Thursday, 7 August 2014

Special Feature: 7914 Mandalorian Battle Pack Review

Hi all! I hope you've been having a great week leading up to the National Day Holiday this weekend! Today I have something special for all of you, my first ever “Throwback Review” of one of my older LEGO Star Wars Sets!

This is the first time i’m reviewing an old set of mine, and I will definitely be doing this more in the future, hopefully as a monthly feature here on my blog, to cover all the LEGO Star Wars sets in my collection, but they will probably be more personal, and shorter on the review aspect. So without further ado, introducing, the 7914 Mandalorian Battle Pack!

©The Lego Group, Photo Credits to Brickset.com

This set contains a measly 68 pieces and comes with 4 identical Mandalorian soldiers from Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV Show. This set was released in early 2011, and was retired from LEGO Shop@Home in December 2012. The set retailed for USD $12.99 as most Battle Packs do, and was sold here in Singapore for around SGD $27.90.



This was one of my first LEGO Sets, especially in my LEGO Star Wars collection, being the 3rd ever set I bought, with the first 2 being 8017 Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced and 9488 Elite Clone Trooper & Commando Droid Battle Pack, the former currently on display in my grandparents’ house, and the latter in my room on a shelf.

I bought this set for a relatively low USD $13.95 (compared to local prices) at Barnes & Noble in Orlando, FL in the USA while on a family vacation to Disney World. I liked this set so much, that my brother and I even bought 2 of them, which was all the stock they had left in the store. A quick check of eBay listings shows that it currently sells for around SGD $35+, oh how I wish I had saved a box instead of tearing both of them open.

So a quick introduction of the set. This set is your typical LEGO Star Wars Battle Pack, a staple in every new winter wave of LEGO Star Wars sets. It comes with 4 identical Mandalorian Minifigures, each with their own weapons and armament. 

As you can see from the picture, theres a Mandalorian speeder, a fixed turret emplacement, a heavy-machine-gun/rocket-launcher-type-thing (according to the Box) and well, a regular grunt with  blasters.

My first impression of this set was a bit of amazement, the box art truly doing the Mandalorians justice. I really liked this set for its awesome minifigures (which I will talk more about later) and its army-building qualities (which i will also talk about later).

So now, onto the first part of my more-official review, the Minifigures.


The minifgures are pretty much the only thing in this set, and LEGO truly did a great job with them. Each Mandalorian comes with his own weapon(s), and with their standard, trademark Mandalorian armor, helmet and jetpack, forever immortalized on the big screen by the infamous Jango Fett and his son Boba, the former serving as the template for the Republic’s Clone Army.




As you can see, each Mandalorian has the same armor detailing, and a really well printed face resembling those on the LEGO Clone Troopers but with blue eyes. Given that this set was only retailing for about USD$12.99, and it was released way back in 2011, the lack of leg printing can be forgiven.

Also, it’s really awesome to get these minifigures in a set for such a low price, and 4 of them to boot! These are way better than the horrible Jetpack Clone Troopers we got with the Clone Turbo Tank a few years ago, and are as cool as some of the new 2014 Clone Troopers!

So for the Minifigures, I rank this set 9/10!

Now for its Playability and Display Quality.

While I agree that the array of weapons, equipment and vehicles do very well to complement the Mandalorians, with each of them getting their own weapon or vehicle, this still doesn’t really help its display quality by having a bunch of tiny structures lying around haphazardly with no direction whatsoever.

However, I can see how buying dozens of this set can create an awesome Mandalorian Army!

As such, I rank this set highly for its Playability and Army-Building Qualities, but rather low for its Display features. So, I give this set a 4/10!

Last but not least, Growth Potential.

A good thing about reviews of old sets, is that you can actually see how they have performed in the Secondary market, way after they are released and have gone EOL. This set in particular, is fetching about SGD $35.00 on eBay Singapore, but not many of them have been sold. 

This may be due to the Mandalorians being not as popular as the Stormtroopers, Rebels and Clone Troopers that are usually featured in Battle Packs, and the fact that they're only featured in the Clone Wars cartoon series.

On the other hand, while there haven’t been many Whole-set sales on eBay, there is a surprisingly large number of listings, both active and sold, for individual Mandalorians, each one selling for about SGD $7.00.

This makes it a pretty good investment, though not entirely watertight and foolproof, with moderate returns that have been severely reduced due to its limited popularity despite its great minifigures.

For Growth Potential, I rank this set a 6/10.

©The Lego Group, Photo Credits to Brickset.com

So to end off my review, this is one of my all-time favorite LEGO Star Wars sets because of its awesome minifigures (though this may be due to my strong liking for troopers). If you were lucky enough to score a few of these at a sale, and are still hanging on to them, then kudos to you! I will be making more of these reviews every month, so stay tuned and have a nice National Day Weekend!

On a side note, I’ve had a lot more time after my tests recently, so I've been able to go around to various LEGO Shops in Singapore to snap some photos and make some notes, so you can expect an article on that in a few weeks. See you soon!




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