LEGO 10266 Creator Expert NASA Apollo 11 Lunar Lander Model Building Kit with Astronaut Minifigures, Collectible Home Décor Gift Idea

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The central section of the landing stage is octagonal which requires some repetitive building and some clever techniques to attach the four off-grid sides. New-for-June-2019 decorated elements include an Apollo 11 Lunar lander nameplate and golden elements.

LEGO space model building set This collectible moon lander model features an elaborate replica of Apollo 11's Eagle lunar module, complete with accessories. The display model comes with separate ascent and descent stages - the descent stage comes with gold-coloured landing pads and panels, an opening camera and laser hatches, and a ladder, while the ascent stage has a detailed interior with room for 2 astronauts. Finished with an Apollo 11 Lunar Lander nameplate. I hope you have found this review informative. Let us know by liking this article and share your thoughts on the set in the comments below. If you have already assembled the LEGO Ideas 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V set, get ready to experience a deja-vu while building the lander. Its landing stage has the same octagon structure covered with plates and tiles on each of its eight sides. Even though the building technique differs a lot from those used in the Saturn V set, such structures require a strong dose of repetitive building. Our recommendation: get a partner to build the set together with!monkyby87: I wonder how it has become such a strain financially for TLG to produce baseplates when in former times it was possible for so many sets. LEGOLAND, Space, Castle, Aquanauts, you name it, all those themes had lots of sets with baseplates, flat as well as raised in all kinds of shapes. And all these sets were still affordable strangely enough. The top surface of the landing section is a bizarre combination of SNOT (studs-not-on-top) building technique, 2×2 corner tiles and a bulky 10×10 octagonal plate in the very center of the structure. At some point it hard to believe how perfectly all the pieces sit together! The heads are similarly generic but no hair components are included which is somewhat disappointing. Arm printing would have been welcome as well, especially on the left shoulder where an American flag should appear. On that basis, these are reasonable minifigures for displaying beside the spacecraft but room for improvement certainly remains. We really dislike how flimsy the set feels towards the end of the build, especially when it seemed like structural integrity was going to be a focus of the build with the Technic pieces. However, if you take your time and are used to building Lego, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. There is one simple way to describe this wonderful experience: LEGO Creator Expert 10266 NASA Apollo 11 Lunar Lander is a set no-one knew we needed. You don’t need to be a fan of space to fall in love with the set. But if you are a fan and you already got LEGO Ideas 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V, please don’t make a huge mistake of leaving the new brilliant addition to the Apollo 11 mission out of your collection.

Oh yes and prints are hideously expensive too. Hence why sets by companies like Cobi or MegaConstrux, which use prints almost exclusively, are so much more expensive than LEGO... However, my favourite details are the minifigure footsteps which are visible along the forward edge of the model. These are absolutely superb, revealing a light bluish grey surface beneath the surrounding dark bluish grey elements. An attachment point for the American flag is also included so you can plant the flag easily, although its position beside the spacecraft is not entirely authentic.

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Since the set captures the culmination of the lunar mission, the scene has all the attributes of the historic event. First of all, it’s a minifigure’s footprints on the surface of the moon just by a place for a flag. Of course, a minifigure-scale copy of the spacecraft cannot fit all the structural elements of a real one, but the designing team made their absolute best to make the assembling exciting and insightful. For instance, those white and red tanks inside the lander carry fuel and oxidizer to ignite the fuels, since it is impossible to use fuel without an oxidizer in space. Things like this are particularly impressive! Another quadrant of the lander hides a camera that filmed Armstrong as he climbed down the ladder and made the first step in the surface. The camera is built with just three pieces, but its nice to see a 1×2 printed tile with a tape pattern which has been around since 1990. In all honesty, the argument that prints (or baseplates) would make sets more expensive is plain BS. It just means that TLG would have less of a crazy profit margin. That's all. Although the real ascend stage was designed to leave the landing stage only once, the clips in the center of the spacecraft let you easily remove and place the top part again and again. This solution works just perfectly.