Review: 6856 - Planetary Decoder

[Walter Kovacs]

When I was a wee lad, my parents bought me a few Classic Space sets. Alas, the last set they bought for me was #6950 - Mobile Rocket Launcher, in 1982.

Fast forward 14 years. MY girlfriend and I are walking through some unremembered chain store (Target, maybe?). On a whim, I walk through the toy aisle, and I look longingly at the LEGO section, fondly remembering the toys of my youth. My girlfriend (who has since moved up through the ranks: fiance, wife, mother of my children) says to me "go ahead and buy one if you want to. I won't think any less of you." So I did.

And with that, an AFOL was born.

The Planetary Decoder was the first set I bought after coming out of my first Dark Age. I looked for something resmebling Classic Space, since that was what I enjoyed most in my youth. The Exploriens theme fit the bill nicely. Here's the details:

Stats:

Name: Planetary Decoder

Number: 6856

Theme: Exploriens

Year: 1996

Parts: 79

Minifigs: 1

MSRP: $8 USD

Links: Bricklink, Peeron, Brickset

The original packaging was discarded long ago, so here is a picture of the box taken from Peeron:

The Box:

Nothing special, it shows the Exploriens logo in the upper right corner, and an image of the model itself right where you'd expect it.

The Instructions:

Front:

The front of the instruction booklet looks exactly like the box, minus the Exploriens logo. Looks like I have to remember which theme this came from on my own.

Back:

The back shows some nice alternate builds (remember when all sets had alternate builds?). I've tried to make all of these alternates, but none of them are very sturdy. Still, building the alternates without instructions was always a challenge.

Random Page:

No part callouts, but the instructions are very easy to understand. Of course, when you only have black and white parts, it's pretty easy to tell them apart. The build itself only takes about 15 minutes, if you are going slow.

Parts:

The parts are almost entirely white or black, with a few trans red, trans blue and trans neon green parts sprinkled in.

Coming out of a long dark age, I was comforted that I knew most of the pieces. Here are some of the more interesting parts:

While the tail pieces were not new to me, I included them because this is the last set I bought that included them. I had always thought of them as fairly useful. The rest were new, at least to me.

Stickered Parts:

The tile with the silver circle is used as a control panel. The other two are special. They have white, red and blue printing on them, and the sort of look like fossils (if you squint real hard and it's the third Tuesday of the month). More on those later.

I have not had any problems with the stickers on these pieces, even after 14 years of play.

The Minifig

Theres only one minifig with this set, but he is rather nice.

No standard smilies here. He has hair, and a microphone inside his helmet. Here he is without that helmet:

The Finished Product

3/4 View:

There she is. Notice the large cannon, er, sensor, um. Just what is that large blue thing on the back of the ship, anyway. I always imagined it as a massive cannon. Anyway, It's best to have the cannon facing backwards for swooshing. Otherwise it rotates a little too freely, and will flop evewhere.

There isn't a whole lot of substance to the Planetary decoder. It's an open design, so no cockpit or windscreen to worry about. It's all about making the wings look cool.

There are several play features in this set. The cannon rotates, and moves up and down thanks to some old style finger hinges (aside: if you are a MOCer in need of the old finger hinges, fins some Exploriens sets; nearly all of them have black or white hinges in abundance). The engines rotate downward into a launch/landing position. Theres a nice instrument for the minifig to hold.

Front View:

The trans red and blue dishes on the front end serve a purpose. When the black stickered tiles I mentioned earlier are viewed through the dishes, the red or blue parts are filtered out, showing a different image. It's a neat effect, at least for the first dozen or so times you try it. It loses it's luster after a while. I tried to photograph the effect, but I couldn't get a good picture. You'll just have to trust me.

Side View:

From the side you can see how simple the ship really is. Not nearly as sleek as a lot of the Star Wars sets that would come later, or some of the late 80s/early 90s Classic Space sets for that matter. But it isn't meant to be sleek, it's there to find those fossils. Or something like that.

