"An unusual situation"

Regular readers of this blog - which, as far as I can tell, is just me - may recall that my Lego interest / hobby / addiction began back at Christmas 2012 when Mrs Boo bought me the Technic set 8070 Super Car (1) and then with some Christmas gift vouchers, I bought the Technic 8110 Mercedes-Benz Unimog. (2)  Not long after that I discovered the website Brickset and its associated forum. (3)  The Brickset site is one of the most popular Lego sites in the UK and holds its own on the global stage too, thanks to the unstinting efforts of owner Huw and a small but dedicated team.  It produces news, reviews, articles and so forth, but also has a stupendous database sitting behind it.  This database is a thing of wonder in its own right...

For starters, it gives you a huge amount of detail about each set.  Which theme (and subtheme) any given set sits in, how many parts it has, when it was released (and, if relevant, when it ceased production), price (both new and used), price per piece - a stat beloved of Lego enthusiasts - and quite often, who designed it.  It has a user rating, based on the thoughts of Brickset users and links to both any official Brickset review, and those of Brickset members.  These can range from "It's really good!" to War and Peace style epics that go on for pages.

And just below that are two additional tick boxes.  The first is "I want this set", and the second is "I own (number) of this set." (4) 

I keep a spreadsheet on my laptop which details each set I own, when and where I bought it, how much I paid for it (5) and how much discount I managed to get off the RRP.  But useful (and incriminating) as it is, it's not accessible while I'm out and about.  Whereas, as long as I can get a phone signal, I can always check whether I own a set thanks to the Brickset database.  Which has saved me a fair bit over the years.  I'll pick a set up and think "I really like this - might have to have it." and then a swift check will establish that I've had this conversation with myself at some point in the past and have already bought it!

As we'll see, I should have done that on my recent trip out!

But the unusual situation that I found myself in, at just after 12.30 on the day in question, was this.

For the first time in nearly 12 years of collecting, my 'Want' list was empty.

Broadly speaking, any set that goes on the list is a considered decision.  Since I lost my job, my acquisition rate has dropped off a cliff.  Looking at the sheet, I have added ten sets in 2024, two of which were freebie 'Gifts with purchase'.  Compare that to 2018, when - somehow - I managed to add 125 sets to the collection...

So these days, a set has to be something pretty special, or a set that I need (6) to complete a collection.  Things like the Modular Buildings, which I know I'm going to buy.  The large Ninjago City sets...  These are the sort of thing that will only go up in price when they hit the secondary market once production ceases, so it makes sense (kind of) to buy them at RRP or, if I can get them from John Lewis, at a 25% reduction (thanks to me still having staff discount, courtesy of my wife).

But other sets...  Up until recently I had the Lord Of The Rings set, 10316 Rivendell on the list.  But restricted finances mean a set really has to justify itself.  Rivendell looks beautiful, but it costs £429.99 and I don't have (other than a few polybags) have any other LOTR sets.  So it was struck from the list.

Rivendell.  It's lovely, but it's not coming home with me.

The only two that were on the list, at the time of writing, were 76780 Wednesday Addams Figure and 76328 Batman : The Classic TV Series Batmobile.  These are both new sets, only going on sale at the beginning of October '24, and both look fantastic.  There was a version of the Adam West Batmobile released in 2021 which is on a similar scale to Speed Champions and it looks pretty good for a small scale set.  But the new version is considerably larger, notably more detailed and for someone who grew up in the 70s, it was a must-have.

A large Batmobile?  Why I don't mind if I do!

The smaller, 2021 version.

A brace of Batmobiles.

Wednesday, on the other hand, is a new theme for Lego.  There are only a few sets available thus far, and they're based on the Netflix series starring Jenna Ortega as the eponymous anti-heroine.  It's (the Netflix series) one of the best things I've seen in years (which other people seem to have agreed with, leading to a second series being filmed as we speak) and the set looks kind of cool.  

Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams

It's not the sort of thing I'd normally pick up, but this one appealed.  I'd have just left them on the want list for a while, but I was suckered in by the current 'Gift With Purchase', which is a neat little Halloween Pumpkin (40697) with a light brick.  Trouble is, the Batmobile (which would have got me over the purchase threshold) has proved popular and seemed to be sold out online and in most stores.  And the Pumpkin gift was only going to be available for a few more days...

