Building Sets Reviews

My six year-old received this for his birthday and hasn't given it a second glance. But he was the same with Lincoln Logs a while back and now loves them. So I haven't given up hope yet.

Brilliant. Simple, easy to use creatively, encourages practice with spatial relations and engineering.. My (currently four year old) son plays with his Tinker Toys all the time. He never seems to get sick of these!

When shopping for xmas presents I wanted to buy a "building" set and I was recommended that Tinkertoys were very popular in the USA - I am a brit so never really knew what this toy was.

Not wanting to do lego's yet, but wanting something better than megablocks as we had outgrown them alreadythought what the heck and bought it a box of Tinker Toys for my son.

I can honestly say it was the best [...] we spent that year. He has played with this by himself, or with his dad or/and me, who have built all the toys on the box ! Its a really fun toy.

BRILLIANT !!

and the large box is enought btw to build things, and also, just enough pieces that they dont get lost and will get picked up each time.

Also great size pieces as younger than 3 cant swallow anything, but intriguing enough for the older kiddies to build with :}

Legos has taken a lesson from models and added decals to their kits. One negative point regarding the decals; the instructions telling where to put the decals are weak. Beyond that small point, this is yet another excellent set in the Star Wars Legos series.

The Vulture Droid part of this set is just okay. The Vulture Droid either looks like a small space ship, or you can rearrange it to make a droid that stands up. The side pieces swivel when in the ship configuration, and the legs swivel in the droid configuration. As I said, there is nothing special with this portion of the set.

The Revenge of the Sith Jedi Starfighter is very cool. The wingtips fold for landing and you can position them in various aspects for flight. The wings also have a limited range of motion. The landing gear also moves into a stowed position for flight, which is really a nice feature because it makes the starfighter appear very streamlined. The cockpit opens so that Annakin Skywalker can get in and out of the starfighter. Annakin also has a light saber that comes with this kit. The light saber can be a pain to get into the cockpit, so I stuck it on a little piece that is part of the wing.

Other reviewers seem to dwell on the fragility of this set. The Vulture Droid is not fragile at all. The starfighter is a little fragile. There are a couple of pieces that seem to want to come off a bit too easily. However, with a little care the pieces will stay on nicely. A little bit of fragility is the price you pay for having a lot of features and details.

The Sith Jedi Starfighter is a nice addition to a collection of Star Wars Legos. I think of the Vulture Droid as a bonus. You need this cost effective set for your collection. Enjoy!

This toy is great, do not listen to those reveiws that say its not that durable it is very durable ( unless you throw it ) wich i dont throw my lego i place them on the ground. If your not sure if you should buy this or not buy it! I got the ultament space battle kit and boy im sure happy with it! anakins starfighter is very sleek and cool looking and they both have lots of parts that move up and down! this is the best lego set i have bought. It has never broke for me before and i thought it would. I mean it! Dont listen to most of the reviews!
You have to get this set and i would keep going on about how much FUN this set is! GET IT!

This toy is great.It's cool,decent price,and awsome look.But don't compare it to a hasbro starfighter,thier totally different.Overall if you need a lego ship for your person this is great.

Let's face it, most of the Episode 3 sets weren't all that great. Some were, most weren't. Lego decides to end the Episode 3 line right now by introducing a $10 V-Wing. Now you may think that this is not the big bang to end Episode 3, but trust me, this set is better than most Episode 3 sets (quite possibly the best).

The V-Wing was another fighter for the Republic that was produced in mass numbers. I really like the design of the V-Wing because of its sleek shape and blunt nose. If you look at this set head-on, you can tell it will become the TIE Fighter(which it does). This set is surprisingly strong. I dropped it on the floor and nothing broke off. I give Lego points for that. The overall design is accurate to the movie except for one thing: the wings. The wings SHOULD be facing horizontally in landing mode and then vertically in fighting mode. It's only a small error, and you probably wouldn't care about it if you're not a star wars nut like me.

This set comes with one clone pilot and the head of an awesome looking droid. Note that I only said "head", not the whole body, which is really a shame. I would have liked to have the whole astromech. The clone pilot is the same as from the Arc-170.

So there you have it. This is a great set. Plain and simple. It works well and doesn't come at a high price either. This is great for army-building so maybe you should pick up a few. I know I did.

