6982 - Explorien Starship

Rating:
Pros: Large laser; plenty of pieces; wings fold down
Cons: Workroom is not air-tight; silly fossil tile idea
Contents: 652 pieces including 4 mini-figs
Price: Discontinued
Reviewed: 29-Dec-1998
Reviewed by: Mark Bauer

In the vast caves of the planet Nebula there has been a large discovery of fossil remains from the secret Spyrius clan. The report was given to the Explorien chief who immediately ordered the fossils to be brought back to the Android station for further examining. After the order the got received by the commander in space flights the Explorien Starship was pulled out of its' massive cargo bay and was prepared for take of. The crew of 4 hopped aboard and blasted towards Nebula unaware of what might wait ahead at the cave.

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I had not seen this set until the day I bought it. When I was looking at all of the new 1996 sets I saw this one and was totally amazed at the size of this set. Seeing how I had some money to spend I picked it up immediately. When I got home I ripped open the box and spilled all of the pieces on the carpet and built it as fast as I could. The overall look and feel of the set is really good.
The set consists of a front pilot area, a skinny middle section with some areas to hold weapons and the back area, which has the gigantic laser beam. The very back of this huge ship even has a place to stick a small ground vehicle.
The front area, which is the pilot area, has the front cockpit for the chief to sit. This cockpit is quite spacious and has a lot of controls for one cockpit. The odd part about the cockpit is that there is a pin that holds the cockpit upright but when you pull the pin in the cockpit will tilt a little bit. I found this to be a cool function but the purpose of doing this is still confusing me.
The area directly behind the cockpit is a very spacious workroom with a hologram in the middle for communication with other Exploriens. To the left and right of the workroom are two observation pits with 2x2x1 computer pieces, which I think look really neat. Pulling away two wing pieces and lifting a radar dish can access the workroom. Two Trans-blue sloped shields access the tow observation pits.
Behind the workroom is another Trans-blue shield that really reveals nothing but you could hide some fossil tiles in there if you wanted to.
Next is the skinny section that basically has two holding areas. One for fossil tiles and the other to hold lasers. The back part is by far the coolest section of the whole ship. The center of the section has a large laser that could easily blow up any ship that got in its way. There are two walls that can somewhat cover up the laser. The back section also has two long arms that can move up and down and swivel. One arm has a magnet to grab the fossil tiles and the other arm has Trans-red and blue discs on it to see what the fossil tile reveals (I think this is a dumb idea). The back area also has two very wide wings with very large missiles that can be taken off at the ends. One thing that you may or may not see at first glance is that you can pull out two pins located on the wings and when you do that AND lift the ship of the ground the wings will bend at a 45-degree angle. This function is very well designed and makes the ship look awesome when you fly it around.
As if all of this wasn't enough this monstrous set also comes with a little rover, which is used to pick up fossil tiles by means of a magnet or a "pincher". This rover has a very unique design in that it only has two wheels that are in the back and the front is held up by two booster pieces. This way of designing it surprisingly works well and looks pretty cool.
By now you may be thinking that this is the perfect space set right? Wrong. There are a few things that could have been avoided in this set. First of all the work room and observation pits are not enclosed totally, there are a lot of openings which really bugs me because I think they could have designed it a bit differently to fix this. The other thing that makes the set look a bit ugly is the radar thingy that sits on top of the workroom. The form of the ship looks really sleek and cool until you put this thing on. If I were you I would put on at first to see what you think but I'm sure you'll want to take this thing off soon after.
Other than those two little complaints I think this set is a total blast! It is nicely designed and actually takes quite a long time to build up. I was very pleased to see this set giving away three Trans-blue slanted shields. If you are a space collector and you want the largest ship of all then pick this set up. I highly recommend it.