My Tie Fighter just arrived in the mail yesterday and I had a chance to put it together last night. It is definitely a step above the previous models. Let's start with the box:
If I can be unreasonably disgruntled for a moment, having Darth Maul on the box is irritating. He was dead long before the modern TIE fighter came to be. I'm sure it is because episode one is being re-released in theaters but still, not good enough.
The other thing about the box is I feel like it's too big. There are three bags and an instruction book. How big does it really need to be?
This also brings me to my first notation. If you're like me you probably open all the bags first and then open the instructions. But it turns out with this set the bags are numbered 1, 2, & 3, and you can quite literally open them in that order as you build. If you have limited space or want to look through fewer pieces at a time, that may come in handy.
The set comes with four minifigs (for reasons passing understanding). The cockpit seats exactly one person so the other two are left to just hang about. TIE fighters also do no use astromechs as they have no hyperdrive so the droid is pretty meaningless.
I am not a big minifig collector but from what I understand the droid and the death star trooper are new designs.
The droid uses the same body as R2-D5 (what I lovingly call the pumpkin droid) but with a more polygonal head.
The build is straight forward and should not take you about an hour. The first 9 instructions for the wings are repeated so if you want to speed up the process, build two at once.
Once assembled it is quite a good model of the TIE fighter. The black and grey contrast I think is spot on.
The cockpit is closer to the true ball shape from the movies. I know others have complained about the size of the pillars which connect the wings and I can see what they're talking about. Perhaps if more black had been incorporated they wouldn't have looked so big. What you can't see from the pictures is that within that large structure are several poles to help keep the whole thing together. So while it's bulky, it does make the wings very sturdy.
The wings are probably the best place to see the well thought out black grey combination. They really do look a lot more like TIE fighter wings. The grey border of the wings uses a novel approach that I give the designer credit for. However, as others have pointed out, the border doesn't really sit flat against the wing. There is a gap at the apex of the sides that is pretty noticeable. On the one hand, this problem is somewhat unavoidable (see Fermat's last theorem). On the other hand, they maybe could have gotten it a bit closer than what it is. If I'm feeling ambitions some day I may play around with it. My fear is that you could probably shorten one of the bent sides by one but not by two. That would make the whole thing uneven and it may just end up looking worse.
All things considered it is a pretty fantastic looking model and I think it's worth getting, even if you have some of the other versions. At $55 I question the value for money, but if you look around you can find it cheaper.
My only other issue is with the "flick-fire" missiles or lasers or whatever you want to call them. They're stupid and flick-fire barely works if ever. I think it is absolutely ridiculous that they have a warning in the book. If it had text is would read: "Don't flick fire your missiles at people or you may cause a very slightly noticeable sensation." I wish they would quit with this. If I want to fire something, I'll use my spring loaded cannons thank you. Those at least deserve a warning.
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