I also began a review of this set (should have been my first post on the board). But since I won't have time to do it properly in the next weeks/months, I will just make a second opinion out of it:
Back in the days where I was at an age where playing with Lego was widely adopted by my social environment,
I loved to visit one of my friends who's parents where cash wise "fluent" enough to by him the bigger Lego sets on a regular basis.
He had a lot cool sets (especially from Space Police like the Galactic Commander), but 6990 was my favorite.
I always wanted to have one, but as a kid my parents simply couldn't afford it, and as a "grown up"
I had to wait for my kids to reach a certain age to have a credible excuse to buy one.
More or less unfortunately only this set was in my (shortened through affordability) grasp - but due to the above mentioned "history" this set has to stand up against 6990.
The minifigs
I'm no minifig - guy so no judgment here from my side
the train
The base is called "Monorail transport base" - but what is actually transported by this base ?
There is absolutely no cargo to transport (except you declare minifigs as cargo), even if there was cargo,
there is no space on the monorail for it.
The old monorail had a special cargo container, to transport goods (whatever that may have been), and even a passenger cabin.
The new one has only these cockpits or whatever the may be called, that can be loaded or offloaded. But why are they
"loadable" in the first Place ? I can't see any real purpose.
The train itself houses a cockpit at each end and the battery compartment, and a thing that i have no name for. It looks like
a rocket(?) propulsion, but that wouldn't make sense on a train (at least if they don't want to fry their main motor).
I'm also missing the cool "bumpers" from the 6990 monorail - I know the set had to adopt the design guidelines of the Unitron theme, but these cockpits seem to belong more to a starship than to a monorail.
The "loader"
The loader is the only (non rail-based) vessel in this set and isn't very well/boring built but serves its purpose very well. The Major downside on this one, are the flimsy connected wheels.
They often are "left" behind when the "loader" has to cross small obstacles or is "rough driven".
The reload station
I called it reload station, because its the only possible use I came up with, but I'm not sure if this is right.
Maybe "let the radar dish rotate" would be more suitable, because at least this makes some kind of sense:
A wheel is "loosely" placed near the track, so if a train enters the station the wheel is turned by the train itself.
The wheel is connected through a technic - axle with a radar dish on top of the roof to make it turn.
The second "function" is a platform that can host a "cockpit". The platform is connected to a footbridge that is based on a turntable.
If the monorail is halted, the platform is able to "swing" from one monorail nose to the other. My guess this should be used to
exchange the cockpits. But how does the cockpit move from the monorail to the plattform an back ? There is no crane or lifting mechanism,
that could help here. So they need to lift off by themselfs - but if they can lift off, why have this platform in the first place ?
They could simply fly to the other end.
The "tower"
The tower consist of a small compartment with terminals in it, and on top of that is an unloading station. My first thought on this was
"crud there aren't enough "direction manipulators" in the package (I bought it in very used condition from eBay) but Lego seemed to cut costs
by simply using a brick to invert the direction - which is clever, but another "direction manipulator" would have been cooler.
Anyway if the monorail drives on top of the tower the cockpit is unloaded on a plattform and then the monorails direction is inverted.
I'm also not sure what the cockpit does when its on the plattform, maybe lift off - it surely can't get back on the monorail again
I don't know what the guys in the control compartment are for, maybe controlling the monorail ? And as often the windshields don't
seal the compartment airtight they seem to have only decorative character.
The (un)loading station
Nothing special to say about that. It's function is to (un)load a cockpit on the loader vessel which also functions very well.
Except that there is again no mechanism that lets you - more or less - automatically load the cockpit from the laoder to the train.
The track
The tracks are the major advantage of this set. Having two track switches and 2 "direction manipulators" makes the
whole track network a lot more interesting in a sense of playing with the track layout as opposed to 6990 which had a quite boring layout.
One thing I missed from 6990 was the track decorations. Although they had no real purpose they were cool to look at, and they gave
to whole thing a more realistic look.
Scores
Build: 6/10 The built is easy, no special techniques used. Its not very repetitive but there aren't many parts.
Playability: 6/10 The playablity has the monorail factor which catched my boys (5 and 2,5 years old) for quite a while. But apart from that there isn't much left to play with
Minifigures: 7/10 The robot guy looks cool - I like his transparent helmet.
Pieces: 6/10 Except from the monorail part no special pieces to mention.
Price: 6/10 I was lucky getting mine for "only" 60€ which I find rather overpriced. I don't know the original price, but at least here bases where/are always expensive
Design: 6/10 There was absolutely no "cool look at that" factor that my son and I have when building other models (like the very good 7692 MX-71 Recon Dropship).
Total- 37/60
All in all, I'm torn. I'm quite dissapointed about the whole set but thats surely based on the fact, that I can't look at it with my childhood eyes.
The tracks itself are good, but the rest of the set isn't. The buildings are poorly built and don't have a lot of (usefull) functions.
But on the other Hand its the monorail - the transport vessel for future colonies on other planets like Mars
(at least at the time it came out a lot of serious predictions (like from NASA and ESA) mentioned/showed a monorail).
Cool, but overrated - I Think
