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Rolling right out of a Danish plastic Chinese restaurant near you, it's… Set Name: Ecto-1 & 2 Set #: 75828 Theme: Ghostbusters (2016 Movie!) Pieces: ? Minifigures: 6 Year of Release: 2016 Price at Release: USD 60 Check out the Flickr set for more and bigger versions of all pictures! Stacking up as perhaps nobody's most anticipated IP ever (besides Angry Birds, right? Please?), the Ghostbusters 2016 reboot/make/run/thing movie has sure caused quite a firestorm way before almost anyone has seen the film. Guess what this review is NOT going to focus on? That. I've said it before and I'll say it again literally right now: sets to me stand on their own merit, not the merit of their IP. I've seen great sets based on of IPs that suck and terrible sets I'd never want based on IPs that love. So if anyone has any, errr, 'comments' about the film - howabout don't. This review is about the LEGO stuff. This set actually looked quite attractive to me for two reasons: cool car and so many cool female minifig heads and hairpieces. In this set that basically boils down to "everything" because there's nothing extraneous in this set. Sure, there's a motorbike, but who doesn't love ridiculously out-of-proportion motorbikes? Nobody, amiright? So, come with me as I see if this set, or at least those awesome-looking new hairpieces, live up to my expectations. (NOTE: This set was given to me as a gift at LEGO Fan Media Day in Billund, but the opinions are all my own and will not stem from the sense of giddiness I experienced being at LEGO Fan Media Day in Billund. At least, probably they won't. No complete guarantees.) INSTRUCTIONS (I ditched the box in Billund and my photos of it were a bit lousy, so I'm starting with the instructions.) The front art is nothing amazing, just some ghost-busting action and Chris Hemsworth looking like he may be about to ram into the car. His character is supposed to be a bit daft I guess. Though this instruction booklet is bound in 'normal-set' fashion as opposed to 'premium-badly-glued-original-Ghostbusters-set' fashion, it still contains several pages of movie/character info. Maybe to get you hyped for the movie because you're probably not? But that's none of my business. I'll spare you from all of the pages (check the Flickr set for the rest), but I found it interesting that the bad guy minifig in this set is apparently based on a green furry ghost. Does it look green and furry to you? Hmm.... I'm not complaining though since it's a cool figure with great parts. The actual instructions themselves are straightforward as always, and set on a serviceable plain black background. PARTS and BUILD In this section I'll go through the four bags bag by bag, pointing out any cool parts and anything particularly interesting I noted in the build. Since this is a review and not a True Build Experience ™ I'll just say now that the build of this feels much more like that of an adult/high end set than that of a kid-oriented set - tons of SNOT, sub assemblies, little bits, great color detail, etc. Really quite a pleasurable experience watching the car come together. Bag 1 The first bag provides the most drab parts selection and also the most samey, as it has you build literally four of the exact same thing (proton pack). Nonetheless, we get straight to some minifigure goodies, so that's cool. The ingot piece new in black stands out to me as the most pleasantly surprising re-color, but some other parts are quite cool too like the trans-clear stud-with-bar piece, recolored skellie parts, apollo stud, and that SNOT piece (which maybe has been around, but I wasn't familiar with having droves of them). I included the 3L bar just because it's still a bit more rare to get. Finally, the printed boat-bottom pieces (four in total) have quite a nice print that I could see being used outside of this particular context. Bag 1 builds Kristen Wiig, Chris Hemsworth, the Ecto-2 bike, four proton packs, two containment units, and the skellie/ghost/Mayhem thingy. Fear not, I'll be taking a closer look at everything further on in this review. Bag 2 Things get a bit more colorful immediately with Bag 2, though not necessarily more interesting. Tons of brown jumper plates must jump out at you though. Two printed license plates may be cool, but most exciting are the trans-clear headlight bricks, which are still rather rare (they come in 12 other sets according to Bricklink, but really 10 since two of those are rare non-regular-retail sets). By step 25 you'll just have a build a blob the beginning of the seating area. There's something I find very pleasing about putting down tons os jumper plates. No idea why, though I get the same sensation with total tileage. Another SNOT-y blob thing for the front end of the car at step 43. Kudos to the designer for this clever headlight assembly utilizing headlight bricks plugged-in sideways to headlight bricks. (Step 53.) By the end of Bag 2 (step 55), the lumps of LEGO almost start to resemble a car. Bag 3 Bag 3 moves us into the color palette that you'll actually see when all is said and built. Also, cool new hairpiece alert. Those small wedge plates are still pretty new, so they're welcome. Despite this set having some stickers, all the curved slopes on the side of the car are prints! Woohoo! Thank you LEGO Overlords! All the comfy leather seating gets installed by step 70, but the back of the hearse still looks a bit bare. By step 107, it just lacks wheels and a roof (not like cars really need either of those things, though. Right? I'm no automotive expert). Bag 4 Now we get into more bits and bobs, since all of the 'equipment' on the roof of the car gets constructed from bits and bobs. I was surprised by the jail cell bars and door, but I admit I had not looked at pictures of the set too closely. Not a ton of interesting parts here, though I always like trans-tiles and that particular wheel piece is still pretty rare in white. Also, the toolbox piece looks pretty in dark blue. At step 110 we've got wheels and axles, but the hearse is still going topless. Et voila, step 139 finishes it up. Spares One of the perks