Mostly. And let me just preface this article by saying that I’ve only seen the movie once (and need to remedy that toot sweet) so I’m basing most of my comments off of memory.
75177 First Order Heavy Scout Walker – F+
Let’s start with the worst offender: 75177 First Order Heavy Scout Walker. It wasn’t even in the movie! Well, I can’t say for sure that the Scout Walker was completely absent only because it might have been one of those situations where it showed up on-screen at the Battle of Crait for half a second, much like the AT-ST at Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. 75177 First Order Heavy Scout Walker gets an F+ only because it has Hux who did appear in that part of the movie.
75188 First Order Heavy Assault Walker – B-
75189 First Order Heavy Assault Walker scores a little higher. I don’t remember Rey swinging her lightsaber at one of these things, or Poe attacking one with his blaster, but everything in this set did appear on-screen in some manner around the same time, except Rey’s lightsaber that is. This one gets a B-.
75190 First Order Star Destroyer – B
75190 First Order Star Destroyer is a mixed bag. Like the Assault Walker, it has some minifigs that don’t belong, like Snoke. It’s not his ship and I’m pretty sure he never set foot on a Star Destroyer when he had his own personal Dreadnought. Again, like the Assault Walker, I’ll give this one a B-.
75188 Resistance Bomber – B-
75188 Resistance Bomber makes me a little sad. While I applaud LEGO for attempting to do a large scale ship like this, the final product was disappointing. And as far as accuracy goes, the ship’s crew is where it’s at, but the inclusion of Poe and Holdo, especially the Vice Admiral, is questionable. Without them, the set would have scored an A on the accuracy scale, but they bring it down to a B-.
75176 Resistance Transport Pod – A+
And finally, the most accurate of all, from the first wave of The Last Jedi sets, we have 75176 Resistance Transport Pod. It looks pretty close to the source material, and every minifigure that is in this set actually appeared with the vehicle. It’s odd that out of everything from the first wave, this cheap $30 set scores the highest on the accuracy scale: A+.
75204 Sandspeeder – F
That’s it for the first wave. Let’s move on to the new stuff that came out this month and start with 75204 Sandspeeder. I made my feelings about this set pretty obvious, and the fact that it didn’t even appear in the movie more than convinces me that this was just a cheap and easy money grab for LEGO and Target. Grade F material right there.
75200 Ahch-To Island Training – A+
Other than that, the rest of the TLJ sets from Wave 2 look pretty spot on. 75200 Ahch-To Island Training gets an A+. It’s got to be more than a coincidence that this is also a cheap $30 set and is the most accurate, like the Resistance Transport Pod. Maybe that’s the sweet spot where accuracy meets price.
75202 Defense of Crait – B
75202 Defense of Crait has great selection of builds that are accurate to the source from which they are derived from. There’s also a nice selection of minifigs if even some of them didn’t appear in the exact same set of frames but are at least present in the sequence. My own personal bias may be playing into the grade a bit; it should be getting a B- But I’ll bump it up to a B.
75201 First Order AT-ST – A+
As much as I hate this set, if I’m being fair, 75201 First Order AT-ST scores highly on the accuracy scale: it gets an A+. All the figures are there, the vehicle is built properly, and the gantry is probably in the scene as well.
Final Grade – B-
I purposefully didn’t include 75187 BB-8 or any of the battle packs since they are sort of outside the norm of playsets. Based on those grades, LEGO averaged a solid B-. The Sandspeeder and Heavy Scout Walker sets brought the average down a bit but not by much; without those two, they would have been graded an B+, almost an A-. So overall, not too bad. Again, this is for screen accuracy, the actual sets may score lower than their accuracy grade.
And this post may or may not be an attempt to get some sales commissions.
