LEGO Speed Champions 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon and 1970 Dodge Charger R/T

Cross Posted to Brick Set

Continuing working through the backlog of posting the photo gallery for each Speed Build. I'm also continuing the new style of post, hopefully its appreciated. I might also try writing more in general. This exercise has shown me my writing skills have gotten very rusty since high school. (4 years of engineering apparently does NOT do wonders for the reading/writing muscle...)

This is also my first long form "review" (can I call it that?) of a speed champions set. I had the old format so I'll have to figure out a way to re-jigger the two separate formats together.

Link to video:

Part 1: Main Build
I think the designer did a good job capturing the character of both vehicles in these six-stud wide vehicles. The midsections of both are built similarly with the major differences in how the front of rears are attached. Both cars also feature a pretty neat building technique where a 1 x 6 plate is secured in place from the top and is actually floating in place before that step. Really neat to see that mirrored in both vehicles.

LEGO Hidden Side Juice Bar

To celebrate (or push) the new Hidden Side theme, Lego gave away a Gift-With-Purchase (GWP) kit for the theme back in September. I got my version through this promo, and own absolutely zero other hidden side sets. Woomp-woomp.

(Apologies for the skewed angles in the pictures. I hadn't noticed the issue until creating this post. Unfortunately the Juice Bar has been dissembled into it's constituent pieces, so I'm not able to retake the shots.)

Link to Speed Build:

Part 1: Main Build
The juice bar comprises most the pieces included in this promotional kit. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I love the trans-clear pieces used to represent the juice machines and drinks. (I love trans-clear stuff!) The Juice Bar is actually a pretty hefty and structurally sound build. The orange and sand green colors play well together to give the Juice Bar a visually striking scheme. The awning is made with 2x1 curved slopes pieces in very attractive pink and green colors. 

LEGO Star Wars Jedi™ and Clone Troopers™ Battle Pack

This is a retired Star Wars Battle Pack from 2018 for MSRP $9.99. I picked this up because I am particularly fond of the Phase 1 clone troopers. I also experimented with MS Paint's sticker & edit features to make the thumbnail for the video. I think I was able to pull off the effect I was going for.

Link to Speed Build:

Part 1: Main Build
The main build consists of  mini-LAAT. It's not not quite right but what can you expect from such a small scale? At least with the maroon and lime green, the colors are correct here. The ship includes some very nice trans-clear royal blue pieces for the stud blasters and greebling. There's two represented blasters one the wings in addition to two stud shooters mounted on either side of the pilot's seat. The stud shooters are a bit hard to use when flying the ship around and also make a "face" to me. Pretty disappointing.

LEGO City Space Satellite Service Mission Speed Build

Cross Posted to Brick Set 

Small kit from LEGO's Summer 2019 City Space line. If I'm not mistaken this is the smallest boxed set of this wave.

 Link to Speed Build: 

Part 1: Main Build
I love the color scheme for this entire line! The orange is especially gorgeous to me. The craft is bruit from the wings up with only a few large pieces uses to provide shaping. The major ones I remember are the trans-clear canopy and a black piece used to shape the underside of the hull. Two stickers are used for the mission logo towards the rear on either side of the craft.

LEGO Star Wars Sith Infiltrator™ Microfighter

Another large break between posts. I'll make another long-form write up of my thoughts on this kit.

Link to Speed Build:

Part 1: Main Build
Well the main build is the only build, so this'll be short. The Infiltrator was quick to assemble.  The ship consists of three major sections, the main body and two wings. The wings attach to the body via a clip-and-bar connection. The trapezoidal pieces that provide the shaping for the vertical wings have a gap between them that sandwich the main body's horizontal wings.

LEGO Star Wars Snowspeeder™ – 20th Anniversary Edition

Cross Posted to Brick Set
 
This is my third 20th anniversary Star Wars kit. I'm hoping to get the rest before they leave production. I'm also going to try a different format for this post, as well as the next ones.

Link to Speed Build:

Part 1: Main Build
Let's start with main attraction, Luke's Snowspeeder! I've never owned a LEGO Snowspeeder before (although I came real close with the Sandspeeder) but I am really impressed with the details here. The kit feels adequately dense and stable in the hand. The built in play features are easily accessible but aren't easily triggered during handling. Highly swoosh-able! The greebling is decently built up and a plethora of stickers round out the fine details throughout (and through-in!) the craft.

LEGO Hidden Side iOS app as VIP Reward?

I tried checking to see if either BrickSet or BrickFan had reported on this but it looks like they haven't. There's actually been few times I've seen new rewards go live for VIP that haven't been reported for a few days. I've noticed an all around lack of announcements on TLG's part on announcing new rewards for the updated VIP program. Very interesting...

The VIP page shows the following rewards in the VIP Exclusive Rewards section:

Seems weird? As far as I knew Hidden Side was already available for free on iOS. Why would I need to pay 200 Points to download it. I pulled up the app on my phone and safe to say it still works (and is appropriately Halloween themed right now!).

