Construction set provided by LEGO/Flashpoint PR., Price: $69.99, Originally Released: 2014, Available at: LEGO
Is there a more iconic location in Star Wars than the Mos Eisley Cantina? Absolutely! You’ve got the Death Star, Dagobah, Bespin, Endor; all way more interesting. Even so, if there was one spot that sold Mos Eisley as being Tatooine’s gutter of morality, it was the Cantina.
That in mind, we thought it’d be fun to take a crack at assembling our own hive of scum and villainy by constructing the official LEGO set based on it. Continue onward to check out some pictures of the work in progress, see the fully assembled model and, of course, read all the insightful thoughts that came to my mind during the building process.
The humble X-34 landspeeder. There might not be much demand for it since the X-38 came out, but as the starting point for my LEGO adventure it more than did the trick.
Luke Skywalker is the first mini-figure assembled in this set and I’ll be honest and say that he’s not my favorite. Mind you, it’s not that it’s a bad mini or anything, I’ve just always been more of a fan of Luke post-A New Hope when he was less whiny and more impatient.
I’ve built several LEGO sets recently and I still cringe every time the instructions tell me to apply a sticker. Maybe it’s that they were designed for hands a bit younger and smaller than mine. Or maybe it’s just that I have the digit dexterity of a drunken walrus and couldn’t put one of these on straight if my life depended on it. Jebus do I hate the stickers.
All in all, this was probably the part of the set that I enjoyed assembling the most. A lot of that might have with this being the only self-contained part of the set and my being somewhat of an addict to instant gratification. Regardless, it was fun to put together and I liked the end result.
When you first empty section two out of its little plastic baggy, it doesn’t look like much. The colors are drab and there aren’t any cool mini-figures to assemble and start quoting movie lines with (not that I would). That said, this pile of plastic forms probably the most important section of the entire set.
Assemble all those sand colored pieces and you get yourself the foundation of a pretty nifty little tavern.
The set’s third section doesn’t contain quite as many pieces as those that came before. What it does contain, however, are plenty of teeny tiny parts that are easy to lose and hard to find when you accidentally knock them off the table (six times).
The third section also contains the set’s largest collection of mini-figures. Included among them are the indomitable Han Solo and the slightly less indomitable Greedo. Random aside, am I the only one who would love to see a buddy flick starring these two? Just imagine if one of Disney’s planned solo films was a prequel focusing on their criminal exploits before things went bad and Greedo started looking forward to blasting Han.
More mini-figures! I can’t say I’ve ever had an especial attachment to the Cantina band, but hot damn if these little guys aren’t cool.
Completing step three adds a set of dining tables to the Cantina’s main structure that you can push in and out of the booths for easy access. These come in handy, of course, for the inevitable reenactment of Han shooting Greedo that you know you’ll be doing at some point. Speaking of which…
I was going to make a “Han Shot First” joke, but then the picture turned out like this and yeah…
It was at this point that I hit a roadblock. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the instructions for steps four and five. I looked on the floor. I checked the box. I checked the floor again (just in case it had materialized in the two minutes since the first time). Finally convinced that LEGO must have just sent me a set missing half the instructions, I went to the internet and looked them up on the company’s official website. It took another twenty-five minutes before I found the missing booklet squashed in the crack between the cushion of my chair.
I love the Stormtrooper and Dewback. Granted, neither took much special effort to put together, but of all the minis included in this set, there’s just something about them that immediately left me enamored with them. Obi-Wan’s good too I guess, though I’d argue that his LEGO rendition doesn’t quite capture Alec Guinness’s sage-like wisdom.
While the end result of step four looks relatively small, this section of the set probably took me longer than any of the others. And that’s not even counting the time I spent fumbling around looking for the instructions, either. Minor as it appears, this section contains a lot of tiny parts and detail work that take a lot of time to piece together.
The final section of the cantina, this portion includes the building’s entrance and also adds on some additional roofing. The highlight for me though was a sliding door that I enjoyed far more than I logically should have.
Door goes open. Door goes shut. Door goes open. Door goes shut. Door goes open. Door goes shut.
The Mos Eisley Cantina took me about three hours to build and, overall, was a lot of fun. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit, however, that I was more than ready to be done with it by its end. In retrospect, I might have split it up over two nights rather than just pushing straight through and knocking it out in one.
As for the set itself, there’s a lot to like, especially on the mini-figure front. That being the case, your overall enjoyment is something I could see varying depending on what you plan to do with it. If you’re actually intending to play with it, this is a great set. Its design makes it flexible and easy to transport and the abundance of mini-figures provides a lot of fodder for fun.
If you’re looking for something to display however, there are better Star Wars options out there. The LEGO A-Wing, looks awesome, costs less than half the price of the Cantina and requires substantially less build time. The new LEGO B-Wing, likewise, delivers a decently sized vehicle that looks considerably nicer on a shelf than the Cantina. This isn’t to say that the Cantina isn’t worth the time or money, but there other options you might consider over it.
