Tatooine is no doubt one of if not the most famous planets in Star Wars as it appears in episodes 1, 2, 4, 6, and 9, not to mention it was part of Rebels and is becoming a very large part of the Mandalorian. I would also think it would be a very safe assumption that the upcoming Obiwan series will also take place entirely on Tatooine. However, surprisingly this locale has not really gotten the attention it deserves from Lego, with many of the sets based here being unavailable for many years and now extremely expensive. Mos Eisley is of course the very first city we saw and the cantina is of course where Luke and Obiwan meet Han and Chewie. The cantina also has been featured in both seasons of the Mandalorian which has been a lot of fun to see.

However the new UCS set, while it looks amazing, costs an incredible $350! Luckily there have been three other renditions of the cantina to choose from. The sets from 2004 and 2018 both are fairly small, and really only gives you a place to order drinks and kill Greedo. This set from 2014 is much more substantial and if you shop around can still be had for around $60, its original price, and an absolute bargain considering what you get with it.

Minifigures

8 minifigures are included with this set which is an incredible amount given the sets size.

You of course get Luke and Obiwan, both of whom look great. They both feature detailed torso and leg prints. I do have a slight problem with Luke's head as it has some lines to give his face more contour, and I feel as if they make him look older, where in this set he should really look very young.

Next up is Han and Greedo. Han is fairly standard as he always is, but still looks great. Greedo of course is probably the most exciting figure in the set and his head mold looks fantastic. They both carry small blasters which can conveniently be concealed under a table, although unfortunately not a Lego built table.

You then get 3 Bith musicians, two of whom have unique instruments, while the third plays the drums. While their torsos are fairly plain, they are accurate. However, it is the wonderful head molds that make them look amazing. The fact you get 3 allows for an actual band, so thank you Lego for being so generous with them!

Finally the set is rounded out with a sand trooper all decked out and riding a custom dewback. While the sand trooper is highly detailed, the dewback is the main attraction. It features a 4x4 studded area on top which can be covered with either 4 arches which are included to give a smooth unadorned animal, or with a brick built harness to carry the sand trooper. The dewback itself is huge and has an operable jaw, although nothing else on the animal moves.

Parts

The set features a wonderful selection of parts in colors you wouldn't normally expect from Star Wars. The speeder gives you some beautiful bright orange bricks, while the cantina features lots of tan including arches and a large dome which is what defines Tatooine architecture. Not to mention you get lots of those lightsaber like bricks that are sideways on one end in a variety of colors which is fun.

The Build

You start out by building Luke's speeder. If you've ever built one before (I have the one from 2010) then you already know what you're doing. However it is still a fun little build. If this is your first time building a speeder, you will be pleasantly surprised by how tubes are used to represent the grill.

Next is a small moisture evaporator that has an interesting technic based construction and looks very nice. Once the model is completed it can also be attached to the cantina for easy storage.

After that you build the cantina which is not surprisingly assembled section by section. You start with the two rooms that are side by side, one of which houses the Bith musicians, and the other which seats Han and Greedo. Interestingly neither room has a floor as you build out the walls and roof. Once the structure is completed you build each floor separately along with a trough for the dewback to eat a bone from on the outside of the building. The trough is a fair distance away from the cantinas exterior wall and gets connected to either floor by two long technic axels. The purpose for this is rather ingenious, you can slide in the trough and the two rooms get pushed out of the structure so you can easily put in or take out minifigures.

Next up you build the bar which is a fun detailed hold and looks great. My only complaint is that the drink machines do not use IG heads as I think it would have been great if Lego exploited the fact that IG-88 was assembled from leftover cantina parts.

Finally you build one additional, fairly large room that gives you enough space for Luke, Obiwan, Han, and Chewie (BYOC) to talk. Additionally you build a sliding door that can be used to enter the cantina from the outside, although I feel like the hinges were placed on the wrong side.

The Model

Overall the model looks fantastic. I especially love how it folds up allowing for it to look like a complete building from the outside as well as making it easy to store. It is also very sturdy for a model with lots of hinges and moving floors. The 8 minifigures give you plenty to play with. While Chewie is missing, you no doubt have plenty of him that can easily be added. As for R2 and 3PO, they don't serve their kind. Wuher would have been a nice inclusion as there is room for him behind the bar, so I'll have to purchase one on Bricklink, but I really can't complain given how much you get with this set.

However, what really makes this set great is its attention to detail. Not only is the bar elaborate, but the walls have excellent color patterns, and the sconces look great. Not to mention I really like the look of the speeder. The oranges look great, and the busted engine is noticeable yet subtle.

