Lego has lined up a whole series of Star Wars sets for 2012 that were available in Singapore from the beginning of Jan 2012. The full list is as follows,
- 9488 Elite Clone Trooper & Command Droid Battle Pack
- 9489 Endor Rebel Trooper and Imperial Trooper Battle Pack
- 9490 Droid Escape
- 9491 Genosian Cannon
- 9492 TIE Fighter
- 9493 X-Wing StarFighter
- 9494 Anakin’s Jedi Interceptor
- 9495 Gold Leader’s Y Wing StarFighter
- 9674 Naboo StarFighter and Naboo
- 9675 Sebulba’s Podracer and Tatooine
- 9676 TIE Inteceptor and Death Star
Less the 9495 Gold Leader’s Y Wing StarFighter, which is a exclusive only available at Toys R Us in Singapore, the rest are available in all department stores. The 9494 Anakin’s Jedi Interceptor is forever selling at a discount price while the rest should be able to buy at 20% off at the usual shops and departmental stores. For me, I’ve gotten the smaller sets from the usual Metro Singapore sales and the bigger sets via BN.com and Amazon. Let me start off the series of reviews with the first on the list, the LEGO 9488 Star Wars Elite Clone Trooper and Commando Droid Battle Pack.
The LEGO 9488 Star Wars Elite Clone Trooper and Commando Droid Battle Pack is one of the smaller sets released for this round. The price is quite reasonable and affordable if you wish to build your army of Elite Clone Troopers or Commando Droids. For this series, all of them have the same design theme with the Sith at the top right hand corner of each box.
The set is pretty simple with 2 packages and a thin instruction booklet. However, interestingly, the set comes with 2 pieces of fabric to be placed onto the Clone Trooper Commander and some accessories for his visors and helment attachments. However, based on the instruction booklet, I would only need 1 piece of the accessories but Lego included much more than that.
The completed set is simple with the Gun, 2 elite Clone Troopers and 2 Commander Droids. The 2 elite Clone Troopers are slightly different as on is the Gun Operator while the other looks more like the Trooper Commander with additional fabric attached to him. Also these 2 Clone Troopers are different from previous ones due to the new designs on their body and helments. As for the Droids, they differ from the usual Tan colored Driods with their new dark tones and a red dot on their left torso. Maybe that’s why they are the Commander Droids and not a normal Droid.
Something unique about this set, I would say, would be the use of a transparent round 2 x 2 brick placed at the bottom centre of the Gun to hold it upright. This is necessary as the 4 legs of the Gun is certainly too weak to be able to sustain the whole Gun structure. Very ingenious of the Lego designer to use this method.
Overall, I would give this set a 7 out of 10. The Gun and the Droid Commanders are too simple and bring down the value of the set. However, the moderately low price of the set would certainly help AOFL to build their own Droid and Clone Trooper armys much easily than before.