2
There was a package waiting today when I got home. I opened it and this was inside:
Japanese candy and a new Lego set 
!
I apologize for the sometimes bad colored pictures, the light in Sweden isn´t that good this time of year
?! Set Name: Hayabusa
Set #: 21101 and CUUSOO #002
Theme: CUUSOO
Parts: 369
Minifigures: 1
Year of Release: 2012
Price at Release:Yen 6,615, when later possibly availiable through S&H - USD 49, EUR 49
Links: Bricklink, Brickset
INTRODUCTION
As it has been discussed before this is the second set in the CUUSOO series. It was just recently released in Japan and you can read the press release from TLG here.
There you can read: Hayabusa (“falcon” in English) is an unmanned spacecraft built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), designed to travel to a small near-Earth asteroid named Itokawa and return sample material to Earth. Hayabusa’s mission began in 2003 and ended successfully in 2010.
Enough of that, let´s go in for a closer look of the set.
BOX
The box has the same clean design as the first set, the Shinkai 6500 submersible. It´s bigger though, mesuring 30x30x10 cm compared to 26x19x7 cm. It looks nice imo!
Front view.
Back view.
Close-up of the Hayabusa project manager J Kawaguchi.
Side views at the same time!
INSTRUCTIONS
Nice booklet one containg 92 pages. The first 12 and the last 6 has a lot of information about the real spacecraft, its journey and mission, and other fascinating things. The instructions are printed on white paper so the building steps are easy to follow.
Front view.
Back view.
Page 5.
Page 12 - about J Kawaguchi.
Same page, close-up on his message to you as a builder!
Page 86 - from the original designer Daisuke Okubo.
Page 87 - the TLG designer Melody Louise Caddick writes about the design.
Page 42.
Page 84.
Part list.
THE PARTS
There are 5 polybags with parts and one sticker sheet. Black, grey and yellow are the most common colors.
The polybags.
Plates and panels.
Bricks, plates, dishes etc and minifig parts.
Smaller plates, slopes etc.
Mostly tiles and techic parts.
The small stuff.
There are some new colored parts, the 1x1 round tile in trans-blue and the 3x3 radar dish in metallic gold.
And of course the cool minifig 
!
The sticker sheet.
BUILD
The build is easy, fun and done in modular parts of the spacecraft. Here´s an assortment of pictures:
The stand a.k.a part of the asteriod Itokawa.
Stickers applied, yeah that is funny 
!
The heart of the spacecraft, the main module being built:
And now the solar panels:
.
Some parts on the underbelly of the module and then the solar panels:
Flip it over again:
The
!
And finished:
The two faces of Kawaguchi. I wonder if that´s how he looked when it launched
! 
RATINGS
Parts: 7/10 - Ordinary parts & colors mostly, but the golden 3x3 radar dish is nice!
Build: 8/10 - I enjoyed it even if it´s simple. But because it´s a model of a real thing and the way the booklet look, I´ll go this high.
Design: 7/10 - Simple but quite true to the original in this small scale.
Minifigures: 6/10 - It´s just the business man from Alien Contest with different hair. But it´s a real person portrayed and I think it resembles him a lot so .... I love it. (I wrote this first: 9/10 - It´s exclusive, it´s a real person - I love it.)
Price: 7/10 - For the parts 5/10, for the instructions 9/10.
Playability: 5/10 - Let´s face it - it´s a display model. But you might be able to swoosh it!
Overall: 40/60 - If you can and have the
!
Edited by Rufus, 27 April 2012 - 07:32 PM.
Indexed
), and it'll be hard to put this ahead of the rest of my buy list. I do think it is a nice design, and more interesting than the first Cuusoo model, the sub.
(and I don´t really have a lot of AC)! It´s basicly the 
), why this? (You don't have to answer, I know the reason)