Miss Wednesday Addams in all her brickish glory!

The Halloween Pumpkin.  The 'free' Halloween Pumpkin.

Fortunately the Lego store in Westfield White City seemed to have some in stock, and a phone call confirmed it.  Cue a horrible round trip, taking in such joys as the North Circular, the Hangar Lane Gyratory System and the Westway, roads which I would not wish upon my worst enemy.

But I got there, and while wandering around the store with the Batmobile under one arm and Ms Addams under the other, I had a look at what else was available.  The new Star Wars UCS set, 75397 Jabba's Sail Barge, looked a little underwhelming, particularly given its £429.99 price tag. (7) There was a time when a UCS set was a day one purchase for me, but I haven't bothered with the last few and I don't think that's going to change with this one.  

Another one that was tempting is 42172 Technic McLaren P1.  I've been fortunate enough to have the last few large Technic cars - 42056 Porsche 911 GT3 RS, 42083 Bugatti Chiron, and 42115 Lamborghini Sián FKP 37 I bought with my hard earned cash.  42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3 I was given to review - and in an ideal world I'd buy the McLaren too.  But it's not the prettiest set, it's expensive and like the past few, you spend half your time building a gearbox that you'll never see again until you take the set apart.  So it doesn't make the want list.

But as I headed for the till, I spotted a dinky little classic Land Rover Defender.  It was less than £14 and looked very cool indeed.  It went on the pile.

Beware the dual temptations of 'Cool' and 'Affordable'

Of course, when I got home and added it to the spreadsheet, I realised that I'd bought it last June...

I'll think of something to do with it!

So now I'm curious as to what, if anything, will be the next set that does actually make it onto the want list.  As we approach the end of the year, the rumours will start flying about the next Modular Building - hopefully something a bit more interesting than this year's 10326 Natural History Museum.  That will have to go on the list.  Maybe a future Star wars UCS set, if they decided to have another crack at the Sandcrawler (the 2014 UCS set 75059 is one on my list of 'the ones that got away')?  And maybe if Lego take the Architecture theme back to actual architecture, rather than the 'gift shop catnip' that they've been churning out for a while.  Sets like 21005 Fallingwater, 21009 Farnsworth House and 21014 Villa Savoye were iconic houses designed by legendary architects.  Most sets these days are the 'skyline' series which are designed as novelty tourist keepsakes.

Still.  While Lego keep turning out things I don't want, at least my wallet can rest easy.

For now.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(1)  Fun fact!  12 years on, I still haven't opened the box!

(2)  Haven't opened that one either!  Just saving it for the right time.

(3)  The forum, due to running costs, was shut down a while back and has been replaced with a Discord.  A Discord?  A Discord server?  A Discord forum? I'm not sure what the terminology is and if I'm honest, I don't much like the way it works, so I rarely visit, which is a shame, as the Brickset Forum was a thing of joy.  Let's take a moment to reflect on its sad passing.

(4) It's not uncommon for AFOLs to own multiples of a set, whether they're army building, squirrelling them away in the hope of making a decent profit in the future or "I saw it at a price that was too good to ignore."  Many AFOLs live by the mantra "One to build, one to keep, one to resell."

(5) I occasionally put a SUM function at the bottom of that column just to see how much I've spent over the years.  It's a worrying figure. 

(6)  I can hear my wife now... "Need?  Want?"

(7) CapnRex101, Brickset's resident Star Wars expert, disagrees, and other than wincing at the price, thinks that it's a particularly fine set.

"No. I don't know any George Formby songs." Review: Creator 3-in-1 Tropical Ukulele, 31156

Many parents like the idea of their child playing a musical instrument.  But which instrument to choose?  I remember picking a book up from the library when I was about 11, which attempted to address this complex, potentially loud and almost certainly expensive (unless your child develops both a hankering and a talent for the harmonica) question.

It looked at the child's physical attributes - how long are their fingers, how big are their hands etc.  Their abilities.  Can they multi-task and so on?  And their temperament.  Are they a calm, quiet, thoughtful child?  Outgoing and gregarious?  Are they the sort that is happy to sit and practice, repeatedly, or do they bounce from one thing to another?

