Enjoy the Silence(r) – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, October 2022

Time flies as fast as a TIE Fighter and so here we are again at it with the LEGO Star Wars magazine only four short weeks after the last one. This is because next weeks holiday weekend here in Germany is messing with the calendar and release schedule, so we’re getting the October issue almost one week earlier.

The comics are getting a bit concerning. Every second one of them is in some way ridiculing Darth Vader and Blue Ocean really need to stop it. It’s not that everything needs to be dead serious and strict to canon, but these “Vader is bored and messes up his surroundings” stories are really reaching a level of nonsense where it’s hard to enjoy them if you’re not a three year old.

The secondary comic follows in a similar vein and makes even Kylo Ren look bad and the empire once more like a congregation of morons.

The posters have a distinct 1970s early 1980s vibe with striped patterns, but don’t quite mange to pull it off. The back side with Obi Wan is a bit better than the front with Vader, though.

The extra is Kylo Ren‘s TIE Silencer from The Rise of Skywalker where it gets sliced to pieces by Rey. The model more or less follows the standard build pattern for these vessels we have seen so many times, but swaps out shorter panels for more elongated ones. Just like the Mandalorian Starfighter it uses the new 2 x 6 wedge plates, this time in Black of course, so if you don’t have any yet, here’s a good way to start adding some to your parts collection.

The extra once more saves the day, but otherwise this isn’t a great issue. There’s very little to gawk at and beyond the “I buy it every month, anyway.” There’s really not much to say about it. There’s just nothing standing out.

The Not-X-Wing – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, November 2021

This months LEGO Star Wars magazine brings back memories in that it comes with a small A-Wing in the style of the one from The Rise of Skywalker‘s end battle, but more on that later.

The primary comic starts out well this time. It’s not Vader making himself look like a fool but rather a ghostly Yoda playing pranks in a number of ways. This nicely fits with his somewhat mischievous nature, which regrettably is totally underplayed in the latest movie trilogy, where he comes across as much too stern. Seeing him be his little trickster self is indeed much more enjoyable. Since he’s merely projecting his Force Ghost, we also get to see a number of different locations, which also helps to make this interesting.

The second, three pages short comic as usual ties in with the extra, i.e. the A-Wing, but surprisingly enough it depicts the wrong one, that being the version with the Dark Red trim from the original movies and having come out as a large scale UCS model last year.

The puzzles are once more not much worth of a mention and neither is the first poster, which looks kind of amateurish with the sand not having been properly dusted off the minifigures. At least it proves that it likely is a real photograph with the actual figures from The Bad Batch Attack Shuttle (75314) set. The second poster on the back is more to my taste, taking clues from the character posters from The Force Awakens onward.

As already mentioned, this edition contains a miniature rendition of the Resistance A-Wing Starfighter (75248) I reviewed last year. The limitations I laid out back then still apply, of course – A-Wings, while slick in appearance don’t make for the most interesting models. This small one isn’t half bad, though, be it just for mixing up the build formula for these things compared to this other one.

This version comes with a few special pieces, if you wanna call it that. One of them is the small 1 x 1 rounded “dome” slope in Dark Bluish Grey, which so far only has appeared in the Story of Nian (80106) and the other are two 1 x 3 tiles in Dark Green. Both these elements aren’t rare, but also not available in abundance, thus a bit more costly on Bricklink, so it never hurts to get a few extra on the cheap just by buying this magazine.

Overall this is a pretty solid issue of the LEGO Star Wars magazine and is fun enough even for adults. Definitely a recommendation this time!

Ketchup Trooper – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, August 2021

This month feels like it has passed particularly quickly and so here we are already again with the latest LEGO Star Wars magazine for August.

The comics are again a bit of an acquired taste as it’s back to weird clownery by the evil guys, this time Kylo Ren and Palpatine, and mixing scenarios from different episodes and eras of Star Wars. It’s a bit odd that they keep doing that, as Blue Ocean actually recently did their own survey which indicated that around 44% of all of their magazines are read by adults. I would bet this number is even higher for this one. So perhaps they really need to “grow up”, shift the target age range towards adolescents and grown-ups and stick to canon?

Anyway, the comics are not bad stylistically and the secondary one provides a comical, though rather low-brow and predictable explanation as to why Sith Troopers wear red armor. Sandwiched inbetween the two comics are of course a few other pages with puzzles, games, reader feedback and so on, but really nothing special. The games may occupy two pages at times, but ultimately they are still simple “find the way” puzzles, not demanding trivia quizzes.

At least one of the posters could have been pretty good, the main one depicted here, but I feel that they went a bit overboard with the vignette/ darkening effect. It very much sucks out the life of everything. Even the lightsabers aren’t really glowing. If I were to put it up I’d likely at least cut off a bit of the dark areas to make it pop a little more.

The minifigures are a case of old meeting the new with the Finn character being a version included e.g. in the Jakku Quadjumper (75178), one of the first sets I reviewed here on this blog. The Sith Trooper on the other hand is from last year’s eponymous battle pack (75266). As always with these things, the value of these figures to you personally will depend on what you have in mind and how much you are a fan of a given Star Wars film. Since The Rise of Skywalker wasn’t that popular with fans, though, I doubt there’s that much demand for additional red troopers, either.

