Review: 8096 Emperor Palpatine's Shuttle

Set ID: 8096 Emperor Palpatine's Shuttle

Number of Pieces: 592

Year of Release: 2010

Minifigs: 4

Purchased Price: About SGD160

I have absolutely no recollection of how this vehicle looks like in the movie. None at all. Or maybe it doesn't even exist in the movie and this is one of those made-up vehicle to fill the void of a barren spell in the LEGO Star Wars production. Just maybe. This is also not to be confused with the Imperial Shuttle, which is another classic vehicle in the array of Star Wars transportations.

I almost wanted give this set a miss because I seriously find it ugly. It looks "bricky" and weirdly proportioned, with 3 wings that largely defy the logic of aerodynamics. But then again, I can list a whole lot of other examples of vehicles in Star Wars that are counter intuitive to logic and engineering, but yet being able to zoom through space at warp speed. Welcome to the world of science fiction. In the end, I succumbed to the temptation to buy it when I managed to get a 20% discount, thinking that this might be the one and only version that will be launched by LEGO. Should that be the case (at least it is true until today), this will be a rare set. 

Building Experience

At almost 600 brick count, this is by no mean a small set. It comes with 4 packets of bricks - 1 for the cockpit, 1 for the main fuselage, 1 for the wings and 1 for the dorsal section. As I put the set together, my disappointment of the aesthetic was soon replaced by the admiration to the design of the fuselage, which actually housed the laboratory where the transformation of Anakin to Darth Vader took place. And this is the more challenging part of the construction, with a fair share of technics bricks used here. 

As I was building the fuselage, I kept asking myself "Why is this here?" and "What's the purpose of this piece?" etc, and when the whole fuselage was completed, I could almost see the light bulb popping up above my head. Very clever design. Very clever. 

This is how the transformation works. A pair of rubber bricks hold the Darth Vader helmet above the Anakin's minifig which is lying down on the hinged operating table. I was wondering why the table was hinged rather than fixed ... By pushing the pair of rubber bricks towards the head of Anakin, the helmet will lock nicely onto the minifig and a further push of the pair of sticks will lift the minifig upright, levering on the hinge of the operating table! How did the LEGO engineer ever think of such an innovative design?  I really have to take my hat off for these designers. Kudos! A word of caution on this maneuvre is not to push it too hard at one go, otherwise the minifig or the helmet may jolt off the set, something that happened very frequently when I was a little over enthusiastic when playing with it.

The other parts

After being impressed by the design of the laboratory, I thought very little of the rest of the set, especially when I completed the dorsal section of the vehicle. The design of the dorsal wing was a let down, with the studs of the bricks facing the left side of the vehicle and the bottom of the bricks facing the right side. The asymmetrical nature of the dorsal wing made the vehicle looks better only when viewed from the left (which explains why LEGO used this angle to take the picture for the box). The picture below shows a little more evidence of what I meant about the dorsal wing.

The dorsal part can be attached onto the fuselage by mean of 4 "latches", 2 at the front and another 2 at the back. The latches are quite well concealed but perhaps due to this reason, they are not easy to hook on. You will also have to adjust the dorsal part to and fro to get the "catch" right before you can latch it on. If you choose to buy this set for play rather than for display, then I strongly recommend that you discard the dorsal section and leave the laboratory exposed. Frankly, you have little to lose.

The other 2 wings can be folded up, a useful feature when you run out of space on your display shelf. A pair of ski-like undercarriage can be found at the belly of this vehicle. With 2 stud-wide per ski, this is a very stable set when the undercarriage is deployed. The space in the cockpit is generous, thanks to the large curvy bricks that are used on both sides (see below). Curved windscreen completes the aerodynamics look of the cockpit, with 2 strips of stickers on either side of the windscreen.

Minifigs

Emperor Palpatine is a must (hint: check out the name of this set). Anakin comes with a battered torso and scarred face, a grim reminder of the battle with his master. The 2-1B medical droid is on deck to help with his surgery and transformation. Instead of a fully covered helmet, the Clone pilot's helmet is hollow at the visor section, revealing a painted face of the pilot. The recent versions of the helmets have  seen much more details and thoughts put into them. Great job, LEGO!