This Jedi Starfighter and Vulture Droid will probably take 45 minuites to build if you're a average builder. The Jedi Starfighter
has really beutiful yellow colors and the flaps on the wings can go up and down. And it's not that fragile but the Vulture Droid...It's kinda easy to break if you're touching and playing with the wings and you'll be so ticked off when you'll half to re build the wings back onto the droid so that's why I usualy put the Droid somwhere safe and don't play with it, I only play with the Starfighter because it doesn't break all the time. So I suggest you get this really cool Jedi Starfighter with Vulture Droid.

This is a great LITTLE Star Wars Lego set. Although it's advertised as being on sale for half price, don't be misled - it's being sold at Lego's MSRP. If you're looking for a great little ship, then buy it - but don't choose this set over others thinking that you're getting a great deal, because you're not.

You might find the same product locally in some stores for the same price so the shipping and handling is an over head .

These blocks are definitely NOT the classic blocks I had expected. "Deluxe" is not a word I would use to characterize them. They are quite small and the quality is not as good as I had expected.

I got these blocks quite a while ago, proud of myself for finding these "good old blocks". They SUCK!! The paint was peeling off the first time it got a little saliva on it! The wood itself is very soft and easily destroyed and splintery!! Stay away from the Old Fashion Type Blocks!!!!!

We bought this toy for our son and he LOVES it! Very creatively built toy! There are little "surprises" as well (a safe full of money and a hidden recipe for the krabby patty, etc.) This is an adorable toy!

we have hardwood floors so i bought this together with Playzone. i'm pleased with these mats --these made it safe for the frequent falls my baby went through when he was learning to crawl and pull himself up. now i put these mats beside his bed, softening his occasional 'dreamy falling off' his bed.

These play mats are great for outdoors. I bought several packs and put my daughters play house, slide, sandbox and etc on them. You can hose them off. We leave them out all year long, and they held up great through the winter. They don't ever look worn. I just went and bought more to extend the play area.

These playmats are fantastic. They have cushion and yet are sturdy and durable. My son chews these mats like candy and yet they have kept their shape. They are great for little new crawlers that need alittle padding and resistance for their little knees. [...]

Just a warning to new parents thinking of playmats. We have three sets (large family) and these are our favorite by far. All the other sets we have have shapes and numbers in them that come out. It is a huge pain when our son plays w/ these mats because you end up on your knee's trying to find the missing pieces all the time. Save your back, money, and time and just buy whole pieces without all the fancy decor (letters,numbers,animals, elct.) that comes out, they just end up missing or on the other side of the room out of the mat for you to pick up and figure out where it goes in the mat. Also the pieces get old and when you move the mat around all the pieces fall out everywhere, everytime you move it you have to put the whole puzzle back together.

I pre-ordered a got the new NXT box last week. I built the alpha-rex. It was fun. Here are my impressions so far...

1. The motors, sensors are well designed and works great.
2. I found a single defective piece in my set which is very uncharacteristic for lego. However, it was still usable.
3. The bluetooth gave me some problems on the second day of usuage. My laptop (Dell Precision M70) and the NXT brick couldnt connect. I had to use USB to download. I dont think its serious issue as it had worked fine previously.
4. The labview software was intutive and straight forward. However, I believe that a 10 year old will need some lessons to get used to it.
5. The display interface on the brick is very intutive. It could have been better with backlight...but then again I think that would eat up the battery faster..
6. The packaging is very disappointing. I plan to buy separate plastic boxes for storage.

Overall, I am very excited and happy with the product. I cant wait for the bluetooth resources that lego will post on their website, which will let me do some cool stuff...i hope :)

My NXT set just arrived by FedEx this afternoon. I'm a parent of two (6 and 3-year old) so this is mainly for me for now. I was an early adopter of the first generation of Mindstorms, so naturally I pre-ordered the NXT. I've played with it for two hours, so these are my initial impressions:

- the new motors are Wonderful -- they work as motors or servos (you tell them which angle to go to). They look futuristic and robot-y

- it comes with an ultrasound distance sensor -- whoa that's neat!

- All of the sensors are "slick-looking", and seem to work very well.

- the brick display is quite nice, but the interface is a bit niggly. Lots of nested menus. My 3 year-old managed to delete the built in demo program by button twiddling. It was easy to restore, though.

