So a new addition to the CCG site will be some toy reviews and unboxings.

I have been doing this already via our YouTube channel, and decided to branch out a bit into the blog site as for something like Lego it is much easier. I have no interest in doing time lapse build videos, but thought I would share the some insight into the more complex sets I have.

I have been a long time Star Wars fans, and have been collecting Star Wars Lego since it debuted on the market in 1999 along side the release of Phantom Menace.

Back in those days I purchase 100% of the sets available, and did so for the better part of 5 year, until space (and money) ran out and Lego upped the production to WAY more sets per year.

At that time I dialed things back to just buying the Lego Ultimate Collectors Series ships, then even that waned as the price increased and the Canadian dollar dropped.

Over the years I have sold off about 90% of my collection as to be honest, the builds are just too damn big. I loved my UCS Millennium Falcon, but it was 3 feet long and 20 inches wide, my home just cannot accommodate something that big for a collectable.

But 2015 brought in a few new sets that are WAY more shelf friendly, and also priced reasonably. So I decided to take the plunge back into Lego with their long overdue UCS Slave 1.

The set retails for $225 Canadian, which is a pretty reasonable price for just under 2000 bricks.

The instruction manual was pretty beefy for the set clocking in at just over 300 pages.

And also containing 14 polypags of pieces. Gone are the days of opening all the packs and pouring them into one pile, Lego has chosen a new approach bu setting up the instruction based on bag numbers, so each specific bag contains all the parts needed for a single section of the ship.

Not sure I like that idea as I came from a place of dump them all out and go nuts, but it certainly takes the brick finding frustrations away from a 2000 element build.

Construction for the ship itself was very well done. A extremely sold build that once complete felt a lot like a playset more than a UCS ship, and by that I mean you could pick it up without fear of pieces falling off. There have been a lot of ships over the years that were very poorly made and looking at the sideways would cause parts to drop off. Not the case with the Slave 1 thought.

The base of the ship used a real unique build, putting together long flat sections small single elements to connect to the bottom of the ship, allowing for a much smoother finish.

The internal framework was something similar to most Technic sets, with a solid frame that was wrapped in some nice shiny smooth elements not seen before in any other set.

 

All told be build ran about 4-5 hours over a single afternoon.

The finished product sits upon a very well constructed stand. In the past the stands were a little flimsy at times and didn’t exactly feel safe.

This new design though is very solid, they employed the use of smooth bricks as well to give it a much more polished look, almost looking molded out of plastic rather then just more standard dotted Lego bricks.

Another great addition is the solid plastic mold for the sign. In the past left used 1×8 smooth elements across a large flat plate to make up the surface for the sign sticker to be applied. This was fine day one, but after a few months when the sticker shrunk down a bit, you could see all the little lines along the sign. This new design is 1 large smooth plate that works perfectly and offers a solid smooth surface.

Here are the final full build pics:

 

Lastly, this set came out February of 2015 and is still available for now at at major retailers like Amazon and Walmart, and of course Lego.com itself.

The set is listing as hard to find which means it is getting close to being retired, so I highly recommend if you want one, grab it soon before it goes off the shelves and the price goes through the roof.

A well rounded set that was fun to build, and highly recommend for the SW fan and Lego collector alike, a solid 10/10.