This issue is a bit of a wild ride again and doesn’t have a recognizable through-line nor does it boast anything extraordinary that you shouldn’t miss. As such it will still provide a bit of diversion on the beach during your summer holiday and the sand may even tempt you into re-playing some Jakku scenes, but overall you’re not missing much. Nothing to lose sleep about if you should be unable to obtain this item while away from home…

Aerial Battle Fun – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, July 2021

The summer heat has waned off a bit this week and things have become a bit more enjoyable, despite me still feeling like a lazy slob a lot of the time. At least the various LEGO magazines arrive on schedule, so let’s see what the latest edition of the Star Wars version has in store.

Jumping right in with the comics, we get a quite epic aerial battle between some TIE Fighters and X-Wings in the main one and the Millenium Falcon is involved, too. It’s still a bit weird and not adhering to the main canon very well, but still way better than those weird Vader stories. It’s also visually very pleasing with lots of nice blue sky shades, but at the same time the panels not looking empty as I criticized for one of the Jurassic World magazines not so long ago.

The second comic takes a play at the training scenes with Rey and BB-8 at the beginning of The Rise of Skywalker and is equally acceptable, not just because it serves as the tie-in for the extra, which of course are our two protagonists in minifigure format.

I’m just gonna say it: The posters are both terrible. It’s what I call uninspired hack jobs. One is cobbled together from existing stock photos. Nothing wrong with that and people do it all the time, but you can literally see that exactly zero effort went into it. Even I could probably bash this together in five minutes. They could at least have properly layered and color corrected the “ghost” overlay instead of just reducing opacity. The backside poster doesn’t fare much better. Though graphical in nature and playing with the idea of a brick mosaic, it just doesn’t look good.

That being the case, I wish they had used the wimmelpicture instead and ideally as an XXL print at that. The shameless promotion for the Mos Eisley Cantina (75290) and a few other sets aside, it has some interesting and funny details and would look gorgeous as a decently oversize poster. There’s always the chance they may do so in the future, of course, so not all hope is in vain.

The minifigures of Rey and BB-8 at this point feel like clearing leftovers from their stockpile. The funny thing is that  the movie may be only one and a half year in the past, but it already feels like an eternity, yet at the same time it’s to early to celebrate any anniversary and anyone who bought several of the sets is probably sitting on piles of Reys. Surprisingly the BB-8 has a decent value, though, as this new version with the larger eye has not been in that many sets. At the same time, my old version with the smaller eye which I got kind of accidentally with this set seems to be equally coveted. At least it’s rather pricey on Bricklink. Go, figure!

All things considered this is an okay issue, but it doesn’t make the globe spin faster. I’m particularly miffed that some good ideas were not used and for the extra they could at least have thrown in one of them palm leaves and a Dark Tan plate or something to create a little patch of the training jungle and make it more enticing. With that in mind, a lot of people are already much more excited about the next issue, which will include a Sith Trooper and as usual some people have already vowed to buy it in bulk… We’ll see how that works out!

Flying Triangle – LEGO Star Wars, Sith TIE Fighter (75272)

After the latest LEGO Star Wars magazine came with a mini version of the Sith Eternal TIE Dagger and I already posted a size comparison to the actual commercial model, it only seems natural to follow up with a full review of the Sith TIE Fighter (75272), late as it may be.

As you may know, I won this set in a little building contest a while back. This opens up the question whether I would actually ever have bought it myself. I think I can pretty much answer this with a firm “No!” without much pretense and dancing around like that it would depend on the circumstances and whatever other excuses one could make up. The only exception from that is of course when I would need the parts for a project and buying the box would be cheaper than ordering the pieces individually from Bricklink.

The latter is, however, unlikely to ever happen, considering how pricey this set actually is. At a suggested retail price of 70 Euro for a meager 470 parts the price-to-piece ratio is terrible. You can’t even rationalize this with some of those elements being larger plates or for that matter some of the wedge plates used on this model being “new” (more on that later). They will be common pretty soon and lose their “exclusivity”, given in how many sets they are already being used and latest at that point nobody will be willing to pay a premium just to get them. This will be penny stuff one day soon.

Now of course actual retail prices are lower, but even then the usual metrics of 10 Cent a piece don’t work out when you still have to pay 50 Euro when that’s what it actually should cost before discounts. Point in case: These TIE Fighter sets just don’t have enough bulk, use mostly standard parts and in this particular case there aren’t even any fancy extras to justify an extra profit on top. In fact one could even be majorly upset by the way the minifigures are distributed, so let’s have a look at that.

The Minifigures

This set only has three minifigures to offer. On a general level that is adequate enough, but more or less feels a bit underwhelming, given how large the model will be. Most notably, aside from the pilot himself there aren’t any actual figures associated with the craft itself. In some other sets you get at least a guard and a mechanic. Funny enough, the opposing side, The Resistance, more often than not gets a much richer selection of characters, with even some smaller sets having more minifigures than this one.

Aside from the sheer number of little guys, there is also something very, very cynical (to the fans) going on here: Critical characters from the The Rise of Skywalker movie have been scattered across multiple sets from this series, forcing people who want to collect them to spend big just to obtain a complete selection of figures. Of course I’m referring to The Knights of Ren first and foremost, but this has happened to some others as well. It’s just sad to see and while I have ambiguous feelings about obsessive collectors, I still feel for anyone who had to shell out big just for a special minifig, as much as I may then benefit from buying sets bereft of the figures for cheap on secondary markets.

The characters themselves are executed nicely with some fine details and prints. Finn even got his utility bag and wears his leather jacket! The TIE pilot isn’t anything special, but may still be valuable for a larger diorama with an imperial squadron if you want to mix up things a bit and need different helmet types. Maybe that becomes even more a thing when the new Star Wars – Squadrons game comes out? Finally there’s of course the single Knight of Ren. Since I’m not that deep into the overall canon and lore I’m not going to bother with his name, but it’s interesting to me what crazy prices this would fetch. Again, I’m stunned what consequences such a very corporate move can have in practice…

Is it real?

