Review: 75020 Jabba's Sail Barge

Set ID: 75020 Jabba's Sail Barge

Number of Pieces: 850

Year of Release: 2013

Minifigs: 6

Purchased Price: About SGD 200

Personally I prefer to build and review a vehicle set, for a good scene set is few and far between and a vehicle is more spectacular and eye catching as a showpiece on the display shelf. With two preceding scene sets built earlier this month, it was only logical that the next review will be a vehicle. Once again, I toyed with the idea of opening the UCS Sandcrawler but with increasing challenges for display places, I opted for the more manageable Sail Barge instead. I know it won't be long before I give in to the Sandcrawler temptation...

Setting Sail!

Only one other Sail Barge has ever been released by LEGO, back in 2006. Although both are comparable in terms of piece counts, the older sibling does come with an additional Desert Skiff and a Sarlacc pit. Whereas for this version, all the 800+ pieces are dedicated to the Sail Barge itself, creating a model that feels solid and dense. Visibly the new version is also slightly shorter in terms of overall length and has a more pointed nose. Despite my dislike for the design of this new nose, I have to admit that it is more movie accurate than its predecessor.

Cruise Control

The smooth operators

This is a Sail Barge, so logically it should ... sail. To simulate the sailing motion, this Sail Barge is now equipped with well concealed wheels at the bottom. These wheels (actually just the wheel hubs without the tyres) do allow the Sail Barge to move smoothly with a slight nudge and gives more credits to the "Sail" part of its name.

Play Ahoy!

There are plenty of playable features in this new variant and on most account I would say, are improvements over the 2006 variant:

Fully opened up for play time!

The Barge can be opened fully to expose its playable features within. The Upper deck can also be removed completely to allow easy access to the play area in the hull of the Barge. There is a new design for the hinges for the side panels - a combination of Technic peg and the rather new 2X4 plate with asymmetrical peg hole (OR LEGO part inventory 4646512/3). Although it was not easy to push the peg into the hinge, the resulting hinge works really well and allow each of the panel to open to any degree. There are only three panels now at the rear of the Barge as compared to five in the previous version. However, the space created within is now better utilised to set up a performance stage for Max Rebo to entertain Jabba the Hutt.

The one man (or elephant) band ...

Neater interior design

There are still the prison, a kitchen and Jabba's throne / seat that took up the other chambers in the Barge. The prison has been shrink considerably but I have no complain as there should only be one occupant. It now has a decent door that opens up directly to the kitchen. The brown prison door and the black grills are a little mismatched though ... The kitchen is a less messy affair here without the dodgy-looking food as seen in the previous Barge. All the food pieces (fish, drumstick and ermmm ... blue popcorn?) have their respective storage so that they don't get lost easily during play time. Jabba's throne is multi-coloured, which reminded me of a tic-tac-toe board.

The nose .. the nose ... the nose. I do prefer the smoother profile of the previous nose, but yes, it was a little too steep. This sharper nose is now housing a cannon that slides outwards when the lid opens. Not too sure if this cannon actually exist in the movie but it does resembles a lot to the old school cannon commonly found in the pirate / warships. Unlike the typical LEGO-ques flick or spring loaded missiles, this cannon fires by tugging the rear and releasing the spring mechanism within, firing off a pre-loaded 1X1 cylindrical cannon ball. Now before you get to excited over this pretty decent play feature, I must pre-empt you that the cannon is NOT designed to be fired from where it resides in the nose, i.e. you have to remove the cannon from the Barge before you can play with it. Go figure.

Old school cannon in the futuristic Barge. Nice design but impractical positioning ...

The removable upper deck is shorter now but serves its purpose well. There is a noticeable lack of safety railings this time round but I guess the minifigs are well secured on the studs of the deck to avoid any play time mishap. The double barrel gun on deck is now shootable with a pair of rather neat flick missiles. The down side is, with the large sail shielding over the cannon, it is not easy at all to play with it. Gone are the useless hatch and catapult from the earlier variant. They are certainly not missed.

The two sail masts are mounted on 2X2 square bricks instead of the previous round bricks, which were not at all well secured onto the deck. I have little complaint over the new plastic sails as they are still very movie accurate. However, the fabric variant in 2006 does go down better with me. One point to highlight of this new upper deck though, that it does warp upwards a little upon construction and this does make securing the deck onto the main body quite challenging. It may be down to my construction but it certainly wasn't well designed enough.

Building Process

This set was released as part of the "green box" series in 2013, with Yoda on the box art. The box was rightly sized for this set too and there was no over supply of voids within the box. The bricks are separated into 6 numbered packs (actually 7 because there are two number 2 packs), with the two instruction booklets, sticker sheets and poster neatly tucked in a cardboard backed packet. As a result, no more creased stickers! That certainly took some pain away from application of creased stickers.

