Mega Bloks Halo 97129 - UNSC Pelican Gunship

I got this for my son's Christmas and at this price was great value done everything it said on the tin as they say lol and especially where everywhere else was selling this at 20 pounds extra this has to be a great deal I had no problems and also my son had extra parts left over so there was plenty to spare in that respectRecommend !

This took me 149 days on and off to build: think of it as a 1161 piece 3D jigsaw. On opening the box you are confronted with hundreds of dark green coloured pieces. Whilst the instructions are not quite up to the standard of Lego, this isn't actually that much harder to build than a Lego model of similar size. What does take ages though, is sifting through the box for the correct pieces - particularly some smaller ones which are only very subtly different from one another. It doesn't help that the box isn't compartmentalised, as a larger Lego set would be. It aids the assembly process if you take the bits out of the box and spread them around; putting similarly-shaped pieces in piles next to each other - but this is risky because some of the smaller pieces like connecters and stoppers can easily get lost. The instructions would be much easier to follow if the printing quality was better: stages that call for one dark green piece to be placed next to another don't always show where one piece ends and another begins and this can take a little fathoming out - make sure you assemble this in good light. Another difference between this and Lego is that some of the stickers have to be placed over multiple pieces - meaning that once it's assembled you can't take those same bits apart again.Criticisms aside this is actually the best "fake" Lego set I've built and the main faults are in the presentation (the packaging and the instructions) but not the quality of the product itself. As a reluctant model builder with a bit if nostalgia for Lego, I quite enjoyed putting this together. Despite occasional frustrations patience is rewarded.The kid whose toy this is is 7 years old (the box says suitable for 8+) and would not have been able to make it for himself. I just hope he appreciates how much work I put into building the bloody thing!

I enjoy the "Halo" franchise to an extent and am a tremendous Lego enthusiast. Sadly they do not make a proper 'Lego Space' any more - other than their "Star Wars" kits whose fandom I do not really follow. Therefore I came to MegaBloks with hopes they would fill the gap and at first glance I found myself thinking the Pelican did so pretty well.The kit is huge, both in terms of component bricks and the finished item. This is especially noteworthy when the price (I paid Amazon £64) is compared to real Lego kits with a similar number of parts. For a 2000+ model you would be paying at least £130-£170 if not considerably more for a 'show stopper' franchise entry like the 'Super Stardestroyer'. Moreover the scale is much tighter than Lego and gives a level of detail that is especially nice for a supposed military vehicle. Nor does it hurt that MegaBloks equip their kits with proper guns and other offensive equipment, something Lego have been very precious about in the past. As a final plus the minifigs are - at least supposedly - fully poseable with ball and socket joints greatly superior to their stiffly stylized Lego counterparts. Sadly this is pretty much the end of the positive side to my review.Put simply the MegaBloks building experience is horrible. The first, catastrophic flaw hits you immediately on opening the box - the parts and not divided into logical batches. For a very long time now Lego has been splitting its kits into numbered bags that correspond to sections of the manual. This allows you to open up and spread out no more bricks than you immediately need, making it much easier to find the bits you need. MegaBloks on the other hand require you to empty everything out at once which makes the first part of the process as much fun as finding a needle in a haystack, repeated many times over. The actual building instructions in the manual are also deeply flawed. While in Lego fashion you are shown a complement of the bricks you need for each panel, I found it almost impossible in many cases to tell which piece went where. For instance - a 1x3 and a 1x5 plate are butted up end-on to each other but it is next to impossible to say which goes on the right and which on the left of the joint. I literally gave myself an eye strain headache trying to make these details out and often ended up guessing anyway. This could have been an artefact of the pelican using dark olive-drab bricks, but in a Lego manual false brighter colours are printed with edges enhanced. Finally I resorted to using a off-angle torch beam and a magnifying glass in an attempt to find some detail.The bricks themselves are not well made either. Again, the pelican is supposedly a military vehicle which could be understood to have seen heavy use. Therefore, on spotting that many of the parts were not evenly coloured I assumed it was a clever means to convey camouflage or damage. However on closer inspection I realised that the bricks were just badly made. Their discolourations were totally random and often streaked with plastic that had not been coloured at all. This is just sloppy and a clear result of using too little - expensive - dye batch in the injection hoppers. The supposedly stand-out feature of their 'authentic' minifigs are also not an unreserved success. Often the arms and legs are very hard to click together yet contrastingly simply to pop apart when you try to set them in a pose.Finally and perhaps most damming of all for a Lego-like construction toy, not all of the required parts were present. This is an ongoing and totally unacceptable problem with MegaBloks. I have in total five of their Halo kits, no less than three of them came with missing parts - including a supposedly hyper-rare 'Cortana' minifig which obviously removes any of her collectible value. Missing bricks are totally and utterly unacceptable in a construction toy and massively frustrating. Moreover this is not random. I checked out an online review of the same Pelican kit and the chap who posted it mentioned he also was missing EXACTLY the same bricks and stickers... Yes MegaBloks are cheaper than Lego but that is relative - the kit still cost over £60 and for that much money the very least you need from them is a complete inventory!!! You can order missing pieces online and I have done so, however so far from the five pieces I have requested I have received only one and this was ordered back at the very start of January.At the end of the day my MegaBloks experience has not been very positive. Nonetheless it must be said the finished models do have a strange power to grow on you and their level of detail is pleasingly high. The 'light and sound' features are also very amusing and I wish Lego would start releasing their own kits again that do the same. However I do not believe these positives outweigh the many problems. If you are a big Halo and MegaBloks fan then you may feel differently but I would not recommend these kits without heavy qualifications.

Great product full of lots of new innovations. Part of the new series, definitely recommended for an avid fan of the Halo series

The concept, price and the model is brilliant. However and I believe is a general problem with Mega Block. The pieces are really hard to put together, and they are extremely disorganised I know that I am spoil by the extreme efficient of Lego and these has been my second Mega Block that I bought for my 8 years old, but he became frustrated due to the difficulty to put together

A HUGE success, with my 11 yr old son - great value and kept him busy for over a week as he assembled a bit each day - but beware you will need a free tabletop to set all the pieces out on , this is a massive set...

not very happy tried to complain but got nowear item had a couple of broken pieces

Not a bad kit and looks pretty cool so don't regret buying it. Some issues though, including missing pieces (which internet suggests is not a rarity for megabloks), unclear instructions and the lights don't work on the included figure. Also over engineered in places (strength built by multiple layers of blocks rather than clever design) and very flimsy in others, lacking the elegance of a Lego build. 44CM long on completion, so relatively big.