REVIEW: Prince of Persia 7569 Desert Attack

[Svelte]

Theme: Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time

Set: 7569 Desert Attack

Pieces: 57

Price: $US10.99; CAD14.99

Resources: Shop @ Home; Brickset; Bricklink

** Please note that all images link to high-res flickr pics if you want detailed close-ups **

Introduction

After 2010's more junior-oriented Toy Story and Ben 10 licensed sets, it's great to finally have a theme featuring the finer things in AFOL life - death-dealing assassins, new minifigure accessories, a printed horse, and smatterings of dark tan bricks and vegetation! So how does the latest addition to Licensed battlepacks and the intro set to 'Prince of Persia' measure up?

Box, Parts, Instructions

The front of the box tells you everything you need to know. Hassansins! Desert beasties! Old-skool skele! Dark bley bamboo! Dark tan bush! Dastan! Persian horsey!

The rear of the box shows the application of the dual katana holder, the concealed gems in the desert scenery, and a fierce battle scene. I think that skele at the back is drunk. He's fallen right over!

Parts contents - 2 small bags, and separate horse and bush.

Short and sweet instruction booklet.

The parts list. I like that they mixed up one each of a dark tan and ordinary tan 1x2 45 degree slope - nice touch when they could easily have used 2 of the same colour. All useful parts, even if most of them are figs or accessories! The 2 x 4 plate in dark tan is a previously rare part, and light bley cheese is always useful.

The printed horse is a thing of delicate beauty - look at that finely printed goldwork and lovely dotted bridle! I was always annoyed by the horse bardings in the Fantasy line since they always seemed smudged or misprinted, so it is refreshing to see the crisp lines on this definite army-builder.

The dark tan bush. Lovely! The colour thins as the leaf blades taper, but the effect is subtle and naturalistic. Must. Get. More!

De-bagged parts, including the sand-blue saddle.

Minifigs & Set

Dastan from the front with dual katana holder in place. The leg printing is metallic, with red over-print on the left hand side. Is that orange mark a scar or a chin indentation? I'm not sure about the colour choice as a contrast to flesh And yet Jake Gyllenhaal's manly, bushy eyebrows are reproduced exactly here

Reverse head is a grimace, look of determination or possibly even constipation! The Dastan torso has no rear printing so I haven't pictured it here. The hair could work for a female fig, too.

The two Hassansins. A quick google search reveals 'Hassansin' is a term used exclusively in conjunction with the Disney movie, ie some marketing guru made it up, possibly to avoid the supposed association of the original Hashashin cult with cannabis. Again with the odd orange colouring on the eyebrows and cheeks. The claw Hassansin has a metallic silver scar on his cheek and the Hatchet Hassansin looks like a rejected model from 'The Fly' with that manky eye.

I have to say I much preferred the Indy approach of using dark flesh for variation in the Cairo battlepack. This is the only let down of the otherwise amazing Prince of Persia line for me.

Back view of the Hassansin Brothers - possible evil ancestors of the Hanson Brothers? Yes, it's all beginning to make sense...

The Claw Hassansin has a special pauldron and 2 of the attachable claw handpieces. Great new pieces in pearl silver!

All tooled up! Yes, he looks like Wolverine's Persian cousin, but still very menacing. The black keffiyeh is a great piece, much better proportioned than that oversized turban we've had for a while. I guess with the dark shadowing, the orange face marks look much better

Hatchet Hassansin!

The horse comes with a detachable back. The sand blue saddle is nice. Good to see this colour isn't completely dead apart from actual minifig parts.

The finished set is simple, but lovely for parts. Tan! Dark tan! Dark brown spears! The rare plant pieces! All very useful and easily recyclable for other scenes. Obviously these battlepack-style sets are all about the figs but I think the choices made for the small build are pretty good.\

A hinge opens revealing a secret stash of jewels.

A black scorpion and crimson cobra add to the desert danger! They need to do that snake in a new colour, red is kind of old.

Extras! Bley cheese, claw and old skool skele arm.

The finished model!

The final set, fully assembled. Yays for the old-skool skele! I am so glad they resisted the urge to put pupils on that thing and kept the original huge, dark sockets! This is a great little starter set for the Prince of Persia line and a fantastic army-builder. Who wouldn't want a whole camp of Hassansin Brothers, a herd of lovely horses, and a scattered landscape of burnt desert vegetation? A definite multiple must-have.

