Review: 75446 Grogu (Mandalorian Apprentice)
Posted by CapnRex101,
Grogu was introduced in 2019 and the character became an instant merchandising phenomenon, although it took another year for his initial LEGO appearances. Numerous versions of Grogu have been developed subsequently and 75446 Grogu (Mandalorian Apprentice) is the latest.
Personally, I am not convinced this was required, following so soon after 75403 Grogu with Hover Pram, but at least the figure includes some unique features, such as the beskar rondel. There are significant problems though, especially where articulation is concerned.
Summary
75446 Grogu (Mandalorian Apprentice), 1,200 pieces.
£119.99 / $129.99 / €129.99 | 10.0p, 10.8c, 10.8c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
Grogu looks reasonable, but really suffers from underwhelming articulation
- Appealing texture on the robe
- Detailed wrinkles on the head
- Characterful eyes
- Very poor head articulation
- Beskar chest armour is too small
- No real improvement on the prior model
- Overpriced
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
Minifigure
As normal for these large-scale characters, a minifigure-scale rendition is included too. Grogu has received an update for The Mandalorian and Grogu, featuring a new body element, which looks much better than the standard baby body used previously and includes a printed beskar rondel, emblazoned with a mudhorn emblem.
The dual-moulded hands look superb and I like the sculpting of the collar as well. Similarly, the head is quite detailed, featuring wrinkles on top and with large eyes and ears to match Grogu's appearance onscreen.
The Completed Model
A plaque is provided, with room for the Grogu figure to stand on a 2x2 jumper plate. There have already been three plaques like this one released, in 75318 The Child, 75403 Grogu with Hover Pram and now here, displaying different information about the character each time. I appreciate the consistent style of these plaques and this example is printed.
Grogu himself looks good. The figure measures 20cm in height, which is approximately half the size of the character onscreen, but this is an ideal scale on display. I wonder about the potential of a life-size model, although given this model contains 1200 pieces and costs £119.99, $129.99 or €129.99, a life-size Grogu would surely have over 3000 pieces and be priced accordingly.
Articulation is quite limited, as the head only moves a short distance to the left or right and can be raised on a click hinge, though it cannot tilt sideways at all. Furthermore, you can attach the arms in multiple orientations, but the bag obstructs the right arm hanging down and I think each arm looks a bit strange when reaching up, as though the shoulder joint is too low. There are no issues with the moveable ears or hands and fingers, however.
Gathering almost every Grogu released to date together, having quite so many in the space of six years does feel excessive! On the other hand, most have their own place in the series, with the two BrickHeadz figures separated by a few years and the mid-size version including a pram in 75403 Grogu with Hover Pram.
75446 Grogu (Mandalorian Apprentice) feels a little less distinctive. 75318 The Child retired at the end of 2023, so perhaps we were due for another model of Grogu at this scale, though the pair are quite similar and I am not convinced there has been much improvement. The shape of the robe is perhaps more realistic and the arms were fixed on the original figure, but as I have mentioned, the posing options are underwhelming anyway.
Most importantly, the head on the new model really looks no better than the version released in 2020, in my opinion. The bigger eyes are effective and I like the printed reflections, which make Grogu look more alive, but the head as a whole seems blocky. The jawline in particular looks far too sharp.
The ears have been improved though. They are still able to move up and down, but the edges are now smoother and the tan pieces inside look great. Also, the mouth opens to reveal a pink plate, which is a fun detail. Unfortunately, the inability to tilt the head means a lot of personality has been lost, especially with such restricted head rotation.
Grogu's head only rotates about 20 degrees to either side because it is connected to a Technic beam through the core of the body. I suppose this is a reasonable feature, but it was absolutely not worthwhile with such restricted movement. The figure cannot even look in the direction of his Mandalorian training gauntlet when the right arm is raised.
In addition to his training gauntlet, Grogu wears a satchel and a beskar rondel in the new movie. These are nice additions to distinguish this model of Grogu from its predecessors and I like how the strap is assembled in segments linked via clips and ball joints. Making sure it hangs naturally over the shoulder is tricky, but it can be done.
A pearl dark grey 8x8 dish piece forms the beskar rondel, decorated with the mudhorn symbol shared by Grogu and Din Djarin. The design looks excellent, though I dislike the 2x2 round tile placed in the middle and this whole piece of armour is much too small. It should be bigger than Grogu's head and a 10x10 dish would have looked much better.
Curved slopes form Grogu's bag and I like the contrast between the smooth pieces on the bag and strap and the exposed studs on the robe. Moreover, there is room to store a blue macaron inside the bag and Grogu holds another in his hand.
