7144 - Slave I

Rating:
Pros: Boba Fett mini-fig; Han in carbonite
Cons: Ugly as sin
Contents: 165 pieces including 1 mini-fig
Price: $19.99
Reviewed: 27-Aug-2000
Reviewed by: Gareth Bowler

Vader hated it when people smoked on his capital ship because of all his problems with asthma. After they had made their arrangement, Boba Fett, knowing how the Dark Lord of the Sith felt about second hand smoke, moved Slave I all the way around behind the Star Destroyer and lit one up. He was taking a deep drag, enjoying that rich flavor you only get from real Degobah weed when he noticed a familiar shape drifting away with the Star Destroyer's trash. Fett grunted a laugh, "Just floating away with the rest of the garbage." He flicked his smoking butt into the trash, put his helmet back on, and engaged stealth mode, "You're mine, Solo..."

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Okay, I'll be blunt. This isn't a very good set. However, let's start with the positive. It positively looks like crap.

Okay, hang the positive, let's start with an objective overview of the design. This set is a fairly accurate representation of Slave I. (For those of you who aren't hard-core Star Wars fans, that's Boba Fett's ship. You know, the one that looks like a giant iron and flies in the least logical position and direction imaginable? The one where the pilot ends up looking straight up while trying to land the thing, just hoping there's no debris or small animals on the landing zone? The one with the pivoting wings on the side that quite clearly aren't functional as wings and aren't engines since the engines are mounted on the back? The one with the cannons mounted as far from the cockpit as possible to ensure that the pilot can never actually hit anything with them. Yeh, that one. Slave I's it's name. How do I know, considering the name is never mentioned in any movie? I just do okay. I'm tuned into the Universal Dork Subconscious, all right? Now stop asking stupid questions so we can get on with the review okay?)

There's an opening cockpit up front, and hatch at the back to store your Han-sicle. The problem is that the ship needs to be roughly twice as large, with access from the rear hatch to the cockpit. The wings pivot like in the movie, although they can move 360 degrees, which is a little goofy. A few cleverly placed pieces can restrain them to their proper 90 degree arc.

As for the Boba Fett mini-fig and the Han-in-carbonite brick, the Brunching Shuttlecocks site has a much funnier review of them than I could write without stealing their material, so I'll just direct you there.

All of this brings me to the inevitable color rant. The folks at Lego must've let the colorblind monkeys out of the cage for this one, because this set contains far too many colors. Inside you will find brown, green, tan, gray, dark gray, black, blue, white, yellow, red, and bright translucent orange. About the only color missing is Paradisa pink, which was most likely only omitted because they don't make it any more. Did the designers just give up and say, "Well, the main model is green and brown. Nobody with any color sense is going to be buying this anyway. Let's toss in every hue imaginable." Speaking of green and brown, why are these the main colors in this set? To be fair, I guess Lego green IS closer to Slave I�s true shade than Lego blue. What would've been even better is Rock Raider Turquoise. Why wasn't this color used instead? Would the Rock Raiders have been jealous?

Okay, I'm about out of negativity for today, so it's time to make up some good points for this set. Ummm. Gimme a minute...

Just kidding. It's got a good selection of bricks, mostly in green and brown, which is nice if you want to beef up your collection of parts in these colors. All in all it's still a passable set, just not nearly as good as any of the others in the theme. Serious Boba Fett fans will probably like it, but for those who think he's vastly over-rated, there's an X-Wing or Snowspeeder out there with your name on it.