LEGO Star Wars 4504 Millennium Falcon review

10 November 2004 12:01 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Gadgets with batteries aside for one minute, you can mistake the appeal of building the Millennium Falcon out of Lego. Pocket-lint took the hard task of building the fastest cruiser in the galaxy.

At just £100 you will be expecting plenty for you money and plenty there is. As an adult, and former Lego fan as a child we would like to think that our building skills are as good as the rest, yet at 3½ hours to build this is a night if not mores entertainment.

It's not necessarily the technical difficult of the model that took us so long, merely just the size of it. The manual is 57 steps long and most of these involve additional steps as well. That combined with what has to be the biggest pile of Lego we've seen in a box set for a long time and you'll need to spend some of that time just rummaging for the right bit.

There are a few new pieces here, but for the most the solid spaceship favourites are still present and all slot together nicely to produce the Millennium Falcon. This model, according to Lego is a new and improved version on the original one they released for the 20th anniversary and now along the spaceship the set includes miniature figures of Chewbacca, C-3PO, Snowtrooper, and new Hoth Han Solo and Princess Leia. The craft also includes an escape pod and the top of the craft can lift up so you can get inside quicker and easier.

We did encounter some issues while building however, for the most part the mainstay of the craft is grey, dark grey and black, while in the diagrammed step manual telling the difference between light grey and dark grey was easy the same can't be said for the dark grey and black and we found ourselves on a number of occasions picking and then building with the wrong blocks. The other is a design fault that the ramp to exit the craft isn't very stable and under even a small amount of force is prone to breaking.

Verdict

There is no doubting that this model is very complex and would keep any nine-year entertained for months with all the possibilities there are available with this set. And with the next episode due in the cinemas next year Lego are certainly on to a good thing. Is it worth the money? We think so, however the only problem we can see is that you won't want to let your child play with this until you've had your go first.