Essentially, it took the view that if you narrowed it down, you and your child could then pick something suitable, and then they could look forward to a lifetime of study, practice and (hopefully) enjoyment.  There was, however, one exception.

The drums.

The author of this book took the view that if your child was destined to be a drummer, then there was nothing that you - or they - could do about it.  No matter how much you try to tempt them with a guitar or a piano, if your offspring is constantly fidgeting and (the dead giveaway) tapping on everything, with anything, then fate has decided that little Harriet or little Tommy is not going to be serenading you with the Moonlight Sonata, and will not be reinterpreting Elgar's Cello Concerto.  They will be hitting things with pieces of wood.

Of course, parents will try and avoid this potentially alarming destiny.  Mine did.  Which is why, at the age of 12 I was given an acoustic guitar and packed off to some lessons that were being offered by the school.  Maybe if I'd been taught a handful of chords and shown how to play a bit of rock 'n' roll, things might have turned out slightly differently, but as it was, our tutor was a kindly old man of some vintage, and wanted us all to be the next Segovia.  We didn't know - or care - who Segovia (1) was.  Lessons didn't last long and a charity shop was the grateful recipient of my guitar some years later.

Then, when I was 20, I went to Pro Percussion in Kentish Town, handed over 500 of my hard-earned pounds and ordered a Pearl Export Drum Kit in Deep Ocean blue.  I have never looked back. 

I have, over the years, dabbled with both the harmonica and the bass guitar, but nothing spoke to me, nothing felt as instinctively right, as sitting down behind a kit, feeling those sticks in my hand and creating something primal.

But, after 30-odd years of "How do you know when there's a drummer at the door?  The knocking speeds up!", or "What do you call a drummer with half a brain?  Gifted!", I began to think that maybe it would be nice to be able to play something that you could actually get a tune out of (2).

Then, a few months later, my sister gave me a Ukulele for Christmas.  It was a Mahalo Uke, which, I have since learned, is synonymous with "I am going to buy you a musical instrument, but I don't know a) anything about it or b) whether you want it, so I'm not going to spend more than £25."  I suspect that many Uke players started out with a Mahalo, and most of them didn't keep it very long.

I didn't. 

But a couple of years later, after another charity shop had benefited from my apparent lack of interest in stringed instruments, someone started some Uke classes at the place where I used to work and I figured that I might make better progress if I had a teacher, so I went out and bought myself another Uke.  Not expensive, but it was bright yellow and had a smiley face on it, so I thought it was cool.

Two things happened within the space of a couple of weeks.  One, I realised that I really quite liked playing the Uke.  It was - for a beginner - a relatively simple thing to get something approximating a tune out of.  And two.  My bright-yellow Uke was way too small for my sausage-fingered hands.

So shortly afterwards, I took a trip to the Duke Of Uke, a shop selling ukuleles (No!  Yes, really!) and had a chat with the staff.  Turns out that Ukes come in a variety of sizes and the one that most people start on - certainly the one that people picture when they think of a ukulele -  is a Soprano, which is Italian for 'Too small for anyone with normal hands." (3)  Next up is a Concert, then a Tenor, then a Baritone.  When you get to a Baritone, things become a bit odd, as the tuning stops being GCEA and starts being DGBE, which is the same as the top four strings of a guitar.

But go with a Concert or a Tenor, and all those chords that you've already learned are still the same, there's just a bit more space between the strings and a bit more space between the frets.  I came home with a Kala, Solid Spruce topped, Tenor, and I've never looked back.

So when, recently, Lego decided to create a Ukulele set, aka Tropical Ukulele, set number 31156 as part of the Creator 3-in-1 range, it was a given that I'd be picking it up.  And now I've had a chance to build it, so let's (finally) take a look. 

The set costs £24.99, and has 387 pieces, many of which come in Light Aqua.  I'd assumed at first glance they were Sand Green, but I am reliably informed that Light Aqua it is.  There are three models to build (hardly surprising), but while the main build - the Ukulele itself, which sits on a purpose built stand and is enhanced by some tropical flowers - is very nice indeed, I get the impression that the designers struggled a bit to come up with two other models.

