Tag: Lego

The Star Wars Hangar: A Display Base That Finally Gives My Ships Somewhere to Live

Toys & Collectibles Review · Purchased May 27, 2024 · $775.99 CAD via Vonado

A large brick-built Star Wars hangar bay diorama with ground crew figures and support detailing
A comparable large-scale Star Wars hangar bay diorama. Photo: MOC Brick Land

Buying a large diorama base right after buying a large ship is either very smart planning or a very effective upsell. I will let you decide which this was.

The Background

Purchased the same day as the Ghost (VCX-100) covered previously, this large hangar and diorama-style set is designed to give one or more ships somewhere purposeful to sit, complete with ground crew figures, support vehicles, and hangar bay detailing, rather than leaving an expensive ship model to sit awkwardly on a bare shelf. Modular hangar and display bases like this are a popular category within the MOC community specifically because official LEGO rarely produces display bases at this scale on their own, usually bundling smaller docking or landing elements into a ship set itself rather than selling the base separately.

At $775.99, this is one of the pricier single items in my entire 2024 haul, and its value is genuinely tied to what you already own or plan to display alongside it.

Living With It

As a standalone build, the hangar delivers a lot of the same satisfaction as the Coruscant Diorama covered earlier in this series: real detail work in the flooring, support struts, and background elements that make it feel like a lived-in space rather than a blank pedestal. Ground crew figures and small support vehicles add points of visual interest at a smaller scale that contrast nicely against a large ship once one is placed inside it.

Where this set truly earns its keep is exactly what I bought it for: giving the Ghost, and potentially other ships from this collection, an actual context to sit in rather than floating awkwardly on an otherwise empty shelf. Once I placed the Ghost inside it, the combined display genuinely looked like a professional diorama rather than two separate, unrelated purchases sitting near each other, which is the best compliment I can give a display base like this.

On its own, without a ship to put inside it, this is a much harder purchase to justify. The value here is almost entirely relational to the rest of the collection, which is worth knowing before buying: this is an accessory purchase dressed up as a standalone set, and it should be budgeted for accordingly.

What I Liked

  • Genuinely elevates the display quality of ships placed inside it
  • Detailed enough to stand on its own rather than reading as a blank pedestal
  • Ground crew and support vehicle details add scale and life to the whole display
  • Transforms a collection of individual ships into something that reads as one cohesive scene

What I Didn’t

  • Value is almost entirely dependent on already owning (or planning to own) ships to display in it
  • One of the more expensive single items in the whole year’s spending
  • On its own, without context, this is just an expensive backdrop

The Value Verdict

Rating: 4/5

Rate this one based on what you already own. As a companion piece to the Ghost, it turned two separate purchases into one genuinely impressive combined display, which is worth something real. Bought in isolation, without ships to put inside it, this would be a much harder recommendation.

Where to Buy

The Razor Crest: The Best Value in My Entire Vonado Haul

Vonado Review · Purchased February 11, 2024 · $197.99 CAD via Vonado

Razor Crest Mandalorian building block set
A Razor Crest compatible-brick build. Photo via USABLOCKS.

If someone asked me to justify the entire Vonado experiment with a single set, this is the one I would point to.

The Background

The Razor Crest, Din Djarin’s gunship from The Mandalorian, is one of the most consistently requested Star Wars vehicles in brick form, and LEGO’s own official versions have a well-earned reputation among fans. Vonado’s version, listed at roughly 1,383 pieces on their retail listing, is a clear compatible alternative aimed at the same audience, priced well under what an equivalent-scale officially licensed LEGO Star Wars ship typically runs.

I bought this as part of the same large February order as the previous entries in this series, and out of that entire haul, it is the one I would recommend to someone else without hesitation.

Living With It

The scale here is the right size to actually feel substantial once built (roughly desk-shelf sized, not a small trinket) while still being an achievable weekend build rather than the multi-day undertaking some of the larger sets in this series turned into. Hull detailing on the ship’s distinctive asymmetric silhouette came through clearly, and the set includes an opening cargo bay and cockpit area, giving it real play value beyond just sitting as a static display piece.

Piece quality across this build was consistently strong, with landing gear and articulated panels that held together securely rather than feeling loose or fragile, a common complaint leveled at cheaper compatible-brick sets in general but one I did not run into here. What makes this the standout value of the whole haul is simple math: at roughly $200 CAD for a large, detailed, 1,300-plus piece ship, you are paying meaningfully less than an equivalent official LEGO Star Wars vehicle at similar scale and piece count typically costs.

What I Liked

  • Best price-to-scale ratio of any set in my entire 2024 Vonado haul
  • Strong piece quality and secure clutch power throughout
  • Genuine play value with an opening cargo bay and cockpit, not just static display
  • Achievable weekend build rather than a multi-day project

What I Didn’t

  • Still not a licensed product, some purists will always prefer paying more for the official version
  • Minifigure-scale accessories tend to be the weakest point in compatible-brick sets generally

The Value Verdict

Rating: 5/5

This is the set in my entire 2024 collectibles haul that I would buy again without a second thought. It hits the sweet spot of scale, detail, price, and build satisfaction better than anything else in this series, official or otherwise.

Where to Buy

Vonado’s Horizon “Thunder Claw”: Building the Machine LEGO Never Made

Vonado Review · Purchased February 11, 2024 · $427.99 CAD via Vonado

Thunderjaw Horizon building block set
A Thunderjaw compatible-brick build. Photo via FantasMall.

Some of the best entries in a compatible-brick catalogue exist specifically because the official license holder never got around to making them.

The Background

LEGO has released exactly one officially licensed Horizon product: the Forbidden West Tallneck set (76989), a mid-size build that came out to solid reviews but left an obvious gap for fans of the game’s other, more aggressive machines. There has never been an official LEGO Thunderjaw or any similarly named “Thunder Claw” set. What I bought is a fan (MOC) design manufactured and sold as a compatible kit through Vonado, filling a hole in the official catalogue that LEGO itself has simply never addressed.

This arrived as part of the same large February order as the Star Wars sets earlier in this series, and at $427.99 it represented a real step up in both price and ambition from those smaller builds.

Living With It

Machine-creature builds like this live or die on articulation, and this is where the set earns its price tag. The legs, head, and tail all have genuine poseable joints rather than being fixed in one aggressive dinosaur-esque stance, which meant I could actually pose it in a way that matched reference art from the game rather than settling for whatever the instructions defaulted to. Getting that kind of mechanical complexity right, with joints that hold their pose under the model’s own weight instead of drooping, is a genuinely harder engineering problem than a static ship or building, and it shows in both the piece count and the build time, which ran closer to a full weekend than a single evening.

The tradeoff for all of that is durability handling: with this many articulated joints, this is not a set you want younger hands or a curious pet handling roughly, since the connection points that allow posing are inherently a little less rigid than a fully fixed structure would be.

What I Liked

  • Fills a real gap, there is no official LEGO equivalent at this scale or price
  • Genuinely impressive articulation and poseability for a brick-built creature
  • Shell and plating detail translates the source game’s design language well
  • A satisfying weekend-length build rather than a quick evening project

What I Didn’t

  • Poseable joints mean less structural rigidity than a fixed-position build
  • Not something to display somewhere it might get bumped or handled roughly
  • A meaningful price jump from the smaller sets earlier in the same order

The Value Verdict

Rating: 4/5

For a Horizon fan, this is close to essential specifically because nobody else has made it. LEGO’s own catalogue leaves this exact machine on the table, and Vonado’s version fills that gap with a genuinely well-engineered build. Just budget real assembly time and a stable shelf for it once it is done.

Where to Buy