Building this model with a nephew at Christmas brought me out of my dark ages. The way it captures the shape of a fighter plane so well, the swell of the body, the angle of the wings, it reminded me just how brilliant Lego can be.
And that's all very fair to say of this set. Looking at other plane sets, particularly subsequent creator sets, this is a real gem of a set, a diamond in the rough. It's its wonderfully compact nature with every part feeling totally coherent to the whole that makes it shine.

The build is good fun. There are no especially difficult advanced techniques, but the Technic mechanism for swinging the wings out, the Technic parts in the engines and the layering of plates in the wings give a great amount of variety. I found it very easy to remember with everything being coherent and quite enjoyed pulling it apart and trying to build it from memory and build it different ways (front to back, top to bottom, in sections, etc).

The parts are nice for what it is, but are naturally limited. You get a lot of inverse blue slopes and curves, not as much red as you'd expect, and plenty of white wing pieces. But as with the build, the Technic sections give you some interesting pieces, and the cockpit pieces are nice.

The real strength of the set is how it looks and how swooshable it is. As I've been saying from the start, it all comes together really well. The main fault of other Lego planes, and certainly the self builds I used to make when I was young, is how parts can seem disconnected and awkward. This set doesn't suffer from that at all. It looks fast and sleek and begs to be swooshed around the room! It's a great size for that too, big enough to feel substantial, but not so big it's cumbersome.
The functions are great too. The landing gear is the only real fault I can find. The front wheel folds up a little too easily when wheeling it around as they don't get all that far back from vertical. And the flaps covering the back wheels feel flimsy, why Lego didn't use a double clip I don't know, and the suggestion of an extra piece a few reviews below that will make the wheels pull the flaps up seems nice, though I imagine if the wheels are touching the brick when retracted it might damage the rubber of the tyres eventually. (The rear wing flaps are also a little annoying, only being attached by one Technic pin, so they rotate a little too easily.)
The real triumph is of course the retracting wings. Pushing and pulling them closed and open is really pleasing, the mechanism is well hidden, and the different positions you can put the wings in make displaying it really easy. I moved one of the Technic bushes to the other end of the mechanism to stop the wings opening all the way, it looked a bit faster to me!

Pros

• Superb looks, sleek, fast and compact
• Great wing function, giving tonnes of playability and options for display
• Overall integrity and coherence - it's as durable as it looks

Cons

• A few little niggles with the landing gear flaps and rear wing flaps on the engines being a little flimsy

A really superb set, that looks fantastic, is fun to build, and doesn't disappoint when you have the finished model. My nephew loved swooshing it, I loved sticking it on the coffee table and seeing it there. It's pretty good value too, so if you ever have the chance to pick one up I'd recommend it.

(I've just realised I've not mentioned the alternative models. It's quite obvious that's what they are though, the hovercraft is cleverly made but it's obvious it's using something else's parts, and the helicopter is better, but there's a lot less to it. You can try building them to see what you think, but you will always come back to the plane!)

Very cool functions, but the novelty eventually wears off.

Pros

• Wings move with a clever Technic construction
• 4 other functions
• Nice colours
• 4 small turntables - my one had two blue and one white extra, don't know how often that happened.
• Hovercraft model uses some interesting techniques and has a castoring front wheel.

Cons

• The designers forgot two 1x2 bricks!! If you add two 1x2 bricks on top of the wheel covers (they go on these pieces http://peeron.com/inv/parts/48336) the covers raise automatically when you push the wheels up! I don't know why we found that and the designers didn't... Anyway, my great discovery is now public! ;)
• Model is a bit weak during construction, but quite sturdy when finished.
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Good price for the pieces, it has lots of wing plates and other plates.

I have 2 of these now as they are such a playable set.

In this set I made The plane, which is pretty cool.You can move the wings back or forward.It is a three in one set so you can make 1 of the three. The other two flyers were a helicopter and a water vehicle.

What a great set infused with Technic parts to add touches of realism. This set is a great buy for 20 bucks. The main jet model is beautiful. Others have criticized LEGO for only having red, white and blue parts but this color combo works for me. The moving wings are by far one of the coolest designs I have come across using Technic parts (although I don't really collect/build with Technic). I haven't built the other models but they seem like fun to build as well. The hovercraft's design is curved which uses slope bricks to achieve this look. This set is worth buying just to learn how the wings move! The landing gear tucks away underneath the body of the plane which is a nice touch as well. Looks great on display!

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