And I thought they smelled bad on the outside...
Posted by Huw,Here's another article from DrDaveWatford's GimmeLEGO blog, first published in 2015, which I felt was appropriate for this weekend:
Being a LEGO Star Wars collector can be a pretty thankless task at times, particularly if you have completist tendencies. If it isn't the countless remakes, many of which seem little changed from the previous versions, it's all the blasted event exclusives and limited edition promos. These tantalising chase items, which are generally only available in small numbers, have been the subject of numerous Gimme LEGO rants over the years (for instance here and here), and I've long given up trying to collect them all.
That having been said, I'm always delighted to pick up these curios when the opportunity arises, and I got lucky recently, managing to score the item below from a fellow member of the Brickset Forum.
The set in question is designated LLCA53 Han Solo On Tauntaun in the Brickset database, and it's apparently owned by just 14 of Brickset's 117,000+ registered members. The previous owner was given the set by LEGOLAND California as a thank-you for contributing Lego Star Wars photographs to their Fan Gallery, although it appears that the sets were originally designed for Ambassador Pass holders attending the 2011 Master Model Builder Class.
The set wasn't supplied boxed - the elements are divided between three numbered grip-seal bags which are themselves packed into an opaque LEGO Factory bag along with six folded and loosely stapled sheets containing the building instructions. The instruction sheets are colour printed on both sides; the artwork above can be found at the top of the first page while the inventory of parts below (click to enlarge) is printed on the back of the last page.
The quality of the printing isn't up to retail standards from the perspective of either sharpness or colour representation, which isn't altogether surprising in a promo set such as this.
Bag 1 contains the parts needed to build the display stand, which is of course designed to look like snowy terrain, and the tauntaun's feet. This stage of the build utilises common elements - only the six tan modified 1 x 1 plates with tooth which form the claws on the tauntaun's feet could be described as remotely uncommon, and even these have appeared in 20 sets to date.
Bag 2 contains the parts needed to build most of the tauntaun plus its harness. Once again, the parts used appear to be unremarkable - predominantly light bley slopes of various types with a few common plates, small bricks and clips thrown in for good measure.
Certainly I don't think sourcing them would be too much of an issue for would-be builders. A number of SNOT bricks, specifically 1 x 1 bricks with a stud on one side, are utilised to hold the harness in the correct alignment and provide an attachment point for the tauntaun's puny T-Rex-like upper limbs. The tail is suspended from beneath the body and doesn't actually touch the ground, with the consequence that it's relatively fragile and liable to fall off if not handled carefully.
So far so good, but the magic really happens when the contents of Bag 3 come into play. First a brick-built reddish brown saddle with a couple of saddle bags is constructed (below) and it's here that sourcing the parts you'd need to exactly replicate the build starts to get a bit more challenging. The saddle incorporates a pair of reddish brown modified 1 x 2 plates with handle on side and free ends which have only ever appeared in eight retail sets.
Worse still is the use of two reddish brown modified 1 x 1 plates with horizontal clip. These are used to attach the saddle bags to the saddle, and according to Bricklink they've never actually appeared in a retail set, so you might need to substitute these with equivalent elements in a different colour unless you have access to a LEGOLAND model shop....
I'm afraid that it's a similar story with the pair of reddish brown modified 1 x 1 plates with vertical clip used to attach Han's pack to the back of the saddle - these have also apparently never appeared in a retail set, although thankfully a close variant is available in reddish brown.
With the saddle complete it's time to build the tauntaun's head and carefully mount it on top of the neck. It's quite a job to wedge the pair of light bley 1 x 1 tiles into the clips on the top of the head to form the ears, and it places considerable stress on the clips which is why LEGO defines this as an 'illegal' building technique and doesn't normally permit its use in official sets.
With the tauntaun now complete, all that's left to do is build the intrepid rider who is of course Han Solo. Han's dark tan legs are attached to his torso by way of a pair of 2 x 2 turntables; these allow the legs to be rotated outwards so as to adopt a more natural riding position. Once completed, Han can be carefully lowered into the saddle and handed the tauntaun's reins, at which point we're done!
You can see the completed build in the pictures above and below. Although the tauntaun is attached to the base, there is some scope for posing the model, albeit limited - the position of the tauntaun's upper limbs can be adjusted, and Han's head can be rotated and his arms bent. It wouldn't take much modification to enable the tauntaun to turn its head as well if desired
For all their rarity value and collectability, I've often felt that many of the LEGO Star Wars promo items aren't especially interesting in their own right, but that's certainly not the case for this model which is superb. I've always had huge admiration for builders who can transcend the crudeness which is inevitable at this scale and craft models which are elegant and immediately recognisable, and I'd say that this is a perfect example of that art.
