Blue and orange parts in 21314 TRON: Legacy
The transparent colours look superb against the black. Transparent Light Blue is an extremely common colour these days so I didn't expect to find pieces newly cast in this colour but did hope for some in transparent orange, of which there are actually two shades used in the set: Transparent Fluorescent Reddish Orange and Transparent Bright Orange [TLG]/ Trans-Neon Orange and Trans-Orange [BL]. (Fun colour nerd fact; the former has been around for a decade longer than the latter.) Anyway; it turns out that many elements I hoped might be new, are not.
For example those banner flags (Design ID 30292) at the rear which represent the lethal streams of emitted light: the Transparent Light Blue has been in eight sets, although none since 2013 (consequently it now has a new Element ID, 6234182), and the Transparent Fluorescent Reddish Orange (6120915) was in four NEXO KNIGHTS sets, a line that has revitalised this hue of late.
There are two Plate 6x10 in Medium Azure (6133692|3033); an element which only comes in the 2017 sets 41315 Heartlake Surf Shop and 70620 NINJAGO City so far. These are used to create the segment of "the Grid" upon which the bikes are raced, which looks quite effective and dynamic.
Printed parts in 21314 TRON: Legacy
Most prominent are the 4x4 dishes that form the wheels; obviously there are four of each, in Transparent Light Blue (Element ID 6228444) and Transparent Fluorescent Reddish Orange (6228443).
These should have been the highlight of the set but sadly, they drive me crazy. The printing is not calibrated correctly and so the concentric circles are off-centre. My blue ones are better than the orange; hopefully yours will all be perfect.
Of course, the minifigures all have exclusive printing and they're beautiful; I especially like Quorra's exposed shoulders. Of the three minifigures provided in this set, only Rinzler was happy about being photographed.
Rinzler's helmet (6232035|29819) is a stunning and sinister mould, introduced last year in the LEGO Super Heroes theme and utilised for several characters, each of course with unique printing. So far it has appeared in:
- Earth Green [TLG]/Dark Green [BL] for Vulture
- Bright Red [TLG]/ Red [BL] for Iron Man
- Medium Stone Grey [TLG]/Light Bluish Gray [BL] for Super-Adaptoid
- Earth Blue [TLG]/ Dark Blue [BL] for Justin Hammer
Perhaps to keep Cambridge Analytica's hands off their data, Sam and Quorra carry their 'identity disc' - 2x2 'doughnut' tiles with blue printing (6228441) - on their back, thanks to the transparent neck bracket with two studs and rounded corners (Element ID 6166106|Design IDs 18986/28656). As per the movie, Rinzler carries two discs in orange (Element ID 6228439) and consequently requires the neck bracket with a Technic pin (Element ID 6003478|Design ID 48724) to attach these.
The identity discs look fantastic and will make for great detailing in the right MOC. In fact you can already give this a whirl in Mecabricks as they've been added already. These elements trump those misaligned wheels for the honour of being my favourite elements in the set!
Black parts in 21314 TRON: Legacy
I noticed there was a good array of not-new-but-recent Black parts in this set, so if you still don't own any of these this might make the set more attractive. Pictured below are the round 1x1 with vertical bar (Design ID 20482), wedged baby bows in left (29120) and right (29119), the 'padlock' plate (26047) and the round 1x1 with horizontal bar (32828).
Conclusion
If you're not a fan of the TRON films there's probably not much for you here – it feels unlikely that you'll be buying a set this small at recommended retail price but perhaps some of those printed parts are exactly what you've been looking for. The misaligned printing on the wheels was a big negative for me, especially as the designers went to so much trouble to have wheels that actually turn (the original submission did not). You may consider my concern to be obsessive but if you specifically had your eye on those dishes as something you could use in your own builds, it's an important consideration before you fork out money.
Price and printing concerns aside, it's a glorious set to display and has great vroomability. The design of the wheels, using curved slopes in the middle, is ingenious and while the build is brief, it's satisfying thanks to the quality of the light cycle build.
Price and printing concerns aside, it's a glorious set to display and has great vroomability. The design of the wheels, using curved slopes in the middle, is ingenious and while the build is brief, it's satisfying thanks to the quality of the light cycle build.