Review: 9490 Droid Escape

Set ID: 9490 Droid Escape

Number of Pieces: 137

Year of Release: 2012

Minifigs: 4

Purchased Price: About SGD40

11 years after the initial release of the original 7106 Droid Escape set, the 2nd generation version is finally revealed. Within these 11 years, many things have changed. The world population exceeded 7 billion and counting, mobile phone can do things that we can never imagine a decade ago, oil prices have doubled and, oh, so have the price of this set. In fact, it is tripled! I guess it is a combination of a few factors, including the effect of inflation, simple supply and demand theory and of course, an additional TWO minifigs in this new set. Plastics have never been so expensive.

Of course there are some changes (and improvements) that are worth mentioning here other than the TWO additional minifigs. The bricks count has inflated from 44 to 137, mostly attributed to the detailed escape pod and the swoop bike. C3PO and R2D2 can now sit comfortably in the pod, each having their own seat and controls.

The Escape Pod

Yes, there are stickers in this set. Despite the miserly count of 137 bricks, there are 2 big stickers to represent the complexity of the external of the pod and a few more stripy ones that looks like ventilation holes. As can be seen from the picture here, the grey colour of the stickers does not quite blend with the brick colour, making it stands out awkwardly when viewed from ... in fact, any angle. 

The pod opens easily to reveal a nice, cosy cockpit for the escaping droids. But do not expect to take this pod in your hand and pretend to zoom at hyper speed because the pod cover does not lock to the body in any way. Invert the pod and out comes the cover. I am not sure if it is intentionally designed like this to allow easy escape for the droids or did I misinterpret the building instruction. But it is certainly too loose for my liking.

Cone-shaped bricks of various sizes were used as the multiple exhaust nozzles at both end of the pod (which makes it look a little like Apollo 13!) All the nozzles are clipped on to allow some degree of freedom in movement. As such, you can adjust the nozzles to different angles, supposedly to steer the pod in the desired direction. 

Construction of the pod should not take you more than 15 min. If you are distracted halfway through the construction by a glance on the TV or a visit to the loo, it should still take you less than 30 min to finish. Anything longer than that will require some serious self reflection. 

Swoop Bike and Minifigs

The Sandtroopers rode on the Swoop bike to hunt down the droids who crash landed. Very simply designed and should not be confused with the Speeder bike, which in my humble opinion, is evolving very nicely in the latest sets. 

The 2 Sandtroopers have different shoulder capes and laser blasters. The backpacks have to be assembled and fixed onto the sandtrooper by a single stud and does come off easily when you are handling the minifig. It is worth mentioning that the Sandtroopers do have printed faces behind those helmets, and they do look a little too friendly to be hunting down the droids. Comparing to the earlier set released in 2001, the colour and details of C3PO has indeed improved leaps and bounds, at least it is more gold than yellow now.

Review: 9492 TIE Fighter

Set ID: 9492 TIE FIGHTER

Number of pieces: 413

Year of Release: 2011

Minifigs: 4

Purchased Price: About SGD80

Honestly I have lost count of how many versions of TIE fighters have been released by LEGO. This has not include the few variants that were released through the years, such as the TIE Interceptor, TIE Bomber, TIE Crawler etc. The design of a TIE-related vehicle is usually very typical, with a small cockpit area and two oversized wings. This led me to give up collecting more TIE fighters as the newer versions were nothing spectacular or impressed me enough for me to part with more money. Until this set comes along in end 2011.

This will make a good collection for those who just started collecting LEGO Star Wars. However, you will never be able to appreciate its beauty if you have not seen or built the earlier (4, 5?) versions. 

The Look

I first came across this set on internet website and the first released pictures were enough to convince me to have one. What makes the difference? The newly designed wings. There are certainly more details put into this TIE Fighter wings and it was a joy to see the finished product. Check out the grey borders and diagonal struts. The grey and the black bricks bring out a very nice and contrasting look for this TIE Fighter. 

