UCS AT-AT : Once More Unto the Breach....

After a brief holiday from the MOC AT-AT build, during which time I dabbled with the Monster Fighters theme amongst other things, it was time to get back to business and crack on.

Those who have been following along will hopefully recall that when I last posted about the AT-AT here I had just completed the body of the beast. That was by far the toughest part of the build so far, but having had a break I was suitably refreshed and raring to dive back in. Next up : the neck and head.

You can see a screengrab of the LDD file of the AT-AT neck above (click to enlarge). The LDD building guide generator broke this section down into 112 building steps involving just 314 pieces, which compared to some of the other sections I've attempted thus far is veritably miniscule.... You can see a sample page of the building guide below.

Predictably given its design, construction of the neck was somewhat repetitive, but at least it was relatively uneventful; thinking back to the difficulties I've had with previous sections of the AT-AT, notably the body, this was a bit of a relief.... At its core are multiple overlapping Technic liftarms meshed together by a multitude of pins and axles; it's consequently extremely strong, which it will need to be to support the head in the correct position.

You can see a photograph of the front of the completed neck section above, and of the back below (click to enlarge). The red 3 x 5 liftarm with quarter ellipse is black in the latest version of the parts list, in case any fellow AT-AT builders are starting to panic... The Technic structure emerging from the dark bley neck section in the picture immediately above helps to support the head and enables it to move from side to side, or at least it will do when the head is eventually attached.

For those of you building your own AT-ATs (Tristan and others) I have another little tip; see that 6L axle with 2 smooth half bushes at either end floating in space beneath the neck section on the LDD screengrab at the top of the page ? It's not actually needed, so you can ignore it ! The four light bley Technic half pins floating just below and behind it are used in the build, however - they fit into two of the 4 x 4 quarter circle bricks at the base of the neck (you can just about see them in the picture immediately above). According to Pete, once the neck is attached to the body they help to prevent it from sagging under the weight of the head.

Once I'd completed the neck I made a start on the head. As you can see from the screengrab of the LDD file below (click to enlarge) this is made up of a number of discrete sections which need to be knitted together at the end of the build. Despite its relatively modest size, the head is made up of a surprising 713 pieces which is testament to the level of detail.

Construction of the AT-AT head was divided into 281 steps by the LDD-generated building guide. The AT-AT has two lateral guns which are mounted on either side of the head - you can see these in the lower left quadrant of the screengrab above. These are first to be built, followed by the left side of the head, which can be seen in the lower right quadrant of the LDD screengrab. Construction time for these sections was longer than I expected, which is I think a reflection of the fact that finding the correct pieces is starting to take longer and longer as the build progresses; when you start out, many of the pieces are present in abundance, but as you use more and more of them up you're increasingly left needing the last one or two of a particular part so searching time is definitely getting longer.  The lateral guns are quite fiddly, and it took a couple of minutes of scrutinising and zooming pictures of the completed AT-AT, plus a text to Pete, to figure out how all the parts come together and attach to the side of the head....

Above you can see some pictures of the left side of the head, complete with lateral gun turret. It's only possible to rotate the gun barrel up and down; lateral aiming will eventually be provided via side to side movements of the whole AT-AT head at the neck as described earlier.

And that's it for now. Despite progress being slower than anticipated, by my calculation I've now used up 3,881 of the parts, so only around 2,300 to go. That's about as many as one of the bigger modular buildings, so I'm hoping I can get this monster finished by Christmas....

< -- Building the AT-AT : Part 5                                       Building the AT-AT : Part 7 -->

Monsters, Inc.

Against all expectations I was really taken with LEGO's Monster Fighters theme following my first contact with the sets, and having initially tested the water with a couple of the smaller ones including Set 9461 Swamp Creature it was only a matter of time before I felt the need to add to my collection.

Truth be told, it was quite hard to know which set to get next. Having pored over the set images I was spoiled for choice - all of the sets have an endearingly goofy B-movie charm to them, and really I would have been happy to build any of them. In the end it was Set 9466 The Crazy Scientist & His Monster that got the nod - there's so much cool stuff going on on the front of the box (picture above - click to enlarge) that I just couldn't resist it.While the front of the box drew me in, it's only when you look at the back of the box (picture below) that you really appreciate how many play features and neat touches the designer has crammed into the set; we'll get to those later.

