Review: 75400 Plo Koon's Jedi Starfighter Microfighter

Really excited about this one! The new Plo looks awesome. This is the first time he's had leg printing, too.

I like the build. Not one of the series' best, but it's still good. I like that they included the lightsaber storage (too many Star Wars sets don't include accessory storage, which frustrates me), as well as R7-D4's head. I hope he shows up in another set next year or after.

Great review, Capn!

The updated head mold is amazing! The PDG looks really swell

As I said in the reveal article, I am so there for a vehicle that's never been a Microfighter before piloted by a character I don't have any of.

Great review! The new Plo Koon is fantastic, and it is wonderful how his reintroduction is in a smaller set. The designer did a great job making the starfighter in the small scale.

Plo Koon just looks absolutely incredible.

This is as good as Rex microfighter. A Republic ship in a cute shape and a long awaited updated minifigure. I'm in.

Thankfully, the microfighters seem to regularly show up at a discount. If so, I will pick up one or two if they dip below $10

These things next to the Super Hero mechs are an embarrassment for value, especially now that many of them are coming with two figures, like 76302 and 76307...

@Kalking said:
"I’m sorry but it really doesn’t matter how good the minifigure is - there is just no acceptable justification whatsoever for a modern set costing $15 for 89 pieces. It is incredible to me that the microfighters line started at $10 apiece and largely only ever went above that for $20 2-packs, and now a single one for $15 is just the expected new standard. There are *$5 polybags* that approach 89 pieces. I could have seen $12 for this to account for the new minifigure, but $15 puts it right into “I’ll see you in the clearance bin when you get down to $7-$8, and if you never do, I guess I just won’t buy you” territory."

I totally see your point regarding the price but getting a near-awesome minifigure in a set at this price - although relatively speaking very expensive - is better than the first rendition of this character for a decade being locked behind a multiple-hundred Euros price, surely...?

Will wait for a reduction in price in some form or another but cannot fault the trend of very desirable minifigures appearing in low-cost sets either.

This one isn't as obvious as like, the Clone Pilot or Wolverine, but this minifig is another example of LEGO's baffling recent preference for molding a leg in boot color and printing pants on just the front rather than molding the leg in pant color and printing the boot on front, when dual-molding and printing on the sides is out of budget or whatever.

I really do not understand it, this minifigure looks so good from the waist up, and the lower half would look nearly as good if they'd molded the legs in the dark brown of the tunic and just printed the boots (and little bit of tan pant legs) on the front.

As-is, because all the colors at play are shades of brown, it doesn't look too bad, but still, dual-molding wasn't necessary to make this minifig notably better.

Plo Koon looks great. I can’t wait to update mine. I hate rubber pieces

Now do Kit Fisto

@Freddy_Hodson said:
"Okay, seeing it directly from the front in good quality, I was completely wrong about the minifigure. Amazing. Presumably not to be used only once though? Does this mean a larger- (normal) scale version is on the way?"

They're going to reverse what they did with 75367 and 75391 and put the figure in a UCS set.

Seeing the old and new side by side really drives home just how much of an upgrade the new one is.

I'll definitely get this eventually, but I want to wait in the hopes that they'll re-use the updated Plo Koon in another set. Preferably one that's more interesting (the micro-fighters have never done much for me) and less over-priced. I can dream, right?

@Jeddostotle7 said:
"This one isn't as obvious as like, the Clone Pilot or Wolverine, but this minifig is another example of LEGO's baffling recent preference for molding a leg in boot color and printing pants on just the front rather than molding the leg in pant color and printing the boot on front, when dual-molding and printing on the sides is out of budget or whatever."

Wolverine makes complete sense, if you examine all the Wolverine minifigs. When 21317 Steamboat Willie came out, it raised some huge questions, because (at the time) Ideas was restricted from producing new molds, but both minifigs had new hats. Then this was immediately followed by the Disney Series 2 CMFs, which also included 71024 and 71024-2. This is when we found out from the Ideas team that the CMF line is now off-limits to other set designers. They can use the molds, in some cases, but they can't just outright copy an entire minifig for use in another theme (previously, whole minifigs from the single-digit series have appeared in other sets, from yellow-box LBR exclusives, to Advent Calendars). To get around that, the Ideas team added silver ink to their design, so as to not break with the B/W color scheme, but also as a nod to the "silver screen" that Mickey first appeared on.