One thing that really drives me up the wall with this particular TIE Fighter is the scarcity or even utter lack of any references and background info. Aside from one or two rather generic official concept drawings there is nothing for interested fans to verify and obsess about actual dimensions, technical details, tactical combat use and so on. There’s not even a cutaway drawing in one of the usual The Art of Star Wars… books that accompany every movie.

The big stinker is that very, very, very clearly detailed plans for this vessel existed/ exist somewhere. This can be easily proven by the amount of detail that not only the LEGO model tries to squeeze out, but also other model renditions like the Metal Earth version folded up from etched frets or more toy-ish versions from other vendors.

The unfortunate and very frustrating conclusion therefore has to be that this vehicle is a victim of circumstance in that it simply fell between the cracks some time during production of the movie and what little remains of all the conceptual work cannot be recognized and appreciated because quite literally this fighter has been relegated to act as background filler in a big battle scene. So if anyone at Disney or Lucasfilm is reading this: Give us that dang concept art from your vaults!

The Lady comes in Pieces!

One thing I’ve always appreciated as a bit of an engineering nerd myself even way back then is the way those TIE Fighters are split into sensible sub-assemblies not just to facilitate the building process. It really helps with transport and storage. On the other hand, once plugged back together, things are extremely stable and robust, making for a very “swooshable”, i.e. playable, model. As you would expect, this model separates into the two main wings and the central cockpit section with it’s beam-like mounting points and then there’s an extra small support pylon.

The Cockpit Section

If you’ve ever built any TIE Fighter, you know what to expect here. The only real difference compared to similar models is that this time there was an actual effort made to give the cylindrical cockpit some real volume with some round 3 x 3 x 2 dome pieces used to give it a shaped butt. The proportions otherwise are still wrong, though, with the glass canopy being too large and not bulbous enough.

Another major flaw or shortcoming it least is that no attempt was made to reproduce the wedge-like shaping of the front edges of the support beams. There may not be many resources to draw on, but at least this part is very clearly visible in the concept artwork, more so than on any other TIE craft ever before. I find it almost tragic, given how the beams are built, as in my opinion it would have taken minimum effort to squeeze in some suitably shaped wedge and slope pieces like this one and this one perhaps.

The Wings

The wings, or more precisely the radiator plates for the TIE drive constitute the bulk of the build and ultimately are what makes any of these fighters appear so large. The basic triangular shape has been around for a while on Kylo Ren’s TIE Fighter (75179), Major Vonreg’s TIE Fighter (75240) and a few others, but this extreme symmetrical, almost equilateral form was never used before.

Does it make sense? Probably not? Is it cool? I don’t agree on that one, either. The whole thing feels forced as if they were trying to come up with yet another shape for the fighters just for the sake of it when there really was no need to. An iconic design like the original hexagonal TIE simply does not need to be reinvented over and over again. It also doesn’t make much sense from an engineering point of view, as the internal tubing for the cooling fluid would be a nightmare and sharp turns cause hot spots and potential congestions.

The red border is also kind of pointless. As stated, the fighters are barely visible in the movie and this outline is so thin, you just don’t recognize it enough. and not to state the obvious: With such large areas available any TIE Fighter pilot would be more likely to just paint on large squadron badges, diagonal stripes or other insignia. Point in case: Had the edge been copper, brass or silver colored I could have accepted it as being a different material for technical reasons, but being as it is it is simply the lamest way they could have designed this.

The double sandwiched wings could arguably have some purpose on a real vessel by massively increasing the available surface area for cooling, but of course this rationale is lost in the way the LEGO model is built with the secondary wing foil just stacked on the first one by ways of standard bricks, thus not allowing anything to stream through the gap. It might be possible to build this differently, but arguably just hanging by a few axles and brackets this would be too flimsy and unsafe for mainstream consumption, so I guess it’s okay on some level. At the same time of course it could be merely a misinterpretation of the original artwork just as well. We’ll likely never know…

The rear edge of the radiator panel is actually a completely separate entity. if you study the few original sources, it appears to be shaped like a broad sward with an irregular blade, which kind of brings us back to my point about the leading edges of the cockpit section: It seems the whole thing was supposed to look a lot more aggressive and intimidating in the first place, leaning much more in the somewhat rough Knights of Ren design direction. Given, what a mess the movie was and we already mentioned the various failures of this TIE Fighter I’m not at all surprised things turned out that way and not in a good sense.

When viewed straight on either from the bottom or the top the basic construction and some of the cooler tricks become readily apparent. First there’s that thing with the Trans Clear 1 x 4 tiles used to reinforce the gap between the actual panel and the “cleaver” section I just described. According to Bricklink, this is the first set in like forever to have these tiles and on top of it there are exactly two sets to date that have even used them. I was kind of wowed by this, though I have no concrete idea if and when I actually might need such tiles. They’re not particularly rare, either, but I’ll definitely stow them away safely just in case.

The other interesting thing are of course the tons of the relatively new 4 x 2 and 6 x 4 wedge plates. As I already wrote in my LEGO Star Wars magazine review they will be common soon enough, but I sure don’t mind having a good helping of them right out of the gate. Further incentive is of course provided by some modified tiles which at the very least also will come in handy when that next Star Wars MOC for a competition will require those polished Imperial black floors. 😉

Pylon What?!