The contents of the box are thankfully accessed by cutting a couple of seals rather than by the use of messy and destructive thumb tabs. The box contains four bags of pieces; the bags are numbered from one to four, and each of them contains at least one smaller sealed bag of parts. There are also two instruction booklets (below) the first of which details construction of the minifigures and the Monster Fighters' car, and the second which covers construction of the structures and furnishings. Finally, there's a gratifyingly small sticker sheet containing just two stickers.

Instruction booklet 1 is pretty short at only 27 pages; other than a collage of all the Monster Fighter sets on the back cover it's all building instructions. Booklet 2 is considerably heftier, weighing in at over 60 pages; it's bulked up considerably by a variety of advertising copy as well as additional content including a summary of the set's play features and a 2-page inventory of parts. As previously stated, the sticker sheet is teeny and can be seen below.

The set contains some interesting parts, a small selection of which you can see below. The medium blue 4 x 4 wedge and arch are unique to this set, and other parts such as the green Moonstone, medium blue 65 degree slope and dark brown tranquilizer gun only appear in two sets including this one. Other parts of note include the wonderful vial containing green liquid, the red light brick, and a few glow in the dark parts such as a rat and spider which aren't widely available in this colour.

And so to the build. Diving into the first instruction booklet, the first job is to assemble the set's four minifigures. The Monster (pictured below) appears to be a representation of Frankenstein's monster; I did wonder whether the lack of an actual reference to Frankenstein was possibly a copyright issue or just a conscious effort on the part of LEGO to distance themselves somewhat from existing works. Whatever the reason, he's pretty well realised. His large head is formed by way of an additional hairpiece-type element placed on the top of a standard minifigure head. There's a good level of detail on his head and torso, for instance a couple of safety pins printed on his head and metallic surgical clips printed on his chest to indicate where he's been opened up and resealed. The olive green colouration of his 'skin' is suitably ghastly, and all that's really missing are a couple of printed bolts on his neck. There's some back-printing on his torso, but he doesn't have a reversible head, meaning you don't have a choice of expression and are stuck with a grimace. The Monster minifigure is exclusive to this set, and rather good I think....

There are some clear similarities between the Monster and the Series 4 Collectible Minifigure (CMF) monster, released in 2011, but also some obvious differences in skin colour and the head and torso prints. You can compare and contrast the two figures below; the newer Monster Fighters version is on the left.

The second bad guy - the titular Crazy Scientist - can be seen below. Unlike the Monster he has a reversible head, which allows him to switch between red and clear filters on his goggles. I love his lab jacket, featuring a printed tool belt containing test tubes, scissors and pliers which wraps around the back of his torso.

While unique to this set, he's very similar to the Crazy Scientist Collectible Minifigure from Series 4, right down to his rubbery bley hair. The torso and facial prints are however different, and the CMF version doesn't have back printing on his torso. You can see a comparison of the Monster Fighters version (left) and Series 4 Collectible Minifigure (right) below.

Moving on to the Monster Fighters themselves, first up is Doctor Rodney Rathbone. His robotic right leg strikes a markedly discordant note against his neatly coiffured facial hair, natty bowler hat and immaculately turned-out torso complete with waistcoat, tie and fob watch. He doesn't have a reversible head, but his torso is nicely backprinted. Dr. Rathbone appears in three sets including this one.

Major Quinton Steele is the other Monster Hunter in this set. He's modelled on the cliched quintessential English pith hat-wearing adventurer, but with a twist - he appears to possess some kind of high tech monocle that even the Borg would be proud of.... This minifigure appears in this and one other set.

Once the minifigures have been safely assembled, attention shifts to the brick-built elements of the set. First up is the car, which can be seen below. The design of the vehicle is seemingly based on the iconic Citroen 2CV, but it's like no 2CV you've ever seen, bristling with armaments and other modifications including three flick-fire missles, an outrigger for Rodney Rathbone to fire from, rocket boosters at the back and a satellite dish on the roof. It's far from clear who's supposed to be at the wheel, however, seeing as both Rathbone and Steele appear to be too wrapped up handling the weaponry to attend to driving duties.... The car's neatly designed, with a rather fetching medium blue scheme. It would have have benefitted from doors, however, and it's a shame that a few bits of the bodywork are light or dark bley rather than medium blue. This is partly, but not entirely, down to limitations in the medium blue parts palette.

