Clone OPatra

The old one had an interconnected function so that the wings folded down and the landing gear folded up, and vice versa, all simultaneously. I believe the new one has wings that must be folded independently and doesn't have landing gear at all. EDIT: I might be wrong though. There is an arrow on the back of the box between the pic of the side wings folding down and the pic of the back wing folding down. Does that mean they fold together? Hopefully a lifestyle video will tell us soon. As @Flawless Cowboy said though, it's just a less cool toy. You're welcome. That was my benchmark for LEGO pricing that was awful. Sad to say, now pricing that is beyond incomprehensible is becoming common here in Star Wars.

Seems like the V-19 has lost the function that made it so awesome back in the day. Sad. This wave of sets make me sad generally. There's very cool novel stuff, but the prices are all "sets including General Grevious" level beyond horrendous.

There is a lot wrong with the new pigeon, most notably that pigeons have distinctive, colourful necks. That would probably be hard to implement without triple moulding plus printing, and simply dual-moulding with no printing definitely keeps the cost down on LEGO's end. I'm still happy to have a pigeon at all though and am not that fussy about accuracy.

Hi Codemito, While we allow topics that are presented as MOCs, with pictures, write-up etc to have a link to Ideas at the end, the way you have posted this is pure self-promotion. I am locking this topic but feel free to repost in the appropriate subforum and actually showing off your build, if you'd like.

Ashnflash has closeups in his review: Around 13:30. Definitely looks dual-moulded.

I'm not even buying this latest iteration and can say it looks way better than the 2021-2023 line to me (which I do have and no longer display in favour of 2018-2020). Being a sectional castle wasn't the main thing that made the 2021 line ugly, but rather that they leaned so heavily at first into the rectangular aesthetic (until they didn't later on, but with sets that still didn't cohesively go together). This castle section might be composed of sections, but that's a justifiable build method for a line that (despite its price) still focuses on a healthy balance of detail and build-ability for a younger/family audience than large D2Cs. The 2024 line's thing is about being huge, not about being complex, and looks heaps better than 2021.

Perfect classic build for the time! I loved that old motorcycle and very much did not like the trike that essentially replaced it, which is a real though rare vehicle as compared to a motorcycle. And unlike newer motorcycle parts, this one actually felt proportional for Minifigures.

I agree that there's something that just feels wrong with these new two downsized Slave I sets, and it puts me off them. It's odd though because plenty of other ships are massively downsized too and don't make me feel the same way, like Ahsoka's T6 or the Bad Batch shuttle. Those aren't spectacular sets by any means, but they just don't feel quite as wrong as the Slave I. Maybe it's that you can see the entire Minifigure sitting there in the cockpit, and that looks goofy, or it's that we got proper larger versions before and so these seem quite poor by comparison.

This is an absolutely awesome wave for prequel era fans. People have waiting a looong time to get the likes of Bly and Bacara, and stuff like a CIS MTT, a new V19, Lama Su, Jango again (in a smaller set), an early season CW Obi-Wan (who looks amazing), a proper Clone pilot. But then the compromises that have been made on the larger sets especially, compared to their prices, really take the wind out of the sails.

Yeah, perhaps LAN is testing out some different strategies. For run of the mill sets, and especially now that LAN is most focused on kids/the rampant and perhaps casual social media crowd, it doesn't make much sense to have the reviews posted when the sets aren't even available yet. Surely it would be better to be able to watch someone's Insta reel and then be able to immediately order the set. There is also just SO much coming out at once that perhaps they're really triaging these days. It's all becoming very controlled.

This conversation has been had before in other chase figure contexts (Comic Con exclusives for instance), but fans' behaviour and willingness to collect these doesn't excuse crappy and consumer unfriendly tactics on the part of a big profitable company. I'm not asking that LEGO hands out every new colour as a $5 CMF by any means. I have no problem at all with them coming in an expensive set like the prize machine, knowing that they will make their way to PaB too (which is also not cheap by any means, especially with high fee-free thresholds and $15 shipping here in Australia). I don't think I'd even totally mind the torso with correct arms and hands coming in one set, and the helmet and tanks coming in another later, or vice versa. But to put a variant in a $30+ book (orange, intially), and even worse to drip feed them into the much less accessible BAM without even the right colour hands, strikes me as a dog move.

What about black? I hear that. I do like my five green ones and it felt great to complete them with the helmets after so long. I'm this far in and have them all so far (besides the light gray / light bluish gray which I personally don't count), but the more LEGO does annoying releases for them, the more likely I am to stop. Having so many blue variants also doesn't actually interest me. I'd like something whacky like a flesh tone.

I'm getting a bit weary of these chase classic space figures, to be honest, and how much of a deluge we're now getting. These dark and light blue ones only available through BAM, again to cobble together with different hands and helmets and airtanks coming later in sets (and much later than that on PaB) - plus two more variants releasing at the same time in the prize machine.... it's tiring at this point. I'm personally lucky I was in the US at the right time to get a couple of the dark blue ones, and there were torsos available with dark blue hands at the same time. The $20 AUD price here in Australia is not good value at all, and yet I should still feel lucky we even have Certified Stores with BAM at all! I feel like the desirable exclusive part recolours they were doing for BAM have also dried up to a large extent, with them instead just focusing on things like prints or costume figure recolours. I suppose those are very popular, but not to me - recoloured hairpieces and animals are far more interesting for my collection. So it's really going to feel like spending $20 to get a few torsos, and a bunch of other stuff I could take or leave.

Sets like Malfoy Manor and the current big Hogwarts sections are absolutely playsets. They are designed to be played with. Designing products as playsets doesn't mean that the designers focus solely on the play factors and forget all other aspects. Especially with this line, they know that older teens and adults are interested, so they design well-rounded sets that can be played with and look good. Looking good and being able to be displayed doesn't make the sets not playsets though.

The 7190 Falcon is still the only one I own, but yeah, it really lived up to the quote "what a piece of junk!" That thing did NOT play well at all and would essentially break when touched. This on the other hand, looks fabulous. I love the concept of only using parts available from the era, and goes to show it was partially more about the design conventions of the time and how they have progressed rather than simply the parts available.