Now for the part that wants me make to slap the LEGO designers in their face (or the responsible higher up project manager) – the sad excuse that is the support pylon/ display stand. It really is like they couldn’t be bothered to even put in a minimum of effort to make it look nice nor actually stable. All it does is literally serve as a third leg to prevent the model from tipping forward while it rests on the bottom aft corner points of the wings. This apparently works sufficiently, but it’s still disappointing. There isn’t even a transversal plate to keep the two trusses at the right distance, much less anything in the way of an actual display stand. I yearn for the day when we get a real launch platform/ gantry with any of the TIE Fighters!

Photo Tour!

While there are a lot of shortcomings with the set, there’s no denying that from certain angles it looks good enough. In particular viewed from steep angles that stretch it in perspective you can almost feel it zooming by and making your furniture tremble. Funny enough, it also looks pretty decent from behind. It’s just the sideways views that give away its somewhat clunky appearance and uninteresting design of the radiator panels. As I said, at least that latter point could have been fixed easily with a different color scheme, so it’s a pity things have to be that way.

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Concluding Thoughts

Would I have bought this set if I hadn’t won it in a building contest? I consider it extremely unlikely. Unless I had a very concrete plan to build a custom model that would require or at least benefit from having those new wedge plate type en masse, this simply doesn’t add up. The vehicle itself is not the most attractive and on top of it the set is extremely overpriced for what little you get in return. I can appreciate it as a free lunch, though, and of course some people will be right in that I probably shouldn’t complain as much under those conditions. Still, I feel that it’s important to give you the full picture, especially when there’s several caveats to consider. Feel free to agree or disagree and voice your opinions in the comments!

October Triangle – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, October 2020

Blue Ocean‘s release scheduling this year has really taken a hit, if not to say it sucks. they were still advertising September 12th as the release date in their other magazines when it was past that already and it became clear that the LEGO Star Wars magazine would be out only one week later.

Now these things happen – a print run may go wrong, distribution logistics may get stuck somewhere and all that – but this hasn’t been the first time. Worse yet, in a day and age where there’s Facebook and other social media and they have their own web site, too, they can’t manage to keep them updated in a timely fashion to inform customers. I certainly don’t need the unnecessary excitement and uncertainty of going to the news agent every other day and coming back empty-handed. Now that it’s here, though, let’s have a look at the October issue.

The main comic is weird. Aside from being utterly non-canonical, would anyone actually believe that Vader could not be recognized posing as an imperial officer? It’s not bad from a technical or stylistic viewpoint, mind you, just not a great story. The second, shorter comic is somehow of lesser quality and displays Luke‘s original X-Wing that isn’t even available as a LEGO model currently, while on another “info” page Poe Dameron‘s fighter is shown. Confuses me!

There is extremely little in the mag in the way of activities and puzzles, with all of them being mazes/ labyrinths of sorts to find your way. It took me under three minutes to solve them in my head without even tracing the lines. Definitely underwhelming even if you account for a kid’s less developed spatial awareness and acuity.

The posters aren’t good, either. the one on the back has this weird Yoda silhouette with the characters peeking through and the front one, as displayed here, fails because someone went crazy with Photoshop‘s lightning filter. Kylo Ren‘s kintsugy-style repaired mask is of course iconic and I get what they were aiming for, but this once again looks like a sloppy intern job.

The highlight of the issue and its saving grace is once more the buildable model, this time a Sith Eternal TIE Dagger. Fancy names aside, it is basically the TIE Fighter that never really was, because, as I wrote in my film review back then, it isn’t even that important or prominently featured in the The Rise of Skywalker movie. Further indication of its limited relevance is that there isn’t even a concept drawing/ cutaway in one of the The Art of Star Wars… books. It really feels like an afterthought with no rhyme or reason simply because they wanted something in their movie nobody had seen before, only to then relegate it to the background.

For comparison I took a snapshot of the small version with the bigger model from set 75272 that I won in this building contest a few months ago. The value of the small model lies in the new 4 x 2 and 6 x 4 wedge plates only recently introduced. I had the Medium Azure version of the smaller plates in this Speed Champion set already, but getting a bunch of black ones may turn out much more useful. I could see them being used as spires for towers or similar pointy, sharp stuff already.

Anyway, you get eight of the smaller plates (four left, four right) and two each of the larger ones, so this is a good basis and a simple way to obtain some examples just in case you might need them if like me you are not privy to having the big set (where there’s a ton of those plates, including the red versions of course).

This issue is not great by any stretch of the imagination. It leaves a lot to be desired and even the model would be just the umpteenth micro scale TIE Fighter if it weren’t for the new parts. Perhaps I’m really getting too old and jaded, but it seems to me that they need to shake up the formula a little, even more so considering how many adults actually read the mag. The insistence on pretending this was primarily still for kids feels more and more out of alignment with reality to me…

September X-Wing

Did you ever realize how many planets in the Star Wars universe are just barren deserts? Given, how hot it’s currently I almost feel like I live on one such planet. That makes the new LEGO Star Wars magazine a welcome distraction while I’m being kind of summer-lazy.

The September issue is fully packed not just with the actual magazine, but also comes with a “free” album and a sample pack for the new Star Wars collectible sticker series. I put the free in quotes because you actually pay for it to a certain extend. It’s only a fraction of what it would cost separately, but still, paying 5 Euro this month instead of the usual 4 Euro was an unexpected and unwelcome surprise at the newsstand.