The laboratory is next up for construction, starting with the machine which breathes life into the Monster. This is made up of a tower which houses the diabolical reanimation device, and a rickety, uncomfortable-looking bed for the Monster to lie on while he's being zapped. The reanimation device contains a red LED light brick which, when activated, causes the transparent neon green dish and light saber blade attached to the front to glow red as you can hopefully see in the picture below (click to enlarge). An irritating thing about LEGO light bricks is that you have to keep the button held down in order for the light to stay lit. This set offers a neat solution to this, however - an elegant mechanism which allows the light to be switched on and remain lit. This is accomplished by turning a gear on the back of the tower which rotates a knob wheel adjacent to the light brick and holds the button down - simple but effective, and extremely welcome. Just remember to turn it off again when you're done or you'll be replacing the battery before you know it. The bed moves backwards and forwards by way of a reddish brown capstan so that you can manouevre the Monster into the perfect position for maximum reanimation beam exposure....

The remaining structures are what appear to be a holding cell plus a work bench and a storage unit (below - click to enlarge). The cell door opens at the front, but there's also a panel at the back that can be released if the occupant chooses to make a quick getaway. The roof of the cell is adorned with a ballista, presumably to defend the laboratory against aggressive oddballs driving Citroen 2CV's, plus a variety of animal species, of which two are of the glow-in-the-dark variety. The workbench comes complete with a glow-in-the-dark skull in a bell jar and various tools including a neat-looking little microscope.

The various sections of the laboratory bolt together by way of hinge bricks; triangular (cut corner) plates at the base of the various structures prevent much movement of the different sections relative to each other, although if you'd prefer to open the laboratory out more you can remove or replace the plates and choose your own arrangement

You can see how all the various elements of the set come together below; presumably the idea is that the Monster Fighters mount a full frontal assault on the laboratory and lay waste to the place. Let's just hope that the Monster gets a shift on and reanimates sharpish or the baddies are done for....

Overall, this is a cracking set - highly recommended. It's an interesting and extremely varied build, the components of the scene are well designed and come together nicely, and there are a ton of play features worked into the models, with the mechanism for activating the light brick and keeping it switched on a particular favourite. My 4-year old loved the set as well - seeing it assembled on my desk it was almost impossible to tear him away - so its appeal is clearly not restricted to AFOLs of a certain vintage....

Monster Fighters Set 9466 The Crazy Scientist & His Monster contains 430 pieces and retails at £39.99 in the UK and $49.99 in the U.S.. Even at RRP I'd be recommending it, but at time of writing the set is 17% off RRP at Amazon.co.uk making it even more of an essential purchase. Folks in the U.S. can pick up the set here.

Blast from the Past : Set 657 Executive Jet

Just back from a week in the sun, and there's nothing like spending a few days in temperatures of 30 degrees plus to make you 'appreciate' the UK November chill.... My timing was actually pretty poor - I managed to pick the week when The Sun newspaper ran their biannual LEGO promotion to be away, and it's only thanks to the kindness of Brickset member Kevbags plus my folks that I didn't miss out on some pretty excellent sets this time around.

Anyway, what better way to cheer myself up on my return to chilly Blighty than by wallowing in some LEGO nostalgia and looking back at another set that I owned as a child. Set 657 Executive Jet, concisely but rather unimaginatively known only by the name "Aircraft" in the U.S., was released in 1974 at a cost of £0.65.

I still have the very set I owned as a child together with the buillding instructions, but the box is long gone. I was however lucky enough to find a boxed example on eBay for less than a tenner including postage earlier this year. The box (pictures below - click to enlarge) is far from perfect but is at least intact and even still has the original price sticker on it. The image of the model barely fits on the front of the box, and consistent with other sets of this era the image is untidily split in two when you open the box. Three out of four sides of the box feature a stylised side-on view of the model, and the fourth side is completely taken up by "LEGOLAND" branding.

The back of the box (below) is an early attempt to highlight close ups of a couple of features of interest, focusing on one of the jet engines and one of the wheels in addition to a side-on photograph of the finished model. I think the engine and wheel may be featured because at the time the set was released they were new parts - the light grey engine part appeared in sets for the first time in 1974, and the blue single wheel holder first appeared in 1973.

The building instructions (below) are of the fold-out variety and consist of a mere 5 building steps. The rest of the space is occupied by a multitude of photographs of other sets, including another of my childhood favourites, Set 687 Caravelle. I was pretty chuffed to realise that I have at least half of the sets featured in the photographs.

