Random set of the day: Fight on the Flying Wing
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 7683 Fight on the Flying Wing, released during 2009. It's one of 7 Indiana Jones sets produced that year. It contains 376 pieces and 4 minifigs, and its retail price was US$49.99/£41.09.
It's owned by 3,385 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
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60 comments on this article
Missed out on these when they came out and have seen surprisingly few in used bulk. Hope they come out with ot Indiana Jones sets when the new movie comes out.
I don't remember quite so much green on this in the movie. I remember a couple of big red patches and some geometric symbols though. I wonder why LEGO didn't do that? ;)
They should make more sets and movies in the future. I’d rather not spend around double the amount for the older sets, so it’ll be great if they would make more. (Same with The hobbit/Lord of the Rings.)
I recently finished Bricklinking the plane (not the truck or minifigs), including the dark Bley wing piece which was exclusive to this set!
A very cool looking plane, and a rare military set from LEGO!
I had this set as a kid. Oddly enough I found the little fuel truck way more fun than the plane. Tanker go spinny!!!
My brother on the other hand hated it. Growing up Indiana Jones was one of his favorite characters. This set came out when he was like six and seeing Indy being punched on the box art freaked him out and made him mad.
LOL Huwbot has been monitoring the forum, we were only discussing this recently!
Here's hoping for more Indy sets! As for this one, I was never really interested in it because the plane is fictional and doesn't really resemble anything useful, plus I've always found that large wing piece to be too big.
The tanker truck is nice but the front of it is so boring and lame, it feels like a set from classic town (this is just the front grille section and headlights part), the rest of the truck is good.
Seeing this just makes me sad that theme "coconut" probably isn't going to be Indiana Jones :(
Well, one can hope some stuff will come out when the next movie relseases... if it isn't delayed again.
Propellers are too small.
They need to rereleased these sets. Updated of course like the Star Wars sets they did.
@lemish34:
The Flying Wing gets a pass on the fact that it’s mostly based off designs that never made it past the paper drawings stage. The Last Crusade tank was a dressed up British design, but was never actually produced as a set. The most questionable items to appear in plastic are the Last Crusade fighter plane (based on a real German fighter), and the amphibious “duck” from Crystal Skull (based on a different real Russian amphibious vehicle). The utility trucks, the Last Crusade motorcycle, and various Jeep-type vehicles might be less problematic, depending on who has used them outside of the military, and how accurately they were modeled.
I was just a Disney's Hollywood Studios in Orlando last week and saw the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, in which they reenact this scene. The plane they use doesn't look as nice as the one from the film, but it was still fun to watch. It made me think of this set.
@Brent007 said:
"They need to rereleased these sets. Updated of course like the Star Wars sets they did.
"
That’s what I was thinking! These were great sets, the thing I liked the most about them is the military builds and figures.
@MCLegoboy said:
"I don't remember quite so much green on this in the movie. I remember a couple of big red patches and some geometric symbols though. I wonder why LEGO didn't do that? ;)"
If you look at the preliminary images for this set, you may see something more familiar.
Wild that the swastikas made it to the “conceptualization” phase of this set.
That’s real, everyone. Look at the prelims for this set.
@Bricky_Dee_Williams said:
" @MCLegoboy said:
"I don't remember quite so much green on this in the movie. I remember a couple of big red patches and some geometric symbols though. I wonder why LEGO didn't do that? ;)"
If you look at the preliminary images for this set, you may see something more familiar.
Wild that the swastikas made it to the “conceptualization” phase of this set.
That’s real, everyone. Look at the prelims for this set."
The prelims I’ve seen show an earlier draft of the plane, but still without the you-know-whats on the actual LEGO model; they just have the build in front of a film still, so that we see those markings on the “real” plane. I’m open to correction, but as far as I’m aware they never put those decorations (at least not accurate ones) on the LEGO recreation at any stage of its development (and I certainly don’t think they’d ever have *considered* releasing a final set to store shelves that had them).
I want LEGO to redo this set she make it more movie accurate. I didn’t get this set at the time because of his weird it looked.
Ah, the memories. My first Lego set. Too bad I lost every single piece except a couple of figs and the huge wings a month after I got it.
