Atlantis: Undersea Explorer Review

[TimToyGeek]

I picked up the new Undersea Explorer set at the Lego Store at Disneyworld yesterday - it's pretty fun, with good transforming action, and the eel creature is nice as well.

Set: 8080 Undersea Explorer

Price: $40.00 USD

Pieces: 364 (lots of little teeth)

Undersea Explorer - Box front

The first bag of three builds the eel creature, it's a quick build but has lots of fun details - the sunken eyes are red bulb pieces and there are what looks like little fenders forming the eye sockets. The jaw is hinged, though there are only four teeth. The front section has a ball and socket joining the second section. There are then eight curved fin pieces with two yellow teeth each, so the whole effect is spiky and dangerous looking.

That's A-Moray...

It's about a foot long stretched out.

Who ordered Unagi?

Four teeth, but still dangerous looking.

The second bag builds the body of the crawler vehicle, which turns out fairly nice, not watertight but it does have an opening canopy, room for the diver, and lots of lights up front. There are two flick fire missiles at the top, and positionable propellers on each side. One thing I didn't see very well from the box art is that there is a back panel with a large propeller, this is a good detail as it helps to cover up the folded up bits when it's in crawler mode.

Rolling along

Crawler mode, front view

Back view

Crawler mode from the back

The third bag builds the arms and legs, these are all done with ball and socket joints like with previous mechs. There are joints at the shoulders, elbows, hips and ankles, no knees and no swivel for the hand unit. I like how the feet are nice and solid, giving the mech easy balance and allowing some good posing. The arms have a decent range of motion, and the hand looks great with those red bulbs as fingertips.

Standing tall!

Mech mode, front view

Downward view

Top side, showing the top propeller panel

Wrinkles thanks to TLG

Transformation instructions - pretty basic, but effective

More unnecessary instructions

Additional transformation visuals.

So, in my opinion, this is a good set. It's probably better than most of the diver vehicles in the Atlantis line, and has a good combination of a vehicle and fish creature to justify the pricing. I think it's a bit overpriced considering the piece count, but thanks to the play value of the set, I feel it was a worthwhile buy. If I had $40.00 and only one set to buy, I'd rather have the Lunar Limo (one of my favorite Lego sets this year) but the Explorer is a worthy addition to the Atlantis theme.

Tim

"toy geek"

[Peppermint_M]

Thank you for the review. If you are having trouble deeplinking the images, there are a lot of tutorials to help here.

Atlantis is a mixed theme to me, some of the sets are really interesting and have a great design, but others don't appeal to me.

[squidman85]

A little bit expensive,but anyway, i like this set.I very like the snake and lime R2-D2 barrels.

[prateek]

This is a really cool set, but I wish the Canadian prices weren't so high for this price point.

[lightningtiger]

Thanks for the review 'TimToyGeek' - interesting toy - undersea Mechwarrior - COOL !

I'm a conformist! everyone !

[Barricade769]

I like it - I'm on the fence about all of this years other new Atlantis releases, but if there's one thing I'm a sucker for it's a transforming robot, as I'm sure my Transformer collection will attest

Thanks for the great review, TimToyGeek!

[Cardinal Brick]

Thanks for the review its nice to have a look at this set. I quite like Atlantis, I'm a diver so that might be part of it. But I'm not a huge fan of this set, I might pick it up if there's a sale but otherwise I think not

[The Eye]

Thanks for the review, and let me welcome you to EB TimToyGeek! Unlike others who seem to be on the fence for this set, I absolutely love it. I wanted the Titanium Drilling Rig at one point and also wanted to see the Crystal King climbing up it, but I never managed to get either of them. With the PoA and the UE, it should be doable. Thank you!