Most of the 37 parts making up this set are pretty unremarkable, but there are a few worth singling out for attention (picture below - click to enlarge). Pride of place goes to the three printed 2 x 4 blue bricks which make up the fuselage of the jet. This is the only set that these blue printed bricks have ever appeared in. There are also three of the single wheels with wheel holder, two light grey engines and the blue 4 x 2 x 2 tail, complete with (badly applied) stickers.

Unusually, my purchase came complete with the original sticker sheet which still contains two unused stickers; I don't recall LEGO including spare stickers with sets, but these two are certainly spares. I've not yet decided whether to remove the cack-handedly applied existing stickers from the tail and neatly replace them with the spares; I'm actually leaning towards leaving the remains of the sticker sheet unmolested for posterity, but we shall see.

As you'd expect, it only took a matter of moments to assemble the model, and you can see the results below. I suppose it's maybe hard to see anyone without an emotional connection to this set getting too excited over the finished model, but to me it's pure gold - I can still remember more than three decades later how exotic and sleek it looked back then, not to mention the hours and hours I spent swooshing it around....

If like me you're partial to a generous slice of nostalgia you can pick up your own copy of this set for a song; boxed examples can be purchased via Bricklink for less than £10 plus postage, or else keep an eye on eBay and one will no doubt pop up eventually. Happy hunting !

Bargain Hunt Lives !

As a keen LEGO bargain hunter, adding the Bargain Hunt ! feature to this blog a little over a year ago was a logical step. Having discovered the delights of Amazon in particular, and more specifically their tendency to discount sets, I was regularly perusing the Amazon LEGO listings looking for bargains anyway, so putting some of my finds up on the blog so others could also benefit seemed like an obvious thing to do.

I expected some level of interest, but I wasn't prepared for how popular the feature would become. It quickly became the most visited page on the blog apart from the home page, and it has remained in pole position ever since despite a shameful level of neglect over the past few months. Many readers have even e-mailed me to moan about the lack of updates, and I guess I deserved it.

Having initially started out with the aim of identifying sets which were at least 30% off RRP, I experimented for a while with other formats, such as picking a different theme for each day and listing the best deals. Inevitably, however, the sheer time commitment inherent in finding the bargains and then manually coding the listings started to take its toll, and the updates became less and less frequent. The final nail in the coffin was probably my collaboration with Huw from Brickset on an automated system of finding and displaying the best bargains across Amazon sites in six countries - the Bargain Watch system, which is hosted on Brickset and has proved to be very popular. Once this was up and running, it became incredibly hard to motivate myself to manually code listings on a frequent basis, and so the Bargain Hunt page started to die a slow death, with only an occasional, sporadic posting saving it from total oblivion.

And yet....reports of the permanent demise of the Bargain Hunt ! page have it seems been greatly exaggerated, and like a phoenix from the ashes it has once again burst into life. This is largely thanks to the sterling efforts of Huw who has made it possible for me to more quickly and easily generate and display discount listings on Gimme LEGO, which makes posting bargains much less time-consuming and therefore greatly increases the chances of me pulling my finger out and posting regular Bargain Hunt ! updates. It should hopefully cut down the number of disapproving e-mails I get if nothing else....

Readers in the UK and US can therefore expect a diet of Top 10 discount listings by theme much like I used to post, albeit more regular, plus anything else that I figure out how to do once I've familiarised myself with the system.... I'll also keep a listing of deals 40% off or better for UK, US, France, Germany, Spain and Italy permanently displayed at the bottom of the page, and will occasionally throw in info about promos being run by other retailers if there's anything worth mentioning. Finally, there are links to take you straight to the LEGO listings for a host of different retailers at the top of the Bargain Hunt ! page, and if there are retailers you'd like me to add to the list then get in touch and I'll think about it....

You can access the Bargain Hunt ! page from the menu on the right side of the screen or else by clicking here. I hope you find the listings of some use; please feel free to contact me or leave a comment if you have any suggestions for how the listings could be improved, and happy hunting !

UCS AT-AT : Body Beautiful

So after the joys and distractions of STEAM, closely followed by another foreign business trip, I was finally able to crack on with the AT-AT over the past few days. When I last wrote about the UCS AT-AT build I'd got partway through the 422 building steps required to construct the internal skeleton and body of the AT-AT, and you can remind yourselves of the story so far here.

