So it's pretty clear what's going on here: Jim Speedster gets abducted by a crazy, time-traveling, future-space faction named M:Tron (the M stands for "tiMe traveling," obviously), who dumps him off in the middle ages. There, he discovers the fountain of youth, partakes of its waters, and quickly ends up stranding himself (along with his favorite pet parrot, whom he also gives the waters of youth to) on an island for a very long time.

Eventually, he catches up to the future. His bird, meanwhile, has become so smart in that time, that it has learned how to genetically modify itself into a human. The two form a new present-space faction (the future, of course, now being the present), name themselves "Blacktron" ('cause hey, it just sounds cool), and dedicate themselves to preventing other poor abductees of crazy M:Tron time-kidnappers from suffering the same fate.

So I was always a Space fan first, though I was fairly into technic, too. At the time, Pirates was the first new theme to join the veterans of Castle, Town, and Space. This combo pack represents the 4 themes well (especially since Space got a double-helping!). It also answers the question of "how does a long time space fan end up with two random pirate and castle sets?" This combo-pack was a great value for the money and, as the other reviewer mentioned, offers a good taste of the other themes.

• The catapult is actually pretty cool for a small set, and the minifig comes with sword and shield. It's not spring loaded, but you can flick a 1x1 round pretty far with it. It makes a fun little desk decoration.
• The Blacktron set is nice for coming with two minifigs and some good parts (those fluoro-yellow whip antennae). As a vehicle, though, it's a bit minimalist.
• The pirate set is also a good parts grab as it comes with a gold-laden treasure chest, a parot, and a shark. It could have used a bit more foliage.
• The racer is a standard racer of its size and the town theme is full of similarly designed/size racers. This one is not minimalist and every bit as good as some of those stand-alones.
• The M:Tron is probably the least impressive here as it's just so bare. It looks like a hinge with a few parts on it rather than a vehicle that happens to have a hinge in it.

For someone who once upon a time wanted to collect all the legos they could from all the Legoland Themes, Value packs were a great way to go. And even now, that I'm older, they still would be a way to go.

You get several small sets to build and put together for several different themes. And it's definently a way to get a small taste or idea of the different themes and if you liked or wanted to pursue collecting them.

The possible downside would be having a bunch of small sets but not a larger model to play with... or having a small set from a theme wasn't really all that appealing and feels misplaced in a Lego collection.