One is a surfboard, sitting on a sandy base with some flowers and a radio.  I haven't built this yet, and judging by images that I've seen, I'm unlikely to.  It looks like the sort of thing you'd make in a "Five minute, blindfold build challenge".  The third is a 2D model of a dolphin alongside a sandy island housing a palm tree and a flower.  Again, I am not feeling the urge to take the Uke apart in order to build that one.

The Uke itself, though, is a nice little set.  Opening the box (carefully, with a knife - I really hate damaging a box by using the thumb tabs), I find it is my first set that uses the much-heralded paper bags.  They are numbered 1,2 and 3, plus we have a clear plastic nag which holds the 'strings' and a couple of other parts.  Each build also comes with its own separate manual.

The build takes just over an hour - if you're rushing and / or have more nimble fingers than me, you'll probably finish faster, but for me, Lego building is to be enjoyed, not hurried.  The build starts with the body of the uke and uses a mishmash of colours and shapes, all of which are included for use in the other two builds - here they're just buried away inside the body.  The neck also uses some coloured parts but are covered with ten 3x1 plates in Medium Nougat which creates the fretboard.  While there are no actual frets, the gaps between the plates do a nice job of 'implying' them.  The headstock - also in Light Aqua - is created next and attaches attaches with click hinges.

Then the two 'wings' of the Uke body are created and as they are attached, the instrument suddenly appears!  The strings, aka Flex Tube 21 Module w/3.2 hole are attached to small shafts at each end and are clicked into place.  The headstock is them pushed back one notch on the click hinges and the strings are tensioned nicely.

The final part of the build is the sand coloured base and a couple of brick built tropical flowers, one in Yellow and one in Coral.  Together with some foliage, they set the model off nicely and add a bit of colour to something that could have been quite monochromatic.

So what's the verdict?  As a 3-in-1 I'm afraid only one model really warrants building, so I think that this set is going to end up be bought either for, or by, Ukulele players.  It's a nice model in a pleasant colour and for less than £25 it's pretty good value.  Unlike my last build, the UCS Razor Crest, it's small enough and pretty enough to be tolerated by my non-AFOL wife and it doesn't take up a huge amount of room standing, as it does, 25cm tall and with a base footprint of 17cm x 10cm.

If you're a Uke player, this is a must.  If you're not then it's a maybe.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(1)  Andrés Segovia Torres, an incredibly talented Spanish classical guitarist.

(2)  Somewhere in the distance, Terry Bozzio is shouting.  Bozzio is a phenomenal drummer, renowned for his technical ability and his, quite frankly, enormous drum kit.  At one point it included 26 tom-toms, 8 bass drums, 53 cymbals and 22 pedals.  The drums were tuned and Bozzio would play musical pieces on the kit.  You couldn't, however, get it in the back of a Volvo estate.

(3)  Interestingly, I recently attended the Ukulele Festival of Great Britain, which had a large vendor hall.  Speaking to a custom Uke builder, I mentioned that I found Soprano's impossible to play.  He disagreed, and pressed one into my hands.  "Try this." he said.  It turned out to be surprisingly manageable.  "It's because you're used to playing now," he said, "it's not so strange for your fingers."  After a bit more experimentation, I found that the perfect combination was a Soprano body with a Concert neck.  All of which is a) nothing to do with Lego and b) potentially ruinous for my wallet. 

"This is the way." Review: Lego Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series 75331 - The Razor Crest

January 1st brings out a Pavlovian response in many Lego collectors.  It's the day that the new Modular Building hits the shelves.  For Lego Star Wars fans, it's slightly different.  On the upside, their red letter day (usually) comes twice a year, but frustratingly the dates can drift about a bit.  'Early May' and 'Sometime in late Autumn' is about as firm as the dates usually get until there's an official announcement.

I am talking, of course, of the additions to the Lego Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series.  Stretching back to the summer of 2000, when 7191 X-Wing Fighter launched the theme, we've since had nearly 40 entries to the collection, with gems like the Millennium Falcon (twice, 75192 in 2017 and 10179 in 2007), 10212 Imperial Shuttle, 75313 AT-AT and 10225 R2-D2.

There have also been a few sets along the way that... didn't exactly raise the bar.  10186 General Grievous is surely one for the completist only, while 75098, Assault On Hoth is one for the masochist with too much money.

