[REVIEW]: 9516 Jabba's Palace

[hatcher]

Set Name:Jabba's Palace
Set Number: 9516
Theme: Star Wars
Year: 2012
Pieces: 717
Minifigures: 9 (really 7)
MSRP: $149.99 (CDN) $119.99 (USD)

Description from Shop@Home:
Rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt's desert palace!

At Jabba's Palace™ on Tatooine, Princess Leia is disguised as Boushh as she and Chewbacca try to rescue the carbonite-frozen Han Solo. Can she get past the roof-mounted missiles, defense guns and surveillance equipment to reach them? Or will Jabba and his motley band of followers capture the princess and entrap her beneath Jabba's sliding throne? Includes 9 minifigures: Jabba, Salacious Crumb, Bib Fortuna, Gamorrean Guard, Oola, Han Solo, Princess Leia in Boushh outfit, Chewbacca and B'omarr Monk.

• Includes 9 minifigures: Jabba, Salacious Crumb, Bib Fortuna, Gamorrean Guard, Oola, Han Solo, Princess Leia in Boushh outfit, Chewbacca and B'omarr Monk
• Features sliding throne with trap door and hidden treasure, entrance gate with movable guns, flick missile on detachable roof and detachable watchtower
• Also includes Han Solo in carbonite, handcuffs and Jabba's water pipe
• Weapons include medium blaster, blaster pistol, blaster rifle, thermal detonator, axe and Boushh's lance blade
• Jabba the Hutt features poseable head, body and arms!
• Avoid the trap door!
• Release Han from his carbonite prison!
• Jabba's Palace™ measures over 9" (25cm) high, 11" (29cm) wide and 7" (19cm) deep

link: http://shop.lego.com/en-CA/Jabba-s-Pala ... tid=527948" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Star Wars Lego is what got me out of my dark ages, and for a while I collected every Star Wars set I could get my hands on. Those days are long gone. I have lost interest in the Clone Wars sets, and even the Prequel trilogy sets have lost their shine. Sadly, the insane prices that LEGO is slapping on their original trilogy sets are making me pick and choose. However, Jabba's Palace is such an iconic set, that when Walmart Canada dropped it down to $98. I grabbed one. Is it worth the premium? or is it just another overpriced re-release? On to the review!

First up, the front of the box. If you bought the original Jabba's Palace back in the day, you remember how unlike the movie it looked. And while not perfect, this set is a huge step up in that area at least. You can see that it includes a whole bunch of mini figures, most of them new, although I have to question calling the B'omarr Monk and Salacious Crumb mini figures.

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The back of the box. You can see that the palace opens up for more play area, and reveals most of the play features of the set.

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Inside the box. Seven numbered bags, Jabba in a separate bag, and an instruction book bag with cardboard. I wish LEGO did this with all their sets. I recently put together one of the modular sets and the instructions were all mangled and curled. But I digress. There are no stickers in this set. (YEAH!)

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There are 2 instruction booklets, with identical covers.

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A random page from the instructions. Steps are numbered and parts required shown. I find the listing of the parts for the step helps speed up the build, and keeps me from missing parts and having to go back and figure out where I screwed up, so I like seeing that.

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The contents of bag number 1, plus Jabba. This will start you on the tower. Lots of tan and dark tan pieces.

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Jabba the Hutt. Jabba is two parts, and connects with a blue technique pin. Insert shows the bottom. Jabba looks a lot better in this iteration then he did when he first appeared, but he's still not perfect in my opinion. I doubt we'd ever get a truly perfect Jabba, so this version will suffice.

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Chewbacca and the B'omarr Monk, the only two figures not listed as being new. Chewbacca is probably the only figure who hasn't had any kind of upgrade since he was first introduced back in the day, but who cares, Chewie is awesome! (Insert shows him from the back.) The Monk is a rather odd choice for a figure in my opinion. It only appeared in I think one scene for less then a second of screen time in the movie, and didn't play any kind of roll in the story. I would have preferred a C-3PO, a character who is central to the scene about to unfold, or another one of Jabba's henchmen instead.

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And Princess Leia as Boushh. Boushh comes with thermal detonator, staff, and hair for when she takes off her helmet, and backpack. This figure is very nice, and if you read my recent rant about losing her (and luckily finding her again) you'll know that this figure was part of the reason I paid (in my mind) a premium for this set. The head is two sided (happy and angry or sad).

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The rest of the pieces go towards building the bottom half of the tower. Kind of a dull uninteresting structure at this point, at least to me. You can see the extra pieces that come in bag one in this shot.

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And the same section from the back.

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The contents of bag number 2 will finish off the tower. We also get another figure in this bag. Part of me is glad that LEGO splits up the figures between the bags to cut down on figure stealing from sets, but I always love putting the figures together before building the rest of the set. Especially when the figures are the main (or only) reason I bought the set.

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The Gamorrean Guard. This is one of the more significantly improved figures compared to the original version, which was rather plain and monochromatic. This version is 100% better. He comes with an ax. Included are how he looks from behind and with head piece removed.

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The first thing you build is the door to the palace, complete with the eye thing that pops out to speak to C-3PO.

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Which slides into place thusly. The eye pops out and retracts quite nicely.

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The rest of the parts go towards the top level of the tower. There are two sections, a storage area on the lower part, and a look out area at the top.

