Name: 10213 Shuttle Adventure
Theme: LEGO Exclusives
Year: 2010
Piece Count: 1204
Minifigs: 3
Price: $129.99 CDN, $99.99 USD
I ordered this set back in June with free shipping and space minifig from Lego.com. I finally found some time to build it. This is my first review.
THE BOX:
The box is huge. It's 23" x 15" x 3" or 58cm x 38cm x 8cm. It has pretty photos of the product in the front and back. My box came slightly dented courtesy of FedEx. Fortunately, I am not a pristine box collector.
INSIDE THE BOX:
Inside the box contains 14 plastic bags of parts, 1 small sticker sheet and 2 instruction bookets. The bags are NOT numbered.
There are not many stickers with this set. The stickers are transparent which is a nice touch.
MINIFIGURES:
The set comes with 3 minifigures. A male and a female astronaut and a service crew member. The service crew member appears to be wearing a pilot uniform with an airplane logo. The female astronaut's head has two faces.
Do they have the right stuff? She looks scared.
Now this is better.
From the back.
Compared to the Collectible Mini-fig astronaut.
THE BUILD:
First is the ground maintenance vehicle. There is not much special about it. It has a video camera to record the launch. I wonder if that is old Beta video tape.
Next is the shuttle. The majority of my time building was spent on the shuttle.
The shuttle features movable wing tips.
The landing gear is retractable. The blue are the mount points for the external fuel tank.
Close up of the cockpit. The astronauts can't see out the windows unless some of the white and black plates on the removeable roof are replaced with transparent plates.
It is also very cosy for the male and female astronauts in the cockpit. Is she touching his bum?
The shuttle has a satellite for cargo.
The transparent sticker for solar panels don't look bad at all.
It fits nicely in the cargo hold under the Canada-Arm.
The external fuel tank is not a difficult build. It is easy to find its parts since they are dark orange and dark red pieces.
It has technic pins for attaching the shuttle and the two booster rockets.
Internal detail of nose of the external fuel tank.
The booster rockets are easy to build too. The round white parts left are for them.
Finally, we get to build the launch pad. It goes on the 16x32 base plate.
Here's how the shuttle sits on the pad.
Ready for boarding.
PARTS:
Extra pieces.
Technic pins in tan instead of the usual grey.
These were used for the landing gear. I haven't seen them before.
32L axles make good chopsticks.
SUMMARY:
Playability: 10/10
Design: 9/10
Price: 9/10 (8 cents US/piece or 10 cents CDN/piece)
Parts: 9/10 (some nice dark orange and dark red pieces)
Mini-figures: 8/10
Overall: 9/10
Lego has done a great job with the shuttle in my opinion. They put in a lot of features and fun into the design. It is quite playable. You can blast off, drop the rocket boosters and then the external fuel tank. Once in orbit deploy the satellite. Return to Earth and lower the landing gear.
The US price is not bad. It comes in under 10 cents/piece at 8 cents/piece. The Canadian price is at around 10 cents/piece.
As the real space shuttle is being retired, it appears to be good timing that Lego released this set. It is a great set to get if you are a space shuttle fan and don't have the previous space shuttle sets. I'd recommend it.
