Is this kit a normal building set?

Not really. It contains mission models for the FIRST LEGO® League robotics competition, used as tasks on the competition table.

What was the theme of this season?

As the name Food FACTOR suggests, the season was built around food.

How many unique parts are in set 9697?

The kit has 313 unique parts among its 2,115 pieces.

FIRST LEGO League

Food FACTOR Challenge Kit

This 2011 kit supplies the mission models for a FIRST LEGO® League season themed around food. It contains 2,115 pieces and no minifigures.

Set number: 9697
Year: 2011
Pieces: 2,115
Minifigures: 0
Theme: FIRST LEGO League
Different parts: 313

What can I build with it?

View the official building instructions at LEGO® ↗

Parts list 313

As BrickLink list (XML)

Import on BrickLink: Wanted → Upload, upload the file (or paste its content), pick a Wanted List and add the parts.

Description

What a challenge kit is

FIRST LEGO® League is a robotics competition in which teams of young people design, build and program a robot to complete tasks on a competition table. Those tasks involve mission models, and each season's challenge kit provides the pieces to build them. The season covered by this kit took food as its theme, as the name makes clear. Rather than one large model, you get a collection of smaller builds that the robot has to reach, move or trigger, which makes the kit a teaching tool first and a construction set second.

A wide spread of elements

With 313 unique parts among its 2,115 pieces, the kit is unusually varied. That makes sense for a set containing many separate models, each needing its own shapes and connectors. The main colours in the catalogue data are black, white, light bluish grey and red. For a school or club that has finished with the season, this variety is valuable: the pieces can be reused for new practice tasks, classroom projects or free building, rather than sitting in a box until the next competition.

Who it suits

The obvious audience is teams, coaches and teachers involved in FIRST LEGO® League. Older kits like this one remain useful for practice, because rebuilding past missions gives new team members a realistic course for testing how accurately their robot can drive and manipulate objects. Collectors may find it a niche item, but as a source of assorted parts it holds its own. It is not a play set or a display model in the usual sense, and it is best judged by how useful its contents are.

Using this page

The complete inventory for 9697 is listed below, by part and colour. It is useful for sorting a second-hand kit, replacing missing elements or rebuilding the mission models from your own collection. The What can I build? tool compares what you own with other sets and shows how close you are to each. Because the kit covers such a broad range of parts, it can be a helpful starting point when you want to see what else your collection could produce.

FAQ

Is this kit a normal building set?: Not really. It contains mission models for the FIRST LEGO® League robotics competition, used as tasks on the competition table.
What was the theme of this season?: As the name Food FACTOR suggests, the season was built around food.
How many unique parts are in set 9697?: The kit has 313 unique parts among its 2,115 pieces.

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