On the other hand I’m genuinely tempted to get some more stickers, even more so as they sell the booster packs with extra Stormtrooper minifigures of different kinds. Apparently they are re-used leftovers from earlier editions, but maybe at long last I’ll get my hands on a Snowtrooper? Somehow I always missed out on them. Anyway, I’m definitely going to keep the collector’s album around for a while, as predictably more sticker packs will be bundled with the various LEGO magazines every now and then in the months to come.

The comic is a retelling of Yoda‘s escape and crash-landing on Dagobah with a few more or less funny twists. I’m not that steeped in the actual canon lore, so I can’t really tell how much they bent it to be kids-friendly. There’s another, shorter comic, as well. Otherwise the magazine is dangerously light on content. Barely anything in the “activities” department, i.e puzzles and all that stuff, and the posters aren’t particularly good, either.

The buildable model is – yet another – X-Wing, this time in its The Rise of Skywalker livery. If you’ve been collecting them all in the last few years, you should have a nice line-up. The build is pretty much the same like before: a long 1 x 1 x 4 brick serves as the nose extension, some plates, slopes and bricks for the main fuselage and then the wings clipped on. At least they have been trying to keep things interesting by using different pieces and construction methods almost every time. This time the wings are created with the 1 x 2 plate with bars on the side and the engine housings are simulated with the still relatively new 1 x 1 rounded bricks.

How many ways to skin a cat there potentially could be is further illustrated by the bigger Poe Dameron’s X-Wing (30386) from the polybag set I put next to it (top half). Once you start to think about the endless combinations and creative uses of the parts, you can go crazy. There’s literally perhaps at least a hundred ways to build such a mini fighter. On an interesting sidenote, I was rummaging through my parts boxes the other day, realizing I actually only had two (!) 1 x 2 jumper plates, so this model is a pleasant surprise. It contains five of these parts and that should bolster my stock considerably. You never know when you’re gonna need them…

All things considered I’m pretty satisfied, though. Good value all round despite the unexpected extra cost. For kids it could be a bit boring due to the lack of more things to do, though.

Sharp Swords and colorful Plants

It’s the first real summer heatwave this year, so I’m lazy as a sloth (in addition to my fragile health not responding well to the temperatures), but I figured I’ll at least share the MOCs I created for some contests I took part in. As per my self-imposed rules I’m only releasing the info now that the competitions are over and this therefore is not a “Please vote for me!” post or that sort of thing.

First there’s my model I created for Zusammengebaut‘s May the 4th… Star Wars building challenge that also doubled as part of LEGO‘s overall #buildtogether (#baumituns) initiative during the current pandemic. At the time I was helping my brother to move to his new flat, so I didn’t have an abundance of time to spend on elaborate large scenery pieces or vehicles and had to come up with something simple, yet elegant and original. That and of course I knew right away that had I gone that other route, I probably would face stiff competition with hundreds of similar projects.

All those factors being relevant and the idea having run around in my head for a while, anyway, I opted to build what I call “The Imperial Light Sword Point Sharpening Facility”. I tried to poke a bit of fun into that whole light saber thing by simply assuming that their tips/ blades would wear down and go blunt, after all, and needed some freshing up every now and then. I looked up some examples for traditional pencil sharpening machines and since I wanted to stick with the traditional palette of the Empire built one in Red. I also added an engineering/ architectural touch by giving it a proper foundation with support beams.

In keeping with the Empire‘s standard tropes I tiled over the floor in as much shiny Black as I could and added a bit of flair by having rounded corners with Light Bluish Grey trim all around. In a real factory/ maintenance facility there need to be some safety measures in place and stuff has to go somewhere, so I also added a container with some “spent” light saber blades. With the glossy floor in place and the Empire valuing their almost clinically sterile cleanliness, of course someone had to sweep up the debris/ chips and who better than a captive Chewy? Adding an officer with a whip and a Stormtrooper with a gun as supervisors evolved naturally.

I dare say that for a mere 24 x 16 studs this isn’t all that bad and who knows, maybe one day I’ll get around to building a much bigger version of it as I originally envisioned? In any case, I’m glad it worked out and netted me a third place. Since it took so long for the Zusammengebaut people to actually rate the contest and publish the results I haven’t received my price yet, but if everything holds as per their initial announcement I should be getting a Sith TIE Fighter (75272), the triangular one from the The Rise of Skywalker, soon-ish. Nice!

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The second MOC is my entry for the Eurobricks Flower Challenge on the Eurobricks forum. I didn’t win anything for that and in my opinion the contest was a bit of a shit show with only few people voting, ultimately skewing the outcome, but I can acknowledge that there were several entries way better than mine.

Anyway, I called my entry “The Duke’s Arboretum” and tried to evoke that feeling of an old English manor in the countryside some time in the 19th and early 20th century where a scientifically inclined nobleman would maintain his own greenhouse/ arboretum to harbor all kinds of exotic plants in a contest with other lords and dukes on who has the most rare species.

To that effect I built a tall Gothic window all with fancy red velvet drapery and that. The walls are more or less plain and only have a Sand Green oil paint socket for easy cleaning. Similarly, I kept the floor rather muted. You know, just like it sometimes is with those science labs. A bit stuffy and old-fashioned, yet oddly charming. On second thought, though, I should perhaps have used some brighter colors. My camera just sucks and doesn’t have enough dynamic range to accommodate these dark colors.

