Needless to say the announcement of the latest UCS set has been mixed and I think I'm being generous with that assessment. While I'm not and never will be a big Star Wars fan I have always liked the UCS sets. UCS stands for Ultimate Collectors Series, that explains it's supposed to be the best of the best. It's not aimed at kids but the hardcore Star Wars fan base. These fans don't want gimmicks and play features they want the best possible LEGO set of a vehicle or scene from the Star Wars films, excellent examples, Millennium Falcon and Slave 1 to name but a few.
So when the fan community got wind of a UCS Hoth Base, one of the most iconic scenes from the films, it got fans excited for what we would get for our money. When it was revealed at the New York toy fair, it was the biggest anti climax anticipated set ever. The Batcave thankfully had the Batmobile to soften the blow of another set that promised so much but left fans thinking that they are being fleeced.
Hoth is even worse not only is it over priced but the image above has done the rounds on social media showing how LEGO have basically given fans a 4 in 1 set, updated some features added a few extra, stuck the UCS tag on the box and added £££ to the RRP.
The image shows that the set is basically adaptions of the following sets 8089: Hoth Wampa Cave (£35.99), 75138: Hoth Attack (£19.99), 75014: Battle of Hoth (£39.99) and 7666: Hoth Rebel Base (£39.99) plus you get the poor ion cannon and the shield generator, that is wrong as its only got 3 discs. It's like the designer didn't have a clue about the scene. The set is called Assault on Hoth, so where is the attacking Empire force, where is the AT-AT's and AT-ST's. How can you attack with no invasion force. In all the years of running this site, I think this has to be the worse attempt of a D2C set ever and I think it is a case of LEGO just milking the fans. There UCS tag is pointless now if they can put sets like this under the banner and think the majority of fans are going to wow that's an amazing set at an amazing price!
From my view point the four exclusive sets have left me disappointed as a whole. Each has faults, the Ghostbusters Firehouse while a great set, the fact you have to take half the ground floor interior out to get Ecto-1 in annoyed me to the fullest. I love the modular series and is the only theme I look forward to each year, yet the Brick Bank again could have been better. The modulars are slowly getting smaller and too many gimmicks are being added for play features. Why? these sets are not marketed at or priced for children but for the older fans, we don't want gimmicks and play features. To me LEGO have forgotten that over the past few years with modulars. The last two are actually my least favourite and for my own personal city are going to require the most work to fix the issues.
Then we got the Batcave exclusive, as mentioned above, the Batmobile is excellent once the gimmick shooters have been removed but the rest of the set is meh and not something that looks display quality but it's another £200 plus set. So if you like your D2C sets that's £845 to own all four, yet none are good enough for the price LEGO want/expect you to pay. The worse thing is we as fans will still buy them and LEGO continue down the path of upping the price of their D2C sets yet the design standard goes in the wrong direction.
It is a worrying trend from LEGO..........
Now do you feel my view's are too harsh? are you happy with the four D2C sets and think you are getting value for money? In fact show your wife/partner all four sets and tell them the cost of all four and see if they think they are worth that price. I sure as hell don't and I know my wife would lose it if she knew I was happy to spend that amount on four sets, let alone four sets that fail to justify their inflated price tag.
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