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INFORMATION:
Set Name: Alien Avenger
Set Number: 6975
Theme: U.F.O.
Year Released: 1997
Number of Pieces: 369
Minifigs: 4
Price: Umm... loads of złotych, can't remember how much. I think I worked it out to around €80, which is about the Bricklink average.
Bricklink
The set came sealed in its box, but that's probably part of several rolls of toilet paper in Warsaw by now. The image above is from Bricklink. I'm no James May, I just couldn't fit the thing in my luggage. A pity, too; it was a nice big one with the flap on front so you could open it and drool on the special drool-resistant plastic membrane. Once again, apologies to the boxed-set collectors out there. This is one less for the brotherhood.
_____________________________________
THE CONTENTS:
The manual cover, with a nice little scene showing the terrified robot fleeing from the wildly out-of-control mothership.
A random page, showing the completion of the command module and the construction of the buggy. The graphics throughout are very clear and there are no problems with telling light grey from dark, but the lack of a piece callout makes certain stages a nightmare. Note how a sticker has suddenly appeared on top of the dome in the last stage. You need to watch out for that sort of thing throughout the building process. Using these old manuals was like reading a "Where's Wally" book at times. I had to backtrack some stages a couple of times, even on this second build.
The back features two alternative builds. I think they're actually rather good, but I haven't attempted them yet.
The set also contains a rather campy mini-catalogue for 1997, and an insert for ordering additional parts from various sets. Cute.
Pretty much everything is printed in the set, and there's a lot of it, but there're still these four special stickers which I didn't (and don't plan to) apply. The two black ones are heat-sensitive mood sensors. Touch them, and they light up with an alien face. Unless you're me. I must be a zombie or something.
Let me just pre-heat my hand....
Bingo!
Moving on....
PARTS:
The main colours are black and classic light grey, but pretty much all of it is hidden under the printed and transneon yellow saucer shell. I've made a couple of errors when sorting these out of my boxes: some bits are bley rather than the correst colour, and that bley flap in the middle of the black parts is the wrong flap type and wouldn't fit. I had to go back and find the right ones later on.
The cooler stuff. A bendy crane thing (which I hate), six magnets and their various sockets, small transneon yellow saucer segment (two in the set), small light grey segment (two), large light grey segment (four; two with printing on the left, two with it on the right), a transneon yellow octagon cockpit, a squared slanted one (two in the set), a safe with transneon hatch (two), two weird flappy things, the bizarre hollow octagonal 10x10 plate, and the printed tiles. I missed two of the 2x2 tiles, there are actually four in the set.
My set has a misprint, with one large segment having a thick yellow band across it. Meh. I'm not too bothered. I'll say I crashed into a mint-condition Yellow Castle.
The four minifigs: Three aliens with armour and helmets, and one robot with no accessories. These are the only minifig accessories in the set. I gotta say, though: These minifigs are easily my least favourite of all the ones I own. Their printing - and that of the entire U.F.O. line - strikes me as ridiculously over-detailed and complicated. Thankfully, Lego has toned it down since. I mean, the faces are just absurd. I've named them Smiley, Botox, Buckteeth and Robot.
Moving on....
THE BUILD:
Building begins with the figs, then the command module, then the buggy, then the large saucer section. This image is from very early on, I just wanted to show the first use of magnets. These attach the command module to the rest of the craft and do the job very well. This also shows just how spartan the command module's build is: Finish out the rim, attach a few antennea and the dome, and that's it.
This is the random page I pulled out earlier. As you can see, the excessive printing makes the command module look far more involved than it actually was. A victory for juniorization! The four stickers are also all applied on this page, three on the craft and one mood sensor on the buggy.
There are still a couple of stages to go before I attach the huge saucer segments, but as you can see, this is far more involved than the command module was, and the end result will be a surprisingly solid, sturdy construction.
The building process isn't symmetrical, you sort-of do it in layers from right to left. It lets you see everything, but exacerbates the "Where's Wally" phenomenon when they stick a few small bits in with the larger ones. This build is the stage before the one you can see in the book, but if you look at the book, you'll see that the black plate sticking out at the left should have two grey 1x4 plates on it. They were added in the previous step, and I don't discover the mistake for a couple of steps yet.
I've also just added the magnetic crane, which will be used to lift the buggy in and out of the centre of the craft. The reason I don't like it is because the segments are quite flimsy and separate easily, and also don't bend as smoothly as Lego illustrations and photographs suggest; instead, it tends to bend at only one or two points each time, giving a jagged look.
By contrast, this handle is a simple feature that I really like. If you hold the craft in one hand by the handle, you can spin it around, giving the ship oodles of swooshability and making the alien commander wonder what the Earth his engineer is drinking.
Gotowy! The ship has tonnes of moving parts and things to do once it's complete, and looks great too. I'm not fond of the two huge guns at the front. They're nice and menacing, but very plain. Given the OTT design ethic of the U.F.O. line, I think they could badly use some greebling.
The buggy sits in here. Robot doesn't get his own bed compartment, so I presume he's supposed to sit in the driver's seat between planets.
And the command module sits on top. Like I said, the magnets keep in in place very securely; if you try to lift it off by holding just the dome, the dome will come off before the magnets separate. You need to lift the rim with two hands.
I call this little thing the bug, because it really doesn't deserve all five letters. It sits in it's own compartment opposite the crane. However, you need to be careful when driving it off the ship...
...because it's quite a drop.
IN CONCLUSION
So, spending something like €80 on a set that probably retailed for a third that from a theme I hadn't even known existed because it reminded me of those awesome large Blacktron II sets I fantasized about owning as a kid: Worth it? Ehm... yeah, after seven months, I suppose I'm still happily feeling that odd misplaced nostalgia. The more striking elements aren't as MOCable as I'd convinced myself they were in the shop, unless I want to build something on-theme. The big, juniorized elements make the end result look good but detracted a little from the building process. And of course, the minifigs are horrible. But overall, I'm very pleased with how it turned out. It is a deadly looking set.
Design: 8/10. A heavy reliance on large pieces to provide the shape, but they integrate well, and the thing is literally covered with doodads to lift and pull and turn and generally mess with.
Parts: 7/10. The larger bits are difficult to reuse and a lot of the smaller bits are old-fashioned compared to today's standard, but there are a god few pieces in here to fire the imagination by themselves, and it also has plenty of basic elements to support that. Transneon yellow is my favourite colour in Lego, and this set has it in spades.
Build: 6/10. Having to pore over every illustration to see if there are any 1x2 plates there that weren't there a second ago was a pain in the neck. We've come a long way, baby. Nothing too challenging otherwise.
Playability: 10/10. Lego managed to squeeze functionality into practically every seam between the large plates.
Price: 5/10. I suppose it hasn't inflated as much as more in-demand lines, and I knew I was paying collector prices which I managed to justify by being on holidays damnit, but still, it was a fair whack to the wallet. I don't think I was ripped off, by any means.
Overall: 80%. There are parts I don't like, the building could be a chore, but damn, the thing looks awesome when it's finished.
Thanks for reading!
Separated at Birth
- Dunjohn
This post has been edited by Dunjohn: 26 January 2011 - 12:17 AM
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