In 2022 we had Luke's Landspeeder appear in May - the umpteenth speeder to join the Lego Star Wars theme, but the first to be awarded the UCS label.  And then in October the subtheme took something of a swerve.  Up until this point, every 'Ultimate' set had been drawn from the Star Wars films, and indeed most came from the holy trinity of episodes IV, V and VI, with just a scant few coming from the prequel trilogy.

But the Star Wars team had cast their net a little further this time, and looked to the small screen rather than the cinema for inspiration.  Thus it was that The Razor Crest, home to the bounty hunter, Din Djarin, was immortalised in ABS.  Lifted from the very successful Disney TV Series 'The Mandalorian', currently on its third series, the Razor Crest - or an ST-70 Assault Ship as it probably says on the insurance certificate - is the sort of rusty, battered workhorse of a ship that is so beloved of Star Wars designers.  

The Razor Crest, taking up quite a bit of the dining room table

Well.  Except the ones who worked on The Phantom Menace, who wanted everything to look shinier than a shiny thing on shiny day (1).

Now many Lego websites will have produced a review at the time of release, back in October 2022, maybe even just before.  But most of them will have been sent a copy by the Lego Group.  Me, I have to buy my own stuff, and at £519.99, it was simply too expensive.  However, thanks to the company I used to work for having it on sale a while back and the fact that I still qualify for staff discount, the price came down to something rather more palatable.  And the sale was on my birthday.  I mean, that's basically the universe saying 'BUY IT!", right?

Well that's what I heard anyway.  So anyway.  That's why this review is somewhat late out of the blocks.

So what do we get for £519.99 (or however much you paid for it)?

This is a very large box indeed

You get a large box, with the now traditional image-on-a-black-background, containing two smaller boxes, each with what looks like concept artwork from the series rather than images of the set itself.  Inside are four manuals which cover the 48 bags of parts, numbered 1 - 36.  Manual two comes with the inevitable sticker sheet, but there are only 18 stickers in total, all of which go on fairly easily, with the exception of the large 'infopanel' sticker which still induces a shortness of breath and shaky hands.  Printed panels, like the one that came with 42143 Ferrari Daytona SP3, can't become the default too soon if you ask me.

Concept art on the inner boxes.  Ikea table, blogger's own.

It's made up of 6,187 pieces which technically makes it the eighth largest set ever released, although the number two slot is a Legends of Chima set that was a competition prize that was never available to the public, so that doesn't count.  And the number one largest set by piece count is 31203 World Map which does have over 11,600 pieces but the vast majority are 1x1 dots, so it only takes the title on a technicality.  So by any reasonable reckoning, the Razor Crest come in at number six in the all time biggest 'proper' sets.

Which is nice.

Certainly when it's built, you can see where all the pieces went.  It's a big beastie and it weighs a substantial amount.  Certainly enough that manual one has a picture of designer, César Soares, showing you how to lift it properly so that you a) don't knock any pieces off, and b) don't put your back out. (2) Also in the manual are pages that cover the design of the ship for the TV series.  In keeping with Star Wars traditions, wherever possible, models or full sized mock-ups were built, to keep CGI trickery to a minimum and there are a few photos of the ship and models in-situ.  The detailed interior of the Lego model is, understandably, not visible once completed and so a couple of pages are dedicated to showing which parts of the ship have been designed for easy removal so that if your friends, or maybe your significant other (3) ask to see inside, you can show them the intricate detail with a minimum of fuss.

Anyway - showing it off is all in the future.  First we have to build the thing!

Manual one covers the basic skeleton of the fuselage, book two adds some of the upper superstructure, number three adds much of the outer 'skin' and completes the tail of the ship while book four adds the enormous engines, the cockpit canopy, weapons and the information plaque.  The four books come in three cardboard sleeves, rather than the usual plastic bag, which helps to avoid dog-ears when the set is broken down and stored away.

The Build...