So, the CMF team made 71039-12, but that happened to be the specific costume that was needed for 76281, and later for 76294, so how do they get around that rule? They make the legs look the same, but in a different way. Instead of dual-molding them, they simply print the yellow on blue legs.

For Plo Kloon, there's a less obvious issue, which is that they can't print right down to the toe. Either you have to print the thigh on the boot color, or you have to dual-mold the boot and thigh in their respective colors, but you can't simply print the boot onto the thigh color. With CMFs, they can get a lot closer to the toe, but there would be a massive gap between the rounded part of the thigh and the top of the toe if they tried to print his boots for a non-CMF release. Dual-molded legs eat up a bigger chunk of the budget than finding solid legs in the same color and adding print. In cases where they did end up using dual-molded legs, it might be worth digging through all the recent uses of dual-molded legs to see if they managed to borrow the unprinted color combination from another theme, or if they've even managed to dual-purpose that same mold within their own theme. After all, if you can make one set of dual-molded legs work for 3-4 other characters, suddenly everyone gets access to those parts cheaper than if they were all one-off uses.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Jeddostotle7 said:
"This one isn't as obvious as like, the Clone Pilot or Wolverine, but this minifig is another example of LEGO's baffling recent preference for molding a leg in boot color and printing pants on just the front rather than molding the leg in pant color and printing the boot on front, when dual-molding and printing on the sides is out of budget or whatever."

Wolverine makes complete sense, if you examine all the Wolverine minifigs. When 21317 Steamboat Willie came out, it raised some huge questions, because (at the time) Ideas was restricted from producing new molds, but both minifigs had new hats. Then this was immediately followed by the Disney Series 2 CMFs, which also included 71024 and 71024-2. This is when we found out from the Ideas team that the CMF line is now off-limits to other set designers. They can use the molds, in some cases, but they can't just outright copy an entire minifig for use in another theme (previously, whole minifigs from the single-digit series have appeared in other sets, from yellow-box LBR exclusives, to Advent Calendars). To get around that, the Ideas team added silver ink to their design, so as to not break with the B/W color scheme, but also as a nod to the "silver screen" that Mickey first appeared on.

So, the CMF team made 71039-12, but that happened to be the specific costume that was needed for 76281, and later for 76294, so how do they get around that rule? They make the legs look the same, but in a different way. Instead of dual-molding them, they simply print the yellow on blue legs.

For Plo Kloon, there's a less obvious issue, which is that they can't print right down to the toe. Either you have to print the thigh on the boot color, or you have to dual-mold the boot and thigh in their respective colors, but you can't simply print the boot onto the thigh color. With CMFs, they can get a lot closer to the toe, but there would be a massive gap between the rounded part of the thigh and the top of the toe if they tried to print his boots for a non-CMF release. Dual-molded legs eat up a bigger chunk of the budget than finding solid legs in the same color and adding print. In cases where they did end up using dual-molded legs, it might be worth digging through all the recent uses of dual-molded legs to see if they managed to borrow the unprinted color combination from another theme, or if they've even managed to dual-purpose that same mold within their own theme. After all, if you can make one set of dual-molded legs work for 3-4 other characters, suddenly everyone gets access to those parts cheaper than if they were all one-off uses."

Wolverine does make sense as to why they didn't do dual-molding, but I still think the solution they took is about the worst non-dual-molding option they could have chosen. (Also I feel like doing An Ideal Classic Wolverine in a CMF series was a pretty bad idea itself, if it was gonna preclude other sets being able to use The Ideal Design and force them to figure out workarounds like this, but whatever).

