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.