Random set of the day: Droid Fighter
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 7111 Droid Fighter, released during 1999. It's one of 13 Star Wars sets produced that year. It contains 62 pieces, and its retail price was US$6.
It's owned by 9,743 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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41 comments on this article
Old brown and old grays. Delicious.
Also this comes with 4 of my all time favorite part, and that's the 1x4 dark gray tile with printed circuitry pattern that was only ever in Star Wars sets from 1999-2001. If they reintroduced it in modern sets, even on dark bluish gray, I would not be mad.
I second the colours and circuit piece!
This one came in a co-pak with another SW set, as I recall; the duel with Qui-Gonn and Maul. I bought a bulk lot and it had both, but only one came with the box. I was still happy.
I ended up buying three of this set. I think I found some on clearance or something. I didn't really need that many. But hey, more of the aforementioned tile (which I'd also love to see them reintroduce) for me! (Not to mention the printed slope.)
It was pointed out at one point (and I checked the entire run to confirm) that this is the only minifig-scale SW set that does not include minifigs at all.
I miss the brown. The real brown. I was looking up the printed circuitry pattern. Looks like I do have one, in set 7180 B-wing. That is a cool print.
I really thought this was a clever set when it came out. Subsequent sets had more articulation, but this really taught me some basic, but interesting tricks back then.
The head remains one of my favorite printed pieces of all time.
I have this set despite being in my dark ages when it came out. I’d receive some small set in my Christmas stocking each year and this was one of them. It’s in storage and whenever I happen across it I ponder for a second how to use those really long brown angle pieces in a MOC, but as something other than a roof or awning. We’ll see someday.
It may be basic, but this was a really great set for the price. Easy to build a nice little fleet of droid ships to chase Anakin’s N1 starfighter without breaking the bank.
@PurpleDave said:
"It was pointed out at one point (and I checked the entire run to confirm) that this is the only minifig-scale SW set that does not include minifigs at all."
I can't ever seem to find this information, but I swear I remember reading that 4481 Hailfire Droid is technically minifig-scaled and it doesn't come with minifigs.
EDIT: It's in the first edition of the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary, page 83. "This model, which is not packaged as a LEGO Technic set, is in proportion to LEGO Star Wars minifigures."
So I guess that makes two!
The best 1999 Star Wars set
I have all the Vulture Droids lined up from oldest to youngest and biggest. They all have their charms. It's funny the this one is about half the size of 75041, which is so large it has a pilot.
I’’d love to see another Vulture droid, last one was over seven years ago! Especially if it’s affordable; they don’t even need to change much if anything from the 2014 version.
I got this for my birthday. The click hinges supporting the wings wore out quickly and soon became incapable of holding the weight of the wings. I’ve distrusted click hinges ever since and try to cycle them between different positions as little as I can.
Similarly, the click hinges in the 7143 Jedi Starfighter landing gear wore out quickly and became unable to hold the weight of the model. To keep the same thing from happening with the 4502 X-wing Fighter, I built a landing cradle for it so I’d never have to cycle the front landing gear.
Aah, the simpler times...
This is one of those sets where its simplicity gives it charm rather than renders it crude; I think helped by the fact that it still captures the vulture droid's ability to shift modes. Not bad for something that comes to us from the previous millennium
@MCLegoboy:
I did think about that, as I know I’ve considered it to be minifig-scale in the past, but something held me back. So I did a search for this article:
https://brickset.com/article/62976/minifigure-scale-star-wars-vehicles
In it, @CapnRex101 puts 4481 at about 1/6” off minifig scale. I posted a comment stating that my math, based on a 6’ tall minifig, shows that it’s 45% too tall, which probably explains why I was reluctant to include it as minifig scale. If it was a System set, I’d probably forgive that much of a discrepancy without batting an eye. It’s a Technic set, though, and they’re not really designed to interact with minifigs (even when the Dark Side Developer AT-AT is comparable in size to one or more of the System AT-ATs). So, that’s probably why I went ahead and posted that without citing the Hailfife.
