And now for a much more colorful Star Plan set: the 1,238-piece BB-8! This is a clone of major brand set 75187, which retails for $100 USD. Our Star Plan version comes in significantly less expensive, $54 from BuildingToyStore.com. And as we’ll see, it’s a great clone set indeed. The set arrived in a custom-fitting exterior box, which protected the retail box perfectly for its transit from China to North America.

A large part of this build felt immediately familiar to me. You see, a few months ago I built the grandest, largest LEGO set: the 5,900-piece Taj Mahal (clone set 17001 for $194, or authentic LEGO 10256 for $370, which is what I bought). It’s got brick- and plate-built domes that were perfect practice for building a largely spherical droid, or at least as close to spherical as brick-building can accomplish without special pieces. If you’re familiar with the style and building techniques of the Taj Mahal (either because you have the new version or the discontinued and very expensive original version), building BB-8 will be fun, and yet pose no serious challenges. If you’re not familiar with building spheres or partial spheres from bricks and plates, you’ll enjoy the experience of learning a new building technique that will come in handy in future.

This set mixes “System”-style bricks and plates with an internal structure of Technic-style beams, pieces, and pins. The mechanics of BB-8 allow its domed mechanical head to freely rotate 360º thanks to a “steering wheel” cleverly disguised on one side of his cute little spherical self, as well as for a (non-functioning) welding torch to pop open a door in his tummy and project forward, with the turn of a similarly-disguised wheel on his opposite side.

Like any Technics-style set, you’ve got to pay close attention to the instructions when assembling anything with moving parts. The track on which BB-8’s welding torch slides out is an interesting assembly, and requires precision in its assembly in order to work properly. Ditto for his head.

The build went pretty smoothly overall, except for having to adjust for the welding torch to automatically open the door. The door is pushed open by the torch itself, so the door does not close automatically on retraction of the torch. That would be a cool feature, but I recognize the innards don’t leave a lot of room for the gears necessary to make such a thing occur.

The other main frustration in assembling this little ball of orange and white cuteness was the fact that all of the dome-shaped sides are held onto the body with four offset plates, one in each corner of the square structure inside the circle. You’ve got to get all four perfectly aligned in order to snap the circle on with ease. I recognize this is a frequent issue with any sort of assembly involving aligning, all at once, more than a couple pegs and holes (a desk I assembled from IKEA last month required me to perfectly align eight such targets!). It’s not a huge deal, but it bears mentioning.

BB-8 is playable, but is also built for display. He comes with a nice little stand and informational plaque telling his statistics. One of my favorite features of the set is the BB-8 “minifigure” that also comes with the set, and which hangs out on a little perch in front of his big brother when the whole thing is assembled.

I’ve become quite a fan of Star Plan sets, and BB-8 is a worthy addition to any Star Wars fan’s collection. As usual, the bricks were all of great quality, and even though much of the internal build is Technics-style pieces, I had zero problems with piece quality or finish. The one minor complaint I have is that one of the longer plates used in the display base bows a little upward, at the end, underneath the informational plaque. For most purposes, I have found that plates that bow don’t really matter as there is generally enough weight placed upon them, keeping them in proper position. With only a little plaque to provide downward pressure, that is not the case in this instance. If you find that yours bows and that is not to your satisfaction, it will be a negligible expense to replace those plates with major brand plates instead.

I highly recommend you pick up BB-8 for either yourself or the Star Wars fan in your life. He’s a fun build, a very attractive finished product, and indeed, you may find yourself getting even more hooked on building block toys as a result of the very good price at which you can obtain him. And, right now our friends at Building Toy Store are offering a $5 off coupon for readers of Alt-Blocks. Click the link and then when checking out, enter coupon code WY5UGBJZ.

I believe Poe would approve of this interpretation of his little droid. If a brick figure Finn stumbled into your Star Wars collection, perhaps he could even believe he’s asking the real astromech droid for directions to the Resistance base camp, thanks to this model’s faithful interpretation.

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