After my not so awesome video review of Stringer, I'm back today with a good ol' written review!
Stormer, the beloved leader of the Alpha Team (...that was the name of his team, right?) is on his mission to catch the evil Speeda Demon. To do so, he got the XL treatment, since the best way to catch a crazy devil on a motorcylce is by becoming a giant robot... or so it seems. Well, let's just start the review.
Set name: Stormer XL
Set Number: 6230
Price: 19.99 Euro
Pieces: 89
Year of release: Summer 2012
Size Class: Box
The Box
The front of the box (which got a nice yellow at the upper side) shows the great bulky Stormer, standing in a friggin' cool ice world, ready to shoot any bad guys down with his launcher.
Like many other people, I have to admit that I don't like Stormer's pose on this box. In early prelim pics, he was shot from a different angle, from which his triangle-shaped body looks far more impressive. It's not a bad pose he got there, but the other pose just looked so much better in my opinion.
The back of the box puts him in a nicer pose, showing the shooting launcher, the handcuffs which can attach to any bad guys wrists and that you can detach the winged drones on his shoulders. There are also nice pics of all sets of this wave on the very right of the box (including Stormer XL - Stormerception?).
Overall, I like the design of the box (which is actually the same size as Black Phantom's). The orange and yellow makes it again brighter than the packaging of the first 2012 wave, which makes me actually wonder if LEGO plans to give the winter sets always a darker packaging than the summer sets (the Ordeal of Fire sets also had quite dark boxes, but at least orange canisters, while pretty much all Savage Planet sets were lime green).
But enough about that, let's open it!
The instructions
The cover of the instruction booklet. I think the image comes off a bit better without all that other stuff on there (like that ad for that video game).
The instructions want to make sure that you don't mix the limb pieces up while building the legs. It also later shows you on which shells you have to apply which stickers, but more about the stickers later.
If you happen to own both Stormer and Speeda, you get the opportunity to build this crazy fellow. I don't know why, but the combination of white, silver, gold, purple and lime green actually works, if you ask me.
The parts
Stormer XL comes with (if I didn't make any mistakes while counting) 89 parts. He got a fair share of bones, white shells, a bit blue and also some silver. He also comes with a few new pieces, so you get quite a lot for your money here.
Oh, he also comes with 6 friction joint-things. Yay!
Oh yeah, he comes with stickers instead of printed shells. I'm on the fence about that. While stickers are not as good as actually printed shells, I personally prefer shells without printing on them, so the stickers actually work for me. And yes, that means that my Stormer won't get stickers, but I'll mention were he would get them during the review.
This new little piece is used to attach the outer shell on Stormer's lower legs. I actually didn't expect it to have a hole in the ball section too, but after building him, I noticed that hole is really important.
Let us all hope that TLG puts that piece into Pick-a-Brick, because I gonna need LOTS of these.
The new small connector was a pleasant surprise for me. Stormer uses it for his back section. While I don't have any awesome ideas to use that piece for MOCing yet, it's definitely a nice addition to the growing sortiment of new limb pieces.
The winged drone (which actually requires stickers) is arguably one of the coolest pieces you can attach to a shell so far (well, the only thing which rocks more are probably Stringer's speakers). Stormer got 5 of them in silver.
They look also very nice on regular sized torso armour shells. Just so you know.
The new huge feet looked initially kinda weird. Having them now in front of me, I must say they look pretty cool and are a nice alternative to the "feet" of the older titans. I do, however, wonder why Stormer's feet are silver, and not white.
Here we got Stormer's new HULKing chest armour. It's a very wide piece...
...with two sockets at its wide ends. In case you missed my incredibly lame pun above, it's the same piece which is also used by the Ultrabuild Hulk, but only in white.
Stormer got also yet another recolour of Breez's/Batman's sword, this time in silver with a blue blade. It looks sweet, goes nicely with his colours and he comes with two of them.
Building the hero
The build start with the main torso and adding some stuff to it's back.
Then, we continue with the legs, which get all the friction joints. Building Stormer's feet reminded me of the many Bionicle sets were you also had to connect the foot with one of those wonderfuly versatile ball sockets. Ah, good old days...
(Oh, and can you see that little black TECHNIC piece behind the ankle? It's there to make sure the socket stays in place)
After adding the thigh, the whole leg gets armour cladding (and normally stickers on the thigh and the front of the large shell).
Except for the stickers, you do the same for the right leg (only mirrored, of course) and add a clip for the handcuffs on the thigh.
Here you can see the skeleton of Stormer's back, which also uses the new connector piece. At this point, you can already get a slight feeling for what the final set will look like.
He gets some armour on his back and on his arms (the drones would also get stickers), and after that...
...you build his sword. I think the picture speaks for itself, it's not too complicated.
The launcher is even simpler, which is also why I didn't bother myself with making pictures of it. Put two red axles into fist, attach the lower part, attach the upper part, then attach the fist to his right arm, and the launcher is done. Nothing special here.
After the sword, he get's his head (which is on the small limb piece), helmet and the lower torso armour.
Then, he gets the large white torso armour (which would also get two stickers, as seen on the box), his Hero Core, the blue shells with the last two drones, and you got...
Stormer XL - Ready for his mission!
Forgotten is the awkward picture on the box once you got Stormer XL together. He is big, he is bulky, but he's still quite sleek and dynamic.
From the front, he looks very nice. I have only two minor complaints about his design here. First, his feet kinda stand out because they are silver, but it's not that bad. And second, his arms seem a bit short. I'd appreciate if his lower arms would have been a stud longer, but maybe it's just because of his very wide upper torso.
His back is nicely covered with a regular armour shell. The instructions tell you to attach a clip for the handcuffs there, but it's not mentioned again at the end of the instructions (or anywhere else, for that matter). Anyway, I think the cuffs are annoying at his thighs anyway, so I store them on his back.
Playability
In addition to his launcher and the handcuffs, Stormer XL is poseable. No, seriously, despite his size, he actually can do lots of poses, for example, stuff like...
...this. Try this with Fire Lord, Rocka XL or Black Phantom. I dare you.
Stormer XL benefits greatly from the friction joints in his legs, which are able to carry the weight of his body without any additional limb constructions, so he got an wider range of motion with his legs than previous titans. In fact, he got even more poseability in his legs than even the smaller sets, since he also rotates at the knee joint.
His arms are also quite stable, partly because of the design of his back, partly because they're so short, I suppose.
Here's a size comparison with Rocka XL, Black Phantom and the new Stringer set. Stormer is a bit shorter than Rocka and BP, but he beats them in terms of poseability by far. He also still manages to look really impressive next to the regular sized sets.
(I must admit, however, that I orginally liked the proportions of Rocka XL a tiny bit more - but now, it's more a draw between the two).
Final thoughts
Stormer XL marks a huge step forward in the design of the titan sets. While his arms do look kinda short, he's overall a fantastic set, and if you want a large hero to face off against the most evil villains your imagination can create, he's the right hero for the job. As long as you don't prefer lime and purple (read: Speeda Demon) over white and blue, Stormer XL is worth the money.