Before I could jump back into the build, I had a couple of things to consider. First up, should I upgrade to the latest version of LDD ? LEGO have released a new version (4.3.5) of the software, and now every time I boot up LDD I'm asked if I want to download the new version. Normally I'd dive straight in, but given I was partway through building a section of the AT-AT I was concerned about the possibility of the new version of LDD generating a building guide in a different sequence to the one I'd been using previously, meaning I wouldn't just be able to pick up where I'd left off. Also, I'm told that the new version of LDD doesn't like one of Pete's LDD files and omits a couple of pieces from it which have allegedly not been placed correctly (!). All things considered, I decided to hold off upgrading LDD for now.

Secondly, I've had an issue with LDD which appeared when I upgraded my iMac operating system to the latest version about a week ago. Since then, it's been impossible to see the outlines of the pieces on LDD; there's an option to show the outlines within the LDD menu but this is now set to 'off' and greyed out so I can't select it. This obviously makes it much trickier to see how everything fits together. I spent some time looking for a fix, but wasn't able to find anything so eventually decide to just press on with the build and hope for the best. Although now too late for this particular section of the model, if anybody reading this has any idea how to remedy this issue I'd be very grateful. I'm hoping that at the very least I'll eventually regain the ability to see the outlines when I upgrade to the latest version of LDD, but we shall see....

Anyway, back to business. Wrapping up the internal skeleton and body of the AT-AT involved a number of distinct stages - lengthening the floor a bit, construction of the front wall of the body, construction of the rear of the AT-AT, fashioning a robust Technic frame to ultimately support the roof and hang the sides on, and finally attaching all the multiple sub-assemblies that I'd constructed earlier, including figuring out where all the legion of small, individual parts were supposed to attach (see my previous AT-AT posting for a rant about that particular task....).

Completion of the floor and front wall of the body (pictures below - as usual, click to enlarge) was relatively straightforward, in stark contrast to the rear of the AT-AT which turned out to be hideously fragile and unstable until the very end when everything came together. The sizeable black and yellow section attached to the floor is the block which will eventually support the head and neck. A number of subassemblies fit inside this structure and should ideally be installed as you go along rather than at the very end, which is what the ludicrous LDD building guide would have you do....

A feature of the LDD file for the AT-AT body is the presence of a number of loose parts and structures which, on account of LDD's idiosyncrasies, aren't shown as being attached to the rest of the body; you can see these leftovers in the bottom left of the picture immediately below. As some of you are aware, it just so happens that I was fortunate enough to have seen cavegod's AT-AT at STEAM less than two weeks ago, so I took the opportunity to grab a few pictures of the rear of the AT-AT (below) while I was there. The pictures are pretty rough, but they were very useful in helping me to complete the rear of the AT-AT and figure out how all the loose bits and pieces are supposed to attach.

The last major part of the build is the long Technic section (picture below) which bridges the gap between the front and rear walls of the AT-AT body and which will eventually support the roof. Many of the "free floating" Technic pins that I commented on the last time I posted an update ended up being employed in the construction of the uppermost part of this structure, and you'd be well advised to work out where they fit and pop them into place as you go along. You can do this by jumping back and forth between the relevant pages of the building guide and the last page. Yes, it's a total pain in the backside, but it beats trying to attach them when you've finished building everything else which is once again what the building guide suggests....

I did my utmost to try and attach the multiple sub-assemblies and loose parts that I'd been collecting together during the previous 421 steps as I went along; all that was left therefore once I'd finally managed to stagger through to step 422 (the final step) of the building guide were a collection of Technic liftarms, the drive motors and the structures to which the legs would attach. The penultimate task was to drop the Technic section on to the top of the body section and knit these sections together (below) with the Technic liftarms.

Last but not least, I bolted the drive engines and the structures to which the legs would attach onto the underside of the body and I was done ! This last step was pretty tricky, but the results are impressive as you can see from the picture immediately below.

I experienced a real sense of achievement when I finally finished this section of the AT-AT build. Between the horrible LDD building guide and an at-times genuinely tricky build it's been a while since I was challenged this much by a LEGO model. Completing the AT-AT body used up 1,282 pieces, to add to the 2,120 pieces that went into the legs, meaning I'm now well over halfway done overall.

Next up is the neck section, after which I can finally upgrade LDD....


<-- Building the AT-AT : Part 4                              Building the AT-AT : Part 6 -- >