LEGO: yeah we don’t do military sets.
Me: *ahem*
Not really sure how the Indiana Jones sets were able to get around that grey area. But then again, we didn’t get a set based on the Tank Chase in the Last Crusade.
@rab1234 said:
"Missed out on these when they came out and have seen surprisingly few in used bulk. Hope they come out with ot Indiana Jones sets when the new movie comes out. "
I've been in and out of the bulk scene for five years, just a few months ago was the first lot that included the printed cockpit element from this set. The Jungle cutter has been more abundant, probably three occurrences in various stages of completion out of ~40 lots
This is a great looking set--I'd even buy it today. A bit surprised it was ever made, though--the big guy meets his end rather gruesomely and I'd hate to imagine my children re-enacting that particular scene...
I loved the design of the plane, very unique. Great set, maybe the best Indy set.
Unpopular opinion, but am I the only one here who would rather have Adventurers return instead of Indiana Jones?
Loved this set. Had in on display for years. Taken it down, needs a intense dusting LOL.
Great scene from Raiders and also great to have an official Lego military concept WWII vehicle.
I'm in the camp of doing BOTH. Have some scenes from the new movie as well as the ones that they didn't make for the original 3 Indy movies...especially the tank battle and a whole set at Petra, with all the traps leading to Indy getting the cup.
Then do an all new Adventurers line. Push it like maybe a diesel punk line (I know they did a NinjaGo one) but more in the late 1800's/early 1900's settings.
Before I clicked to see the comments, I bet myself that it would be less than 5 before someone said the word "military". I was right.
I remember the box of this set had the Nazi flag logo in the background
I don’t know why I was surprised by how wide this set really was when I got it, it is a flying wing.
Though in my sorting, this bulks up Sam Sinister’s armada as he battles Johnny Thunder, as do most Indiana Jones bad guy vehicles
unpopular opinion, I am happy we are getting avatar over Indiana jones for now, indy will return with the new movie but im excited to see what lego has for pandora. I know its an obscure movie that no one ever remembers but I cant wait to see it.
Nothing like a good old, modern military aircraft, something that LEGO is apparently firmly against ;)
Cool aircraft, something LEGO could do more often (and I don't mean generic planes, instead unique looking aircrafts and I wouldn't complain if they could transform into a robot :D )
I remember passing on this as not great value compared to the similarly priced 7628 : Peril in Peru plane with an extra 300 pieces. There was also the far more fun Temple of Doom mine 7199 to save up for instead, which probably makes it fairly rare if everyone else did the same.
Yay, a nice Random Set of the Day I actually recognise :)
@ambr:
The Flying Wing is one of the few iconic vehicles from the original IJ trilogy, and they skipped the tank. I believe Peril in Peru was also a shared exclusive, so availability would have limited how many people could even buy it.
Brickset shows 3126 owners of 7628, while this set has 3385. 7199 is quite a bit lower with 2877. Predictably, 7620 (cheapest set in the first wave) has the highest ownership with 10683. This only represents a fraction of how many copies of these sets actually sold, but might be indicative of overall popularity.
Honestly would be more interesting to me if the wings were plate built , even if studded/tiled.
Right now it's mainly a 4547601: PLATE 54X20X2/3 with giant stickers.
But this is from 2009, and a lot of wedge/triangle plates/tiles were introduced in recent years , so they did not exist back then, also the giant wing piece already existed from City.
Ah yes, the notzis. Indy's main enemy, as everyone knows.
This set always stuck out to me as the least fun one of the theme. It just looks way too big to be practical. As mentioned above: why not just save up and buy something better, or go for something smaller but equally fun?
It doesn't help that the muscled torso appeared later in 2010 in the PoP line
@RaiderOfTheLostBrick said:
"LEGO: yeah we don’t do military sets.
Me: *ahem*
Not really sure how the Indiana Jones sets were able to get around that grey area. But then again, we didn’t get a set based on the Tank Chase in the Last Crusade."
1. Old.
2. Clearly fictionalised setting.
3. Wacky fantasy plane, not a real aircraft.
What is shirtless Walter White doing there?