Other than that this was mostly a test bed for trying out different plant building techniques in such a way that I wouldn’t just lap on standard LEGO blossom elements everywhere. This is definitely a topic worth revisiting at some point, but I definitely have to stock up on some parts and build a larger, more open outdoor garden next time…

Porker Van – LEGO Monkie Kid, Pigsy’s Food Truck (80009)

LEGO‘s new Monkie Kid series has only been out for two weeks at this point and due to some favorable circumstances for once I was able to hop onto the bandwagon of just-in-time reviews, so here’s my take on Pigsy’s Food Truck (80009). Before we delve in, some more general thoughts on the series as a whole, though.

Monkie Kid who?

As should be now be widely known, Monkie Kid is a modern spin on the old Chinese Journey to the West tale that revolves around the adventures of a band of mythical creatures and heroes, including the Monkey King. That’s pretty much where my knowledge ends. I’ve never seen a movie, not one of the older animated series that apparently exist nor read any books or comics. feel free to call me totally culturally ignorant. 😉 This is not made better by LEGO’s own animated series tie-in not having come out yet, so the models can only be rated on their own merits out of context.

That being the case, I have to say I don’t like most of them. Not only had I hoped for a more traditional approach to this series to begin with, potentially giving us some interesting historically inspired stuff, but my real problem is that most sets look like a wild mix of Nexo Knights and poorly done Ninjago. That is they use way too many large, compound parts where one might have preferred to build up things from many smaller pieces, lots of exposed Technic elements and an overall aesthetic, that’s not necessarily appealing to adults with lots of intense colors like Dark Purple and glowy oranges.

The other major turn off is simply the crazy pricing. No way to dance around it, but it really seems with this series LEGO are reshaping their own reality and reaching new heights. It’s not per se bad that sets cost a certain amount of money, but keep in mind that this series is not a collector’s edition, but is genuinely meant o be used for playing. Funny enough it will serve the latter purpose just fine, as most builds in their own way appear to be done well enough to live up to that, but the insane cost will be prohibitive and put it out of reach for many.

On the positive side the series introduces a ton of new parts or parts in previously unreleased colors and brings back some legacy pieces even that haven’t been available for a while. That alone will be motivation enough for some potential buyers. I would in particular go so far and say that the Monkey King Mech (80012) will be extremely popular in the MOC-building communities just for its many Metallic Gold parts and similarly the Dark Green Technic parts in the Monkey Kid’s Team Secret HQ (80013) as long as they’re not available elsewhere.

Finally there’s of course some interesting new minifigures. Even if I don’t actually pro-actively collect them, you have to give props to some of the new designs. They look fresh and truly like they add something new with new color combinations, new hair pieces and overall rather elaborate designs and prints.

What the Pigsy…?!

Based on the factors mentioned in the previous paragraph and some additional ones I opted for Pigsy’s Food Truck (80009) for a hands-on look at at least one set from the series. The reasoning behind this is pretty straightforward.

First, my brother and I have this weird running gag of anything to do with pigs and piglets and as a consequence anything to do with certain shades of pink. That’s why I had to have this for the pig on the roof of the van and Pigsy‘s minifigure alone. On that same note, I’m of course also somewhat into LEGO Friends and thus already have a reasonably large collection of pieces in these colors which I’m always looking to expand and complete in the hopes of one day pulling off some gorgeous custom builds with them.

The other reason to get this set are the many white parts, in particular the arches used on the wheel wells and the large modified tiles constituting the upward-swinging doors on the sides. There’s quite a few of them and if nothing else, they may come in handy as snow-covered roof elements for Christmas-y builds when it’s that time of the year again…

With that in mind, the economics added up and I wouldn’t have to worry about a total write-off even if the model itself disappointed. Knowing that these sets will very likely be exclusive to LEGO stores for a while, I ordered it right away from their online shop. Lo and behold, despite all kinds of horror stories of packages getting stuck in distribution centers due too overwhelming demand in the current crisis, everything worked out just fine and one week later DPD dropped the box undamaged on my doorstep.

Unwrapping the Van

The set comes with a pretty sizable van, five minifigures and two motorbikes, which even despite my initial criticism makes for a good value. In fact I would argue that out of all the current Monkie Kid sets this is perhaps the one with the best price-to-value ratio overall. I’m not sure if 60 Euro is the best price it could have, but given how surprised I myself was at how large the food truck actually turned out, I feel that it’s still fair on some level. If it only cost 50 Euro it would of course be even better, yet I don’t feel I have paid too much, rare as this is these days.

As written earlier, the figures are pretty nice. Monkie Kid himself (center) stands out the most with not only a unique torso print (apparently he’s employed at Pigsy‘s, if only as a disguise), but also the most elaborate legs I have seen myself to date. They are dual molded wit ha red upper section and black shoes and printed from three sides. Technically this is nothing new, but figures with such complex leg prints aren’t found in every set and i never had one before. My only criticism would be the slight lack of opacity on the white portions.

Pigsy uses a new unique head mold and looks just fine as a comical interpretation of a pig. The single customer is a bit run-off-the-mill and the Red shirt/ Sand Blue pants combo feels a bit overused. Simply too many figures in City and Creator sets use it. The evil guys, called Grunt and Snort in this set, are just clones in the truest sense of the meaning. they all look the same and are contained in every set, so similar to Star Wars you may indeed be able to build a clone army once you have bought enough of them.

 

The motorcycle/ bike is a completely new mold and is reminiscent of certain older types like wartime messenger bikes or the somewhat rustic-looking generations after that until the 1970s mostly. What makes them great, aside from having another alternate design, is the fact that LEGO had the good sense to do them in decent, realistic colors. They are a combo of Pearl Dark Grey , Pearl Grey and Black, making them unoffensive and integrate well into any scenario. even the spoked wheel hubs have that nice metallic sheen.