And don't get me wrong, when I say "print the boot on a pants-colored leg", I'm not imagining CMF-level print fidelity here. And even if they can't figure out a way to make a boot printed onto just the front of the leg look passable, I think even just not bothering to include the boots whatsoever and just leaving the lower half of the legs blank is still a substantially better solution than molding the leg in boot color and printing pants on. Multiple other characters in 76294 take that route, and they all look better for it than Wolverine does. That's what LEGO used to do most of the time even, and it usually looked fine enough at worst; this "mold the leg in the boot color" thing they've been doing repeatedly recently looks "fine enough" (like on Plo Koon) at absolute *best*, and more often than not tends to look like an outright eyesore.

@Jeddostotle7 said:
"Wolverine does make sense as to why they didn't do dual-molding, but I still think the solution they took is about the worst non-dual-molding option they could have chosen. (Also I feel like doing An Ideal Classic Wolverine in a CMF series was a pretty bad idea itself, if it was gonna preclude other sets being able to use The Ideal Design and force them to figure out workarounds like this, but whatever)."

Problem is, the CMF team is not beholden to any other design team. Once they decide to produce a set of IP-based CMFs, they have just as much right to any unproduced characters, and they have just as much desire to come up with designs that are going to be successful. It's just unfortunate that the Marvel team left that particular character design sitting around for _ELEVEN_YEARS_ without making a move, because Wolverine has always been one of the most popular characters (the Marvel team puts him in every retail X-Men set, and if he'd appeared anywhere in the What If? show, you know the CMF team would have put him in Marvel Series 1 as well), and the 1997 X-Men series has long stood as one of the best Marvel productions. If they wanted to make him better, they should have made him sooner.

"And don't get me wrong, when I say "print the boot on a pants-colored leg", I'm not imagining CMF-level print fidelity here."

Here's what they can print on the leg. They can print on the entire outer side. They can print on the front of the toe. And they can print on the curved face of the thigh. The front of the shin, the top of the toe, and the inner and back surfaces are all off-limits. There really is no way to do a good boot print that doesn't involve leaning on dual-molding. The next best option is to do exactly what they did here, and mold the leg in the boot color, while printing the pants on. It's not a great option, but it is the second best option, no matter how distant.

"And even if they can't figure out a way to make a boot printed onto just the front of the leg look passable, I think even just not bothering to include the boots whatsoever and just leaving the lower half of the legs blank is still a substantially better solution than molding the leg in boot color and printing pants on. Multiple other characters in 76294 take that route, and they all look better for it than Wolverine does."

Most of the other characters included in that set wear boots that aren't nearly as flamboyant as Wolverine's. And if you read the comments regularly, you know that one of the biggest gripes about licensed minifigs is plain legs. And it is frequently a legitimate gripe, as it leaves nearly half of the minifig body undecorated. Look at early Stormtroopers, with solid white legs, while the film characters wear armor that has intricate detail all over the place. Worse, one the standard cheats going back to the 80's is to just give them off-colored hips, like everyone is wearing belts that have an extra strap that passes between their legs. It does help hide the fact that there's nothing going on with the lower half of the body, but it doesn't change the fact that it looks terrible.

Anyways, there's a simple solution, albeit one that involves spending money. The CMF Wolverine isn't incredibly expensive...yet. It's always possible to just buy a couple of them and sub them in (or swap the legs) for the two related sets. Or, with the X-Jet, that's a set that most people swore off buying, due to the price, so right there that saves them from having to 'fix" anything.

I can 100% see these being the start of Jedi Starfighterer
microfighter trend: Kit Fisto, Saesee Tinn, etc. - all
the prominent Jedi. It’s a perfect vehicle for LEGO to release and sell sets with updated Jedi minifigures!

I’ve not been above paying an extra premium for minifigures in the past because I’ve not wanted the sets themselves (I’m looking at you, Zuckuss). This new Plo Koon minifigure is an excellent upgrade to the original (despite not being perfect), and the threshold to own is just low enough that I’ll pay a premium for it.

The set is nifty enough, but not really display worthy. Great way for youngsters to get another starfighter in their collection though.