- Thursday, October 22, 2015 8:53 AM
- DisneyDan
Hello everyone,
In a new four-part series, I am going to be reviewing the iconic TV and movie sets from the LEGO Ideas range. These are the DeLorean, Ecto-1, Wall-E and the Big Bang Theory. In today's review I will be looking at Ecto-1.
My first impression of the set is that it was a must-have. As a big sci-fi and fantasy fan, I felt that this one-time set had to be given some support. The Ghostbusters are a huge pop culture icon, and even after all these years, have a new movie coming out next summer.
LEGO Ideas Ghostbusters Ecto-1 can usually be purchased through
LEGO directly (click here for a safe link to the LEGO site), and retails at $49.99, plus tax. The set number is 21108, and there are 508 pieces, including four minifigures.
Let's take a look at the box, back and front.
The contents of the box.
The first thing I noticed was that unlike nearly every other new set recently, the bags were not numbered. While obviously I am not incapable of building a LEGO set, one becomes complacent with a particular way of doing things, and having numbered bags for some of the bigger sets I've built recently really helped. With 508 pieces, I feel at least having two separately numbered bags would have helped. Oddly enough, there were two stages of construction that could have easily been split into two bags.
The first stage was to complete the minifigures with their proton packs and a stand to display them on. The minifigures have two expressions on their faces - "calm" and "scared".
The minifigures up close:
The photon packs, for me, were really awkward to put together, well, the hose part was hard to connect, at least. And I feel like that hose part will easily degrade and eventually snap, too.
Let's take a look at the completed Ecto-1 up close.
I have to admit, the car does look cool. When you compare it to actual photos of the real Ecto-1 (which I did), they really nailed some of the details, like the brown rod on top the yellow and green canisters at the sides, the red and silver lights on top, and lots of other small details. One thing that I will say, is that there could have been more details inside, but space is limited inside anyway, and if the car had been bigger I suppose the scale would have been thrown off. It's also actually impossible to fit all four characters inside the car with their photon packs - so I guess the others just run alongside when they are speeding off to an emergency?
Building this set was frustrating because of the lack of the numbered bags. Also, there were some very, what I would call "fiddly", parts to it. The instruction book itself has a thick spine and would not stay open no matter what I tried! The black pages made it hard to see the difference between some of the dark grey and black pieces they were telling me to use, and so this set took a lot longer to put together than I had anticipated.
My final observation is that given that this is a Ghostbusters set, there is a distinct lack of an actual ghost! They could have made a really cool Slimer or even just a generic ghost figure, but alas, there are none. I feel that a Ghostbusters set without a ghost is really bizarre and is actually a detriment to the value and quality of the set.
I would give this set three and a half out of five. The lack of a ghost really knocks the points off for me, and the lack of space inside the car for all four characters is frustrating. The annoying construction process with irritating instruction book made me just want to hurry and finish the set. At $50 plus tax, this set probably isn't worth it unless you're a hardcore LEGO or Ghostbusters enthusiast.
Dan.