UCS Assault on Hoth is just a 4 in 1 set

Needless to say the announcement of the latest UCS set has been mixed and I think I’m being generous with that assessment. While I’m not and never will be a big Star Wars fan I have always liked the UCS sets. UCS stands for Ultimate Collectors Series, that explains it’s supposed to be the best of the best. It’s not aimed at kids but the hardcore Star Wars fan base. These fans don’t want gimmicks and play features they want the best possible LEGO set of a vehicle or scene from the Star Wars films, excellent examples, Millennium Falcon and Slave 1 to name but a few.

So when the fan community got wind of a UCS Hoth Base, one of the most iconic scenes from the films, it got fans excited for what we would get for our money. When it was revealed at the New York toy fair, it was the biggest anti climax anticipated set ever. The Batcave thankfully had the Batmobile to soften the blow of another set that promised so much but left fans thinking that they are being fleeced.

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Hoth is even worse not only is it over priced but the image above has done the rounds on social media showing how LEGO have basically given fans a 4 in 1 set, updated some features added a few extra, stuck the UCS tag on the box and added £££ to the RRP.

lego

The image shows that the set is basically adaptions of the following sets 8089: Hoth Wampa Cave (£35.99), 75138: Hoth Attack (£19.99), 75014: Battle of Hoth (£39.99) and 7666: Hoth Rebel Base (£39.99) plus you get the poor ion cannon and the shield generator, that is wrong as its only got 3 discs. It’s like the designer didn’t have a clue about the scene. The set is called Assault on Hoth, so where is the attacking Empire force, where is the AT-AT’s and AT-ST’s. How can you attack with no invasion force. In all the years of running this site, I think this has to be the worse attempt of a D2C set ever and I think it is a case of LEGO just milking the fans. There UCS tag is pointless now if they can put sets like this under the banner and think the majority of fans are going to wow that’s an amazing set at an amazing price!

From my view point the four exclusive sets have left me disappointed as a whole. Each has faults, the Ghostbusters Firehouse while a great set, the fact you have to take half the ground floor interior out to get Ecto-1 in annoyed me to the fullest. I love the modular series and is the only theme I look forward to each year, yet the Brick Bank again could have been better. The modulars are slowly getting smaller and too many gimmicks are being added for play features. Why? these sets are not marketed at or priced for children but for the older fans, we don’t want gimmicks and play features. To me LEGO have forgotten that over the past few years with modulars. The last two are actually my least favourite and for my own personal city are going to require the most work to fix the issues.

Then we got the Batcave exclusive, as mentioned above, the Batmobile is excellent once the gimmick shooters have been removed but the rest of the set is meh and not something that looks display quality but it’s another £200 plus set. So if you like your D2C sets that’s £845 to own all four, yet none are good enough for the price LEGO want/expect you to pay. The worse thing is we as fans will still buy them and LEGO continue down the path of upping the price of their D2C sets yet the design standard goes in the wrong direction.

It is a worrying trend from LEGO……….

Now do you feel my view’s are too harsh? are you happy with the four D2C sets and think you are getting value for money? In fact show your wife/partner all four sets and tell them the cost of all four and see if they think they are worth that price. I sure as hell don’t and I know my wife would lose it if she knew I was happy to spend that amount on four sets, let alone four sets that fail to justify their inflated price tag.

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Rich
Founder of Brick Fanatics. I'm Richard Hayes a 34 year old runner based in Sheffield. However I'm better known as the Mohican Runner due to my very distinctive hair style. I've gone from 20st to a runner, I've raised over £1.3 million for charity by doing various running challenges.

I'm supported by Absolute360,SockMine and Tribesports.

Currently I have a 17:20 5k PB, 36:02 10k PB, 81:11 HM PB & 3:08:24 for the marathon.

You can find me on my blog http://mohicanrunner.co.uk

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Rich

Founder of Brick Fanatics. I'm Richard Hayes a 34 year old runner based in Sheffield. However I'm better known as the Mohican Runner due to my very distinctive hair style. I've gone from 20st to a runner, I've raised over £1.3 million for charity by doing various running challenges. I'm supported by Absolute360,SockMine and Tribesports. Currently I have a 17:20 5k PB, 36:02 10k PB, 81:11 HM PB & 3:08:24 for the marathon. You can find me on my blog http://mohicanrunner.co.uk

8 thoughts on “UCS Assault on Hoth is just a 4 in 1 set

  • 17/02/2016 at 13:03
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    My tuppence:

    1) thankfully and just as well I kept an eye on this, I have just saved myself £219.

