7110 - Landspeeder

Rating:
Pros: Great little model; dinky little price
Cons: It is, admittedly, one of the less exciting vehicles from Star Wars
Contents: 47 Pieces, including Tatooine Luke and Ben Kenobi w/ lightsaber
Price: $5.99
Reviewed: 10-Aug-2000
Reviewed by: Dave Ruete

The heat of Tatooine's twin suns scorched the streets of Mos Eisley. Imperial Sandtrooper TK-1138 stood at attention as a lone landspeeder approached from out of the wasteland. He gave the signal to halt, and it's three engines hummed as the reverse thrust slowed the vehicle to a stop. The vehicle floated less than a meter off of the ground as he interrogated the passengers and their droids.
"These are not the droids you're looking for" one of them said, and Trooper TK-1138 found himself convinced.
"Move along," he said at the passenger's prompt. The repulsor's engines rose to a whine as the vehicle slid off downtown.

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Okay. Admittedly, when you've got B-Wings and A-Wings and repulsortanks to play with, the SoroSuub X-34 Landspeeder initially seems a little tame. But just as every complete Legoland collection needs a handful of those dinky little one-passenger cars, the Star Wars collection needs its share of personal ground transport vehicles. Although, this set is much cooler than those little cars ever were.

Out of 47 pieces, the folks at Lego have managed to create a surprisingly well-scaled and accurate model of Luke's landspeeder from Star Wars. The construction is fairly simple, but the details are beautiful; the little dark gray vent on the hood, the textured blocks around the sides of the vehicle, and my favorite part: the way they got two chairs side-by-side in a 6-stud wide model. Another added bonus is that, with slight modification to the placement of the interior walls, this little gem fits inside the Millennium Falcon model (this does require removal and stowing of the top engine, but that is easy enough to do).

The figures are fun as well. Tatooine Luke is included. He received rave reviews from the Brunching Shuttlecocks. Also, to my knowledge, this is the only set that includes the Episode IV version of Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan is pretty well done, though I don't remember Sir Alec Guinness (R.I.P.) having this much hair. He is molded in tan with brown and black details on his front. The head has a gray beard to match the gray hair piece. He does not come with cape or robe, but that would probably just get in the way anyway. (As a side note: he looks pretty good if you put the Samurai armor on him.) He and Luke have to share the lightsaber, though, because the set only comes with one.

If I had to list drawbacks (not Dewbacks!) to this set, I'd say that the number one would be Obi-Wan's hair. He has the same hairdo as Luke and Han and that doesn't seem quite right. I guess all Lego guys except Qui-Gon have that hair, so it's okay. The only other drawback would be the somewhat inaccurate coloration of the set (the actual speeder looks more brown than tan in the film), but that is only an issue to real purists; I actually think the color scheme looks pretty good.

All in all, I give the Landspeeder 4 stars out of 5 for very good detail in a very small/inexpensive set and for having Obi-Wan in it...who is an excellent addition to a set of Lego Star Wars mini-figs.