- the box itself (the "out of box experience") is disappointing. You have to punch out some quarter-circles to allow it to hinge, but they're poorly serrated, so the tears come out ugly. The inner boxes are hard to open so you end up messing those up. In short, the previous mindstorms box was a great long-term storage solution. This one is going in the trash. As a first impression, it's pretty poor.

- back to the good: there's a "quick-start guide" that gets you building a simple robot that is run by a built in demo program. It's perfect: not difficult, but not trivial -- it makes noises and moves around. The kids were enchanted.

- the "powered by LabView" programming environment seems halfway between the nerd-y LabView system that you could buy from Dacta and the totally bozo thing bundled with the old Mindstorms. It doesn't have that "rocket scientist" feel of the old LabView environment, which is both good (it's more self-guided) and bad (I don't see how to zoom out so that I can see complex programs all at once, for example.

All in all, this thing is very impressive, has lots of staying power, and since it supports MacOS X, I'll actually use it, and will most likely pull out my old MindStorms and combine parts. Thanks, Lego -- keep up the great work!

Firmware update worked fine for me. You may need to reset your NXT brick (paperclip beside the usb port) and redownload.

My three year old daughter and I built and programmed the tribot in about three hours. We're thrilled with it.

I bought this for my 22 month old son for easter. When I opened it the only thing it did was light up...I put fresh batteries in and same thing, just lights no sound whatsoever! I was hoping to see his face light up in the morning, now we have to take it back.

I thought this would be a great toy for my 17 month old when we were in the store he cried to have it when we got home he cried when I sat down with him to play with it I was upset when I found out it only says A-L it could have at least said the whole ABC's and to me that is a heavy toy to carry around and the age on it is 6-36 months the hammer is heavy my son hit his hand and was in tears to me it should have been around $7.99 and maybe even cheaper I am very upset I spent $19.99 for it I wasted my money.

We got this toy for our son for Christmas. We thought it was cute, and my husband liked the idea of our son "hammering"... very macho, you know. Well. Our son does in fact like the hammer. It goes everywhere with him. And he hammers EVERYTHING with it; coffee table, walls, floor, couch, my knee... Which hurts, in case you're wondering. The only thing he does not hammer is..... the Toolbench!

Not that the Toolbench is bad. He likes to push the shapes and watch them light up and the little men pop up, and he enjoys listening to the music. The tape measure is cute; he likes the songs and likes to watch it spin. But overall, it's not a big attention grabber. He will play with it for a few minutes if he just happens to sit down near it, but it's not a favorite and he never plays with it for more than a minute or two. There are a lot of toys out there that hold his attention for 10 to 15 minutes or more.

In my opinion, if you want to buy a toolbench, get one of the old-fashioned ones with the pegs that you hammer down, then flip over and hammer again. Sometimes the old classics really are better than the new-fangled "improved" versions.

I love the original trilogy. The A-wing was an awesome fighter. I loved it's sleek design and speed. The original Lego A-wing wasn't the best set around. I love this new re-design.

This set features the use of white and maroon parts, different from the original grey and red. I actually like this color scheme and if you don't, well, you can change it. The model itself is awesome! The only flimsy part is the back fins, which don't fall off all of the time. Swoosh away with this model! Or display it. Although the nose isn't movie accurate, and the stickers are another dread, they're only minor problems. (Hey you may even like stickers.)Another problem is that the pilot lounges in the cockpit and the computer screen, I don't like either one of those. The cart that comes with it is basic. It's simple yet effective.

The figures are pretty cool. The smilies I don't like but I modded that. The technician has a cool torso and wears a helmet that he can skateboard with! The pilot is dressed in a sleek green with a nice racing helmet. Not movie-accurate helmet but still cool.

This is a very good set. It's only $[...] more than the original and comes with more pieces and accuracy. It's definately worth the money. Buy multiples, you won't regret it.

The themes for lego toys have given the concept a whole new life. Kids are now willing to engage the toy and spend time focused on the task of decoding the manual and building the toy whereas with before they would not show the same energy toward assembly toys and favor more passive things like video games and such.

The new Lego A-wing has new colors, a sleeker design, a new Rebel Technician figure, a rebel pilot much like the old one, a small cart-looking thing and a box that fits in the back of the ship. Without the cart, this set has more parts than the old one. I think it is a huge improvement. Now all Lego needs to do is make a new Y-Wing.