Lego AT-AT

 

The All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT) is one of the Empire's most iconic symbols of military strength. The AT-AT walker was made famous on the ice planet at the Battle of Hoth in the Empire Strikes Back. Lego makes two versions of the AT-AT: an absolutely mammoth version that has 6,700 pieces and costs $850, and a smaller but still large version that has 1,200 pieces and costs $170. I built the smaller version. I've seen the larger version at the Lego store, and while it is impressively large, I don't think it is worth the nearly $700 jump in cost. The smaller version is still quite large and they look similar.

To be honest, this was not one of my favorite Lego builds. Building the body was fine, but building the legs was redundant and there was a lot of grey bricks, so not much variety. The cheaper walker looks impressive sitting in my bookshelf, but I will say it is a bit flimsy on its legs. It wouldn't take much to knock it over, and I wonder if this is an advantage the larger and more expensive model has over the one I built. My favorite part is that there is a pulley system coming out of the belly of the walker, where I've staged Luke Skywalker in his famous orange rebellion suit grabbing onto the wire to be pulled into the walker, with lightsaber in hand.