It was just only a few weeks ago when the LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector’s Series Snowspeeder (75144) was officially announced but we’ve managed to get a hold of the set, courtesy of LEGO, and we’re happy to bring you this review of the set. Coming in at 1,703 pieces, the UCS Snowspeeder will retail for $199.99 and will be available starting April 29 for LEGO VIP early access and on May 4 for the general public. The contents of the box include 13 numbered bags, a loose 8×16 plate, a black 8×16 flat tile, and the instruction booklet packaged with the sticker sheet.
Instructions Booklet
The instruction booklet for the UCS Snowspeeder is very thick. It has 300 total pages counting the covers. The first page contains a short message from the LEGO Star Wars Design Director Jens Kronvold Frederiksen who gives some details about the LEGO Star Wars Design Team.
The next two pages gives you some background information about the Snowspeeder including some facts and stats that are on the UCS plaque.
Finally we have short interviews with some members of the design team including Model Designer, Jordan David Scott, Graphic Designer, Marie Sertillanges, and Art Director Michael Sion.
Minifigures
There are two minifigures who are unnamed but are given generic titles, the Rebel Snowspeeder Pilot and Rebel Snowspeeder Gunner.
The Rebel Snowspeeder Pilot, who I believe is Zev Senesca, has on the usual orange flight suit with printing of the flak vest and life support box on both sides of the torso. What makes these torso exclusive is the arm printing on both sides. The legs have some printing of the belt on the waist and pockets above the knees. He has a double-sided head with a confident smile on one side and a scared look on the other. There’s also printing over the eyes for the visor. His helmet is dark gray with some scuffing on it. His accessory is a pair of macobinoculars.
The other minifigure in the set is the Rebel Snowspeeder Gunner who I guess is Kit Valent if Senesca is indeed the pilot. He has the same exact torso and legs as the Rebel Snowspeeder Pilot and even the head piece is exactly the same. The only discernible differences between the two is the helmet in which the gunner has a white one with the Rebels logo on it and he has a blaster as an accessory.
The designers said in the designer video that the minifigures should be easy to figure out but they bring more questions than answers. Please correct me if I’m wrong on the minifigure names.
Build
The first bag lets you build the back of the Snowspeeder which the rest of the build comes off of. There’s nothing really special that goes on here.
The second and third bags allows you to build the middle section of the ship with lots of emphasis in the cockpit area. For the pilot section, there’s a combination of printed and stickered parts for the display screens. There are two blasters used for the ship controls. On the sides, again there are printed tiles for more displays. In the gunner section, there are some more printed slopes for his displays. There’s also the beginning of his control for the harpoon gun in the back which uses a simple rotating gear mechanic.
The undercarrige of the Snowspeeder also gets some details. The landing gear is right in the middle and uses a hinge to adjust. The back uses some ice skate pieces for the bottom part of the heat dispersion fins.
Bag 4 starts off with with the seats for the Pilot and Gunner that are attached to the ship on hinges. There’s also a little section that goes in between the seats. When putting the sectioni on the jumper plates, make sure that the stickered tiles on the sides are placed correctly or else you’ll have some messed up stickers.
The controls for the harpoon gun has a sticker display on the 2×2 tile and it doesn’t look too bad. In addition, we also build the rear windshield area where the side windows have some stickers on them. The last part of the build for this bag are the front wings that are on ball joints.
Bag 5 is purely used to build the Technic stand for the Snowspeeder. There’s also large stickered plaque that goes in front of the stand. The two minifigures are included in this bag as well which go on the jumper plates on the stand.
Next up, we build the lower sides of the wings which is made up of mostly plates and tiles. In the front, there is a small section for the wing tanks using fin pieces. The whole lower wing section attaches to the ship on some ball joints. To keep it from drooping, there is a rubberband that goes around a hook on the ship’s side to a ball joint on the wing. Finally, we have the lower rear brake flaps that attach to the Snowspeeder using some bar elements to give a look of hydraulics.