Each hand features three poseable digits, with anti-studs on the palm to hold accessories. The tan fingernails are a lovely detail and I like the Mandalorian training gauntlet too, adding a dash of dark orange to the model. Technically, there should be three barrels on the gauntlet, although two look fine.
You can display the figure without the armour and satchel, revealing all the details on the robe. The collar and cuffs are rougher than the rest of the fabric onscreen, which this figure seeks to recreate by concentrating studs in those areas. 75318 The Child did the opposite and while this design is more accurate, there are plenty of visible studs on the areas supposed to be smooth.
Grogu memorably ate several macarons in The Mandalorian's second season and these have become forever associated with the character, for some reason. Medium azure 1x1 round tiles representing these macarons are therefore stacked in a trans-clear 1x2x5 brick inside the body. This kind of Easter egg does nothing for me.
However, I do like the plates forming Grogu's feet on the base of this model, including tan 1x1 round tiles for his toes. This is a definite improvement on the figure released in 2020, although you are rarely going to see the feet on display.
Overall
75318 The Child was an impressive first attempt at recreating Grogu, developed in haste once the character was revealed in season one. I hoped that 75446 Grogu (Mandalorian Apprentice) would make some major improvements and there are certain features I prefer on this occasion, particularly the eyes and ears.
Unfortunately, the robe is only marginally better, if at all, while the head shape and sleeves are perhaps worse than they were on the original model. Furthermore, the limited head articulation really detracts from this figure's personality and even the beskar armour is not executed as well as I had expected. For its price of £119.99, $129.99 or €129.99, this is simply not a worthwhile purchase, in my opinion.
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29 comments on this article
Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days...
Punt Yoda.
75403 is currently on sale for 69.99 on Amazon . . . that is a major problem for this set.
I much prefer the nose placement on the previous models. Higher, between the eyes greatly improves the “cute” factor that I am just not seeing in this version.
@Murdoch17 said:
"Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days..."
Way too much baby yoda in our society and yes especially in Lego Star Wars. Probably has to do with the fact that the Mandalorian has really been the only successful thing Disney has done since acquiring Star Wars
@shaase said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
"Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days..."
Way too much baby yoda in our society and yes especially in Lego Star Wars. Probably has to do with the fact that the Mandalorian has really been the only successful thing Disney has done since acquiring Star Wars"
Rogue One / Andor were very successful, but yes I agree this overshadows those two.
@Murdoch17 said:
" @shaase said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
"Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days..."
Way too much baby yoda in our society and yes especially in Lego Star Wars. Probably has to do with the fact that the Mandalorian has really been the only successful thing Disney has done since acquiring Star Wars"
Rogue One / Andor were very successful, but yes I agree this overshadows those two."
Rogue One had a more predictable ending than Ep3.
I care little for The Mandalorian, for I have yet to see it on account of Disney making it quite difficult outside of streaming, but the little 4+ 75443 Grogu’s Homestead (currently lacking the Grogu tag for some reason) kit was so cute (and so discounted from an already reasonable price) I couldn’t resist. I suppose that version is my favourite of the buildable Grogus.
If I was inclined towards getting a bigger one, 75403 with the pram feels the best to me in terms of capturing the cutesy roundness, and, well, you get the pram. Neither of the two biggest ones work for me. They’re too rough and square looking - and shouldn’t the increased scale allow for subtler shaping?
The new minifig, however, looks great. So there’s that.
TY for gathering the entire family
@PurpleDave said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
" @shaase said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
"Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days..."
Way too much baby yoda in our society and yes especially in Lego Star Wars. Probably has to do with the fact that the Mandalorian has really been the only successful thing Disney has done since acquiring Star Wars"
Rogue One / Andor were very successful, but yes I agree this overshadows those two."
Rogue One had a more predictable ending than Ep3."
Well of course it did. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey to that point. The whole RO film along with the Andor show is about how the Rebels got the Death Star plans and the heavy sacrifices made to get said plans.
@Murdoch17 said:
"Well of course it did. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey to that point. The whole RO film along with the Andor show is about how the Rebels got the Death Star plans and the heavy sacrifices made to get said plans."
I'm not talking about getting the plans. I'm talking about how, from the moment the droid got shot, the only thing that I didn't call before it actually happened was the shuttle pilot getting snuffed, and that was only because I forgot he was even in the movie! At least if my first viewing of the films was Ep1-3, R1, Ep4-6, I wouldn't have known how Ep3 was going to end. I still would have called every single character death in R1. Except that stupid shuttle pilot.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
" @shaase said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
"Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days..."
Way too much baby yoda in our society and yes especially in Lego Star Wars. Probably has to do with the fact that the Mandalorian has really been the only successful thing Disney has done since acquiring Star Wars"
Rogue One / Andor were very successful, but yes I agree this overshadows those two."
Rogue One had a more predictable ending than Ep3."