Overall

If your like me and don't want to spend $350 on a cantina, this set is definitely the way to go. It also will fit in very well with other Tatooine based sets as it is at a normal Lego scale. Placing the new Obiwan's hut set beside it definitely works very well, as do many of the moisture evaporators that have been included in other sets. I recommend being patient to get a good price, but this is definitely the set you are looking for.

This is a great set. The landspeeder (we have enough, Lego) is a great build, love the flexible prices being used on the sides of the front part instead of stickers. The main build is much more substantial than the newer cantina, with four separate areas: a bar, two seats for Greedo and Han to shoot each other, a room for the musicians and a cool little entry room. The entire cantina can be folded into itself for easier display.

The Minifigs

Overall plenty of good minifigs come in this set. You get Kenobi, Luke, Greedo (which is exclusive to this set), Han Solo, a Sandtrooper, the Dewback, as well as three Bith musicians. Too bad they weren't able to get all band members in, but I don't think many would be happy with hundreds of Bith musicians anyway. The dewback is a great animal. It has a saddle for the sandtrooper to sit on and it gives you some 1x4 olive green arch pieces if you want to have the dewback as a natural animal.

You also get a moisture vaporator with the set, pretty clever build for that. On the back of the cantina there is a little water trough which, if you push in, will push the seats and the stage for the musicians forward for easier access.

Edit: The new cantina came out which surpasses this one in every way shape and form, not the best anymore

The size makes it one of my favorite summer 2014 sets. It has a lot of little features that really make this set special. Also I think that the set is worth the money. The set really brings back old memories of watching the movies, and getting the Cantina Band song out of my head.

Box/Instructions

The box is very wide, yet not very deep.The set comes with 2 medium sized instruction booklets. The front of the box has some very nice cover art.

Parts

If anything can be more unique about this set it has to be its parts. The parts are very detailed and interesting. There are many different parts to this set and most of them are really cool, and normally unseen. Such as the bars that go around the Bar part of the cantina, and also the bars that go around the front of Luke's Landspeeder. Even though there are a lot of stickers on the Landspeeder the parts are very good.

Minifigures

?For the price of the set there are a lot of hard to find minifigures. Such as Greedo, The Cantina Band, Sandtroopers, and the Dewback.? They all have nice printing to them. The only thing that I would comment on is Luke's new overly detailed face, it just doesn't look right.

The build

The build was a pretty easy one. I think that the age recommendation on this set is very good. The parts are very cool to start with, and when you put great parts with a great build, than you get a great set.

Overall opinion

Overall I think the completed model of the Mos Eisley Cantina is very accurate. It's folding feature is very cool, and so are the slide out parts are very cool, and interesting. The minifigures are great, and so are the hidden features. Also the details are very accurate. Overall the set is a good one!

I own almost all the Lego Architecture Sets, some City sets, including the Coast Guard Patrol and Cargo Terminal sets. I also have the new Millenium Falcon.

This set was boxed in the usual good Lego box. There were two instruction booklets, and the parts were packed in separate groups, numbered from 1 to 5. All of the parts of this set fit each other perfectly, as have all my previous Lego sets. One point that I must make is that I have never opened a Lego set that did not include all the pieces, as well as extra pieces that seem to be included because they might be easily lost by young builders who play with the sets.

The mini-figs included in this set include all the characters that were in the Mos Eisley Cantina scene in the original Star Wars movie, which I saw on the first day of its release. The only missing figures were R2-D2 and C-3PO, but their kind weren't allowed in the cantina. The Dewback is outstanding. Luke's landspeeder build was fun and full of memories for me.

Building this set was not difficult, but the build required attention to details and my previous building skills were helpful, as usual. I believe the 8 to 14 year old age group indicated on the box is appropriate. I love the slide out rooms of the Bith musicians and of the Han Solo-Greedo confrontation are great. I also love the hinged rooms.

I really like the completed model and highly recommend it to all Star Wars Lego lovers, as well as Lego lovers in general.

The price of this set is very good, especially considering the mini-figs that were included.

This is a great little set with a host of features. Those things and its size makes it my favourite of the 2014 summer sets, more full of features than the B-wing, but more attainable than either of the other mammoth sets - saying that I suppose there wasn't much competition!

Box/Instructions

The box is curiously wide and not very deep, allowing for a great picture showing off a widescreen shot, surely the best option for a set with different parts like this.
(I can't think of much more to say about boxes and instructions that are largely the same across the TLG portfolio, I'm amazed I said that much!)