@iwybs:
There are at least three generations of click-hinges. The early ones were too weak to support much weight, so they improved their strength. Then they were so stiff that you’d rip cockpits loose rather than open/close them, so they eliminated a few teeth on one half of the click-hinge pairing. The missing teeth were strategically chosen so the hinge would be weakest at specific positions, generally correlating with fully open or fully closed. This would allow you to get the hinge started a bit easier, and inertia would help carry it through the rest of the rotation. For the better hinges, the side with one finger is pretty much unchanged, but the two-finger side needs to have seven teeth, not nine. Those will give you holding power when supporting a bit of weight (think X-Wing, not Millennium Falcon), but still allow you to pivot the hinge without destroying the model.
I came out my dark ages around 2002, and then found six of these still on the shelves at an Albertsons in I think 2003, and bought them all. I’m glad to have the printed elements, but most especially I like having the long 2x12 triple-slope elements in old brown, which I’ll probably eventually use a bunch of to help make some trees.
I got this as my first Star Wars set as a stocking stuffer (shoe stuffer actually). It always felt a little crude and chunky even for the time. But the color scheme of brown and tan was nice. You could turn it into a walking configuration (although you have to take the head off first). And the wings can be put in closed configuration, which looks nice and smooth! It even has transparant red 1x1 plates on headlight bricks as (dark) engine glows!
I miss this set so much. I'm sure I had two of it.
@PurpleDave said:
" @MCLegoboy:
I did think about that, as I know I’ve considered it to be minifig-scale in the past, but something held me back. So I did a search for this article:
https://brickset.com/article/62976/minifigure-scale-star-wars-vehicles
In it, @CapnRex101 puts 4481 at about 1/6” off minifig scale. I posted a comment stating that my math, based on a 6’ tall minifig, shows that it’s 45% too tall, which probably explains why I was reluctant to include it as minifig scale. If it was a System set, I’d probably forgive that much of a discrepancy without batting an eye. It’s a Technic set, though, and they’re not really designed to interact with minifigs (even when the Dark Side Developer AT-AT is comparable in size to one or more of the System AT-ATs). So, that’s probably why I went ahead and posted that without citing the Hailfife."
The Hailfires were very large in AOTC. A battle droid barely reaches the support structure for the wheels. 4481 is the only set that is even close. Not sure where your math is coming from? I'm with @CapnRex101 and @MCLegoboy on this one.
Granted, I can't seem to find a photo of 4481 with a minifig. Unfortunately, this is one of those sets that has eluded my collection.
@MCLegoboy said:
" @PurpleDave said:
"It was pointed out at one point (and I checked the entire run to confirm) that this is the only minifig-scale SW set that does not include minifigs at all."
I can't ever seem to find this information, but I swear I remember reading that 4481 Hailfire Droid is technically minifig-scaled and it doesn't come with minifigs.
EDIT: It's in the first edition of the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary, page 83. "This model, which is not packaged as a LEGO Technic set, is in proportion to LEGO Star Wars minifigures."
So I guess that makes two!"
The fact that it’s minifig scale is also referenced in its entry in Ultimate Lego Star Wars
This was honestly the first-wave Star Wars set that I was least interested; not only did the lack of minifigures put me off, as a kid, but I had also already picked up the Hasbro version of the vehicle (http://rebelscum.com/episodeIvehdroidfighters.asp) on massive reduction - which was the same scale, had smoother shaping, and came with three starfighters to this set's one. At that age, that made this one entirely redundant to me, so I passed over it even when I had the opportunity to get it cheap.
Then I got 7256 a few years later, which put this version out of my mind entirely.
-
On a different note, I had a weird sense of deja vu on seeing this article, I was sure it had already been RSotD recently. Then I realised I was thinking of 30055 instead, which had been Random Set a little under three months ago. Same vehicle type, different set.
Not exactly the first Star Wars set that I got back then, at first I only wanted it because my friend had it as well and it looked cool. Now I'm glad I have it, very simple but effective, and I love the scale.
@lessjunkfood said:
" how to use those really long brown angle pieces in a MOC, but as something other than a roof or awning. We’ll see someday. "
I find they work really well for adding some big SNOT trees to your layout.
Six bucks?!?!?
Jeez, the set is easily worth $20.
@Lego_lord said:
"Aah, the simpler times... "
I really believe that the complexity and "perfection" of most modern Lego sets interfere with kids' imaginative play, especially older kids who are already on the brink of "aging out." As a parent I see kids unwilling to take apart the official build because they're just too good, and those perfect sets set a higher standard for what a set "should" look like.