Bag 7 builds the top part of the right wing which consists of mainly plate and tile pieces. There are some new parts usage here with the Plate 3X4 With 4 Knobs in white which is currently in one other set, the Rebel U-Wing Fighter (75155). There is also a sticker on the 2×4 tile for some decoration.
On bag 8, we have some detailing on the repulsor drive units including some greebling on the inside which unfortunately will get mostly covered up when the brake flaps are down. There’s also a start of the gear feature that will be used later to raised and lower the brake flaps. The rest of the parts for the bag are used for the converter with a sticker used on the 2×4 tile for the power coupling.
Following that, we build the main thruster for the wing that doubles up as a play function with the turning gear that lifts and lowers the brake flap. The blake flap itself is connected via a Technic pin with the top using tile to give it a smooth look. Lastly in the front, we have the laser cannon. The whole wing section attaches to the main ship with hinges on the underside.
Bags 10-12 are the exact same thing as with bags 7-9 but for the left side of the wing so I won’t repeat it.
For the final bag, we build the rest of the covers for the brake flap areas which again use the while and orange tiles to give it the smooth look. Next up, we build the heat dispersion fans on the back of the Snowspeeder. It’s separated into two sections but both sections are virtually the same except for reversing the builds for their respective sides. The fans use mainly dark gray plates with four studs on top and it’s basically just stacking them. There are some plates with pin on top attached to angle plates to connect the fins to the back of the ship.
The final part of the build is the cockpit windshield which uses a new front windshield piece created just for this set. There are some stickers to apply to this new windshield piece so if you plan on using it for your own creations, I suggest not applying them. On the sides, it uses 2x10x3 windshields which is also very rare as it is only been used in the LEGO Creator Volkswagen Beetle (10252). Again, there is a sticker on each side so you might not want to apply it if you want to use the piece in the future. All around the whole section are some white tile pieces to give it the sleek look and it attaches to the ship using some hinge pieces.
Results
Overall, I really did enjoy building the LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector’s Series Snowspeeder (75144). The vehicle build makes a triumphant return in 2017 after the UCS Assault on Hoth from last year which may or may not a misstep according to LEGO but it certainly was with fans of the Ultimate Collector’s Series line. The build itself is really good and the proportions are pretty much spot on.
The play features are decent and I do like the steering wheel for harpoon gun on the back. The brake flap function is not bad but it’s nice to have. The two minifigures that are included are not to scale so they are merely just for use on the stand. Speaking of the stand, it doesn’t “lock” in the vertical position but it leans forward to make the Snowspeeder seem like it’s flying.
One thing that I didn’t like about it was that it has stickers, which is the same sentiment of other builders. Considering that it is a UCS set and the moniker commands premium detailing, stickers do take away from it especially when it has a total of 35 of them spread through the ship. I know that stickers do cut the cost down from printed pieces which cuts down on the overall price of the set itself but I have a feeling that fans wouldn’t mind paying a little more to have printed parts.
As mentioned before, the UCS Snowspeeder (75144) will be available for LEGO VIP members for early access starting April 29 and for the general public on May 4 to coincide with the traditional May the 4th promotion.
[easyreview title=”The Brick Fan Scoring Summary” cat1title=”Design” cat1detail=” ” cat1rating=”4.5″ cat2title=”Playability” cat2detail=” ” cat2rating=”4″ cat3title=”Value” cat3detail=” ” cat3rating=”4″ summary=” “]
Thank you to LEGO AFOL Relations & Programs (ARP) team for sending in this set for me to review. The content above represents my own opinion and not the company. Review sets sent in does not guarantee a positive review.
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Nice review. Nice set. Some typos and odd grammar in there just fyi. On those final photos it looks like the front panels are sticking up a bit – is that how it’s supposed to look?
Looks to me like they need to be pushed down to become flush with the outer panels.
