Greetings mini figure fans! A couple of months ago I suggested Lego Star Wars Microfighters as stocking stuffers. Well it turns out they make great Valentine's Day presents as well! My girlfriend was kind enough to get me series two as part of my gift for Cupid's holiday.
I will tell you right off that I think series two is better than series one as far as the ships go but is not as diverse mini fig wise. The reason series two is not as diverse is because both the light and dark side ships have a repeat character, which I will explain below. There are also no unique characters represented in this series whereas series one at least had Han Solo. Ship wise this series knocks it out of the park with: Snowspeeder, ARC-170 Starfighter, Republic Gunship, AT-AT, Vulture Droid, and Homing Spider Droid.
THE MEAT
I'm going to talk about these in two groups, light side and dark side. First up, light side!
The ships and mini figs for the light side are: Snowspeeder with Snowspeeder Pilot, ARC-170 Starfighter with Clone Pilot, and Republic Gunship also with a Clone Pilot. It should be noted that the Clone Pilots have two completely different helmets so they don’t look very similar.
The Snowspeeder is a phenomenal little ship and the Gunship is not far behind it, where the light side is lacking is in the ARC-170. The ship itself is not to bad but it is so similar to the X-wing from series one that I think they should have gone with something else, Jedi Starfighter, Mon Calamari Cruiser, Y-wing, B-wing, A-wing, E-wing, insertletterhere-wing, etc etc. Lego has a lot of ships to pull from and they basically went with a repeat.
For the mini figs the only one that is new to me is the Clone Pilot in the ARC-170, I’m not sure if it has been used in other sets or if this is the debut but I am inclined to think it has been in another set. I wouldn’t think Lego would make a new helmet and torso graphic for such a small series, but I could be wrong. The Clone Pilot from the Gunship is the familiar pilot that comes in just about every Clone War era ship. The Snowspeeder Pilot is not new either, it comes in the full sized Snowspeeder for sure, possibly other sets as well.
Dark Side, for me, won this series as soon as it was revealed. The micro AT-AT is just to cool! The Homing Spider Droid is a little better than I expected but the Vulture Droid is almost as good as the AT-AT. I know a lot of people are not fans of the prequels but I am, which makes it easier for me to appreciate the prequel era ships. The wings on the Vulture Droid rotate so it can be in “flight mode” and “fight mode” which is great.
All the dark side mini figs are the same ones that come with the large scale ship counterparts so they aren’t anything special, AT-AT driver and two Battle Droids. The Battle Droids are different colors, one burnt orange and the other is the classic light tannish brown color from the movies with a blue chest to signify it’s a pilot.
THE POTATOES
As far as customizing goes, if you watch the little Micro Fighter movies on the Lego website there is a part where the Snowspeeder and AT-AT get mashed together which looked pretty cool. I haven’t tried it yet so I don’t know if it will work very well but it is definitely something to explore.
THE DESSERT
I love Star Wars, I love Lego, I love mini representations of figures, ships, cars, pretty much anything so these are a home run for me. For series two I would say that Dark side has the edge and wins this round, I would rank this series as follows:
1. AT-AT
2. Vulture Droid
3. Snowspeeder
4. Republic Gunship
5. Homing Vulture Droid
6. ARC-170 Starfighter
Just some small tid bits for you this week: Today at Toys"R"Us I spotted a few items in the wild for the first time: Minecraft (series two), Avengers: Age of Ultron Legos, and Avengers: Age of Ultron 2.5 inch scale figures. If you are interested in any of those you should be able to look at them in hand soon with a visit to your local toy store.
Also at Toys"R"Us today I got the TRU exclusive Star Wars Command Galactic Ground Assault Pack on clearance for $9.98 which is half off of regular retail. The set comes with 51 figures which is just under 20 cents per figure! You can’t beat a price like that!
Last but certainly not least, there was a Banimon release on Saturday night in army green, same as the recent Revenge of the Beasts and Onell Design releases. If you are lucky there may be some left by the time you are reading this, check out the shop and blog for more info.