Of course it did, but that is entirely irrelevant to how successful it was.
Also, the ending of R1 wasn't everyone dying, it was getting the plans onto the Tantive IV and escaping Vader (temporarily). But still, good on you for calling the ending with only half an hour left in the movie. I too can call the endings of movies right at the end; actually, I can call the endings of 99% of movies, if not from the trailer or title, then from the first 10 minutes: the good guy always wins. (That was why Avengers: Infinity War was so refreshing: for once, the good guys didn't win. A cynical person could've seen that coming, but you still dreaded it actually happening.)
Also, Ep3's ending is obvious even to the blind viewer, through all the unsubtle hints from Palpatine and the title "Revenge of the Sith." If you didn't know who was or wasn't in Ep4, there'd be no reason to suspect everyone in R1 would bite it. At best you could guess "oh, it's one of those war movies." But even then, someone usually survives.
---------
Anyways, as for this set, my dad bought 75318 for our family back in 2020, and we still haven't built it. I'll just stick with that set, even though this new one does look better in places.
But for the Beskar breast plate and his pouch, the previous version was better IMO, more organic, particularly the face. It seems like Grogu is a gold mine that Disney and Lego intend to dig to the bottom.
@Murdoch17 said:
"Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days..."
So tired of this little gremlin, it seems all Disney can do these days is make a cute baby mascot of something and sell as much merchandise as humanly possible.
Only exception I can think of is baby Rocket Racoon, who actually had (brace yourselves) a STORY.
@BLProductions said:
"Of course it did, but that is entirely irrelevant to how successful it was."
I've also seen a compelling argument that The Forced Remake was a better film because at least Rey drove her plot forward, while Jyn was just carried along by her plot.
"Also, the ending of R1 wasn't everyone dying, it was getting the plans onto the Tantive IV and escaping Vader (temporarily). But still, good on you for calling the ending with only half an hour left in the movie. I too can call the endings of movies right at the end; actually, I can call the endings of 99% of movies, if not from the trailer or title, then from the first 10 minutes: the good guy always wins."
Them getting the plans to the Rebel Alliance was a foregone conclusion from the day they made it clear that the Death Star plans were involved in a film that was billed as a prequel to Ep4.
"(That was why Avengers: Infinity War was so refreshing: for once, the good guys didn't win. A cynical person could've seen that coming, but you still dreaded it actually happening.)"
Anyone who heard five years prior that they were doing a two-parter would have been able to tell you they weren't going to be victorious at the midpoint of the story.
"Also, Ep3's ending is obvious even to the blind viewer, through all the unsubtle hints from Palpatine and the title "Revenge of the Sith.""
I mean, you could guess that Anakin was going to fall to the Dark Side, but without prior knowledge of Ep4, you wouldn't expect him to end up so badly wounded. You might have even expected him to kill Obi-Wan. Or if you thought this was the conclusion to the saga, you might have even expected him to come to his senses like Luke in Ep6, and surrender.
"If you didn't know who was or wasn't in Ep4, there'd be no reason to suspect everyone in R1 would bite it. At best you could guess "oh, it's one of those war movies." But even then, someone usually survives."
Exactly my point. They were merely side characters to the 6-film saga. Whether any of them lived or died is immaterial to the start of Ep4, so the fact that every single death was so utterly predictable was just pathetic. Compare it to the MCU, where they were clearly building up to Hawkeye's death, only to change it up at the last second and have someone else die instead. Heck, even having known how Ep4 plays out, there's no reason to have suspected that every main character in R1 bites it, which just makes it that much worse that it was so easy to tell that's where they were heading from the moment the _first_main_character_died_. Even the one guy fake-dying, coming back to save the day, and dying for real was obvious. The intention was to do something nobody would see coming, and it was done in such a hamfisted way that it was more obvious than Disney princesses marrying the prince.
I had a similar problem with the latest Terminator film. There were two moments when characters made the same complaint, which immediately tipped me off to which character would die, and which would become the next John Connor. But at least the way the ending played out offered a few surprises for a first-time viewer.
@GBP_Chris said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
"Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days..."
So tired of this little gremlin, it seems all Disney can do these days is make a cute baby mascot of something and sell as much merchandise as humanly possible.
Only exception I can think of is baby Rocket Racoon, who actually had (brace yourselves) a STORY."
Oh, definitely. One of my coworkers said he had to go home and hug his cat after watching GotG3. Plus, baby Rocket's appearance was a little scraggly, where Punt Yoda is kawaii, even chibi in style.
It is still possible to find the original Grogu on Amazon for MSRP, if not less. That makes this set a tough sell to parents.
Nope, not for me. Looks literally like a pile of plastic bricks.
