Leaderboard

As a countdown to the Force Awakens, I will be writing reviews on Star Wars LEGO sets this week. I haven't really done an exclusive set before. I kind of wonder if the exclusives are the sets that people would be most excited about getting, or the ones that people wouldn't mind missing. Let's dive into the Hailfire Droid set and see if it's a can't miss, or a swing and a miss. REVIEW: SET DETAILS Set #: 75085 Name: Hailfire Droid Theme: Star Wars Parts: 163 Price: $19.99 Before we get to the build, let’s talk value. At $19.99 the price per piece works out to a bit over $.12 each. This is to be on the high side of pricing for a licensed set. There are 3 minifigures Clone Trooper Lieutenant, and 2 Super Battle Droids. The Clone Lieutenant is exclusive to this set. BOX CONTENTS Some people may wind up picking up a set that is open box or, want to verify the box contents before beginning a build. For this set, there are 3 numbered baggies, 2 decorated 10x10 trans clear radar dishes and an instruction book. THE BUILD AND EXECUTION Bag 1: You build your clone trooper and the central body of the Hailfire Droid. There's not really any interesting techniques in this portion of the build. You're basically setting up a solid chunk in the middle that you are later going to pin everything to. Bag 2: This bag combines with the 2 radar dishes to create the fenders and attach the dishes as the wheels. Shown below are the fenders and the new attachment points for them. You also build both of your Super Battle Droids. I have no clue why there's a trailer hitch on this thing. Bag 3: You finish out the build by creating external fenders and the missile racks. I'm usually not a fan of these spring missiles, but for this particular set, I feel like it works. A few greeblies to give a bit more dimension to this thing, and a tilt of the wheels, and off you go. REACTION I like the look of this set. It's a fairly quick build. It needed a small gun emplacement or something for the Clone Trooper. He's massively outclassed in the firepower department, and a small build for him, would have made this seem more like a $19.99 set instead of a $14.99 set. I'd say it fits in well with all of the Geonosis stuff from 2013. Too bad that means it has been out far too long without anything to pair it with. The Super battle Droids are standard. Nothing terribly exciting about them. They're nice to fill out a scene. I like the Clone Lieutenant though. The blue pops, and looks good when mixed in with all of the standard clones. He's got a standard trooper face, not a Clone Wars one, so that's a real plus. FINAL THOUGHTS This set is overpriced. It's a Prequel Trilogy set in a Sequel Trilogy world. There's nothing big to lift it up, and there are no main characters to draw in Timmy's mom. Scene builders, completionists, and impulse buyers are probably the target market for this particular set. It looks cool, but it's not instantly recognizable in the way that an A-Wing, Luke's Landspeeder, or the Droid Escape Pod is. If they had thrown in a main character or a unique Jedi, there would probably be more demand for this set. What I haven't mentioned yet is that this an exclusive set shared by Target and the LEGO Store. In the long run, it will be harder for completionists to get if they want to fill in holes later. I don't know if the demand will ever be huge, but I anticipate the value to climb modestly just due to the fact that it is an exclusive. I would recommend pairing it with the AT-TE or Republic Gunship. Shop for it on Amazon EXTRA PIECES:

This really isn't going to be a fluff article about how awesome Brick Classifieds is, but more of a small message that people are starting to take notice of it. Launching any new site is not easy at all. Google and other search engines don't even know you exist, so obtaining new customers via organic traffic is tough. Vendors that do list products don't have a lot of feedback so it's hard to show history and trust. So you might say, ok, what is so good about this? Those that have stuck it out and continued to post new quality listings with solid descriptions, real photos and priced their listings right have done well, real well. Brick Classifieds has been live for just about a year now and a little over 500 vendors have registered, listing a little more than 1,200 items for sale (there are more than 5,000 items in the system that are waiting to become active). Sales actually are strong for a new site, exceeding greater than $200,000 with an average sale price of ~$350. This shows strong interest in vendors listing high valued sets and taking advantage of the zero commission fee structure. Overall, Brick Classifieds has saved vendors over $20,000 in commission fees if comparing to a few structure like that on eBay. There have been a lot of enhancements on the site over the year and we continue to work on new features and tools. This week we will be updating and releasing price lookups to all the other marketplaces. This feature will show you what your item is going for on those sites and allow you to price your listing accordingly to take full advantage of the zero commissions fees but yet make more money. We are working on a few things for 2016 that could lead to a breakthrough moment for the site. I am in talks with a few developers to help build a native mobile app for the site that will allow for easy posting of new sets, minifigures and other LEGO related items. I have also had a few talks with Huw from Brickset.com to get Brick Classified's listings in front of that large community. I gave him access to an API to search for sets via keywords to appear within their LEGO database. We believe 2016 can be a breakout year for Brick Classifieds. Even though this new site may virtually disappear when put up against monsters like eBay, Amazon and BrickLink, but all sites need to start somewhere. There are some fantastic deals there to be found. Use the feature at the bottom of each listing to compare Brick Classified's price to those that might be found on eBay or Amazon. We will continue to plug away and making the site better, hopefully with the support of some of our fellow LEGO communities and our great vendors, everyone will learn that Brick Classifieds should be the first place to look when going to buy LEGO online!