Saturday 22 January 2011

#387 of Year 2 Lego 8017 Star Wars Darth Vader's TIE Fighter

In an attempt to whore to the Star Wars crowd, here's a Lego Darth Vader in a TIE fighter set review.  I must confess I love TIE fighters, but Lego has gone the route of creating so many  variants of these that they've all blurred together into one.  This one though, has Darth Vader, so it must be good?  Maybe.


The box has the Star Wars and the Lego logos at the top left, and just by looking at the box, one can tell it's a recent set.  Lego has this weird habit of changing the Star Wars boxes every couple of years.  The front has a picture of the fighter, photoshopped in front of the Death Star and explosions, while the back features photographs of the action features, as well as the cross sell of the other Star Wars sets in the line.  There's also an anniversary logo on the front of the box, together with an inset that shows the Vader minifig.



There are only three baggies in such a big box.  The instruction book is pretty much the same as the front of the box.  Then there's the four sticker decal sheet which would have gotten lost if I didn't shake everything to make sure I didn't lose it.


The Vader figure is as per normal, complete with cape and helmet.  Beneath that helmet is a face that's disfigured and grey.  The lightsabre hilt is now moulded from silver plastic, instead of being vacmetal silver like they were way back in the day (aka 2000-ish).


The build is surprisingly easy, and fast.  Most of the fighter consists of the wings which really take up a lot less space when flattened.  The use of technic connectors  to attach the identical wings is something that has been repeated from the previous TIE fighters, so there's no surprise there.  The cockpit piece is also a reused TIE-fighter piece.  I think other than TIE-fighters, and perhaps Death Star related Lego sets, it has not been used elsewhere in the Lego-verse.


For a change though, there's a clip to hold the lightsabre on the back of the fighter - that's a good design choice.  Perhaps Lego has been reading up on the reviews of the previous fighters?  There are also two push missiles and thanks to the clever use of levers, these are fired by the push of a button.  There are no springs powering the missiles though.  Thanks to Lego's micrometer accuracy, it's the ABS plastic elasticity that is used to power the firing missiles.

Overall this still looks like a generic TIE-fighter.  Yes, there are improvements, but still, not nearly enough to make it deserve a slot.  I'm sure Lego will make another TIE-fighter a couple of years later again...

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