Conclusion:

Minifigs: 9/10 - Two Hassansins, Dastan, a skele and a printed horse - pretty good value! I am not really keen on the light flesh faces but maybe they'll grow on me.

Parts: 10/10 - Lots of new minifig parts and accessories, a printed horse, useful bricks and a dark tan bush

Build: 7/10 - Let's be honest, for these sets the build is minimal. Yes, the desert scene is sparser than other battlepacks but the useful nature of the parts and the great figs more than compensate. Actually assembling and playing with the various combinations of figs *is* more of a build than the scenery! Still, no complaints from me!

Overall Rating: 9/10. A bold little set stuffed with unique pieces for its size. Definitely an army-building set in the best sense of the word!

[prateek]

Nice review, but I'd rather have the IJ AiC set instead of this

Don't get me wrong, I still like this set, with all the cool parts and minifig accesories

Edited March 30, 2010 by prateek

[Inconspicuous]

Hooray for the PoP battlepack! A cute little set that's certainly done justice in your cute little review. The more I see and read about this set, the more it grows on me. I really like the desert scenery the more I look at it, and you definitely got me thinking about how this is such a great army builder. If the PoP line ends up growing on me, I might have to get this set.

Thanks for the awesome review, Svelte!

[ILikePi]

A bit unfortunate how you were beat in being the first on EB to review this set, but multiple reviews are always welcome!

I have mixed feelings on this set. You do get some amazingly detailed minifigs, a very cool horse, some new accessories and some new colors of parts, but the price-to-parts ratio is at a very high 19 cents per piece, which is much higher than most $10 sets.

I'll probably end up buying this anyways because it's the lowest-priced PoP set.

Thanks for the review!

Edited March 30, 2010 by ILikePi

[CMP]

1 of the 2 sets I'm getting on Thursday. I may be optimistic, but I might be able to do the 1st Fight for the Dagger Review. Nice review.

Edited March 30, 2010 by CallMePie

[The Eye]

Hey Svelte, thanks for the review.

I like this set quite a bit, despite its poor piece-per-price count. The foliage is interesting, the accessories are there, and the figures are top-notch. A great add-on to Alamut, as now you can have a horse assault. The Hassassins are nice though plain, along with Dastan. That sword holder is really nice though!

[Svelte]

but the price-to-parts ratio is at a very high 19 cents per piece, which is much higher than most $10 sets.

Those of you who are fixated on some mythical perfect price-to-parts ratio are missing the bigger point, which I've tried to emphasise, that the sheer variety of what you do get here that is NEW and UNIQUE far outweighs some easy calculation that hasn't been really reliable for a few years anyway.

You can keep your $10 Creator sets with 200 parts, none of them interesting or rare

[Shadows]

Those of you who are fixated on some mythical perfect price-to-parts ratio are missing the bigger point, which I've tried to emphasise, that the sheer variety of what you do get here that is NEW and UNIQUE far outweighs some easy calculation that hasn't been really reliable for a few years anyway.

This is a set with three $3 figures, a $1+ horse, multiple .50 to $1 parts. New stuff. Old stuff in new colours. Everything printed is printed. If they had stopped there, it would be a great deal, but then there are bricks to boot.

People definitely need to give up an arbitrary method of determining value when it misses the real point of the set, and this set is clearly a value (your mileage may vary by location and local price gouging, but here in the US, it's )

You can keep your $10 Creator sets with 200 parts, none of them interesting or rare

Exactly!

[WhiteFang]

Wonderful review! I could just imagine grabbing multiples of these, without blinking my eyes.

This is truly an amazing set with high valuable and new parts. How could you resist when you got 4 minifigs, and 2 of them have unique torsos that is very much suitable for building up your Persian solders/bandits. The printed horse has not appeared for almost a decade, and the print itself is very nicely done and you could easily allow the horse to cross over to Medieval Castle. And, the rest of the accessories and parts simply wow me away. I am really looking forward to this set, and I can't wait to get this and start building them.

Thanks Svelte for sharing this review with us.

[dabulls03]

As always, the master set reviewer Svelte delivers an excellent review.

I don't really understand the problem with dark flesh printing on the fleshy heads, but maybe that's just me?

This really is a great little set, but I rated it average, because compared to the other PoP sets it's just average.

A bit unfortunate how you were beat in being the first on EB to review this set, but multiple reviews are always welcome!