@PurpleDave said:
"There are at least three generations of click-hinges. The early ones were too weak to support much weight, so they improved their strength. Then they were so stiff that you’d rip cockpits loose rather than open/close them, so they eliminated a few teeth on one half of the click-hinge pairing. The missing teeth were strategically chosen so the hinge would be weakest at specific positions, generally correlating with fully open or fully closed. This would allow you to get the hinge started a bit easier, and inertia would help carry it through the rest of the rotation. For the better hinges, the side with one finger is pretty much unchanged, but the two-finger side needs to have seven teeth, not nine. Those will give you holding power when supporting a bit of weight (think X-Wing, not Millennium Falcon), but still allow you to pivot the hinge without destroying the model."
This is the kind of down-the-rabbit-hole technical AFOL lore that I come here for
@StyleCounselor:
@Vladtheb:
I started with the minifig to determine scale. At 1.5”, a minifig representing a 6’ tall person pegs the scale at 1/4”=1’, or 1:48. The article uses 1:41.369 by starting with the assumption that 75192 is perfectly scaled to minifigs, and therefore all other sets should be compared to it, rather than a minifig.
The dimensions I was able to find for the on-screen Hailfire put its height at 22’, but the 8” tall model in 1:48 represents a height of 40’, nearly twice as tall as it should be. The article cites a length of 8.5m, which is taken from clearly inaccurate dimensions that put height and length at 8.5m based on the diameter of the wheels. The wheels, which define the full height, are canted, reducing the height quite a bit. The frame holding the wheels is quite a bit longer than the diameter of the wheels they hold. Claiming the height and length are equal is just lazy math-avoidance.
For over two decades, official dimensions once claimed that the SSD was 5x as long as an ISD, even when screenshots showing an ISD in the foreground and partially obscuring the SSD prove this is not physically possible. I can’t remember where I found the dimensions I used, but they actually made sense compared against the physical dimensions of 4481 (8” tall, 9-1/4” long), where the official dimensions fail as soon as you consider the angle of the wheels.
There’s also the issue of what we call “minifig-scale”. 10179 and 75192 are clearly designed to be in scale with minifigs, but we also use the term “minifig-scale” to refer to 7190, 4504, 7965, 75105, 75212, and 75257. To some, the Technic Hailfire may be accurately sized, but based on what I came up with, it should really be about halfway between 4481 and 7670/75085.
@Rare_White_Ape said:
"Six bucks?!?!?
Jeez, the set is easily worth $20."
Its inflation-adjusted price is closer to $10, but that’s still a pretty good deal. I’m sure the lack of minifigures helped keep the cost down
My kids and I are still playing with the one that I built in 1999 (or maybe 2000)! One of a small handful of my sets that has remained intact over the decades.
This was my first LEGO set (or at least, the first that I remember playing with), so it holds a special place in my heart. A lot of time for this one.
@Padmewan:
As a member of a very active LUG, I have a very different view on things. If the sets feel too targeted at young kids, they won’t be as likely to retain the interest of older kids who may be on the verge of setting aside their childhood toys. They also do very little to teach advanced building techniques. My generation had the very simple sets of the 80’s growing up, and any truly interesting techniques were few and far between. Compounding that was the fact that the internet in those days was more geared to the military and academia in an age when most homes didn’t even have a computer, so you couldn’t browse photos of MOCs other people had built. Combined with members of the generations that preceded us, we had to create the first online communities for AFOLs, teach ourselves how to build beyond what we’d seen in factory sets, and form the first LUGs. Now there are two generations that have grown up in the shadow of the World Wide Web, seeing the complex MOCs that people post online, attending public displays, and building sets that were designed by people who actually grew up playing with LEGO sets.
In my experience, anyone who prefers “simpler times” and laments the explosion of specialized pieces of the past two decades is someone who is at least as old as I am, and often 10-20 years older. Kids who grow up drawing with crayons may go on to be artists as a profession or a hobby in adulthood, but they’re unlikely to stick with it if you only allow them to use Crayola 8-packs. If they’re serious about it, they’ll want to try advanced mediums, like watercolors, oils, charcoal, or pens, not just get a bag full of more 8-packs. One of the major benefits of joining LUGs or various online image-sharing communities is an opportunity to learn from each other and develop your skills as builders, rather than having to do it all on your own. One of the major benefits of building sets designed for advanced builders is you get to experience more advanced building techniques in person, rather than trying to understand what’s going on in a picture taken by someone who knows what’s going on and may not arrange and frame things best for people who don’t.
