Toys & Collectibles Review · Purchased October 15, 2024 · $1,377.99 CAD via Vonado

Every year has one purchase that makes you pause before hitting confirm. For 2024, this was mine, by a wide margin.

The Background

“The Eviscerator” is a well-known name within the Star Wars fan-building community, referring to Ultimate Collector Series-scale fan designs of an Imperial Star Destroyer, built explicitly to sit alongside (and in some interpretations, surpass) LEGO’s own official UCS Star Destroyer sets in size and detail. At $1,377.99, this is the single most expensive line item anywhere in my entire 2024 spreadsheet, more than the PS5 Pro, more than any other individual purchase across the whole year.

I want to be transparent about what a decision like this actually involves: this is not an impulse buy in the way a $12 DLC pack is. A purchase at this price, in this hobby, requires real consideration about display space, assembly time, and whether the payoff genuinely matches the cost, and I thought about it for weeks before pulling the trigger.

Living With It

This is, without competition, the most demanding build I completed all year. Thousands of pieces, a build that ran across multiple sessions over more than a week, and a finished model that genuinely needs real shelf or stand space, not a spare corner of a bookshelf, once complete. The scale is the entire point: this is built to communicate the sheer, oppressive size of an Imperial Star Destroyer in a way that smaller official sets, constrained by more reasonable price points, simply cannot attempt.

Detail work across the hull, from the engine section through to the command tower, held up under close inspection, and the model’s sheer presence once assembled and displayed genuinely earns reactions from people seeing it for the first time, which is not something I can say about most of my collection, however much I enjoy the smaller pieces individually.

The tradeoff is exactly what you would expect at this price and scale: this replaces meaningful furniture space, demands real assembly commitment, and represents a genuine financial decision rather than a casual purchase. I do not think everyone reading this should buy this set. I think the specific person who has the space, the patience, and the existing love of the source material to want this exact thing should.

What I Liked

• The single most impressive, imposing finished piece in my entire collection
• Detail quality held up under close inspection across the whole hull
• A genuine multi-session build experience that felt like a real achievement to complete
• Delivers a scale and presence that no reasonably priced official LEGO set attempts to match

What I Didn’t

• The most expensive single purchase of my entire year, by a wide margin
• A serious multi-day time commitment, not something to start lightly
• Needs real, dedicated display space, this genuinely competes with furniture for room

The Value Verdict

Rating: 5/5

I do not make this recommendation lightly given the price, but for scale, presence, and the sheer achievement of finishing it, this is one of the most rewarding things in my entire collection. If you are fully committed to the display side of this hobby and have the space and patience to match, it delivers an experience nothing else on this list comes close to.

Where to Buy

• Comparable Eviscerator build
• Vonado building sets

Toys & Collectibles Review · Purchased October 15, 2024 · $475.99 CAD via Vonado

Some sets you buy because you love them. Others you buy because the original is gone and this is the next best thing. This one is the second kind, and I am completely fine with that.

The Background

LEGO’s own official Sandcrawler sets, the classic 10144 and the more recent smaller-scale 75220, have been fan favourites for years, to the point where the larger versions command real collector prices on the secondary market once retired. Rather than chase down a retired official set at inflated resale prices, I picked up Vonado’s take on the same iconic Jawa vehicle from Tatooine, at a scale comparable to or larger than LEGO’s own mid-tier version, for a fraction of what hunting down the genuine article after the fact would have cost.

This arrived alongside the Star Destroyer Eviscerator, the single biggest purchase of my entire year, as part of an October order.

Living With It

The Sandcrawler’s boxy, weathered silhouette is honestly a forgiving shape to translate into brick form compared to some of the more organic, creature-based builds elsewhere in this series, and Vonado’s version captures the distinctive rust-and-sand colour palette and paneling detail convincingly. The build itself moved at a steady, satisfying pace, less physically demanding than the Tremortusk or Ghost, closer in scope to a substantial weekend project than a multi-session undertaking.

Interior detail, to whatever extent the set includes it, focused on the vehicle’s distinctive tracked base and boxy hull silhouette rather than a fully realized interior, which tracks with how the official LEGO versions have generally approached this vehicle too, prioritizing the iconic exterior silhouette over a walk-around interior.

Compared to hunting down a retired official Sandcrawler set, which by 2024 could mean paying well above original retail on the secondary market for a set in good condition, this felt like an easy, low-regret decision. You are trading a small amount of official-license cachet for a meaningfully lower price and, frankly, easier availability.

What I Liked

• Captures the iconic Sandcrawler silhouette and colour palette convincingly
• A meaningfully cheaper alternative to hunting down a retired official LEGO version
• Manageable build scope, satisfying without becoming a multi-session ordeal
• Comparable or larger scale than LEGO’s own mid-tier official release

What I Didn’t

• Lacks the exact collector cachet of an official, licensed LEGO set
• Interior detail is limited, similar to the official versions but still a missed opportunity
• Still requires accepting the general Vonado tradeoff of clone bricks over genuine LEGO plastic

The Value Verdict

Rating: 4/5

If you missed the official LEGO Sandcrawler window and do not want to pay collector prices for a retired set, this is a genuinely solid stand-in that nails the parts of the design that matter most: the silhouette and the colour work.

Where to Buy

• Vonado building sets
• Official LEGO Sandcrawler (for comparison)

Vonado Review · Purchased February 11, 2024 · $637.99 CAD via Vonado

At a certain price point, a building set stops being a toy and starts being a piece of home decor you happened to assemble yourself.

The Background

Large-format Star Wars dioramas, scenes depicting the Battle of Coruscant, the Jedi Temple, or the Senate district in sprawling, multi-thousand-piece detail, are a well-established genre within the MOC (fan design) community, with different builders and compatible-brick manufacturers producing their own interpretations at various scales. What I purchased from Vonado sits in that tradition: a Coruscant-themed display diorama, the fourth and priciest item in the large February order that runs through much of this series.

Sets like this are explicitly designed around presentation rather than play. There is no cockpit to sit a minifigure in, no opening cargo bay, nothing to actually do with it once assembled beyond looking at it, and the price reflects scale and part count rather than mechanical complexity.

Living With It

The build itself took the better part of a weekend, mostly due to sheer part count rather than any particular technical difficulty, section by section, layer by layer, in the way large diorama builds typically go. Once finished, the impact is real: this is a genuine centrepiece, the kind of thing that makes people stop and look when they walk past a shelf, in a way that smaller vehicle builds simply cannot match regardless of how well detailed they are.

The honest tradeoff is exactly what you would expect from a display piece at this price: it requires real, permanent shelf real estate, more than any single vehicle in this series, and once built, it is genuinely difficult to relocate or repack without risking damage to the more delicate architectural elements. This is a “pick its final spot before you start building” kind of set, not something you casually rearrange.

What I Liked

• Genuinely impressive as a display centrepiece, more visual impact than any single vehicle build
• Consistent with the strong scale-for-price value seen across the rest of this Vonado order
• Detailed architectural elements that read clearly as Coruscant even at a glance

What I Didn’t

• Zero play value, purely a display object
• Requires committing real, permanent shelf space before you even start building
• Delicate once assembled, not something you want to relocate often

The Value Verdict

Rating: 4/5

Judge this one entirely on whether you have the shelf space and the desire for a genuine centrepiece, because that is the whole pitch. If you wanted something to actually handle and rebuild, this was the wrong category to shop in from the start. If you wanted a showpiece, it delivers.

Where to Buy

• Vonado Star Wars MOC collection