LEGO Sand Crawler (7264)
By Lando Da Pimp

I have been wishing for a LEGO Jawa Sandcrawler set for a while now. The Jawa's were one of my favorite aliens in the Star Wars universe. Now after the release of the Star Destroyer and Death Star, LEGO has produced this iconic droid collector vehicle from Episode IV: A New Hope.

The first thing you'll notice is the sheer size of the vehicle. The Sandcrawler is 15" long, 8" high, and 7.5" wide. The crawler is not to Minifig scale but most of the sets rarely are. Also, if you think about it nobody would be able to afford a mini-figure sized scale Jawa Sandcrawler. The scale is very close to my Micro Machines Jawa.

Almost the entire vehicle is made up of bricks for a combined piece count of 1669. My build time for the set was about 14 hours over a few days. This is one of the longest build times I have had on a LEGO set.

Building the Sandcrawler begins with a building up the brick walls utilizing mostly brown bricks with the occasional light brown and black bricks. The most tedious work is with the four wheels of the crawler. Each wheel has two treads that are made up of 34 pieces small tread pieces. The problem with making a tread like this is that you have to be careful of the surface that you move the crawler on. The tread can come apart very easily on a carpeted surface.

The best part of the Jawa Sandcrawler is the playability. The front of the crawler has a ramp that raises and lowers. Inside is a workstation that has a working crane that can remove the droids from the crawler. A removable workshop is located in the center of the vehicle that provides a number of tools and equipment for the Jawas to work on and house the droids. On the back of the Sandcrawler is a steering mechanism that moves the rear tread-wheels to the right and left. The crawler also has a few stickers to be added on at the end on the workstation equipment and the windows on the front.

With a large set like this I would expect a number of mini-figures. The Jawa Sandcrawler comes with three Jawas, Uncle Owen, and a number of droids (including R2-D2, C-3PO, R1-G4, a Treadwell droid, ASP Droid, R5-D4, and my favorite the Gonk Droid). What is missing is Luke. Now that all movie property mini-figures are flesh colored we haven't had a flesh colored Tatooine Luke.

Overall
Be prepared to spend a good deal of time building this monster set, it takes a while, but what fun is a LEGO set if it can be built in a few minutes? LEGO did a wonderful job including everything into this set with the exception of a Luke mini-figure. Now that I have the Sandcrawler I have a new LEGO set wish. I want to see the Moisture Farm companion LEGO set to go along with the Sandcrawler.

The set is a bit pricey but I believe this to be the best LEGO set of the year. So Far.

You can pick up this set exclusively from LEGO's Star Wars Shop.

Be sure to see the rest of our LEGO coverage, and our continuing Star Wars coverage.

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