SET NAME: Tie Defender
SET NUMBER: 8087
THEME: Star Wars
YEAR: 2010
# PIECES: 304
MSRP: $49.99 (USD) $69.99 (CAN)
(From Brickset): The secret weapon of the Empire is here!
Built in response to the Rebellion's highly-skilled starfighter forces, the top-secret TIE defender is the ultimate expression of Imperial power and technology! Never before made as a LEGO set, this unique 3-winged TIE fighter blasts into battle with 6 flick-launching missiles and an opening cockpit that rotates when the model turns. Includes TIE defender, stormtrooper and new TIE fighter pilot TIE fighter pilot equipped with new helmet Blast the 6 flick-firing missiles -- 2 on each wing Turn the TIE defender to rotate the opening cockpit Measures over 8" (20cm) tall; over 9" (22cm) wide.
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The Tie Defender is the third LEGO set based on a ship not actually seen in a Star Wars movie or Clone Wars TV Show. (The first two being the Tie Crawler and the Rogue Shadow). Like the first two "Expanded Universe" sets, the Tie Defender was first featured in the "Tie Fighter" Video Game, which was release in the mid 1990's (Wow, that makes me feel old!) as a sequel to the highly successful X-Wing video game.
The Tie Defender has three wings, instead of the standard two, and these wings have a design similar to the Tie Interceptor's split appearance.
On to the review:
First we have the required shots of the box. The front shows the Defender in flight, with the Clone Wars logo at the top.
The back shows some of the play features (the cockpit rotates, so the pilot maintains an upright sitting position at all times, six, count em, six flick fire missiles, and an opening cockpit) plus some of the other sets from this wave.
The box contents. Three bags (numbered 1,2, and 2) and the instruction manual. There are no stickers or loose parts.
A random page from the instruction manual. Each step in the building process is numbered and clearly identifies the parts needed to complete the step. The build is remarkably easy, and took me under 30 minutes to complete (including time to take pictures).
The contents of bag #1. This bag contains the parts needed to assemble the mini figures and the cockpit section of the Defender.
The minifigures. The Tie Defender comes with just two figures, a Tie Fighter Pilot and a Stormtrooper. Both figures have plain black head studs with no faces on them. The Stormtrooper comes with a blaster. The Tie Fighter looks a bit different from previous incarnations, mostly in the helmet.
From the back. Only the stormtrooper has printing on the back of his torso.
Here is the assembled cockpit with extra pieces on the side. The cockpit itself opens on a single hinge (opens upwards). Like other TIE style ships, I find the cockpit very flimsy, and when opening or closing, it tends to pop off instead of open. In the TIE Defender, you can see that the cockpit is slightly deeper from front to back to make was for the spinning mechanism.
The contents of the two number 2 bags. These bags make the wings. Since all three wings are identical, you have to follow the instructions 3 times. This makes for a very quick build.
Here are the wings assembled with the extra pieces. If you own the Tie Interceptor, the wings will look very familiar to you. The main difference is that these wings bend outwards, away from the cockpit, while the Tie Interceptors bend inward towards the cockpit.
And the final assembly, complete with minifigures.
Final thoughts. I wasted many a day playing the original X-Wing and Tie Fighter games and would love to seen them re-released (are you listening LucasArts????) So when I heard the Tie Defender was coming out as a set, I was very excited. Then I saw the price. $69.99?????? Are you kidding me? The only reason I ended up owning this set was a great pre-Christmas sale. At full price this set would never have seen the inside of my house unless some poor fool bought it for me as a gift. That being said, it is a nice enough set. Even if you don't like the Defender design, it comes with a lot of very useful pieces and a stormtrooper minifigure, and as we all know, the way the Empire goes through stormtroopers, you can never have enough of them.
The ship itself suffers from the same problem the other TIE ships has, is that the wings tend to sag or droop over time, due to the minimal attachments to the wings. This is a design flaw in the actual ship design, and there is little that can be done on LEGO's end.
For the price they were asking, I would have expected at lease one more minifigure.
I would give this set a mark of 6/10. Losing all of the marks for being ridiculously over priced. If you never played the Tie Fighter game, and have no emotional attachment to this ship, I would say give it a pass, or wait for Walmart to put it on clearance.
Hope this review helped!