LEGO Star Wars Battle Pack: Inferno Sqaud

Another day another battle pack!

Side note: When I was younger I actually hated these type of mini-fig vehicle products. Mini-figs were lovely but I wanted bricks more! I definitely appreciate the quality of mini-fig packs now though, especially considering the tremendous increase in quality of them over 15 years. (I should go rescue some of my old kits that survived and see if I can't so a comparison...)

Overall I like this set more than the Praetorian Guards Battle Pack. There's a large amount of bias coloring that opinion since I played Battle Front 2 and really liked the campaign there and I am...not all that fond of the Sequel Trilogy.

Anyway, down to specifics. Two of the Troopers stud guns are actually 'brick built' and I found that really nice. (Really only the sniper rifle is but the shotgun/rocket launcher is different enough to count!) Three of the troopers body prints are similar to the Shadow Troopers print but have some more straps and belts layered on top. The feet are different and look more appropriately 'soft' to match Inferno Squads Spec-Ops status. Iden Versio has some more color pops on her armor and is rocking an awesome bun! Dio (her probe droid) is missing from this set so I might might make something to represent the droid.

I actually don't care too much for the helmets. They capture the likeness of Inferno Squad's odd helmet pretty well and the decals are really good. I think the majority of my distaste comes from the back of the helmet. You can see the back/bottom of the head of the troopers peeking out underneath!

The included vehicle is a LEGO invention but is really fun to play with. Very swoosh-able!

Link to video:

Mini-figs:

Generic Trooper

(Kinda looks like me actually...)

Iden Versio

Shotgunner/Rocketeer

Sniper

Team Shot!

Vehicle:

LEGO Star Wars Battle Pack: Praetorian Guard

Took a break from posting. Again nobody but me and Google's Spider's read this so ya know "Tree falls in a forest" and what not. But I come back with a vengeance. The next kit in my cross hairs really riled me up!

I bought the Last Jedi Battle pack of three of Snoke's Guards and one First Order (FO) Trooper. Battle Packs seem to be basically vehicles to put min-figs in consumers hand at a *cheap* price, I really don't like this kit. It has a high price-per-piece for the volume of stuff and the I find the chosen mini-figs disappointing.

I've never had a FO Trooper  I was very excited to get this set just for him. I was very shocked to find that the helmet quality for the FO trooper was much lower than that on the Imperial Storm troopers I had in the Imperial Dropship.You can see the troopers fleshy skin peeking out from underneath his helmet! The new troopers made me pine for my old troopers who had solid black heads but at least you can't see their heads peeking out from a head-on view...

The biggest disappoint for me are the guards. They just seem very red and the helmet sculpting disappear into that bright crimson. At least their heads are solid red! Very nostalgic for me! The included scenery build is pretty much just there. The spinning platters are okay and the training droid is very cool to me. But there's a lack of places to display figures on outside of the spinning platters meant for training duels.Doing a quick spot check looks like most battle packs come with some kinda of vehicle and not mini-fig mountable scenery... So I'll let that issue slide I guess, since a Praetorian-cycle would have been a...more interesting (wrong) decision.

In contrast, I do like some aspects of this battle pack. The printing on the figures, the included melee weapons are interesting, the red and gunmetal grey light saber hilts are *very* cool and again that training droid.

That's all I got to say about that. If you have a different thoughts let me know!

Link to video:

 

Mini-Figs:

First Order Trooper

Praetorian Guards

Training Droid

Scenery Build

LEGO Creator 3-in-1 Might Dinosaurs

So... there's no pictures this time...

I've been in the process of "upgrading" my filming set so I didn't have the grey box in hand when I finished up each of the builds. I'm still not happy with the noise on the video. The new lighting helps occasionally but I think I will need a higher quality camera to get the crispy images I'm looking for. I The new wood grain background looks kind different from other videos I seen and I do appreciate that. I'll keep in mind if I get feed back to switch back but this new set-up not only looks a different in comparison  to all the "white voids", it also gives me flexibility for larger kits.

Link to video:

LEGO Star Wars Clone Scout Walker

I've started to upgrade the filming space. Have a new birch table, new turntable, two new soft boxes and a new tripod solution. These changes were all driven by the fact that I was unable to fit the Walker into frame comfortably. I also had to abort a video on a gundam plastic model kit (gunpla) do to this issue as well. I've also been unhappy with the noise level on these videos (lots of film grain), so maybe these upgrades will also go some way to resolving that issue. Doubtful but we'll see.

On the kit; I feel pretty nostalgic when building this. I had the original 2005 version growing up and absolutely loved it. I'm a little sad the walker can't really even pretend to pose anymore and that the clone trooper molds have changed in my 11 years away. However the new kits quality is astounding. The overall mini-fig and build technique quality of every kit I've built so far is leaps and bounds ahead of what I was used to back in the mid-thousands. The new stud guns are also interesting...

Link to video:

Scout Walker

Kashyyyk Trench

Spider Droid

Mini-Figs