LEGO Star Wars 75425 SMART Play Mos Eisley Cantina Review
First of all, a little something to get you in the mood 🎵
Despite being one of the most prominent locations in the original Star Wars, there have been shockingly few LEGO Mos Eisley Cantina sets, 5 total. I’ve never understood why, it’s even the hub location in the original Lego Star Wars game, yet despite making the first one in 2004 the next wasn’t until 2014. It’s the ultimate home of Star Wars glup shittos, like Yakface and Wolfman, an area which Hasbro loves to go nuts in, but maybe LEGO’s aversion to making new molds for the weird aliens is what’s scared them off. The newest Mos Eisley Cantina comes in at 666 pieces and retails at $79.99/£69.99, making it probably the second largest cantina next only to the UCS. The cantina itself is just larger than the 2014 one, but it came with a landspeeder and a molded Dewback whereas 2026s Dewback is brickbuilt. The big “draw” of the set this time is its smart brick integration, although it doesn’t actually come with one. The set is split very nicely into 5 builds, each with its own bag and instruction set, so I’ll break it down 1 at a time.
Bag 1 is the Dewback, this time brick-built as opposed to the previous large molded ones. I’m generally a big fan of brickbuild creatures over molded ones, it always feels more distinctly LEGO to me, but that really only applies when they’re good. This dewback suffers from two main issues, the first is the oversized harness/seating area, made larger to incorporate the smart brick functionality. I’m fairly against smart bricks in general, to me they go against the whole purpose of LEGO and playing with your imagination. I think back on those stories of actors on the sets of the Star Wars prequels, getting told off because they were making lightsaber noises with their mouths, ruining takes. Having LEGO sets make those noises themselves just kills that creativity to me. It doesn’t help that they don’t even try to hide the smart brick, it’s just a big old block sitting on the back. The second issue is the legs, which are incredibly basic compared to the detail of the tail and head, and are also attached by a loose peg letting them swing wildly. It’s a bizarre contrast that makes the legs look even worse.
Bag 2 gets us on to the main cantina building with the bar. The bar itself is pretty small compared to the actual design which is long and goes throughout the bar itself, this is only a little circle. The bar design itself is a good design though, nice and cluttered with some delicious blue milk. Beside the bar is the large juicer, which you may be struggling to remember from the movie, because it doesn’t exist. It’s just another excuse to include more smart brick functionality. Ultimately this set is 8+, so you can understand putting features like that in, but with how rare Mos Eisley’s are it would be nice to focus on more accurate features. This section shows another key issue I have with the smart bricks, how hand-holding they are. There’s a bright red brick where the minifigure stands, where the smart brick goes, and where the lever to move the juicer is held, ruining the design of the set.
Bag 3 is a door, so there’s not too much to say about it. It’s a pretty nice door, almost oddly well designed considering the more juvenile style of some of the other aspects of the set. It feels strange that this DOESN’T have a smart brick function, because what sounds are better than Star Wars doors? Even the handle at the top of the door to raise it up is a medium nougat instead of bright red, creating a real dissonance between the smart brick parts of the sets, and the others. Bag 4 carries this on, showing a nice booth for Greedo to sit in. It’s got some basic play features, launching the inhabitants out of their seats, again well hidden and not bright red. You would think if anything in this set would have a smart brick, it’s the iconic “Han shooting Greedo” scene. But again, nothing, just a regular booth with some nice extra details, like a water bath outside for the dewback to drink and an antenna of some sort on top.
Bag 5, our final bag, is the big stage where the one and only Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes perform. We only actually get two Bith figures in this set so I suppose it’s Figrin D’an and the Modal Node this time. This section is much like the bar, a more juvenile design with smart brick functionality as we have our band sway around the stage. The functionality to link the 3 sections is pretty neat, and unlike the juicer it’s definitely something I can picture myself enjoying as a kid, although the 3 sections with only 2 Bith is a little disappointing, even just a third would fill the stage and let you buy two to complete the band.
The figure selection here is pretty standard for a Mos Eisley set, Two Bith, each with a unique instrument, a standard Sandtrooper, and a “Smart” Obi-Wan and Greedo. The two Bith are nice to get, it’s the same design they’ve used since 2014 but sometimes they just nail it on the first attempt. The Sandtrooper is again, fairly standard. The hard plastic pauldron instead of a usually cloth one is a definite downgrade, but it’s not the biggest deal. Greedo, while now “smart” is again pretty standard. It’s technically a new figure, although it’s 90% the same as the 2018 one, the only real difference being the hip piece, oddly missing the belt print. The Old Ben Kenobi figure is annoying, because it’s essentially perfect, finally capturing his robes properly like they’ve done with other eras of Obi-Wan recently, except it’s a smart figure so it has weird symbols on the back. I do find it odd that LEGO are still using the smooth hair for Old Ben though, while nearly every other usage has been replaced over the years. It doesn’t look bad at all, just strange. The biggest issue with the sets figures is the ones it’s missing, it feels wrong to not have at least a Han figure, and in a $80/£70 retail set, a few more figures could definitely have been included, even if they included one or two of the rarer figures from the Mos Eisley UCS.
If you want a closer look at the “smart play” features, I’d recommend Jangs LEGO Reviews which has a pretty good examination of each smart brick feature. To me, they largely seem silly, the blender especially. I can see kids enjoying the dewbacks “purring” and sleep noises, but not enough to sell the set. The best use is definitely the stage, playing a rendition of the Cantina music, but having to constantly rotate the stage seems annoying compared to just pressing a button to play the song. Kids these days have tablets and phones and laptops of their own, they can manage playing a song. The obvious choices for smart features, doors and shooting, aren’t even part of it and the figures just make weird noises, and not even in a “MACLUNKY” sort of way. I just don’t see the appeal, especially with the price increase on sets that include the smart brick itself and all the bright red bricks included to show off the over-the-top play features.
Overall while the younger age target and smart brick functions may hold the set back at times, it’s nice to have a new, affordable Mos Eisley Cantina that covers the basics and finally makes the Bith easily available again. It’s definitely flawed, but not enough to not make it worth getting. Full price may be a little too steep, but even 20% off or so makes it a great price, yet alone the £45 it seems to have settled on in the UK.
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