This Is Not The Set You Are Looking For...

8092 Luke's Landspeeder
The Chronicler's Rating - 2/5
Price ~ $25.00
Year Released - 2011

It is very easy to be taken in and deceived by this set. Yes this set has set has a great selection of minifigures from the movie. Yes it is the most movie accurate Lego version of Luke’s Landspeeder from Episode IV A New Hope produced to date. And yes it has a good array of accessories and colors. But at the end of the day Lego sets are meant to be played with and the simple fact is this: in the movies this vehicle is nothing more than a car (and within the context of the Star Wars world a junker car). Car sets have their place in a city scene (how else are you going to do police chases?) but when mixed in with the rest of a standard Lego Star Wars collection which inevitably includes a variety of cool space ships bristling with weapons this set is going to stand out as exactly what it ultimately is: a non-flying, unarmed and relatively slow looking people mover. One can only reenact the famous “These are not the droids you’re looking for” scene from the movie so many times before that becomes… boring, and then what are you going to do with this set? The answer is not much.

FOR PARENTS
I would recommend that you pass on this set due to the simple fact that I can’t think of any compelling reason to buy it. All the figures in this set have been readily available, with only minute cosmetic differences, in a variety of other sets both past and present. The value of this set, while not horrible is not terrific. The pieces, while not terrible are nothing special or exclusive. And, for the reason stated in my intro 9 out of 10 kids will be bored with this set after no more than a week. While movie accurate there just isn’t that much in terms of playing that can be done with a set like this.

FOR KIDS
If you have been wanting this set I would advise you to reconsider and spend your money on something else. While this set may look cool it isn’t going to be very fun to play with in the long run. A set very similar in price to this one is 7915 V-wing, this is a fighter and in my opinion much cooler. You will get much more use out of a set like that in the long run than this futuristic car. The only exception I would make is if all of the following is true for you: You are relatively new to collecting Lego Star Wars (if you are not you probably have an older version of at least half of these guys) or you don’t have any of these figures and really want them. If those two statements are true then this set is a fairly cheap way to get all these figures (especially R2-D2 and Threepio) at once. If however you are planning on collecting a lot of Star Wars sets you can rest assured that you will end up with all of them before too long so I would just wait.

CONCLUSION
For the most part vehicles in Star Wars are very cool and translate into Lego models with lots of play potential. The Landspeeder however just is not one of them. Remember that ultimately this is just an old beat up car and an unarmed one at that. To reiterate one final time the question one needs to ask before buying this set is what will I do with it once the excitement of having a really movie accurate model wears off? If you can come up with a good answer to that question then go for it, otherwise I would pass on this one.

Happy Building
The Lego Chronicler