Yay! I finally get to review something first, although this review is much better than mine...

[WhiteFang]

Yay! I finally get to review something first, although this review is much better than mine...

Your review is equally good in terms of its clarity, and it's probably just the lightning issue which can be solved easily via the use of photoshop.

If you are interested to learn reviewing, why not join up Reviewers Academy to find out more.

[Svelte]

Yay! I finally get to review something first, although this review is much better than mine...

As WhiteFang says, the colour adjustment makes a big difference. Your new pics in the 7571 review are much better colour-wise

[dabulls03]

Your review is equally good in terms of its clarity, and it's probably just the lightning issue which can be solved easily via the use of photoshop.

If you are interested to learn reviewing, why not join up Reviewers Academy to find out more.

Well thank you.

I think I'll sign up.

[Ras 74]

Great review Svelte!

This is definatley one of the PoP sets I will get.

I must agree that if the twins are ment to be arabic, it is strange why they didn´t use the slightly darker heads and hands.

[salty tbone]

I have to agree with the people who say the value of this set transcends price-to-piece ratio. I'm so happy Lego released this set so I can get many of these new pieces/figs in a cheap set.

[Seijitai]

Quite a nice set indeed ! The new weapons/body armor are a pure win for me. And as a Star Wars addict, those torsos would look quite good as Jabba's henchmen...

I must agree that if the twins are ment to be arabic, it is strange why they didn´t use the slightly darker heads and hands.

No racism in what I'm going to say, but watching the cast and crew of the film at IMDB, I barely saw any arabic names... I think that Lego, as - mostly - for the past two years with licensed themes simply followed the pics they had access to... Again, no racism or whatever hidden thoughts in my comment.

[drdavewatford]

Nice !

A part of me was glad that Indy was phased out as I couldn't see myself managing to keep up with all the Star Wars stuff, new modulars and exclusives, Toy Story sets, and Indy as well. I fear however that I may need to find the cash and space for these PoP sets - I love the colours, the figures and the interesting builds.....

I laughed when I saw the complaints about "price per piece ratios" - would you rather they had dropped the horse, for instance, and instead included 50 1 x 1 bley round plates to bulk up the parts count ? Thought not. It's not about the numbers - a piece as large as the horse is surely worth 20+ other tiny and less interesting pieces ?

Dr. D.

[Etzel]

Thanks for the great review, Svelte! Nice job as always!

The set is good, I like the minifigs and the colours. The dark tan bush is probably the part I want the most in this set Not really interested in the accessories like the claws and spikey pauldron, I understand that they need to be in because of their appearance in the movie, but I find them really ugly The headgears on the other side is just awesome :thumbup:

If I had to pay 10.99 USD for it I wouldn't complain about the price-per-part ratio but now I'm stuck with prices nearly the double and that's not good IMO. It doesn't matter how many good pieces a set contains - it has to be worth it's price. I can't give this set more than a 3 or 4 because of this, which is still good and I will get one or two of it, but the price is often the most important factor for me when buying LEGO.

[lightningtiger]

Thanks for the review 'Svelte' - by the looks of it - my arm is getting twisted........this battle pack I'll get now !

I can see these flying off toy shop shelves here in Oz when they are released - maybe around toy sale time in April eh ?

The figures are fantastic - it's just a simple play set heck 2 badies vs 1 goodie, of course the goodie wins !

Thanks again 'Svelte' and I'm a conformist! !

[Big Cam]

I'll be getting this set if nothing else just for Dastan, and now I really really want to see this movie.

[Ralph]

Great review Svelte. This is indeed a great battle pack for PoP as another poster stated. I hope to add a few of these soon to my collection.

Ralph

[WesternOutlaw]

Great review Svelte. As always, nice photography. I'm loving the printed horse design with the blue saddle. The figs are very nice as well.

That new dark tan bush will come in very handy for me, as well as the extras. I'm really starting to appreciate these PoP sets.

[not-in-use-anymore]

Dark bley bamboo!

Where? Great review and set, but I don't like that eyepatch thing.

[Vexxion]

This is amazing. On old school skeleton? I hope TLG uses the old ones from now on. (Which they probably won't)

Oh by the way nice review Svelte.

[-JD-]

Super review Svelte!

I voted this set as 'Outstanding'. This is primarily due to the new parts in a relatively small and cheap set and the return of the awesome old skellie. Not to mention such a nice horse and detailed figures, or the new bush.