I'm immediately reminded of the original mini Star Wars series 10 years ago. Well before we had to worry about the Clone Wars and the Disney factor, we had pure Star Wars. And planetless minis. Those sets had 2 mini vehicles and no minifigures. The one with the snowspeeder also had an AT-ST. An AT-AT would have been a little more accurate but that had it's turn in a single pack. But the point of this paragraph was the comparison between this snowspeeder and the original mini snowspeeder.
My original mini is unfortunately packed away in my garage loft where only the mice and ants visit. One of these days when I have space I want to pull all those minis down and play with them again. But I do remember that snowspeeder being amazingly cute. One of the stunning connections was the single bar (not singles bar) to which two clips attached; one from the wings and one from the body. To me this was brilliant. I would have expected a hinge plate. Even to this day I have a hard time remembering to use the clip and bar as a solution for angled conundrums.
This snowspeeder has the same basic color scheme and is roughly twice as big. The connection of the wings to the body uses a modified red headed stepchild between a pure hinge and the clip/bar system. Two 1x2 plates, one with a closed end handle and the other with 2 clips give the wings their pitch. Is this proof that even LEGO designers can't stand the click hinges? This is not a new idea. We also saw it on the Republic Assault Ship among others. Unlike the Assault Ship though, the Snowspeeder has no stops to hold the wings at an angle. You could lay them straight out or straight down.
In a rare instance, The LEGO Group biffed on one of the parts. I received two white 6x3 wings left instead of a left and right wing. The advantage of having a cache of parts and a store is that I can pull stuff out when need be. I remembered selling some of the right winds recently. Murphy's Law would dictate that I would have sold them all. Murphy must have been on vacation because I was lucky to have not one, not two, but FIV- er, THREE of the parts in my inventory. It's not worth bothering to have TLG send me a new one.
None of the snowspeeder parts are unique or rare save for the printed nose slope. If you weren't able to get this set and want to piecemeal your own speeder together, that slope alone will cost you $2-4 depending on where you're willing to order from.
This is only the second planet series minifigure to NOT carry a blaster. If you don't count R4-P17 who can't hold anything anyway. Prior to this was Sebulba holding a wrench in his, um, paw. This guy has binoculars. It's a nice little departure but I would have liked to see a few of the other characters holding something slightly different. Perhaps Lobot could have been carrying a cool drink or the Naboo pilot could have had a shrunken Gungan head. Just a thought.
The set has 65+5 parts plus a minifig. That's a little light on what would usually be a $9.99 set. Maybe adding more parts to the speeder would have just looked funny. But you won't get this set for $9.99 anyway. You'll be spending around $25 to have it shipped from East Asia, maybe $20 from Europe if you're lucky. It's hard for me to make a recommendation when you'd be laying down so much cash. I expect only the hard core collectors will be the ones looking for it anyway. If that's the case, you don't need my word for it. You'll just go and get it.
And to those that have fought from Europe to Asia to Hoth, thank you for your service.
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