Building Experience

Simple set to build. No complicated steps. First cockpit, then one wing, then repeat for 2nd wing. Its so simple that it borders boring when I was building it. Having said that, I have to constantly check that all the black bricks on the wings are flushed level from time to time because they are only held together by 1 or 2 bricks and can be flimsy when handling. I was very interested in how the grey rim of the wings was constructed and while I was happy with the look of the end product, the rim does not really fit snugly with the rest of the wing. Upon close examination, there are gaps that still can be seen between the rim and wing.

This is a sticker-less set (Thank you LEGO!!!) and the printed bricks are mostly used for the cockpit area.Talking about the cockpit, I must say it is rather claustrophobic for the TIE pilot (as with other TIE fighter sets) can be accessed by a double-hinged cockpit windscreen. Below the cockpit is a pair of red laser rockets that can be easily fired by a push of a finger. This makes the set rather playable and it can easily be paired with a X-Wing to reenact the classic dog fighting scene in the movie. 

Minifigs

The 4 minifigs are (from left): TIE Fighter pilot, R5-J2, Imperial Officer, Death Star Trooper (what is he doing here?)

The Death Star Trooper has a double face - one with a cool looking shade and the other, an angry look.  The pilot has a very detailed oriented flight helmet but the pleasant surprise is the smiley looking face under the helmet, instead of the totally-black head that was found in older sets. 

The fun is beyond the bricks

As a AFOL (Adult Fan od LEGO), my infatuation with LEGO Star Wars goes beyond the collection and building of the toy. LEGO marketing team has gone WAY beyond the usual bricks sets to maximise their market share in the competitive toy industry (I am a willing victim here so I have lost the right to complain). While I am not into collecting every other merchandise that LEGO throws in the collectors' direction, my selection of non-brick set collections include magnets, books, table lamp and even Christmas Tree ornament! 

The LEGO Star Wars Character Encyclopedia was especially cool, providing insightful information of how the LEGO Star Wars minifigs have evolved through the years. Yes, they do evolve. In the earlier sets, the human characters still have the generic LEGO smiley yellow faces. Now they come with customised expressions and more human like colours. For the astronomical price we pay, some of the characters even come with 2 faces! That's a good deal, isn't it? I still remember the day when I bought the book and finished reading them in a day. All 205 pages of it. The exclusive Hans Solo that comes with the book did add some collector's points as well as contributing to the overall thickness of the book. A must read for fanatics like myself.

Discovered this ornament by chance when I was at the LEGO store checking out the latest products. It is a collaboration between Hallmarks and LEGO so the quality was unquestionable. It is slightly bigger than the typical minifig and comes with a hefty price tag of HKD399. Although made as a Christmas tree ornament, I do believe that not many collectors in the right mind will ever buy a few of these and hang them on the Christmas tree for decoration purposes! Darth Vader is the only character I know that has been produced. Looking forward to other characters next Christmas!

Yes. Cult. That's the word to describe the AFOL all around the world. This book documents the LEGO philosophy and what AFOL around the world have been up to. A quote from the book especially interests me "We are all members of the Cult of LEGO - the only membership requirement is clicking two pieces of plastic together and wanting to click more". It cannot be more appropriately put than that.

My latest addition. A 2nd generation table lamp of LEGO Darth Vader. Can be operated by batteries or USB and it looks incredibly cute on the bookshelf or besides the bed. The light intensity can be adjusted, albeit only two levels are available for choice. Comes with a cape (a gigantic version of the minifig one) that I have till date, not figured out how to remove the head of Darth Vader to place it in. 

The Hong Kong therapy

LEGO in Hong Kong is generally cheaper than that in Singapore. This statement does not apply to collector's sets though. Since relocating to Hong Kong in 2010 for work, I have built up a modest collection here, 26 sets in total and counting. Well, strictly speaking not all the 26 sets were purchased here as some of them were brought back from Singapore where the majority of my collection now resides. I am resisting the temptation to bring more sets here as the boxes seldom survive the trip unscathed.

Hong Kong is not a place known for spacious accommodation. Those living spaces we watched on those TVB series are mostly NOT true so do not be taken in by the over exaggerated living conditions portrayed. I am lucky to have some space to store these 26 boxes, occupying the bottom shelves of 2 Billy book shelves. Last weekend was the first time I assembled all the boxes to do a major spring cleaning, no thanks to the inferior air quality here, saturated with the dust and dirt originated from the adjacent road.