Construction starts, as these things often do, with a Technic skeleton, clad in grey plates and tiles.  It's not long before the outline of the hull starts to emerge, from the bluff, blunt-looking nose, through the practical, slab-sided central section of the ship, to the duck-tailed rear with its lowering cargo ramp.  Manual one also includes Din Djarin himself, and he's clad in Durasteel alloy armour, so presumably (SPOILER ALERT) the ship is positioned in the timeline before he gets his Beskar armour. (END SPOILER ALERT).

By the end of manual one, you have a build that is as robust as they come, and could be used to beat a Krayt Dragon into submission.  That said, along the way you have added a few interior details, including a Mandalorian helmet and jetpack.  This jetpack will fall off its mounting stud every time you pick the ship up and so do yourself a favour - put the jetpack aside and install it once the interior is complete to save yourself some grief.

Manual two moves on to the outer skin of the ship, and its worth taking some time to admire the skill of designer Soares.  Thanks to hinges, ball joints, ratchet joints and good old gravity, panels fit at angles that you wouldn't have thought possible.  It's not always immediately obvious how some of the large panels attach, and occasionally you'll have thought that something was sitting correctly, only to find a large panel gap when something else is attached later.  You then realise that a section needs to be shuffled up a few studs to create a seamless exterior.  Take your time and it all comes together nicely though.

Talking of which, one of the things that was pleasing was the fact that none of the bags contained a huge number of pieces, so each one was complete in around 20 - 30 minutes.  As such, the pre-sorting of parts (assuming you indulge in that sort of thing), never takes too long and so you always feel like you're making progress.

There are a few awkward moments with the second main section.  By this time, the body of the ship has become large, heavy and a little unwieldy.  So when you have to start constructing the landing gear, you find you're trying to attach a section with one hand, while trying to hold up the body with the other.  It's a tricky twenty minutes or so, but once the three 'feet' are complete the ship is rock solid once more.

Along the way, the bodywork has been adorned with its distinctive yellow stripes and paintwork, some of which consist of yellow tiles, the rest of stickers.  Fortunately the grey background of the stickers blends well with the tiles, and the yellow 'paintwork' on the stickers is designed to look scuffed, so as long as you get them approximately in the right place then the effect works quite well.

Stripes are a mixture of tiles and stickers 

More of the interior is put in place, including Grogu and his floating pram (and just behind him, the Frog lady's eggs - No!  Bad Grogu!) while further back are the weapons store (complete with amusing sign in the Star Wars common language of Aurebesh) and a couple of bounties, frozen in Carbonite.  Presumably when Djarin explained that he could "bring them in warm or bring them in cold" they opted for 'Chilled".

The next generation of the Frog family.  Or a light snack.

The third book is the thinnest of the four and puts two section of the uppermost superstructure in place.  This only takes up about half the book, and then the remainder is spent starting the huge crossmember that will support the engines.  It's a colourful process - it's all eventually going to be covered over in grey, so presumably using coloured elements just helps with clarity, but one particular step - 1154 if you're interested - caught my eye.  It involves three pieces, a 2x2 grey brick, a blue Erling brick (4) and a 1x1 green stud.

The green stud is attached to the 'face' of the Erling brick which is then, itself, faced into a cavity in the main structure.  As such the green stud has, at least structurally, no purpose whatsoever. It's repeated on the other wing of the build and having thought about it, there's only one logical solution I've been able to come up with.  The Erling brick needs to be placed thus, so that the cavity on the back of the brick is facing out.  When the instructions were being produced, I'm guessing that the creators felt it was too easy to misread that step and place the brick the wrong way round, so by using the green stud, it meant that you had to place the blue brick in the correct orientation.  The green stud was simply there to stop the builder making a silly mistake.

Given the complexity of this (and indeed, many other builds), I wonder why this particular step was picked on as needing to be 'idiot-proofed'?

On to the final book, and the skeleton of the engine structure is fleshed out.  While the central section, being flat, is relatively straightforward, with much of the build focusing on greebling and the creation of the escape pod, the two cylindrical engines are clad in a way that makes you stand back and want to applaud the skill of the designer.  The two engines are built up, panel by panel, using a variety of techniques to attach them, until you're left with a pair of virtually seamless units.

By comparison to the mighty engines, the canopy comes together quickly and settles into place, leaving only the twin, front-facing guns to finish off the model.  For something that looks (relatively) simple, each gun is another complex build with elements going up, down and outward before finally slotting into place via a couple of Technic pins.

