When the first wave of Lego Helmets were revealed, I was somewhat of a naysayer about the collection. The first three, Stormtrooper, Boba Fett and TIE Fighter Pilot didn’t look all that great in my opinion and the size looked pretty small for what you were paying for, even for a premium set.
The later additions to the series started to look better, more screen accurate and better designed. However, I’m one of those people who, if you start a collection you need to do it properly, so I never took the plunge myself.
Then along comes last Christmas when my wife’s Aunt and her family got me the ‘Red 5’ buildable helmet for Christmas to go with the two ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ inspired sets my wife and kids got me for the Holiday.
This was the first of the sets that I started to build, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that, whilst the end product does look good, the build itself felt rather repetitive.
Don’t get me wrong, I love building any Lego sets, for me most of the time it’s quite therapeutic, it allows me to just switch off from the world and just focus on something else for a change and in that regard, the set did it’s job, but when each new step is a few 1×1 square pieces the process did become quite tedious.
Whilst the finished product looks absolutely amazing, I was disappointed by the fact that, for a more premium set, aimed at adult collectors, the use of stickers over printed pieces felt like a cop-out on Lego’s part, and it’s not like there aren’t already some printed pieces in the set. The stickers do add much needed detail but the quality compared to printed pieces feels cheap, especially for a set made to be a display piece rather than a toy that kids can play with.
I don’t want to just focus on the negatives, and despite my issues I think the finished product looks absolutely amazing. The level of detail is superb, completely screen accurate, and surprisingly big (not huge, but a decent size) and most importantly, a much welcomed addition to the collection.
Despite my feeling the build was repetitive, it was really interesting seeing how the designers were able to so accurately recreate the helmet, including “padding” on the inside.
With 645 pieces and an RRP of £59.99 the price to piece ratio is pretty good at around 10p per piece it’s far better than some of the regular sets we’ve had which have had around 250 pieces at a price of £35 (Resistance Transport Podcasts -is a prime example).
Whilst it is a fine addition to the collection and worthy of a decent spot on the shelf for display, I won’t be rushing out to buy any more of this series. There are a few I’d be interested in on Sale but right now, with the collection having been relocated and my display space is at a premium I’m having to be a bit picky with new purchases/wish list additions and as great as it is, I don’t love this build enough to rush out for more.
It does look damn good though.
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My Star Wars Life Debt 