@PurpleDave
@Padmewan
In my experience, anyone who prefers “simpler times” and laments the explosion of specialized pieces of the past two decades is someone who is at least as old as I am, and often 10-20 years older. Kids who grow up drawing with crayons may go on to be artists as a profession or a hobby in adulthood, but they’re unlikely to stick with it if you only allow them to use Crayola 8-packs. If they’re serious about it, they’ll want to try advanced mediums, like watercolors, oils, charcoal, or pens, not just get a bag full of more 8-packs. One of the major benefits of joining LUGs or various online image-sharing communities is an opportunity to learn from each other and develop your skills as builders, rather than having to do it all on your own. One of the major benefits of building sets designed for advanced builders is you get to experience more advanced building techniques in person, rather than trying to understand what’s going on in a picture taken by someone who knows what’s going on and may not arrange and frame things best for people who don’t.]]
True. But for the average kid right now sets are using said advanced building as a standard unless we're talking 4+ sets or 5+ sets. I agree with Padmewan that this might have the opposite effect: sets are very intricately built and are not only a hassle to deconstruct, but are also built to such a standard that it could be intimidating. It's like going from drawing realistic paintings with a step-by-step guide you just have to draw over to just having no guide whatsoever. Sure, the consumer will surely paint a realistic painting. But can they really paint? What would it be like to paint for themselves?
I grew up in the late 90s/early 2000s and I also feel sets like that were simpler. They were. Even the larger sets used lots of basic bricks (often horribly color-blocked) in addition to the infamous juniorized parts that crept into every theme. But they could be rebuilt from a tub of parts with enough patience. I don't think the high piece counts from now would make that fun anymore. When I built my second hand 70425 Haunted Highschool I had to build it unsorted. It was hard! You see, at step 66 out of 302 you use a single 1x1 quarted circle in dark bluish grey. There's only one of those in the set's 1474 parts. And it's in a drab color that doesn't pop. If I had been a kid trying to rebuild the set from my (very likely still small) collection, I would have given up after trying to look for that part. Mind you, at that point you made the platform the actual set will be on and next to nothing else. And there are many more tiny parts like it in that set, which I was anxious about because there was no guarantee it was complete. Nothing but an adult level of organization (and probably determination) would allow you to rebuild a set like that.
Compare that to 7419 Dragon Fortress. It too is massive. But a combination of larger parts, parts unique to the set that stand out like the baseplate, and many common parts (that aren't in colors uncommon to most sets) would make it more feasable to rebuild.
Of course, I'm just going extrapolating from my own experiences. I don't know what kids think of this unless I would interview many, and I'm not in the position to do that.
All I can say is this: set like the Droid Fighter felt easy to rebuild when I was a kid. It still does, even when I rebuild all the Star Wars sets I own from the era in a row. But with newer sets I'm often feeling glad I keep them separate. Even sets the size of 71700 Jungle Raider feel more hefty to put together due to all the small and modified parts (as in the bricklink term for plate/tile/brick etc modified). Especially now that I have so little room I have not much permanent display space so I rotate sets and build and dismantle everything equally. New sets are just slower and more precise to put together.
Just my two cents.
Ahh I was born the year this set came out and my parents bought it for me and gave it to me once I was old enough. This might even have been my first ever LEGO set. I love it.
I remember seeing swarms of these on clearance (~$3, iirc) at Kay Bee Toys in the early '00s.
This was the first set from a minifigure-based theme WITHOUT a minifigure since 1498 in 1987!
I kind of like both it's sleaky design and transformability (also in SW canon). There are many better versions out there nowadays, but it has this bizarre simple Rock Raiders-like look that I feel a bit nostalgic for...
It was also among my first SW sets (I got it together with 7161 and 7110, so I could get over some promo threshold I guess...). I later found a complete one loose in a bricks lot bin I bought many years later. I'm tempted to get a few more for a full fleet...
@Binnekamp:
Several members of my LUG will buy used lots and rebuild whatever sets they find. Sure, they have the advantage of being able to pull missing parts from their collections, or buy them online, but it still involves a lot of digging through piles of unfamiliar parts on a regular basis. This past weekend we also had a woman come to our display, looking to buy very specific loose parts while attempting to rebuild her adult kids’ collection.
