As a general rule I refuse to shop at Toys'R'Us. Their prices are marked up, their customer service is generally lacking and they will enforce quantity limits. Sometimes they even refuse to honor their own ads or price match guarantee. Most of this is hearsay but there's a LOT of hearsay out there. So when the Mandalorian Fighter came out as a TRU exclusive I pretty much figured I'd pass on it.
Whenever TRU claims to have a sale, most of the time it brings their items down to MSRP. If you game it right you can get an even better deal than that. So it was with a little trepidation that I walked into a TRU during a "Buy $20 in LEGO and get a Mandalorian Fighter free" promo. I had previously expressed my woes that the Z-95 Headhunter was no longer available at my local Wal*Mart. So I was rather pleased to see that TRU had a rack full of them. Markup was a buck to $4.99. "But if I bought 4 of those, I would only be at $19.96. What is there for $5.99?" I looked around and didn't see much that I wanted at inflated prices. Especially not the 75002 AT-RT marked up from $19.99 to $29.99. But there were baseplates. For whatever reason the green ones are $6.99 but the blue ones are $5.99. So three Headhunters and a blue baseplate for $20.96. Bingo. The Mandalorian Fighter has a TRU price of $4.99. By barely breaching the threshhold I was able to get $25.95 worth of items for $20.96. This means I got all my items at 81% of their listed price (including the Mandalorian Fighter at $3.99). Therefore everything worked out to normal retail price.
But this is about a mini Star Wars ship, not how I made TRU sell me stuff for MSRP. I've mentioned before that I like dark red very much. This is the same with most of the dark colors including the blue that is used. The ship itself is an ingenious build for what it is. The wings can pitch up or down (independently) and also swivel from horizontal to vertical all via one Technic piece. I'm not sure if the actual ship is supposed to do this but the cockpit and fuselage can also pitch up or down due the click hinge connection. Very versatile and swooshable. Unfortunately it is very hard for my not-chubby but very dextrous adult fingers to grasp the fuselage amidst the wings. Flipping the wings to vertical requires realigning them. Not a big deal.
My favorite part of the build is the instructions. I've built larger sets that only show attachment of two parts per step. These instructions appealed to my more advanced adult mind with several pieces being added per step. I don't expect it to be this way in the future especially since LEGO toys are marketed towards kids. But it was a welcome change.
Maybe it's the nice weather outside affecting my brain but I have no recommendation one way or another on this. If you're a Star Wars or polybag collector you're probably going to get it anyway. There's nothing terrible about the set (except being a TRU exclusive) for me to tell you to avoid it. Play value is there. Even the part count (49 + 5 extras) is good for the price whether it's TRU or MSRP.
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