Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Lego Star Wars Hoth Echo Base


Today we are showing off the Lego Star Wars Hoth Echo Base set.  In the states, this set is a Toys R Us exclusive so you can only really get it from them or lego stores.  This certainly limits the options for getting it on sale down from the 89.99 MSRP.  Lego has had a series of Hoth related releases as it is the original trilogies biggest ground battle.  This one is mainly an interior play set as opposed to walls, turrets or hanger doors found in some other recent Hoth sets.


The set comes with 8 minifigures, 2-1B Medical Droid, Bacta Tank Luke, Chewy, R-3PO (Red Protocol Droid), Hoth Han, Hoth Leia plus 2 Snowtroopers and a Tauntaun.  A previous Hoth Base set which was mainly a snow speeder and big hanger door had a white protocol droid K-3P0 who appears in the control center of the base both working and as part of the wreckage during the movie.  I did not remember a red one but I did recently rewatch the movie and saw R-3PO in the background of the hanger as the pilots discussed protecting the transports.  I really like both the injured Luke and Medical Droid.  Chewy, Han, and Leia are pretty similar to those in the previous X-Wing set release.


Here we have the bacta tank and medical bay.   The tank flips down to allow Luke to be placed inside.  I wanted to build one of these for our Home One set as we had made a little medical room with a big window (think medical frigate at the end of empire strikes back).  Now I have just the right parts for it without having to go to bricklink.



Here we have the control room.  This would have actually been a great place to put some different characters instead of Han and Leia like General Rieekan (Officer who tells Han that it is tough to have a price on your head) or the female tracking stuff on the screen who would probably only need a hair swap.  This area actually looks pretty good with 2 small comm stations and the large interface screen.


They then have a tauntaun area and the tauntaun which appeared a few years ago in a different small Hoth set also called like Echo Base.


They also have a little hanger and fueling station.  Not sure what you would fuel here as the area is small for the snowspeeder that was available in the Wampa cave a few years ago.


This is outside of the side with the medical bay and control center.  Hidden blaster storage.  The ladders on top go to this height adjustable platform cargo mover but this should probably be on the other side as it makes more sense in the hanger.


The other side outside has a turret and some flick fire missiles but I think this whole side would be better if the parts had been used either for a power plant or ion cannon .

Overall the set is Ok at best.  Half is pretty neat options for scenes but the more battle side does not really match anything in the movies and seems to be designed specifically to be different from other recent Hoth sets.  I got this set as part of a buy 1 get 1 50% off deal last year which had some problems with stock levels which ended with me just getting this set at a good price.  Adding it to our other white/grey bricks I do hope to put together a better Hoth base for the play room in the future.

2 comments:

  1. What a neat set. It's a tad clunky but I'm in love with the figs, especially the 2-1B and diaper bacta-tank Luke. It was a tad pricey for me when it came out but nice to it get some play here.

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  2. My getting this set was a pretty convoluted event. I had been watching the slave I set to go on a good sale since I really wanted it but it would sometime be like 10-15% but not lower. Then I noticed heading into last christmas that I was not see it on store shelves so I decided that Lego must be discontinuing it so I just bit the bullet and went to go get it. Toys R Us online was running a Buy One Get One 50% so I needed another set at the same price point so I choose this one as Slave I was marked up 15 dollars there while this one was marked up only 5. So I was getting each set in the mid 70's plus some other freebies. But then I got a notice that essentially all the freebies were out of stock and the Slave I was out of stock. Being right before christmas I called about it and complained and said that I did not think they were going to be getting anymore in time. So they canceled that part of the order but then wanted to charge me full price for this set. I discussed this with them and they knock off a solid chunk of the price getting the set down to less than 60 with tax as it was not my fault that there system was not keeping track of the stock levels properly. I also got a 10 dollar coupon which I later used on the new tie fighter to get it down to like 33 dollars with tax.

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