Is the face really that flat and square? Looks like he did a face plank from a speeder bike. 75318 looked way better, the white spots on the eyes don't work at all here and that DBG round tile a PDG dish is just dumb cost cutting. Only the sack is more detailed now, but at a whooping 44% price increase?! Releasing a dozen different versions of this character while other beloved Star Wars characters never got the chance, really tells you where TLG's priority lies and how Disney is trying to milk the fans dry. I get it, cuteness sells, but how many more mediocre Grogu merchandise do we need?
LEGO really milking the Grogu cow
Pity he can’t eat the Nevarro Nummies.
@PurpleDave said:
[[ @Murdoch17 said:
[[Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days...]]
So tired of this little gremlin, it seems all Disney can do these days is make a cute baby mascot of something and sell as much merchandise as humanly possible.
Only exception I can think of is baby Rocket Racoon, who actually had (brace yourselves) a STORY.]]
Oh, definitely. One of my coworkers said he had to go home and hug his cat after watching GotG3. Plus, baby Rocket's appearance was a little scraggly, where Punt Yoda is kawaii, even chibi in style.]]
There's no way I could substantiate this but I wonder if a large part of GOTG3's success was the shock of Rocket's flashbacks. Yes, the writing is excellent in and of itself, but no one expects a cute Disney merch animal to have a rich story, or to make you feel anything other than "awwwww I wanna buy that!" When I hear people praise GOTG3, it's usually for those flashbacks, and it's usually for the range of emotions that follow from Rocket's story and not just Rocket himself.
Can't say the same for Grogu, won't even try.
@GBP_Chris said:
"There's no way I could substantiate this but I wonder if a large part of GOTG3's success was the shock of Rocket's flashbacks. Yes, the writing is excellent in and of itself, but no one expects a cute Disney merch animal to have a rich story, or to make you feel anything other than "awwwww I wanna buy that!" When I hear people praise GOTG3, it's usually for those flashbacks, and it's usually for the range of emotions that follow from Rocket's story and not just Rocket himself."
Rocket and Groot were definitely the two breakout characters of the first film. While nuGroot drew a lot of attention with the second film, the third was definitely marketed as a conclusion to Rocket's story. The flashbacks may have been hard for some people to watch, but I know a lot of people complained about not liking other parts of the film. I don't recall a single person complaining about Rocket's flashback scenes for any reason other than the content making them uncomfortable scenes to watch.
Rocket's also close to the line, but on the wrong side to be a cute Disney animal. He garners sympathy because he's so obviously been mistreated in life, but you really need to go to animated versions to get any degree of legitimate cuteness. "Live-action" Rocket is kinda like a cartoon opossum, with just enough hint of monster in the depiction that your grandmother would probably find him off-putting on appearance alone (never mind his language), but younger audiences will be drawn to him.
I get there’s a movie coming out but I really don’t understand the need for a third Grogu at this point. Especially when this one isn’t a massive improvement or at least much larger or something. Like if you are gonna do it, make a UCS version or something. Just a weird decision but what do I know maybe they are still selling.
So far I haven’t really seen much this year from Lego that speaks a lot of excitement for me personally, but that’s ok it gave me a chance to catchup from last years lineup.
There you have it again! i cant help but think you dumb license lovers! Go and buy it! you have missed out on ghe last grogu!? Get this one!!! Who knows when lego does the next, maybe in a year or two!? You shouldnt wait! Go buy it day one like all your licensed sets which are the most important!
Cheers, hate star wars! and all other dumbass licenses!
@Murdoch17 said:
"Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days..."
Actually I am feeling Star Wars fatigue. Period.
And kind of LEGO fatigue too. It's not quite the beginning of a second dark ages, but it's close.
But then come sets like 77256, or 42681, and suddenly I can't resist. Especially when these sets then are available at Amazon for between 30 and 40 percent off...
@ohrmazd said:
"I much prefer the nose placement on the previous models. Higher, between the eyes greatly improves the “cute” factor that I am just not seeing in this version."
Do you think this is an attempt to age up his appearance a little bit? Even with his enormous lifespan, he seems a little old to be presenting like a toddler in his 50s. He should be more like a preschooler at this point.
The macarons Easter egg may do nothing for the Cap'n, but I love it.
@Hiratha said:"75443 Grogu’s Homestead (currently lacking the Grogu tag for some reason)"
The "Grogu" tag is for sets with a Grogu minifigure. What you're looking for is "Brick-Built Grogu:" https://brickset.com/sets/tag-Brick-Built-Grogu
@Murdoch17 said:
"Anybody else feeling Baby yoda / Grogu fatigue? He seems to everywhere in Star Wars sets these days..."
Not only Lego, but overall merchandise. Besides high priced collectors items, it’s the one thing that works right now for Disney. They will milk that cow as long as possible.
This stinks.