I’ll start this review by completely up front about the fact that I am not a huge Star Wars fan. I like the films and enjoy watching them, but I’ve never collected any Star Wars memorabilia, including brick sets. I know that among lots of brick collectors the Star Wars (or Star Plan in clone-speak) sets are among the most popular. My own sons love the Star Wars sets.

For my first review of such, I tackled the 05051 (major brand 75054), AT-AT walker. At 1,157 pieces, it’s no small set. It’s priced at $59 USD for the boxed replica version, or between $300 and $400 for a mint copy of the boxed major brand 75054 version, which is discontinued. For my 11-year-old son, exactly one of those options is within his budget. He graciously allowed me to build his set for this review.

Large, full-color instruction book

I set out to build the AT-AT after my son himself had built and played with it quite often, so I was unable to include most of the minifigures in this review, as they have been summoned for duty elsewhere in his Star Wars universe. I was able to scrounge up one stormtrooper, who will make a cameo appearance in this review.

To begin, we build the internal skeletal structure of the machine. This is primarily comprised of technic pieces, rather than standard “system” blocks (though some of those feature as well). I am pleasantly surprised with the quality of parts on this build, as all of the technic pieces were solid, well within tolerances, and connected smoothly with each other. Axles fitted through holes, pins snapped into place, and beams connected solidly.

This isn’t even all the pieces, just the ones I had room for on this small table!

From humble beginnings…

The “neck”, on which our cockpit will sit

Throughout the build, I encountered very few difficulties: just the occasional need to reposition a piece or two to make a connection with another part being added on (as is often necessary with technic building techniques).

Perhaps the most interest part for me was building the walker’s legs. George Lucas specified that he wanted the Empire’s walkers to be psychologically intimidating to the Rebels, and the legs are a huge part of that. In the films, the AT-AT are 20 meters high, and a good portion of these “walking tanks'” height comes from their imposing legs.

Of course, there’s repetition here since the walker has four legs. But they are built solidly and sturdily, with some interesting joint pieces I’ve not encountered in any previous builds (maybe they are specially molded for Star Wars sets, I am not honestly sure). The pieces are visible in the lower right corner of the above photo (comment if you know the origin of these pieces, please!).

Once the four legs are built and added to our rhino-torso, the AT-AT begins to look quite imposing indeed!

Imagine the interior filled with evil Stormtroopers

From here, we must supply the side armor and build the “head”, which as the brains of the machine, is actually a cockpit with a seat for one operator:

The sides of this beast are made of light grey plates. Some people have inquired about plate quality, especially with regards to the larger plates. I am pleased to report that there is no bowing of the plates, and they snapped together firmly.

The cockpit fits nicely onto the articulated neck, providing a good range of motion from which the bad dudes can target the Rebels with their weapons.

One cool feature of the set is the trap door that opens from the belly of the beast, from which Stormtroopers can be dropped by pulling an axle at the rear of the machine (the tail, I suppose).

The trap door slides open smoothly with a pull on the tail axle, the large side panels open wide and high for an army of bad dudes to be deployed in an instant. The legs work very well: the clicks-joint pieces can be positioned in a wide range of positions, to put your AT-AT into realistic poses. My son has recreated several scenes from the films with this set, to great effect.

All in all, the fit and finish of this set is perfect. Even as a non-aficionado of the Star Wars…errr, Star Plan, franchise, I found this a fun build. Of course, the end result is a machine that is light grey, as with most Star Wars sets. If grey’s your thing, these sets are your aesthetic, no doubt. But there is seldom a lot of variation in coloring of the older Star Wars sets such as this one. The minifigures all looked good as I recall, and certainly the one I managed to snag from his new duty post for this review looked as sharp as ever in his white stormtrooper suit and helmet. The only issue noted with the minifigures was the fabric cape included in the major brand original set somehow escaped our cloned set. Perhaps I can cut one myself out of some nylon fabric?

The design is clever: I always enjoy seeing a build take shape into something recognizable. The blocks are well formed, perfect in coloration, and with excellent clutch powers. The final build looks as good as any I’ve seen, and for one-sixth the price of the original, it’s a great way to add this walker to your Imperial forces.

If you’re itching to give Vader more tactical advantage in your Star Plan realm, pick up the AT-AT immediately. You’ll be happy to add this replica to your arsenal.

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