7679 Imperial Landing Craft

[Manta]

Imperial Landing Craft Review

Welcome to my 1st good review. Today we will be reviewing the hunkajunk of '07, the Imperial Landing Craft. It's a great parts set for sure, and with a few mods it's pretty sturdy. Watch out, it'd kill you if it landed on you.

Stock Photo

Set Information

Name: Imperial Landing Craft

Set Number: 7659

Price: $49.99 USD

Theme: Star Wars

Year:2007

Pieces: 473

Minifigures: 5

My Brickshelf

Peeron.com

Overall View of the Set

You can just imagine this ship landing in the death star hanger bay, with a battalion of red guards and the Emperor walking out.

Minifigs:

There's 3 minifigures instead of 5 because I use the torsos for my army, and there's no need to show repetitive minifigures.

I like the Tie Pilot, always need another of those. I would've preferred him with a weapon, or a shadow trooper helmet, the current one looks pretty bland. The new Sandtrooper is pretty neat, I like the new fabric element, I look forward to seeing it in many different colors.

The Ship

Here's a picture of the ship, without the Drop Pod.

It's not the shot that makes it look like a dying cat, it seriously does. I think the best part of the ship itself is the cockpit. It's not that I don't like the ship, but it's really just a skeleton without the drop pod. TLC could also have made the spine of the ship sturdier, you can kind of see my mods in some shots, the lime green and blue 2x1 plates that I use to hold the spine together, because it is 2 technic bricks held together.

Here's a picture of the cockpit.

Pretty basic, nice glass though, to big to be really universally useful on most ships, though.

The Top Fin

I think that the top fin is an amazing source of wall pieces, 2 narrow and 1 full wall, plus some diagonal ones, which are useful pieces. The colors are a little blotchy, and since this is a main visible part of the set, makes the set look blotchy, in turn.

Back

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Paulmc13.../picture121.jpg

It has a pretty basic engine design, but 5 blue transparent discs. The also back features a technic mechanism to move the wings back with a lot of gears used. I also would have liked to see the back of the ship a little covered, on the sides it is kind of open, showing a jumble of different colored technic pieces.

That knob in the picture is used to turn the wings, like below:

Wings Moved

My wings are unaligned, so it's lopsided when they are unfolded. But I'm not in the mood to fix that, 2 hours of building for an inch of perfection. Anyway back on topic, this set uses some pretty nice technic mechanisms.

That's all I have to say for this ship, now to the Drop pod, which I think is a lot better than the ship.

Drop Pod

Well before I begin, here's a picture of the inside.

It used to be pretty cramped, but Stormtroopers Yards took out the cannons. I also repositioned the chairs, because they were weird looking in the middle of the ship, with the cannons removed. This also has a bomb bay, you place a transparent green cone with a transparent orange stud on the bottom in it, and the knobs on the front are pulled to drop the "bombs."

Cannons

One put together, one apart. I can't really call these cannons, I'll call them crap cannons. The crap cannons are pretty, well crappy, but I can imagine little kids love them, because they add great playability for the younger kids. They get a distance of 10-15 feet. (about 4 meters in metric).

Bottom

The bottom is just held up by two arch pieces.I think how they made the bottom works better than it would look just laying on the bottom, seems more high and mighty to me, and that's what that old wrinkly dude in a bathrobe would want. Well I think I've said all I can, and all you all can bare.

Conclusion

This set has great potential, but it doesn't live up to it fully, in my opinion, but it can easily be modified to be a lot better.

Price: 9/10, could use a few more pieces, Then it'd be even.

Playability: 4/10, Not much alone, just 1 faction. Could use an R2 and 3P0 to hunt for ( These aren't the droids your looking for), that would make the price 10/10 as well.

Minifigs: 8/10, Pretty good, 1 or 2 more stormtroopers would be useful, TLC seems to like less minifigs. Buy a Stormtroopers Battle Pack and you'll have enough though.

Design: 4/5 for the drop pod, without cannons it'd be 5/5. 3/5 for the shuttle, the technic mechanism and the cockpit save this set in design. 7/10 total.

Parts: 9/10 Pretty good parts, nice source of white parts for MOCing.

Overall: 37/50 overall, but with a few mods you can have a pretty good dropship.

Edited September 11, 2008 by KimT
indexed and poll added

[KimT]

Thanks for the review Manta.

I've added a poll and indexed it.

Personally I have split feelings towards this set.

Pro's:

Plenty of Minifigs

Loads of useable white bricks.

Con's:

Awfull design

Expensive

I didn't have it built and on display for long.

[Manta]

I'm going to take mine apart later, I just had it together for the review.