When my brother and I were kids, we didn’t really rebuild sets once they got torn apart because we generally didn’t have the boxes left to refer to, and often lost track of the instructions, but we had no problem digging through a box of unsorted loose parts to find a specific element. Also, frankly, I was often disappointed with the simplicity of many of the sets we received as kids, and wanted to build stuff that was bigger and more involved.
Starter sets are important, sure. If every set was a Modular, not many kids would ever want to get started, and most who did would quickly change their minds. Polybags, 4+, and entry level regular sets serve an important function for new builders, but you don’t want to restrict the entire line to starter fare or kids will quickly outgrow the product line.
Ah! A notable set for my LEGO history, for two reasons:
1. It was the first set I had multiples of AND RETAINED. I briefly had a Lightsaber Duel, Anakin's Podracer, and the Sith Infiltrator as duplicates, but each was sold off to younger brothers to fund the habit of new LEGO sets. Here--despite missing a piece (one of those beautiful printed 1x4 tiles)--I was never even tempted. It was a short road from there to army-building and only financial prudence has stopped me making the journey!
2. Before I got either of my copies of this set, my brother had it. It was his first Star Wars set, a pre-Christmas teaser of sorts, only a month or two after we'd first watched and been blown away by both the original trilogy and The Phantom Menace. I managed to purchase a Lightsaber Duel just before the November/December ban on buying new LEGO (to make sure we didn't buy our Christmas presents), so we were supremely excited to open our two teaser presents: we each got a $10 Star Wars set: I got 7110 Landspeeder and he got 7111. This meant that I now had Qui-gon, Maul, Obi-wan, Luke Skywalker and three lightsabers, and he had... a Droid Fighter.
Good times!
@Formendacil:
Except for when I got the Boulder Hill playset, I always seemed to wind up on the wrong end of that kind of story, being four years younger than my brother.
@PurpleDave said:
" @StyleCounselor :
@Vladtheb :
I started with the minifig to determine scale. At 1.5”, a minifig representing a 6’ tall person pegs the scale at 1/4”=1’, or 1:48. The article uses 1:41.369 by starting with the assumption that 75192 is perfectly scaled to minifigs, and therefore all other sets should be compared to it, rather than a minifig.
The dimensions I was able to find for the on-screen Hailfire put its height at 22’, but the 8” tall model in 1:48 represents a height of 40’, nearly twice as tall as it should be. The article cites a length of 8.5m, which is taken from clearly inaccurate dimensions that put height and length at 8.5m based on the diameter of the wheels. The wheels, which define the full height, are canted, reducing the height quite a bit. The frame holding the wheels is quite a bit longer than the diameter of the wheels they hold. Claiming the height and length are equal is just lazy math-avoidance.
For over two decades, official dimensions once claimed that the SSD was 5x as long as an ISD, even when screenshots showing an ISD in the foreground and partially obscuring the SSD prove this is not physically possible. I can’t remember where I found the dimensions I used, but they actually made sense compared against the physical dimensions of 4481 (8” tall, 9-1/4” long), where the official dimensions fail as soon as you consider the angle of the wheels.
There’s also the issue of what we call “minifig-scale”. 10179 and 75192 are clearly designed to be in scale with minifigs, but we also use the term “minifig-scale” to refer to 7190 , 4504 , 7965 , 75105 , 75212 , and 75257 . To some, the Technic Hailfire may be accurately sized, but based on what I came up with, it should really be about halfway between 4481 and 7670 / 75085 ."
I think your calculations are a bit off. The support structure for the wheel is not even a third of the way up the wheel. Thus, this diameter of the wheel is certainly equal to the length of the entire droid which is 8.5m. (See, https://www.starwars.com/databank/hailfire-droid ).
Furthermore, the cant of the wheel has no significant effect on the height- which is almost equal to the length or diameter of the wheel. The cant is only about 10 -15° at most. (See, https://www.starwars.com/databank/confederacy-of-independent-systems ).
Thus, the height = cos (10-15°)(8.5m) = 8.37m to 8.21m. That is about 4.5 minifigs tall based on minifig = 6ft = 1.83m.
Thus, 4481, is certainly the closest to minifig scale.