I figured with the release of STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS season 5 on blu-ray and dvd recently this joke is still relevant right?
Right?
It’s a good enough excuse for me to finish this (now out-of-date) piece I started a while ago.
Oh well.
But it still makes me happy. . . And that’s good enough for me.

This does CONTAIN SPOILERS – sort of – if you haven’t watch the show through season 4 yet.

*with respects to artists Jhonen Vasquez for Gir and Grant Gould whose Darth Maul pic (as seen here: http://grantgould7.tripod.com/art/blogshots6/gould_swtut_s4maul.jpg) for being a big help in getting those darn legs right.

This set consists of 211 pieces and three exclusive minifigures, the aforementioned Darth Maul with his crazy robot legs and two Mandolorian Super Commandos. This review represented a unique challenge because I couldn’t simple take it out of the box and review it, I had to build it first so I documented the process and will give my thoughts as we go! Just like when I was a kid, I built the minifigures first.

Darth Maul is a cool minifig representation of his animated counterpart and I like how they got around his unique look by giving him a little horned skull-cap. His legs are really neat too, with this digitigrade beastial styling. The Commandos are standard army builder minifigs, looking identical and sharing the same general aesthetic as other Mandolorian characters. I will note that I find the hand print on the helmet funny since, y’know, minifigs have stubby c-hands.

Okay, here’s the deal. I haven’t built a LEGO set of this size since before I had a beard, when I was a little baby Sharp-O Jr, and did you know what I found out during the course of the next 90 minutes?

My giant man hands find the dozens of tiny pieces extremely difficult to place (The set has an age range of 8-12). This sets high piece count is a testiment to how finicky some sections can be but it’s a rewarding experience overall. There’s layers upon layers of panels and blocks and…
… Cool curves that hide an ingenious flick missile system. There’s quite a cool set up in the sides that allow some panels to slide against the flick missiles to cause them to launch.

There are some stickers too! I can’t think of the last time I applied stickers to ANYTHING. YAAAAAAAY!

Under the main cannon is storage for both of Maul’s lightsabers and the Commandos’ rifles.

Overall, while this may have been a bit difficult for a rusty LEGO veteran like myself, I found the experience to be quite fun. The finished model is intricate and has a surpsingly clean look because of that. The minifigures are fun and well designed and I can see anyone getting a lot of fun out of this set. With an RRP of around £24.99, I’d recommend most LEGO Stars Wars fans check this set out for themselves. Come back soon, when I take a look at a heroes in a half shell!