It’s an ordinary World (very ordinary)

Moving on to the truck itself, you’re kind of immediately taken out of the Monkie Kid world again as – with all respect – it looks very, very mundane and ordinary, give or take the few extras. That is both a good thing and a bad thing at the same time. It’s good because of course this would allow you to use the model in other scenarios easily with only minor modifications. It’s bad because somehow it just doesn’t seem to fit the slightly more crazy other sets from the series.

Most notably the lack of any variation in the overall White color scheme makes it just look boring. Yes, you can insert the same platitudes about me just not using stickers, but I still feel that this could easily have been mitigated somewhat even without those. Had e.g. the large 6 x 12 tile been substituted with multiple smaller ones and some colored items been sprinkled in to imitate patched or rusty spots, it could have looked more interesting to begin with.

And make no mistake – even if you were to apply the large stickers it would not necessarily look better. Both Bright Pink and Dark Cyan are “cold”, not very vibrant colors that do little to enliven the model. The lack of contrast can be extended to the mudguards or the rounded sections of the roof as well. Would have making the roof Light Bluish Grey been boring, too? Admittedly yes, but it would at least have given some contrast and a nice demarcation line.

I feel that the the mudguards likewise could have been grey or in the Bright Light Orange/ Flame Orange Yellow as the middle strip on top of the roof. On the bright side, though, they are constructed from the new 3 x 3 rounded bricks first introduced in the latest Star Wars – Rise of the Skywalker Resistance X-Wing (75273) for the jet intakes. That opens up potential for using them in a million different ways on other builds as opposed of having more single-mold pieces with limited alternate uses floating about in your stock.

The various appendages, i.e. the red horns, bull catcher and lights to me merely feel like a half-baked, uninspired attempt to make the vehicle look even a tiny bit menacing, but ultimately it does not. In terms of “branding” this seems weird, anyway. Wouldn’t those pieces by Dark Cyan or one of the pink colors, anyway? This also wreaks havoc with the red sausages/ hot dogs. They just don’t stand out enough. I also wish for once we’d get those Wieners in a different color. would it have been too much to ask for veggie spinach sausages in Dark Green?

Don’t be so tense!

When inspecting the driver’s cabin/ cockpit, we have to talk about one fundamental problem with this model. There is a lot of overall tension/ friction and by that I really mean a lot.

The cause of this is easy to pin down – the model uses some very long plates and equally 1 stud wide long bricks on top of a chassis frame that derives its main stability from several 6 x 8 plates on top of a Technic brick frame wit ha few pins. To me it’s all too obvious why this can’t work out. The cumulative shear forces will eventually get so great, you struggle to plug on another row of bricks. This is particularly bad with the yellow decorative strip running down the middle of the roof. Here the issue is exacerbated by the strip being build from 1 x 6 bricks that just won’t fit right due to too much lateral friction. Adding the turntable for the pig figure was a battle. This is definitely not for kids and you may need to have a wood hammer handy.

The roof of the driver’s cabin is not completely as bad, but still not really good. I guess the most fitting description would be that it’s a case of “It will jiggle itself into the right position”. You literally have to bend and twist the model ever so slightly at the step where you’re supposed to insert the roof and once the bricks have loosened themselves again and released some tension things will work. regardless, it’s just not ideal having to work this way.

Boring™ inside

The boring-ness of the design continues with the interior. One can’t help but feel that you’ve seen this a million times in every Friends or City van of similar ilk already. There’s some boxes, the usual mustard/ ketchup/ salt & pepper dispensers and a workbench. The only real highlights are a fridge and an extra overhead storage cabinet in the roof which admittedly uses a cleaver on-the-side building technique, but even those feel like they merely fill too much space that otherwise would not be used.

Don’t get me wrong – those elements are just fine for what they represent and even the “sterile” grey colors make sense, it’s just not what this model would have needed. If I had anything to say about it, this would be some insane stuff where once you open up the upward-swinging side panels/ doors you’d see a completely different kind of shop, be that some Chinese pharmacy or mystery items outlet or a full weapons store/ armory. At least the latter thought seems to have crossed the designers’ minds for a minute, as there’s a hidden weapons compartment in the freezer.

The mechanism for the roof swing doors kind of works, but occasionally it does not. More to the point you need to be pretty careful when to push it up and when to swivel it around. This is again an issue with the panels being rather flimsily constructed from only a few larger tiles with some 2 x 3 plates bridging the gaps on the backside. In addition, the actual hinge mechanism doesn’t use any of the inverted curved slopes usually associated with creating a strong connection, further complicating matters.

The matter isn’t helped by once again severe tension problems in the roof. There’s simply too many bulky bricks up there like the big slopes in the middle. Funny enough, though personally I consider it sloppy, it may actually help that those pieces along with some of the arches have their ends loosely hanging in the air. Were they fully counter-locked with extra plates underneath, the friction issues would probably multiply even more.

Pink Sculpture

As mentioned in the introduction, one of the contributing factors I wanted this set is all that pig stuff and the advertising figure on the roof is part of that scheme. It’s reasonably well put together, though again I wish it would have been a bit bigger and more elaborate. It would have been nice if e.g. the ears had been actually pointed by building them from symmetrical pointed curved slopes. Given how the model is designed in that area already, it seems it would have been easy enough.