Front facing cannons - a more complicated build than they look.

That done, it's just the plinth with the information plate before you can sit back and admire your handiwork.  The sticker (for me at least) went on straight and unlike many that have gone before it, doesn't appear to have any errors.  Alongside the infopanel there's room for Din Djarin himself if you haven't placed him in the cockpit, standing next to Grogu in his floating 'pram'.  Probably best to keep him out of the cockpit and away from those eggs.  At the other end of the plinth is Kuiil, riding a Bluurg and next to him, in a pair of handcuffs is The Mythrol, who Djarin is sent to capture early on in the series.

The completed model.  I had to put it in the garden to photograph it.

The view from above.

The not-entirely-accessible rear ramp.

This does not do justice to the size.

Nice little insider joke on the sign.  If you know your Aurebash. 

Escape pod.  Hope you never need it.

Side view.  That tail looks like there's something missing.  (There isn't.)

Mando and Grogu.

Hold your breath when applying sticker.

Kuiil and The Mithrol.  Bad Mithrol.

o  o  o  o  o

The above was written, shortly after I built the Razor Crest, back in March 2023.  It's now a year on and I'm just getting around to publishing it.  I think next time I update my CV, Procrastination should probably go on my list of skills.  Somewhere near the top.  If I ever get round to it...

But it has given me the opportunity to reflect on the set, as it sat out on display for six months or more (when we got to Christmas the management insisted it was dismantled).  Sadly was 'displayed' at ankle level though - my wife has firm opinions on what gets the top shelf of the display unit and apparently family photos beat 'some big ugly Lego thing' every time.

As such, I can offer these observations.

1.  It's big.  Really big. (Cue Douglas Adams quote about 'You may think it's a long way...')

2. While the model accurately represents the Razor Crest, it's not a particularly attractive thing to look at - function has definitely taken precedence over form, and as such, is not as eye catching or pleasant to look at as, say, the UCS Millennium Falcon.  The fact that, a few yellow stripes aside, the whole thing is one mass of 'Star Wars grey' does not help.

3. As with many of the big UCS sets, there's a fair bit of time (and parts) given over to creating a detailed interior which will, in my experience, never get looked at.  The cover for the cockpit is easily removable and so you may occasionally go and have a peer in there.  The rest of it though?  The two side doors on the sides of the main hull open revealing... very little.  The ramp in the tail drops down revealing... even less (and that's if you can get a fingernail into the gap to actually pull the ramp down in the first place.  There are a few scant details to be seen if you lift the massive engine assembly off, but depending on where you have it displayed, that may not always be practical.  There are parts inside cupboards and storage areas that will simply never be seen again, other than during the build process.  It's nice for a fleeting moment, but after that...  You have to wonder whether it's worth it.

4. It is, as with many big Lego sets, fragile.  While the superstructure is tough as old boots, the greebling - and the main, forward facing, laser cannons in particular - are prone to take damage any time anyone brushes up against it, so if you're going to display it, try and keep it away from passing bodies or meddling fingers.

Final thoughts

For all my grumbles, it's a fine set.  Is it worth £520?  I'm going to say, probably not, but if you can find it on sale somewhere with a 15 - 20% discount - and if big Star Wars sets are your thing - then I'd say that was the time to pull the trigger.  The value, to my mind, is in the build rather than the display.  It has almost zero play value - you'd need arms like tree trunks to 'swoosh' it, so once it's built it's just going to sit out on display and, as previously mentioned, it doesn't have long term 'Ooh!' value.

If you've got the space to have a collection of sets out on view, then this will slot right in, but as a solo show piece I'd say it's got limited value.

So if you can afford it, take your time, enjoy the build, drink in the interior details while you can then put it out for friends an family to admire.  But start thinking about what's going to replace it, sooner rather than later.

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1. Shiny day.  It's a thing.  At Lucasfilm.  Probably.

2. A serious risk at my age. 

3. In my experience, you'll be waiting a long time for this to occur.

4. The Erling brick was created by designer Erling Dideriksen in 1979 and was one of the first elements that allowed a builder to 'rotate' the build through 90 degrees and thus contributed to the growth of SNOT, or Studs Not On Top building.