Pre-assembled Jabba

There were two things that took my attention when I first opened the box - (1) the blue Max Rebo and (2) the poster. More of the former in the later section of this review, but I really want to compliment LEGO for including the high quality poster in this set. The quality I refer here is not the paper of the poster itself, but the artwork of the "drawing" that was printed on the poster. Instead of taking the easier way out to use CG and print a picture of the product, the Sail Barge featured in the poster was actually hard painted. Yes, you heard me right, it was painted. I did not realise this until I was examining the picture and realise that they are not as sharp as we would normally expect from a CG designed poster. Kudos to whoever is the artist for making this poster a must-have for collector like myself. In case you are wondering, the other side of the poster features the minifigs that can be found in the same wave of release that year.

Check out this artwork! Impressive!

The Barge was built bottom up, without too much fancy techniques or pieces. The only challenging moments were when I was trying to hinge up the side panels. The aligning of the pegs to the peg holes were not easy and even when I got the alignment right, I somehow couldn't push the pegs in. It eventually took some brute force shafting to make the hinges click together.

One of my biggest complaint of the last set was the application of stickers over adjacent pieces. Such design does not go down well with me as I tend to dismantle some of the sets for easy storage. This time round, there was no such issue and all the stickers were applied on individual bricks, mostly found on the windows of the side panels.

Minifigs

Minifigs collectors will love this set for the exclusive and unique ones - namely Max Rebo, Ree Yees and the Weequay Skiff Guard. The other three minifigs are not new to the LEGO range so will leave some space to summarise them towards the end of the review.


Ree Yees - Besides the Sail Barge, Ree Yees also appeared briefly in Jabba's Palace and was certainly not a fan of Jabba. I am not too sure how he ended up on the Barge but he met with his fiery end when the Sail Barge went up in flame. His three-eyed head piece is rubberised and highly detailed, fitted onto the brown torso piece. This minifig features a dark brown outfit, which is slightly too dark as compared to its movie counterpart. Another unique feature of Ree Yees was his oversized hands, which unfortunately were not replicated in the minifig.


Max Rebo is the musician who entertained Jabba & Co. on board the Sail Barge. In this set, he has his own music room and drum set so he should be rather happy with that. This Max is cute. Period. It does help that he comes in a bright cheerful blue and has a shorter pair of legs. His elephant shaped head piece is also rubberised to allow more details in the design. But for the same reason that it is made of rubber, I do suspect that it will recolour unevenly over time as compared to his torso. If there is a wish list, I hope he can be fatter though. Regardless, he is THE minifig to have in this set.

The Weequay Skiff Guard is another all new minifig in the ever expending minifig range in the Star Wars series. The fact that he was consumed by Sarlacc despite his really ugly look shows how indiscreet the pit monster is about his cuisine selection. His wrinkled facial expression (and I am talking about VERY wrinkled) was printed on one side of the head piece while his braided hair was printed on the rear side. The hair print continues on at the back of the torso, although I would have preferred a real hair piece instead. Given the recent trend that the minifig designers are trying to cover every inch of the minifig with prints, I was surprised that there was no print or design on his leg piece. A pair of high boots will be nice though.

With every evolution of the Leia (bikini) minifig, more and more details are printed on her, including more life like (in LEGO terms) and more rem ... skimpy. In this iteration, LEGO finally gets the hair piece spot on, with golden hair accessories bringing out the opulence of Jabba's taste. Talking about Jabba, this is the same Jabba found in the 2012 Jabba's Palace, more wrinkled, more textured and more colour than its earlier versions. Check out the tattoo on his right arm too. Cool. This Jabba can also be rotated at his waist (where's his waist by the way?) and has a pair of movable arms. The last minifig is the waiter R2. This version has more drinks to carry around on the tan 2X4 plate. Other than that, it's just another R2.

Conclusion

In short, this is a good set to have, especially if you have not managed to lay your hands on the 2006's version. Although this is not a visibly pleasing set, the many playable features should keep the younger fans happy for some time. If that does not appeal to the AFOLs, the minifigs should provide the necessary incentive to own one.

For a quick reference to my review of the 6210 Jabba's Sail Barge, please see my earlier review in 2013 via this link: http://legoiamyourfather.blogspot.sg/2013/01/review-6210-jabbas-sail-barge.html

+ Better and more secured mast bases
+ Better hinge design for side panels (though difficult to build)
+ Simplified interior design, but practical enough
+ Smooth wheels on undercarriage to allow sailing movement
+ Super artwork on poster

- Nose profile not as sleek
- Frontal cannon not practical for play (can't access firing mechanism)