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And the same section from the other side. The contraption at the bottom there is used to hold the door open.

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The tower section fully assembled. It looks pretty good in my opinion.

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And the extra parts from bag 2.

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Bag number 3 gets us started on Jabba's throne room and gives us 3 more figures.

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The figures in this bag are Bib Fortuna, Oola and Han Solo in Carbonite. The box says that Han is new, he looks pretty similar to the one that came in the Slave 1 recently, but maybe he has a different head or something. Anyway, Bib is a redesign of a previous figure, and Oola is brand new.

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Here we have removed Han from the Carbonite. (He has a double face as well, his asleep face, not shown) Oola's head gear has been removed to show her scared face. I love how they do Han in Carbonite. Just have him hold the hand grips. Very cool.

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Building the throne room portion the of palace is interesting. At this stage (the end of bag 3) you can see that there is going to be some hidden areas.

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The parts from bag four. There are no figures in this bag.

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First you put together the trap door that Oola (and later Luke) fall through.

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The rest of the pieces in bag 4 complete the lower level of the throne room area.

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Bag number five. Again, no figures in this bag. These parts will start to build up the throne room area.

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On the left is where Han will eventually hang.

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More of the structure assembled here.

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And bag five is finished. On the right you can see Jabba's pipe contraption. In front, some refreshments, and at back in the spot under where the throne will eventually sit, some gold, a frog(?) and a gun.

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The extra parts left over from this bag.

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Bag number 6 contents. This bag finishes the bottom of the throne room, and contains our final "figure", Salacious Crumb.

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And here's the Salacious one himself. I mean, come on, how do you call this a figure? He's one piece, with no moving parts! Whatever you decide to call him, he does look like the actual Crumb, so that at least is good.

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The first thing you build is the base that swings open to expand the play area.

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Then, you build the wall, with the moving fire place, that you use to push Jabba forward.

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The back wall complete. It looks pretty good.

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And the throne room area closed.

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The rest of the pieces make Jabba's throne. Here it is with Mr Crumb sitting on it, and the three extra parts.

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And the throne in place, with Jabba chilling with some "smoke".

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Bag number 7 (the final bag, hurray!) will build the room.

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Here we see that Jabba's palace is armed. Really LEGO? A flick fire in Jabba's Palace? Do you have some kind of requirement in your deal with Lucas that every set has to have a flick fire, because it sure seems that way. At least the mechanism is interesting.

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And the roof section is done!

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The Throne Room complete with roof on, and figures in place. Its a bit small, but well detailed. Is it perfect? No, but its a heck of a lot better then the original.

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And with the tower attached.

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Final thoughts. Well, as I mentioned before, this set, while very nice, is WAY expensive. But, so are all the Star Wars sets. I get that they are making new molds to churn out these way cool figures, but they are going to start pricing themselves out of the range of their target audience, kids. Even the American price on this set is crazy. But, if you managed to find it on sale, it is a very nice set. Great figures, and lots of play features. It loses points for the Monk and lack of C-3PO, and loses more points for the stupid flick fire missile. On the plus side, the trap door in the floor works great (pull the sliding part out, drop Oola in, push Jabba forward over the hole, and wait for the roar). If you loved Return of the Jedi, you really want to own this set. Too bad is so expensive.

Ratings:

Minifigures 5/5
Parts 4/5
Play Value 5/5
Price 1/5 (Canadian pricing) 2/5 (American)
Overall score 4/5

[legohunter]

It loses points for the Monk and lack of C-3PO,

You could find new torso design C-3PO at 9490 Droid Escape. TLG would not let you getting all minifigs in one box set.

and loses more points for the stupid flick fire missile.

How did you know Haggia S did not have hidden missle? You should add points for the resemblance instead.

Nice review though.

[mudcatsfan]

The critique of offering a cool, unique figure like the B'omar Monk over a figure available in Dozens of other sets like C-3P0 is an odd one.

Whether you're a long time collector who already has 3-6 C3P0's in your collection or a new collector who can add one for just 19.99 in another current set, i'd vote for the oddball character every day.

In fact, I was almost disappointed they included the Chewbacca, as I have 3 of them already.

[hatcher]

Well, to each his own I guess. I don't think the Monk is cool personally, and isn't even a real minifgure (in my opinion) and like I said, he is a total background character in Return of the Jedi. I mean he literally gets less then 2 seconds of screen time, and could have been replaced with a potted plant and the plot wouldn't have been changed in the least. I suggested C-3PO since he is a major player in the scene shown. He translates the conversation between Jabba and Boushh. The scene literally can't happen without C-3PO. I get why Lego didn't include him (being available in another set) so they can make more money from sales. It just seemed wrong to me to not have C-3PO. Besides, I met Anthony Daniels (who played C-3PO in all 6 movies) at a sci-fi convention years ago, and he's awesome, so I've become a bit more appreciative of C-3PO since.

[DarthPaka]

I see both sides to this debate, but regardless, its a minor quibble for an otherwise awesome set! I've made a few minor tweaks to mine (taller tower for assassian droids, speakers & dancer poles to the main room) and definitely added a protocol droid (though not always 3P0), which is why this is such a great set; it doesn't have to be a Return of the Jedi set, it can be whatever you want (like a bar full of criminals and bounty hunters and ... NINJA TURTLES!