of a set that includes a lot of small parts is that it will have a lot of spares. In this case, extra skellie parts and an extra one of those trans-clear stud-with-bar parts! Woohoo! Thought I might as well try and whip up some homemade accessories, what with all of the minifigure-related parts on offer. It was a quick and dirty attempt. MINIFIGURES Like I said way up in the intro (which even I can barely remember by this point), the minifigures are a significant draw of this set, and boy do they deliver. Or maybe girl do they deliver. They're all terrifically detailed, and even if you don't care for the uniforms everything besides the torsos can be useful for minifig customs. Really I've got nothing but praise for these - the care that went into designing them is quite evident, and three new hairpieces plus amazing new heads are beyond wonderful. All five humans get alternate expressions. Luckily Chris Hemsworth getting possessed isn't a spoiler, since it happens in one of the (really awesome?) trailers. I especially like the 'blehh??' face on Kristen Wiig's minifigure and the goggles face on Holtzmann. Everybody gets subtly different back printing too, which successfully conveys different body types. Really well done. Super-cool details on the bad guy's wings too. Closer look at those two glorious new hairpieces and one cool but not as wow new hairpiece. It's great to have a new fairly-African-descent specific hairpiece, and I love the eccentricity of the middle one. See more closeup angle here, here, and here. The use of parts for the bad guy thing made me think that it's some type of evil soul version of the collectible minifigure gargoyle. They look cool together. MINIFIGURES - with Accessories Most of the accessories are brickbuilt, and look pretty cool. I like the canister builds, though it's a bit awkward that they don't fit straight down in a minifigure's hand since they're so tall. Holtzmann's gun also is a bit weak of a build, honestly. Everything else is good. The proton packs look pretty good from all angles, and by my estimation are as small as they could possibly be. I love that each one uses two black ingots because... black ingots! The minifigures do have to bend forward a little to stand without falling over, and holding an accessory helps for counterbalance. Still, quite nicely done. Having to bend a bit at the waist works just fine for the classic Ghostbusting pose! ECTO-2 I do love the old-school motorcycle mould, but adding builds to it just accentuates how ridiculously large it is compared to minifigures. It's like the size of a horse! In any case, it looks simple but cool. Through the magic of perspective, somehow the bike looks reasonable once you put the minifigure on top. That's the human brain for you. ECTO-1 Finally here, the meat of the set. I took a crap ton of pictures, so this will be just a key selection. I hate gushing about a set, and I feel like 99% of what I've said thus far has been positive, but… this car is really lovely people. It isn't huge but it feels substantial, and from all front angles just feels right. Clean, streamlined, well done. Of course it is a bit huge compared directly to minifigures, but as a model it feels like a good size. LEGO models do skew 'larger than life' in general, especially because minifigure proportions are so strange. One small issue that muddles the appearance just a little is that the printing on the side curved slopes is not quite accurate enough, so they don't line up into clean lines. The two sides are pretty similar, besides for the one having a ladder, which accurately matches the source material. Overall, despite the printing issue, still looking quite good. The top has a bunch of cool little builds, one of which includes a white fez which I neglected to mention in my parts breakdowns. Who knows what any of these things should represent, but I think that applies to the source material as well. It's got a nice mishmash variety. Of course the top can be removed, providing access to the interior that manages to have plenty of space for four minifigures and still have details like a break or gear stick, steering wheel, and nicely stickered dashboard. Especially compared to the original Ecto-1 set, which could not fit all four, this is wonderful. Also note that the doors open, though you really need to remove the roof to get the minifigures in and out. I've been saving discussing the back for last, since the back is actually one of the most awkward sections. From a straight-on angle (which I have), it doesn't look too bad, but usually you'd be looking at it beneath you and from that sort of angle the transition from a 6/8-wide car to rear lights and a 4-wide door just looks a bit strange. Not terrible, but the shaping definitely falls down here somewhat. Another slightly awkward or less than stellar aspect of it is that the back can barely fit one proton pack, meaning that if you have all four ladies in the car, you'll have to just dump their packs somewhere else. On the plus side, you can fit all of the other accessories! ....or possessed Kevin. Kevin gets his revenge for being treated this way by absconding with some of his other wavy-haired friends. But then he probably feels bad and returns to his Ghostbusting duties. CONCLUSION Like what you see? I certainly do. There are a couple minor flaws in this set, like the printing on the slopes not being aligned well enough and the back being a little strange, but all in all it's a lovely model that fun to roll around and put minifigures into. It comes with amazing minifigures with amazing new minifigure parts and prints. It packs a lot of exciting an/or rare and/or new parts, should you happen to want it for parts. It even seems roughly worth it's (US) value, which I don't think you'll have heard this review say for quite some time. Even if you don't care for the source material, it's a splendid car design in its own right, and I think anybody could get something out of this set. Unless of course you hate the IP with such passion that you wouldn't touch anything related to it with a three meter pole. If that's the case.... maybe you need to cheer up.
