Saturday, September 5th, 2015 at 2:01am by Jason, BZPower Reporter
Our reviews of the Star Wars Buildable Figures continues! Today, BZPower Reporter Xccj takes a close look at 75110 Luke Skywalker, one of the cheaper of the models. Is the Force strong with this set, or should it be sent back to the moisture farm? Read on or watch the video review to find out!
Presentation
From the design of the box to the instruction manual, these are the first things you see before building the set.
This time we get our Buildable Figures in a box. It's a fairly sizable box too, although mine got a little squashed in transit. Luke takes the center stage, showing off his green lightsaber and trusty blaster. In the background, you can see the icon scene from Return of the Jedi where Luke and Darth Vader battle it out. The LEGO, Star Wars, and Disney logos are prevalent on the box, and there's also a socket / ball joint design at the bottom to advertise the Buildable Figures. (Also to serve as fair warning that this is a CCBS - Character and Creature Building System - set.)
The back of the box has some alternate poses for Luke, highlighting his various weapons and tools he can use. There's also a list of the other five Buildable Figures being released this year. It seems like they come in pairs to fight against each other, and Luke is supposed to be paired up with Darth Vader. They are also the only two characters from the original trilogy present in the lineup.
Inside the box you get two bags of parts, the body piece, the lightsaber piece, and the instruction booklet. The booklet has further advertising for the Buildable Figures as well as the early summer Star Wars sets, but nothing on the sets based on the new movie.
Building
Half the fun is had building the set. How fun is it to build and how easy or challenging is it?
The build is fairly straightforward, especially if you've built with CCBS in the last couple of years. Nothing too remarkable about it, and it went by pretty quickly for me.
Set Design
Now that the set is complete, we can critique how it looks from every angle. New or interesting pieces can also be examined here.
Luke has a lot of black parts. He has a total of 83 pieces to him, along with a few extra technic bits. The element that jumps out at me first is the green lightsaber piece. It has an axle hole on one end, and it slightly rubbery so it can flex a bit, but overall it is a nice element. You also get four of the new hilt pieces. They're pretty much axle connectors with intricate designs on the outside, but they look good. Luke is the cheapest set that you can get a lightsaber in, but General Grievous, Darth Vader, and Obi-Wan also have them, and Grievous has two in green as well.
The next detailed piece is the head. It has some awesome molding details in the hair, and great face printing. It connects via a socket joint, and it actually fairly heavy, so it's quite the solid piece. However, it's a little too exclusive, and it doesn't quite have the reusability value that, say, a Bionicle mask. But it does a good job at representing a young Mark Hamill.
Also exclusive to this set is the giant torso armor piece. This mold is reused on the other Buildable Figures, but this one has robe printing on it to match the character. It is rather large and bulky, and only has one socket connection on the back, so maybe it's not the best piece to build with. Also new are the curved leg armor, which has a really cool design and has lots of MOCing potential. I believe all the buildable characters come with this piece, and Darth Vader also has some in black.
Some other noteworthy pieces include the size-6 black shell piece (relatively uncommon), the black spikes, and the return of the Hero Factory handcuffs with two chain links. Plus, the hand piece appears in the same flesh color used on the minifig heads, and the ice cream cone piece is in silver, both of which are currently exclusive to this set.
From the front, Luke comes off as a very sleek looking set. The first thing that I really noticed was that he has good, human like proportions. Bionicle and Hero Factory often had oddly proportioned sets, which always bugged me, but the reasoning was that they were robots and didn't need human proportions. However, Luke is supposed to represent a human, and so they gave him correctly sized legs and arms, and I wholeheartedly approve. They've also done a pretty good job at armoring him. The new leg armor piece is rather sleek on his lower legs, and they even attempted to fill in the back of the legs with the spike pieces. It does make them appear a little thick from the sides, which is made worse by the lack of back armor on the upper legs. But the style of CCBS makes it difficult to armor both sides of the limbs, and it works better than I expected. The torso armor, while bulky, does an awesome job of filling out the torso and rounding him out, so he appears adequately wide. The back armor still leaves a few openings, like at the back of his neck, but it's miles ahead of what we usually get. Some technic bits also fill out some gaps in his feet and the back of his thighs, where it also doubles as a "belt" connection for his spare lightsaber handle.
For the most part, Luke has a good, solid flow to his character. CCBS usually works towards making the characters more robotic, but Luke looks quite human, so that in itself is impressive. This also helps because he is mostly black, so the pieces blend together. The unfortunate thing is, this also makes him seem a little bland compared to the other, more colorful Buildable Figures, which somewhat hurts his value.
Playability
The other half of the fun is in playing with the set. How well does the set function and is it enjoyable to play with?
Luke has a standard 13 points of articulation, and this allows him to be very pose-able too. There's not really any particular point where his joints are restricted at all, which is pretty good considering how armored he is. While he has the added friction joints at his hips, his ankles can sometimes be a bit weak, but in general they can hold him up without issue. Then you can start posing him with his various weapons. His lightsaber can be wielded with both hands or just the one, and he can get posed in some cool positions. He also has a nice technic-built blaster gun, which he can use as a secondary weapon. Finally, you can handcuff him to replay the scenes from Return of the Jedi. When he's not handcuffed, I chose to store them on the belt clip with his spare blaster, although that's not really a feature advertised in the instructions, so take it as you will.
I'll also take a chance to compare Luke to a similarly priced set; a slightly modified Onua, Master of Earth. Like definitely towers over Onua, demonstrating the more human-like proportions. Plus, he generally has larger pieces on him, including his various armor shells and limb joints. All the same, Onua does have about 100 pieces to him, which is a fair amount more than Luke's 83, and his stuff seems more useful to MOCers in general. Plus, Onua has the action feature to swing his arms around. Luke, for all his posability, does not have that. And you just know it would've been cool to have a gear driven arm to swing his lightsaber with!
Final Thoughts
Once it's all said and done, how does the set stack up? Should I get it?
Pros
What's to like?
Some new or uncommon pieces (lightsaber and hilt, leg armor, flesh hands)
Human proportions
Decent attempts at back armor on body and legs
Great overall flow on character
Good articulation, fun to pose with weapons
Cons
What's not to like?
Fairly pricey at $19.99, and he's one of the cheaper Buildable Figures
Fewer pieces than similarly priced CCBS sets, including some that are a little too specialized
Black design is a little dull compared to the other characters
No action features
To be honest, I wasn't very impressed with Luke when I first saw images of the set, and he still fails to shine compared to some of the other Star Wars Buildable Figures sets, both in overall design and parts usage. However, he has good human proportions and solid armoring, which is something most CCBS sets have failed to achieve in the past. In fact, I think this is one of the most solidly build sets as far as back armor and such go, and while the black doesn't let him stand out, it also achieves a good overall flow. Plus, he looks quite like his character, and his weapons are good designs that look neat in many action poses. It also helps that he's the only protagonist from the original trilogy, which certainly influenced my selection of him. Luke's probably not the best of the lot, but he still manages to be a decent set as far as I'm concerned.
Thanks again for reading and / or watching this BZPower set review. A big thanks to LEGO for providing us with these sets a little early so we could prepare this review for you! Make sure to like and subscribe to the BZPower Youtube channel, and stay tuned for more LEGO set reviews, including the rest of the Star Wars Buildable Figures.