Not very accurate to the on-screen plane, but flying wings are cool and I'm a huge aviation buff,so I still got it. I remember thinking about trying to use that canopy to make a dieselpunk Jedi Interceptor.
@ra226 said:
"This is a great looking set--I'd even buy it today. A bit surprised it was ever made, though--the big guy meets his end rather gruesomely and I'd hate to imagine my children re-enacting that particular scene..."
At 6 and 7 all the guys on my street thought that was a cool scene when the movie came out; the shooting of the swordsman too.
Don't know if we did an equivalent remake with Star Wars of space LEGO though.
I paid just a bit more than $49 when I got this on ebay two years ago ;-)
Wouldn't mind if they released new Indy sets.
I really want this one, it'll go great with my race for the stolen treasure
Really neat model of that iconic flying wing. The glass nose and rear turret look great and I like that they were able to incorporate the drooped wingtips. My only gripe is that they didn’t replicate the gull wing design of the connection between the outer wings and the center wing/lifting body - which is in large part what makes this aircraft stand out - and the dihedral of the outer wings.
https://i.redd.it/sxughi1054821.jpg
@Goujon said:
"unpopular opinion, I am happy we are getting avatar over Indiana jones for now, indy will return with the new movie but im excited to see what lego has for pandora. I know its an obscure movie that no one ever remembers but I cant wait to see it. "
Avatar isn’t an obscure movie, it had the best box office performance out of any film whatsoever. No one remembers it? Okay, that’s true.
@Retroblox77 said:
"I remember the box of this set had the Nazi flag logo in the background
"
I think you’re thinking of the early images (discussed in some of the previous posts) that had a preliminary build of this model with images from the movie, showing the markings on the “real” plane built for the film. I am confident no commercial release of this set anywhere had swastikas anywhere on it, whether in the photos of the set or in any of the other box art. LEGO would never intentionally put swastikas on their toys, and they’re entirely right not to do so.
@TeriXeri said:
"Honestly would be more interesting to me if the wings were plate built , even if studded/tiled.
Right now it's mainly a 4547601: PLATE 54X20X2/3 with giant stickers.
But this is from 2009, and a lot of wedge/triangle plates/tiles were introduced in recent years , so they did not exist back then, also the giant wing piece already existed from City.
"
Yep. Still, it was remarkable that they were doing this theme at all, and even more so that it went as far as four waves of sets. I sometimes get the impression they didn’t initially anticipate the line doing as well as it did, and that they budgeted only so much for its development. That might have affected what they put into this particular set.
Then again, they did a frankly much nicer interpretation of the Panagra DC-3 for 7628 Peril in Peru than they did of the Flying Wing for this set, when that other plane is pretty much blink-and-you-miss-it in the film and this one is central to one of cinema’s most iconic action setpieces. Funny how these things work out sometimes.
Interestingly, each of the four waves of Indiana Jones sets except the first had a $50 plane set (if we consider 7628 as part of the larger wave of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sets that made up the second wave in 2008, though I know it came out slightly later than the others as a shared vendor exclusive), and there was one such set for each movie except Temple of Doom. If they’d had, say, a $49.99 Lao Che Air Frieght Escape (or some such thing) in the first wave, it would have made a pattern that perfectly characterized the entire 2008-2009 line.
(Another almost-perfect pattern is the inclusion of large “temple” sets as the centerpieces of each wave except the one this set is from, and from each film except Last Crusade. If the Winter 2009 refresh wave that had this set also included a Grail Temple, it would have made another perfect pattern across the entire line).
@MutoidMan:
I know someone from Brickworld Chicago who has built a really detailed MOC that has a thick wing with the dip in the wing near the cockpit, but I don’t think it would have been approved as a set. Indiana Jones doesn’t have a UCS line, and there’s no way that thing would Retail for less than $100 just by itself. I could see it needing a $200 price tag, and that probably would have made it the most expensive MSRP in the entire theme.
@Trigger_:
Uncanny Vallatar? I’d largely managed to forget that it exists, until you guys started talking about it...
The concept work for this set looked AMAZING. The final set, not as good. I still picked it up.