Yeah. One of the problems with ball joints I suppose. I’m just surprised they are in the article to be honest.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ve uploaded new images for the front wings in a better position.
Nice one. Those looks loads better! Thanks for the comprehensive review.
I think you’re right on who the two minifigs are _intended_ to represent, but it turns out they kinda botched Senesca if that’s really who it’s supposed to be. I meant to dig up your previous article about the Snowspeeder being announced and post the relevant info here, too, but at this point it’s probably easier to just toss in a URL. I made a detailed list of all the shots from Ep5 (the original theatrical cut from 1980, not the Special Edition, nor any of the minor tweaks that happened in the 17-year gap) that appear to show Senesca on FBTB, here:
http://www.fbtb.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12751&start=20#p97153
The short version is that you see him from three different angles in the cockpit. The front shot looks very similar to the helmet on the minifig, the back view looks like a white helmet, and the side view reveals that it’s just extremely filthy up front and clean…ish in the back. The gunner is never seen from the front, and there’s nothing on his helmet that can be shown to match what is seen on the minifig, but there’s also nothing that can be used to eliminate him as a possibility (the striped meteor emblem on the side has never appeared in that location on a minifig besides the Rogue One Y-Wing Microfighter pilot, and it’s present on a heck of a lot of on-screen helmets including Luke’s). There’s an image of Valent (with a thick, 70’s porn-stache) from the front floating around the internet, but it looks like it was probably designed for a CCG card, and it looks _horribly_ ‘shopped. Like an kindergartener with MS Paint bad. I think it’s safe to say that the only actual reference material used for the gunner would have been the physical prop from the movie, or reference photos taken during production.
So, almost certainly intended to be Zev Senesca and Kit Valent, but not any more accurate than the previous version of Senesca was. I was kinda hoping that when the set came out, it’d be revealed that the instruction book had pictures of the two characters being represented, even if it didn’t have actual character names listed on the box. Oh, well…
if the brickheadz can have printed pieces (and they are 10$), then it’s absolutely rubbish for a 200$ set to have 35 stickers. i personally would really like lego to stop with stickers completely. and i do think this set is too expensive for what you get
Stickers are a necessary evil. Sticker sheets either don’t count as an element, or they only count as one. Decorated parts would each count as a new element, unique from their undecorated base, and from any other decorated parts using the same base part. They have a strict limit on how many elements they can have in production at any one time, which means that in order to eliminate every sticker from this set, they’d have to cut up to 35 elements from the total lineup. Now, run the numbers on how many elements they’d have to cut if they did away with stickers altogether, and chances are within a year they’d have to give up every undecorated part they make just to fit all of the decorated ones into their limit. Is that really what you want?
The real problem with stickers is that they like to use the white sticker stock more than the clear, and the white stock has long-running problems with peeling and flaking over time. The clear stock has no such problems.
I didnt actually know LEGO had a strict limit of printed pieces, sothannks for pointing it out. The point is, stickers/prints give a vehicle/building character, and after 5-6 years the stickers wear off and its completely blanc. And without those decorations sets look a lot more ugly
The limit isn’t on printed parts specifically, but elements in general. A red 2×4 brick counts as one element. A black one is a second element. A printed black one is a third element. The same print on a red one is a fourth element.
After their two years of posting annual losses, they really cut back on a lot of senseless waste. One such source was the fact that anyone could order up a new mold pretty much on a whim, and their in-production element (part plus color) selection got quite out of hand. I’m not sure what restrictions they put on new molds being cut, but for element inventory they put a strict cap. For every new element someone wants to add (which we see all the time), something has to be cut. The elements they kick to the curb can always come back at a later date, but then something else will have to be dropped to make room.
So, very common deco like computer panels tends to be decorated onto the parts (it can cut down on the need to produce a sticker sheet at all, in some cases), and deco that is essential to play (like facial features on the Chima Legend Beasts, but not claws, fur, or feathers)