The stud shooter forming the snout is okay, but I’d preferred some more realistic shaping over functionality still. it might even have been funnier to build the pig as a container and have a separate gun inside or at least hide the gun behind a panel on a hinge. Farting out bullets from the opened butt has its own weird appeal, if you get my drift…

Final Thoughts

Overall the set is perfectly okay as a traditional/ conservative van. It’s quite large and there are enough play features and accessibility to keep kids busy. It’s also a pretty good source for some unique and useful parts if like me you disassemble your models again after a while and use the pieces elsewhere. On the other hand there’s a lot of amateurish, bad construction used, which makes the assembly a bit of a pain at times and would have me worried about long-term damage to some of the elements. All that creaking can only mean something is going to budge one day.

With regards to the Monkie Kid series this doesn’t do much to spike my interest. It squanders its potential by being way too conservative and it just doesn’t feel crazy enough. For all intents and purposes this could just as well be a Creator 3in1 model and you wouldn’t notice much of a difference. So ultimately how worth buying this is depends on some very specific details. It’s still good value for money, though, just perhaps not in the same way for everyone…

B-Grade A-Wing – Resistance A-Wing Starfighter (75248)

Of course some of the sets for the latest Star Wars – The Rise of Skywalker had been out since late October, but only now that the movie is out things are actually making sense in terms of how realistically the models represent the vehicles and how they fit into the story. One of them is the Resistance A-Wing Starfighter (75248).

As I wrote in my short review of the film, this is one of the fighter craft you barely get to see. It’s only visible for a few moments in the Rebel‘s jungle hideout in the run-up to the big final battle with some protagonists chatting in front of it. There are a few glimpses of alternate A-Wing fighters in different liveries, but overall we don’t get to see them that much. Then again this is of course true for most other ships as well that were only stuffed into the movie as fan bait for one last appearance.

Initially I didn’t have plans to buy the set. I was a bit torn on my inside since I had my eyes on the nice Dark Green parts, the canopy is of a type I don’t have yet in my collection and even the fins are new to me, but overall it just didn’t appeal to me as a must-have item. The actual vehicle is simplistic in structure and design and so naturally the LEGO version of it would not make for the most exciting model, either. Therefore I rather spontaneously picked it up when it was on sale in a drugstore.

To me 20 Euro still feels a bit too much, but it’s definitely better than the 30 Euro LEGO envision. It’s definitely not worth that and the price once more feels artificially inflated by licensing requirements, which may not necessarily be LEGO‘s fault but rather to blame on Disney then. Even as a die-hard fan you should see to it that you get it at the lowest possible retail price. There’s simply not enough content there that would justify it costing more than 20 Euro.

Why keep I bickering on about the price again already you may ask? Well, by its nature an A-Wing is flat as a flounder, meaning any representation in brick pieces will mostly be an affair of plugging together a bunch of slopes and making them look nice. There is not much volume there, which can easily be verified both from above and the bottom. The main fuselage of the model is literally not higher/ thicker than three bricks in most areas. In fact the bottom featuring any extra plates is merely a concession to stability requirements, not so much that they may have wanted.

Because of the flatness everything is built around a large cockpit tub piece. I get why they used this approach, but to me as someone who is more interested in getting universally reusable parts rather than large solid mold ones with limited versatility and flexibility that’s not very attractive. Conversely, it already eliminates quite a bit of the fun in building when you would have been busy for those fifteen minutes longer building your own cockpit frame structure from more regular parts.

Limited options as the shape may offer, it’s captured nicely by the designers. From certain angles it almost looks real. Given that this isn’t the first A-Wing ever I would take this kinda for granted, though, cynical as it may seem. There’s only so many ways to skin a cat and eventually even less experienced builders would arrive at similar construction methods, given enough times and of course all pieces being available. An experienced LEGO-employed designer should not have any difficulty at all with this.

In light of not much actual official information being available by ways e.g. of a specific “The Art of Star Wars” book for the latest movie and no way to re-watch it on Blu-Ray or DVD, the details are hard to verify and you have to rely on what you can find in the depths of the internet. Except for absence of the usual “lumps & bumps” (antenna blades and hoods, hinge covers etc.) everything seems to be represented.

Things can be made to look a bit more detailed with some stickers, but as you well know I never use them, anyway. That’s why the cockpit canopy also looks a bit weird (aside from the fact that it is not 100% the correct shape to begin with). I really wish LEGO would always print those parts. I really can’t imagine anyone having fun applying thin sticker strips on a transparent part. The risk of messing it up and ruining the look is just too great.

While for the most part the fuselage is okay, everything really falls apart at the engine section, in particular the aft parts. This is supposed to look very much like the long gondolas on a Y-Wing with only a constrictor ring at the end, but here it just looks plain wrong. Those disk wheels really cannot be the answer, can they? Despite having produced tons of round parts, wheel hubs and different mudguard arches there is not a single piece in LEGO‘s repository that could actually be used to represent a thin ring in this scale as would be required.

Similarly, the many visible Technic parts rub me the wrong way. The landing skids are just as bad as the engine and even the guns just don’t feel right, even more so since they are attached with only a single pin in a way they can easily be brought out of alignment.

So where does this leave us? Given, how insignificant the fighter is in the movie and how limited its representation in LEGO parts, this is one of the sets that simply didn’t need to exist. It has limited value as a play set and next to other, more imposing Star Wars vehicles will also look quite boring in a collection. It doesn’t offer up much of a challenge that would stimulate your senses as a brick fan while building, either, since even that is kind of dull.

Therefore my conclusion is that this would only be truly worthwile for the most ardent fans of the movie or on the other hand if you can literally get it dirt cheap to keep your kids busy for half an hour. Most others can simply ignore this/ pass on it without missing much.