@PurpleDave said:
" @MutoidMan:
I know someone from Brickworld Chicago who has built a really detailed MOC that has a thick wing with the dip in the wing near the cockpit, but I don’t think it would have been approved as a set. Indiana Jones doesn’t have a UCS line, and there’s no way that thing would Retail for less than $100 just by itself. I could see it needing a $200 price tag, and that probably would have made it the most expensive MSRP in the entire theme."
Yeah, the most expensive set in the line was 7199 The Temple of Doom, with a US MSRP of $89.99.
Granted, that was 2009, so if they released the exact same thing today it’d cost a bit more if for no other reason than inflation, but it’d still be nowhere near $200. In 2009, of course, they were still a little way from doing large, expensive, D2C-type sets for licensed themes other than Star Wars - though it wouldn’t be *too* much longer, what with fantastic versions of Diagon Alley, the Tower of Orthanc, etc. coming not too long after.
Now that they’re a bit more comfortable with such things these days (even to the point of doing $200-ish sets for licenses they’ve never before done anything with at all, like Stranger Things), I think it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility there could be at least one really big Indy-related set in our future, if they do indeed return to the theme in conjunction with next year’s new movie. I’m hopeful for it (I’ve actually long been mulling over an Indy-related Ideas submission that I think could make a great set, if they wanted to do it, though I’m not super-optimistic about that happening), but I guess we’ll see.
@Trigger_ said:
" @Goujon said:
"unpopular opinion, I am happy we are getting avatar over Indiana jones for now, indy will return with the new movie but im excited to see what lego has for pandora. I know its an obscure movie that no one ever remembers but I cant wait to see it. "
Avatar isn’t an obscure movie, it had the best box office performance out of any film whatsoever. No one remembers it? Okay, that’s true."
To be fair, that’s Endgame now.
@Cooliocdawg said:
" @Trigger_ said:
" @Goujon said:
"unpopular opinion, I am happy we are getting avatar over Indiana jones for now, indy will return with the new movie but im excited to see what lego has for pandora. I know its an obscure movie that no one ever remembers but I cant wait to see it. "
Avatar isn’t an obscure movie, it had the best box office performance out of any film whatsoever. No one remembers it? Okay, that’s true."
To be fair, that’s Endgame now."
You’d be wrong. Avatar reclaimed top spot after a rerelease in China in 2021.
I always thought this sounded like lyrics in a bad song.
"Fite on da flyin' whanng! YEEAAHHH!"
First time posting to BrickLink I think, but I had to say:
I love this set! It took me about three years to collect all the Indi sets, this was the last one I got, and it turned out to be my favourite. I thought the bright green coloured parts looked a bit out of place, so replaced them with dark green and DBG (whichever I had available) and I think it improved it greatly.
If anyone is frustrated that the tank on the truck rotates freely, there's an easy fix. Just add a 2x2 DBG plate to the bottom of the cylinder/"Wall element", connect it with just two studs on the edge that's closest to the ground so that it sticks out. There's a small space below the cylinder at the back of the truck where the plate will fit in vertically and prevent the cylinder from rotating.
@RaiderOfTheLostBrick said:
" @Cooliocdawg said:
" @Trigger_ said:
" @Goujon said:
"unpopular opinion, I am happy we are getting avatar over Indiana jones for now, indy will return with the new movie but im excited to see what lego has for pandora. I know its an obscure movie that no one ever remembers but I cant wait to see it. "
Avatar isn’t an obscure movie, it had the best box office performance out of any film whatsoever. No one remembers it? Okay, that’s true."
To be fair, that’s Endgame now."
You’d be wrong. Avatar reclaimed top spot after a rerelease in China in 2021."
Oh wow! I did not know that. Thanks for enlightening me!
@Blondie_Wan:
*cough 7784 cough*
https://www.flickr.com/photos/brian_williams/2659579607/in/photostream
I tracked down the MOC I mentioned. I’ll note that Brian strives for film-accurate designs, so for his version the tails are decorated in a way that would never fly in an official set. Scroll through this feed, and he’s got the Last Crusade tank, too. The first time I saw this, it was part of a large (~50 sqft?) display of the entire Indiana Jones film/TV chronology, excluding the episode where he met Dracula. I can’t remember if he won, but I’m pretty sure he at least got nominated for Best Individual Layout.