Parts

This set really excels at interesting parts, mainly due to the nougat parts in the Sandspeeder, but also a good number of detail elements like the drinks and bar elements (as in the cantina bar, not 4-long type bars!). And for a set you would imagine would be largely sand yellow it has a good mix of colours.

Minifigures

As usual with recent Star Wars sets the figures really stand out.
Luke Skywalker is pretty disappointing to my mind; body and hair is good, but the overly detailed face (much commented on, and the punchline in the last issue of Hispabricks) ruins him. Where's the youthful hero of the 1977 film? Did the get Mark Hamill in and model it on how he looks today?
Obi-Wan Kenobi is nice with leg printing extending his printed robes. He's different enough from any previous version to be a very nice figure to have for any collector.
Han Solo is the same as the chibi Falcon version but for the face print. No complaints there though, he's a good figure, it's just there's nothing all that exciting about him!

On the other hand, I'm very excited indeed about his jousting partner, Greedo, given how expensive his only other incarnation has become. I was quite surprised that his head is the usual ABS plastic, not the rubbery head I expected. He is fantastic top to bottom: great head mould, very nicely printed. Great to have a modern Greedo!
And the three Bith Musicians are very nice too. There's not much that could be said of the modest torso print, but the heads are just superb, capturing the cantina band so perfectly and Lego-ly.
The Sandtrooper? is improved again from the last Droid Escape version and with the black pauldron and printing on the torso to go with it he's the most accurate version yet. But pleasingly he's not so different that he looks odd next to the white and orange pauldroned ones. His head is also entirely flesh coloured, an improvement on the washed out printing, but I'm old school and still prefer no faces on these characters whose faces you never see. The backpack breather units are the same as they've always been.

And though not strictly a minifigure, the Dewback has to go here, and he's amazing! The shade of green is perfect and he absolutely makes my Tatooine scene! Only his mouth moves, but I don't mind that, and being able to take off the large saddle and smooth in his back will add a little playability.

The build

For anyone who has or had the last Sandspeeder the first part of the build will be nothing really, the differences between the two versions is negligible, almost all colour changes, and a couple of simplifications. The combination of wall elements that filled in the sides is replaced with a 1x4 round brick and a wall element, and the battered engine is now simply a different colour and stickered (so love it or hate it for stickers applied on round surfaces...).

The moisture vaporator is a nice little mini-build and breaks things up nicely before you head into the main cantina.

And the cantina construction is straightforward but engaging and fun with the different modules, hinged and sliding. There are some good touches with how the sliding parts go together and with the details particularly around the bar, and the entrance and sliding door are very interesting and round off the build nicely.

The completed model

I won't say too much about the Sandspeeder as it's so close to the last version and there are reviews aplenty already if you want details. It's a nice model, perhaps closer in colour to the film-original though still not right. And I don't know if it's nostalgia for the last version or not but I don't really like the nougat. The colour seems too vivid/full/bright next to the characters, though next to the sand building the old sand wouldn't work either.

The little bits you get, the Dewback and moisture vaporator, are fantastic little features that let you spread the four elements out and make quite a complete seeming scene.
(For what it's worth I've got a small sand vignette with four sandtroopers on, the escape pod and the last landspeeder on one narrow shelf, and they look great with the Dewback added; the other elements look great all together on the next shelf with the Landspeeders leaving one shelf and entering the next to tie them together visually.)

And the main feature of the set, the cantina, I think is very impressive indeed. With the hinges and sliding sections you can have it as an almost coherent and contained building, and it can open out freely. The sliding floor under Han and Greedo's table and the band area mean the opened out scene can be accessed nicely for play.
This part has plenty of potential for free play, and will let you act out just about every scene from the film from entering Mos Eisley to boarding the Falcon, droids behind the door included. It can be arranged in just about any way for display too, I've reversed the build of the door to have it forming a sort of front with the rest of the building half opened and the innards half slid.

Overall opinion

As you may have gathered I really like this set, and I think the four elements come off particularly well against the usual Star Wars ship-in-a-box. It looks good, can be displayed well, and should provide plenty of fun if you actually want to play with it! (Lego's for children? Surely not! :P)

The drawbacks are very small, I can't think of anything beyond little niggly points where I preferred the previous Landspeeder to this one and those are neither here nor there really.
The biggest issue that I've seen others mention is the minifigure selection and perhaps we could and should have had one fewer Bith for the sake of the bartender, or just added an extra figure to keep the band feeling substantial. But Greedo is great and an important character, the other figures are all good inclusions, the only way to have done better here would have made this a £100+ figure-fest so I don't think TLG can be criticised on that.