On the downside the build got a bit fiddly towards the end, and the completed model isn't as robust as a typical retail offering, but really these are trifling details; it's a lovely display piece and it'll take pride of place alongside some of my other LEGO Star Wars favourites.
I'd like to offer my thanks to fellow Bricksetter Mark a.k.a. smokebelch for selling the set to me for an amount which, while admittedly not exactly cheap, was still a long, long way short of the ridiculous sums being asked by sellers on Bricklink; in case you're wondering, at the time of writing there were only two of these sets listed for sale on Bricklink, and at $1,995 and $3,500 respectively they might remain unsold for a while yet...
Unless you're a lottery winner, your best bet would be to just source the 336 parts needed to build the model yourself - the vast majority are fairly common and inexpensive, and those that aren't can be readily substituted by alternative parts; I'll aim to scan the instructions and upload them to the Gimme LEGO Flickr stream here over the next week or so which will make it easier for you to build your own copy if you wish.
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15 comments on this article
Yeah they do!
Hey! That was the name of my Han Solo review:
https://brickset.com/reviews/55996
Admittedly, it was only published this year... but that was because I only joined last Christmas!
This looks great, shame we haven't had a Tauntant in a while.
I have two of these sealed. Hadn't appreciated how few people own them. The model doesn't do a whole lot for me personally though.
Interesting review. I wonder if some of the parts are a bit less rare now.
@Brainslugged said:
"I have two of these sealed. Hadn't appreciated how few people own them. The model doesn't do a whole lot for me personally though.
Interesting review. I wonder if some of the parts are a bit less rare now."
The plate 1x2 with handles open end and the plate 1x1 with clip vertical are reasonably priced and available right now (you might need to look across variants for the 1x1 plate) but the plate 1x1 with clip horizontal remains elusive with only 6 sellers worldwide on BL and a minimum price of $3.
Fascinating. Strange to see that the ears are attached using what most would consider an illegal technique.
I made some substitutions in a BrickLink wanted list. If you swap out the light bley turntables for black turntables, I can get the parts down to about $30. The R-B clips are still $3 each though.
I have a huge feeling of deja vu reading this... it was around the time I came out of my dark ages, and I have a feeling I found this blog post, which led me to BrickSet... and the rest is history!
Impressive. Most impressive. Looks like a fun build. I might source those parts after I finish sourcing the 10143 Death Star II.
@azzanator234:
But it's not an illegal technique. If it was a plate, it would be, but the groove on the bottom of the tile provides just enough size reduction that the tile doesn't stress the clip. It's still an uncommon technique in official sets because it's not particularly sturdy, but they regularly depict minifigs holding tiles like that, and a minifig hand is a lot less robust than that style of clip.
@flipus74:
I think I actually have a few of those horizontal clips floating around. Back when I first tried to make a B:TAS Clayface, the only two color options that were possible were black and dark-bley. So I made Bleyface. Later on, as new reddish-brown parts came out, I was able to update the design with the correct color, and I'm pretty sure I bought a few of those to use as hands (the arms each use two of the also-rare 2x2/1x4 hinge plates), but the ultimate design skipped those in favor of 1x1-1x1 neck brackets and 1x1 tiles w/ clips on top (they looked better, and I could pop the hand off easily to replace it with some sort of attack form).
Smokebelch.
Now THAT'S a name I have not heard in a LONG time. I wonder how he's doing.
Any chance of adding the instructions here or Flickr?
I'm sure many of us would like to add this to our collections!
”Any chance of adding the instructions here or Flickr?”
There’s a link to the instructions in the last paragraph of the article.
An update on the rare reddish brown parts I felt like posting:
"modified 1 x 2 plates with handle on side and free ends" ( https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=2540&name=Plate,%20Modified%201%20x%202%20with%20Handle%20on%20Side%20-%20Free%20Ends&category=%5BPlate,%20Modified%5D T=C) has since appeared in several Cars sets as Mater's rearview mirrors. It's now very common.
"modified 1 x 1 plates with horizontal clip" ( https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=61252 T=C) has since appeared in 1 set, the Rocket and Groot Brickheadz, but unfortunately it still seems to be rare (right now there are only 6 for sale on bricklink). However, you could substitute the newer 1x2 variant of the part ( https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=63868 T=S&C=88&O={%22color%22:88,%22iconly%22:0}), which is very common in reddish brown.
"Modified 1x1 plates with vertical clip" ( https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=4085b&colorID=88&in=A ) has since appeared in 5 sets, although in 4 of them it was an alternate to the newer mold/variant of the part Dave mentioned. Despite that, as far as I could tell it's still cheaply available now.
@goldenguy880:
I definitely have the vertical clips in the Type 3 variant. I used several of them on the bottom of an old pickup truck to simulate rusty rocker panels.