Starting with the minifigures, and... well, they're certainly alien-like. One of the joys of looking through older sets is seeing how things like design ideas have changed. One of the first things you'd probably notice is the helmet pieces. While I'm not a big fan of the techno-organic printing work on them, the piece itself looks awesome, like an early sci-fi "this is the future!" helmet, and combined with the armour piece makes these minifigs look really threatening. The only problem is that they do struggle to use basic gear thanks to the way the two pieces are moulded. Granted, minifigs often struggle with holding guns in a logical way, but this is a new record for me personally. Unfortunately, due to their age, the tolerances on the minifig heads and armour on my copies aren't as open to being removed as they once were, taking off the helmets reveal that these aren't the usual yellow heads... or any skin tone at all for the matter. A minifig head back then that wasn't yellow was rare back then, its why the early Star Wars and Harry Potter sets used the Yellow heads too. I do believe white was a colour used, mostly for skull pieces, but even with all the minifigure heads I've seen, translucent colours weren't used, making these minifigs look even more alien like. Combine that with some weird face prints, and you've got yourself some creative looking aliens.
One thing about this set is that it isn't just one ship, it has several vehicles and compartments to it. For this review I'll start from the top and work my way down, starting with the top of the saucer which is almost pathetically simple in terms of plastic design and part count. What you see is almost exactly what you get. There's no control panel in the cockpit, the only thing in there is a chair, and the only moving parts are the antenna and solar panels. The way it attaches to the rest of the body though is through the use of magnet which, while not strong enough to lift the whole set by the mini saucer, is strong enough to hold it in place during play. It took a lot of vigorous shaking to make the saucer budge from its magnets.
The set also comes with two smaller cars that minifigs can drive around in. One is a simple, but well-designed little ATV kind of car that you can store in the middle of the lower half of the craft. What's cool about it is that it also has a magnet and using the crane arm on the outside of the ship, you can actually move it in and out of the saucer. The other car though... while its designed with storage in mind, as it only has a little garage to store in on the outside of the ship, the only thing I can think of when I see it is that it meets the Bayformers description of half a car, and even then just barely. This car is barely bigger than a standard 2x4 brick. It's so tiny and light that the simple act of pushing it along with a minifigure on it is taxing because it becomes so lopsided. This feels like it should be a drone car, but there's no indicator that its meant to be driven automatically. Granted, its impressive that it kept the part countdown so low, the newest record for "Smallest amount of pieces needed to make a car" now goes to this set with a total part count of.... 13 pieces. six of which you could potentially find a way to remove.
Looking at the main body, while there is thankfully more here then there is on the top saucer, it is still a WYSIWYG in terms of functions. The two cockpits can open up for you to add or remove minifigures, with the car out there's a lot of play room inside the body of the ship, and you've got some spinning functions in the aforementioned crane arm, the two turrets, and on the underside of the saucer to let you spin the whole thing if you wanted to. The crane arm is full of posing joints thanks to the pieces it uses. Every single piece is connected to each other using friction hinges that allow you to do almost everything you would ever want to do with a build like it. Unfortunately, they don't seem to stay connected very well so you might find the mechanism accidentally coming undone over time, however, I don't know if that's just the way it was designed or old age. I do like the asymmetrical build design that this half of the set has, though its a design structure that not everyone is going to enjoy. A lot of the larger pieces also have tampograph details on them and as someone who enjoys tampographs over stickers, I appreciate it. However, it does limit the possibilities of reusing the parts for something other than a UFO-themed MOC, not just due to the stickers, but also the size of the pieces. The round shell pieces that make up the majority of the mass on these saucers are huge, and it makes creating other things with them a lot harder to do because you have to design everything around those pieces, pieces that are designed to love round things. I do wish we got a few more of the pieces in the green though rather then metallic grey, mostly because under the right light, the translucent green used really makes this set shine, adding to the eeriness of it.
One thing I will say to those looking to get this set or another set around this time period, the notion of older lego sets being harder to make, at least for me, has been more of a half-truth. It's based on reality, but the conclusion is wrong, speaking from personal experience. Instructions telling you what pieces you need for that step aren't there (something that isn't a big issue for me) is one of the reasons, but the other big one was how the instructions were printed. Some colours look off, like Black bricks looking dark grey, dark grey looking light grey, among other similar things. Does that make the sets harder? A bit, but it mostly just comes down to how much you're personally focusing on the set, are you paying attention?
Is it a good set? For its time it is, however, I can't speak with much experience on the matter. It does, however, make me curious to see how it would look with today's standards and pieces. It is more impressive to look at then it is to play with, though with the number of functions it has, there's still plenty of fun to have with it before its inevitable destruction and all its parts to be used on other builds. If you can find it for a good price, maybe try checking it out, it definitely made me more curious about some of the other UFO sets. Next week? No Transformers. No Lego, something else entirely. What is it? You'll have to wait and see. For now, "don't get cooked, stay Off the Hook".
(This is going to be really embarrassing if I can't find them on Friday...)
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