Back View:

The use of the dishes as engines is an interesting choice. They certainly look like engines, but seem a little too frail to move a ship even as small as this one. Perhaps if there were a 2 x 2 x 2 cone before the dish it would look better. But then the hinges would never hold up the weight.

Another problem with the dishes is that they come off rather easily. You have to hate it when your spaceship falls apart during swooshing.

The Launch:

Here are the engines rotated down, ready to propel the Planetary Decoder to it's next mission.

Conclusion

This was a nice set that got me back into the LEGO fold. But it isn't without it's problems. The support stands that hold the back end up have a tendency to fall off. All too easily. Which is a shame, since I love reasonably priced space ships. The stability problems didn't deter me from buying more, though. Which leads me to...

Scores

Build: 6/10 A very short build, although the instructions couldn't be any clearer.

Playability: 8/10 Lots of motion. The cannon thingie spins, raises and lowers, the engines move up and down, the minifig has a sensor to carry around. No shortage of things ot do here.

Minifigures: 7.5/10 Theres only one minifig, and he works quite well for a spaceman. Certainly looks the part, though I think the classic spacemen of the early '80s are better.

Pieces: 6/10 A lot of specialized pieces and slopes. It would have been nice to have some regular bricks added in there, but agian, if you need two and three finger hinges, Exploriens is a way to go.

Price: 2/10 This is a 14 year old set. But still, you can find some complete used sets on Bricklink for under MSRP. Most, however are outrageously priced, with the cheapest MIB set starting at more than twice MSRP. The set isn't that good.

Design: 4/10 The design is eye catching, and it feels very open, which is what the designers were going for, I suppose. But that openness comes at the cost of stability. it's a shame when key parts fall off while swooshing.

Total- 33.5/60 A nice set at the time, and one that pulled me out of a dark age. But I doubt if it would even catch my eye nowadays, even given my love of all things Classic Space. It's worth getting if you can find it cheap, but I wouldn't go out of my way to find it.

Full gallery for more pictures.

EDIT: Poll added

Edited March 18, 2010 by Walter Kovacs

[1st Lieutenant Jed]

That's a pretty cool set! The review's not bad, either.

[CP5670]

I have this too. It's an odd looking model and that massive laser cannon (that is indeed what it is, according to the S@H catalogs) looks hilariously out of proportion given the size of the ship, but it comes with all the features of the Exploriens theme and includes various unique parts.

The BL prices on this are inflated though. I got mine unopened for $4 a few years ago on ebay (the original price was $8).

The trans red and blue dishes on the front end serve a purpose. When the black stickered tiles I mentioned earlier are viewed through the dishes, the red or blue parts are filtered out, showing a different image. It's a neat effect, at least for the first dozen or so times you try it. It loses it's luster after a while. I tried to photograph the effect, but I couldn't get a good picture. You'll just have to trust me.

You can kind of make it out in this picture.

This was a cool idea but the theme only came with two of these stickers, so it becomes kind of boring to see the same fossils in every set. TLG made a few more tiles like this later on, but they were only released in one Divers set and are hard to come by today.

These tiles are also slightly magnetized, and the larger Explorien sets included magnetic arms to pick them up.

[lightningtiger]

Thanks 'Walter Kovacs' for a great review.

Cool minifig with hair and mic !

Design of the spaceship is a nice simple classic space design and that cannon - well that would hurt !

I'm a conformist! everyone !

[Lordofdragonss]

The blu thing its a telescope-cannon xD

Yeah I know this funky but I found this info in old catalogue xD

Thanks for review!

Exploriens are my favorite of Lego Space fractions- they not fight, they are fosills maniacs xD

I wonder what's is their Logo... Its looks like a dragon head o me...

Edited March 19, 2010 by Lordofdragonss

[Fugazi]

Thanks for the nice review! This is no perfect set by any means, but it's nice to remember a time when LEGO Space was more about exploration than running after alien criminals and waging war on spy robots (or whatever). But then this is probably just the reason why Exploriens was phased out before long!