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Happy 2010, Eurobricks!
I picked this up the other day from Lego Bluewater:
Set Number 8092
Name Luke's Landspeeder
Movie Episode IV A New Hope
Year of release 2010
Parts 163
Minifigs 5
S@H Price £24.99 | US$24.99 | AU$49.99 | EUR 26.99
Shop @ Home says:
Quote
Adventure on Tatooine…where it all began!
When he drove the old hermit Ben Kenobi into Mos Eisley spaceport, young farm boy Luke Skywalker had no idea that he would end up becoming a Jedi Knight and saving the galaxy. Recreate the moment the adventure began with this special-edition set, featuring an all-new landspeeder vehicle with a secret lightsaber compartment, a cast of droids and heroes, and a sandtrooper guard with a security droid. Are these the droids he’s looking for?
When he drove the old hermit Ben Kenobi into Mos Eisley spaceport, young farm boy Luke Skywalker had no idea that he would end up becoming a Jedi Knight and saving the galaxy. Recreate the moment the adventure began with this special-edition set, featuring an all-new landspeeder vehicle with a secret lightsaber compartment, a cast of droids and heroes, and a sandtrooper guard with a security droid. Are these the droids he’s looking for?
I missed out on the two previous incarnations of the Landspeeder, so I was looking forward to this, particularly as I don't have an OT Obi-Wan or Tattooine Luke. How does the set measure up? Pics are low-res for speedy loading.
In keeping with tradition, we'll start with the box:
Front:
Back:
A nice little action display for the back, showing off the few features of this set, along with advertising for the battle packs and Freeco Speeder.
The side of the box shows a 1:1 representation of Luke:
The little blemish you can see on his chin was present on my figure; I don't know if it's meant to be there but it looks like a misprint to me.
Inside the box, you get three bags, the instructions, two loose grey tubes and no stickers.
(apologies for the blurry pic; there's not a lot of daylight
Parts:
Lots of Republic red here. I don't know about you but I'm up to my ears in dark red tiles at the mo. Pieces of interest include the new 1x1 side-stud bricks (6 of them in dark grey); the curved windscreen from the Indy boat chase, and 2 trans-clear 1x1 round bricks that make up the stand for the little droid. Then there's lots of tan plates, and the usual cheese wedges and radiator grilles.
The minifigs:
Probably what most people will get excited about. We have Tattooine Luke, with printed legs
and curtain hairstyle (and chin blemish, you can just about see). Obi-Wan has wrinkles (he looks like Governor Tarkin with a beard) and usual Jedi torso, no cape. My new-style R2 is quite badly misprinted.
Two blue-bladed 'sabers in pearl silver. No printing on the backs, except for 3PO:
C-3PO is similar to the one in the Sandcrawler, pearl gold, except the printing on mine is lighter: (new one on right)
The stormie, with black pauldron and backpack, is a nice addition, shown off in this little vignette:
Ben: I'm telling you, these aren't the droids you're looking for!
Stormie: Yes they are, my instructions clearly say 'a paler-than-usual protocol droid and a badly misprinted astromech!'
Ben: You wanna fight about it? (aside to Luke) Pass me my lightsaber.
Luke: It's locked in the speeder's compartment!
Stormie: For some reason I've got two spares you could use:
Ben: Bley?! No thanks. I'll just have to use the force. (waves hand) 'These aren't the droids....'
A spy robot thingy with clear stand makes up the last of the party (I haven't counted him as a minifig):
Moving on to the speeder:
The build
The instructions are very simplistic, only a few parts per step, doesn't really need the callouts but I'm not complaining (again, apologies for the blurry pic):
The build progresses quickly, a half hour tops.
I struggled a little getting the second grey tube to stay in, but not too much:
Black rounded 2x2 plates make the speeder 'hover':
Clearly the speeder is British, judging by the right hand drive
Note two 1x2 slopes in the centre. Why use one brick when two will do ?
You can see in this shot, the left engine is designed to look 'coverless', as in the movie, which Lego has pulled off with some success.
Another oddity: the side engines are attached using 2x2 corner bricks. Why?
An interesting technique is used to invert the studs on the top engine:
The lightsaber compartment: good to have somewhere to put them!
And finally, the completed set, arranged to look like the cover shot (I've deliberately left the colour dark, to give it that 'Tattooine feel':
Overall
Well, there you are. This set probably isn't going to set the world alight, but it's nice to have a good selection of figures in a reasonably priced set. Most people who get this are probably after Luke, and possibly the Sandtrooper. The speeder is nice, a bit simple; it's not a patch on some of the MOCs out there (I'm looking at you, Lars), and to be honest I prefer the look of the sandred one from 4501, which I don't own.
Design Simple, reasonably accurate speeder, fills a whole in my collection; I like the use of the curved windscreen 3/5
Build Very easy build, about 30 mins, no real challenge 3/5
Playability You can recreate the mind-trick scene! Yay! I guess with 5 figs plus the little droid, saber compartment, and carpet-swooshable speeder, this scores quite highly 4/5
Parts Those 1x1 side stud bricks are going to be common as anything before the year is out. And I don't need more dark red. 3/5
Minifigs This is what the set is about! New Luke, rare Obi-Wan, and a nice Stormie! Not complaining about another 3PO, either. (Oh, and another R2. Woo-hoo) 5/5
Price £25 seems quite a lot in the UK. Blast you, weak pound!!! I think this is good value, for the figs alone. 4/5
Overall score 22/30 73%
Hope you enjoyed the review!
Rufus
Edited by KimT, 12 January 2010 - 05:27 PM.
poll added
They were not there the next day though...
), great review! 
All that dark-sand-red-something-colour is making me very happy. More than I expected, especially with all the cheese slopes!
I'm also pleased with the pieces in this set. A lot of useful colours (tan plates and dark red tiles are always useful to me) and a couple of those new headlight bricks. 
Maybe I will try to get the minifigs from Bricklink instead.
