BUILD REVIEW: “75102: Poe’s X-Wing Fighter”
My back-ordered copy of this set finally arrived, and I just completed the build this morning.
General difficulty: Moderate.
Instruction quality: Fair. (Several images in the instructions, particularly around the wing assembly are fairly unclear, but otherwise, pretty solid.)
General impressions: A solid updating of the older X-Wing sets, with notable differences in the wing and engine assemblies. The black and orange color scheme is striking, and the inclusion of three minifigs plus BB-8 is nice (though for the price, an additional minifig or two would’ve been nice).
As with the other kits from the forthcoming movie, there’s an unfinished quality to this set; minor details seem lacking (the small grill near the cannons on the upper wings is not mirrored on the bottom, for example); the sleek appearance of Dameron’s X-Wing in various movie stills differs from the visible studs along the forward fuselage; some flat, no-studs-on-top black pieces would’ve gone a long way to smoothing out the design.
I suspect this is, in part, down to keeping part costs down and the necessity of paying a royalty on to Lucasfilm/Disney—one of the things I genuinely don’t like about most of LEGO’s licensed sets.
The rubber bands that apply tension to keep the X-Wings from flopping around are bright blue; would it’ve killed you, LEGO, to use black elastics instead?
Despite these minor gripes, it’s a fun, not terribly difficult build, and the end result is striking; the black-and-orange color scheme is genuinely appealing, and completing the set made me want to see the “real thing” swooping around the screens in December.