If you want to read a set review, visit our friends at The Brick Blogger, Brickset or The Brothers Brick and for some truly glorious photography of the set check out Stuck in Plastic.
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I was pretty underwhelmed when I saw these. I was hoping for I dunno, more? At the very least it seems like these will put some good parts out there on the secondary Market, and that's about all I can take away from this. The donuts definitely have usefulness in Constraction MOCing. I'll have to see if I can raid a store for these. Eyes, techno joints on knees, and elbows, or just greebling, I can definitely find a lot of uses. The 1x2 technic platell in black is pretty sweet. I wish lego would put those on the PAB wall, I'd buy at least a full cup of just those. Lol
ReplyDeleteThere's been some discussion about the 1x2 plate, and it largely falls into two camps:
Delete1. that it's a Technic plate because the ends are rounded which is a detail that has only ever been used on 1x Technic plates before.
2. that it's _not_ a Technic plate because, well, there's really nothing about it that's designed to work with the Technic system, where all the 1x Technic plates had axle holes, pin holes, and/or toothed ends that were designed to interact with the old toothed half-bushings.
I know New Elementary isn't really about actual set reviews, but it's mildly disappointing to see yet another review that doesn't cover one detail that's been mentioned but, as far as I've been able to determine, never shown. Word is that the base can be rearranged into a different shape for the disc battle scene, but where I thought I had an idea of how that was done, now I can tell it's impossible due to the 6x8 plates.
ReplyDeleteYou mention parts in both shades of trans-orange. Which parts come in Trans-neon orange that glows under UV light, and which come in the newer trans-orange that doesn't? The wheels look like they're TNO, but the text indicates that they're the non-fluorescent shade. And bummer that they're not all TNO. On a guess, the 1x1 plate used as the headlight is regular trans-orange, since they've used that in 149 sets already and never once released it in TNO.
The "wheels" certainly looks like they're Transparent Fluorescent Reddish Orange and not Transparent Bright Orange as written in the review.
DeleteAs for the alternative base, it's shown in the video review by the submitters of the original Idea: https://youtu.be/Lq9ZYxJBMGA?t=6m31s
I bought the set earlier today from the Dreamworld LEGO store here in Australia. Using the part numbers from the back of the instruction book I can confirm 100% that the 1x1 round brick and flag are trans-fluro-orange and the 1x1 plate is trans-orange.
DeleteThe wheels aren't listed in the TLG database yet but looking at the part next to some other parts (an unprinted trans-fluro-orange 4x4 radar dish and an unprinted trans-orange 3x3 radar dish among other things), the wheels do look to be trans-fluro-orange to my eyes.
Just stick them under a blacklight. :P
DeleteThanks, my error. Post fixed
Delete@Anonymous:
DeleteOkay, it's pretty much what I figured. Juggle a couple tiles and you can slide the two sections together. I'm not sure I like how it looks, but it's always possible to redo the tile pattern.
That photo with an umbrella reminded me of dancing Jango Fett
ReplyDeleteFull model with all decorated elements is now available on Mecabricks: https://www.mecabricks.com/en/models/mWRaZBbLapZ
ReplyDeleteCouple notes on this after having bought and built two copies. One is that the trans-orange 1x1 plate appears to be only one copy per set, missing the usual extra part in case the first goes missing. I thought maybe I dropped it with the first copy, but I checked very carefully for it in the second and found it to be absent. This is echoed by the Bricklink inventory, which lists an extra of the 1x1 plate in trans-light blue but not trans-orange.
ReplyDeleteWhile the two identity discs on the left are nearly centered, the ones on the right have silver that is _way_ off-center compared to the colored background. Ironically, that's more noticeable than the off-center print on the radar dishes once the model is built. The black round plates behind the dishes swallows up the exposed edge on the dish due to being black. If they'd been built on any other color, it might be more obvious. I can't really tell how bad my radar dishes might be without pulling them all off the four lightcycles, but fortunately for me, I only have one identity disc out of eight that's noticeably odd looking. Unfortunately for me, it's a blue one, where I could have just hidden the bad one if it was orange. Well, I plan to pick up at least one more copy in case I decide to build Quorra's Lightrunner, so hopefully I'll snag at least one more blue identity disc with a decent print.