    2) My review on the Brick Bank is in the process of being written – let’s see what the outcome is!

    Reply
  • 16/02/2016 at 20:18
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    Well I definitely will be voting with my wallet and not buying this set (and I was expecting to buy it before I saw the images of it).

    There really hasn’t been a lot of thought going into this set and pales in comparison to other sets. I really do feel that the quality has dropped since Disney took control whilst prices rocketed. They’ve become too focused on play features and now seem to lack detail. They even reduced the scale on a number of prequel sets.

    Compare this set to the Kwik-E-Mart which was a licensed product and heavily detailed and much cheaper.

    Hopefully there will be a lot of negative press about this and it may start to drive some things home to Lego.

    Reply
  • 16/02/2016 at 12:46
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    You hit the nail on the head here Rich! The Modulars feeling the need to appeal to kids with play features that compromise the design is something that REALLY bugs me! Especially since as you said THEY’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FOR KIDS!
    The Exclusives line is the only place where LEGO can forget about the kids and design it with older audiences in mind. But for some reason that mindset has changed (which as we can see from the exclusives this year) definitely for the worse!

    The biggest problem is with LEGO’s growing popularity these sub-par sets are gonna just sell better and better than the previous meaning we are going to see these problems get a lot worse before they get better :/

    Reply
  • 16/02/2016 at 10:51
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    I don’t buy the star wars or superhero sets so can’t comment on those. I do however buy the modular sets each year and need to massively disagree with you there. For me the modulars have improved each year, the brick bank was a fantastic build with some very good techniques and fits very nicely into my city. I like the fact I’m getting two detailed buildings in the one set, very similar to the Detectives Office.

    When you look at the modulars you can see how dated some of them now look, especially the Palace Cinema.

    Reply
    • 16/02/2016 at 10:58
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      That is one good thing about LEGO, what appeals to one person won’t with another. I love the Palace Cinema and feel it’s a better build then the 3 that’s followed. I do also like the techniques used in the Brick Bank and said as much in my review. My gripe is the play features that are not needed. As a parent I would not spend £120 on this set for my child when there are much better things in LEGO that offer more for them. The modulars are not aimed at children and as such don’t require play feature:

      My main issue is I find it smaller then older sets and size has been scarified for play features and interior details which you are hardly going to see, compared to if you got bigger and more detailed on the exterior. It depends one view point. Do you want impressive display models or do you want internal play features and loads of internal details. I for one vote for an impressive display model which is what the whole point of the modulars were in the first place.

      Reply
  • 16/02/2016 at 10:46
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    Hoth isn’t a set I was planning to buy but my first thoughts were that it reminded me of Jokerland (lots of bit, but little to tie it all together). The picture above does highlight the problem though of combining 4 sets into one. Like you say, the UCS is the gold standard and this seems like a compilation of sets rather than a clever redesign and upgrade.

    The downside of voting with wallets is that the producer sees that a certain line ‘isn’t selling’ and stop producing them. I love the Batman stuff, and will be buying the Batcave (finally a 1960s Batmobile – I’ve been sore about that since the SDCC exclusive!) partly because, well, I kinda like it and because I want more (big!) Batman stuff in the future.

    Reply
  • 16/02/2016 at 10:34
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    “The worse thing is we as fans will still buy them”

    This is the problem right here. If the sets are bad, we shouldn’t buy them. Vote with our wallets.

    Calling the Hoth set a “rip off” implies that Lego are forcing people to buy specific sets but they’re not. We choose to buy whatever sets we choose to buy.

    Reply
    • 16/02/2016 at 11:01
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      The problem is fans won’t vote with their wallets and Ferg has given a prime example of fans thinking in the comments below. I will still stick to my view it’s a rip off as collectors and fans will feel forced to buy it to have a full collection. If it wasn’t under the UCS tag I reckon LEGO would sell a lot less.

      Reply

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