Anyways, looking at it again, $150-170 is probably more realistic. I remembered it being a bit larger, but it still probably has a deceptively high piece count, like a lot of current 18+ sets.
I consider myself really lucky to have got this set new when it came out despite the fact I was in a Dark Age at the time. Dark Age III, actually, the final chapter.
Didn’t keep the box…didn’t store such things! Not back then. Dude, it was 2009. Feels like a lifetime ago for me. Personals.
The set is really cool for when it came out, though it’s weird when I try to review this from the perspective of a longtime Indiana Jones fan and a LEGO fan (with three, um, break-ups)…it’s the best set from the four year run and it’s the most disappointing set of the four year run. Lotta reasons why, but not writing a review at the moment. That’s just the takeaway.
I’ll always love it to death. Beautiful mess.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Blondie_Wan:
*cough 7784 cough*
https://www.flickr.com/photos/brian_williams/2659579607/in/photostream
I tracked down the MOC I mentioned. I’ll note that Brian strives for film-accurate designs, so for his version the tails are decorated in a way that would never fly in an official set. Scroll through this feed, and he’s got the Last Crusade tank, too. The first time I saw this, it was part of a large (~50 sqft?) display of the entire Indiana Jones film/TV chronology, excluding the episode where he met Dracula. I can’t remember if he won, but I’m pretty sure he at least got nominated for Best Individual Layout.
Anyways, looking at it again, $150-170 is probably more realistic. I remembered it being a bit larger, but it still probably has a deceptively high piece count, like a lot of current 18+ sets."
I think I’ve actually seen some of his creations before! I appreciated that someone else was going beyond the movies to do MOCs from the show, something that’s been on my own agenda for a long time. My wildest pipe-dream fantasy for this license / theme is that TLG would not only resurrect the line and do more sets, but include official sets from the TV series as well as the movies. It’s undoubtedly wildly unlikely, but you never know; one early version of LEGO’s Indy mini site included a character bio for Indy that mentioned his youthful adventures seen in the series, and the LEGO Indiana Jones videogames included music from the show as well as from the movies.
@blogzilly said:
"I consider myself really lucky to have got this set new when it came out despite the fact I was in a Dark Age at the time. Dark Age III, actually, the final chapter.
Didn’t keep the box…didn’t store such things! Not back then. Dude, it was 2009. Feels like a lifetime ago for me. Personals.
The set is really cool for when it came out, though it’s weird when I try to review this from the perspective of a longtime Indiana Jones fan and a LEGO fan (with three, um, break-ups)…it’s the best set from the four year run and it’s the most disappointing set of the four year run. Lotta reasons why, but not writing a review at the moment. That’s just the takeaway.
I’ll always love it to death. Beautiful mess."
This set, Fight on the Flying Wing, the best set from the theme? Huh. I’d have thought 7623 Temple Escape probably deserved that designation.
@Blondie_Wan:
Oh, 7623 is hands-down the best set of the theme. It has the entire intro sequence from Raiders, excluding the Hovitos.
This is one of the great sets of the 2000s, not just despite of but perhaps because of the unusual custom molds used to build the flying wing. The play value is through the roof for KFOLs and it is quite faithful to the source material.
@CopperTablet:
This set used only existing molds. The wings were from basic passenger jets, on a slightly larger scale than had been done before. The cockpit was from an Ep3 Jedi Starfighter. And I believe the gunner’s pod was the cockpit from an Ep2 Jedi Starfighter.
@Norikins said:
"I always thought this sounded like lyrics in a bad song.
"Fite on da flyin' whanng! YEEAAHHH!""
Okay, I can't get this idea out of my head; I gotta make terrible singles based on LEGO set names. Probably with a "90s singer who can only say vowels" impression.
@PurpleDave I know most of us have scrapped that film from our brains but my point was that I feel like it doesn't qualify as obscure given how big it was at the time. Maybe it does now, though.