Other than 5 boxes here, the rest have been opened and constructed. In fact, some have already been dismantled to make space for the construction of a new set. A constructed set never goes on display for more than 2 months due to the accumulated dust on them. When the time comes, I took much pleasure in dismantling them brick by brick and sort out the bricks according to the shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to sort them back to the original packaging which would make re-construction much easier.

I sometimes describe the building and dismantling process of these LEGO Star Wars set as 'therapeutic'.  The pleasure of seeing those little bricks coming together to take the shape of your favorite Star Wars vehicle, appreciating the mechanism and brilliance of the LEGO engineers who designed the sets, celebrating the finished product, these can only be felt when you undergo the whole experience personally. If patience is necessary for building a set, it is even more critical when it comes to dismantling and sorting. LEGO has done such a good job with the quality control that the bricks can sometime be difficult to separate. Despite the aid of the LEGO 'key', I can hardly get through the dismantling process without chipping my finger nails or scratching my palms. Friends who know me for years asked me how I can be so patient as a person. 'LEGO therapy' is probably the most apt answer I can offer.

Best of both worlds

It all started in 1999. And the rest, they say, is history.

As I reach a significant milestone of 140 LEGO Star Wars set this year, I cannot help but to look back at the journey of this relentless pursuit for the 2 passions that accompanied me during my teens - LEGO and Star Wars. Yes, 140. But more of the collection in my subsequent blogs.

The story of this collection is probably similar to many who grew up during the 1970s and 1980s. Coming from low income family, getting the family fed was definitely more of a priority to my dad than to let me own a LEGO set. Of course in those years, there were plenty of alternatives, made from cheap plastics that easily chip off with a little more rigorous play and the colours faded faster than when my mum use bleach on a colour shirt. My power of imagination was probably shaped during those years of playing with the cheaper and lower quality bricks, using those chipped and damaged bricks to build the castle walls and the better conditioned ones as the battering rams of the "good knights" of my imagination.

Let's face it, LEGO was and IS expensive. As I grew up and and start to learn about the quality control and philosophy behind the company, I started to appreciate why I am coughing out so much for a few hundreds (and some, thousands) pieces of plastics. My occasional surprises from my dad was often hard earned with good behaviours coupled with excellent results. Those rare sets, mostly of the first generation Knight series, amount to probably 5. But to a young boy who was always unwilling to leave the LEGO isle in the toy store, these 5 sets had been the beacon of my limited toy collection. Not much of these 5 sets now remain, but whatever are left can still be used as loose bricks when my son needed some reinforcement in his LEGO castle sets. After all these years (20 decades and counting), they still fit nice and tight with the newer bricks. If that is not quality, I don't know what is.

Never at any moment in my life do I blame my dad for the deprivation of more LEGO sets. But I remembered telling myself this when I was 10, "When I grow up and earn a salary, I WILL buy my own LEGO collection." Those words were not forgotten, just archived for the day when I can materialise this dream. The day came when someone innovative in LEGO came up with this enterprising venture to collaborate with George Lucas' company to produce the most successful range of LEGO product to date - LEGO Star Wars ... *cue Star Wars theme music*

Honestly, I did not watch any of the Star Wars movies until I was very much older. The last time my parents watched a movie was probably when I was just a strand of protein (or less) so it would never cross their mind to bring me to the theatre to watch a movie that they didn't appreciate or understand. It was only when I started to see the Star Wars merchandise appearing on the shelves that it dawn upon me that Star Wars was BIG. My neighbour used to bring her Star Wars figurines to my place during play time, however I must have given away my look of envy to the extent that she eventually gave me the Han Solo figurine, without the accompanying laser blaster, which she has misplaced.

This lone Han Solo (pun intended) figurine became the hero in all my imaginary world. And as a hero, he certainly needs a flashy ride, made by none other than the limited LEGO bricks in my possession. That, should be the very first version of LEGO Star Wars!

Fast forward to 1999, my Hans Solo was no where in sight and all that were left of his ride was a pile of grey bricks that were once the proud defence of a LEGO castle. Enter the first LEGO Star Wars set, and the rest, as they say, is history.