Desert Skiff 9496 - Review

Boba Fett. What else matters?

I seem to be on a roll this week and have been fitting in a little extra building time. Tonight, I decided to tackle one of the new Star Wars LEGO entries, set 9496: Desert Skiff. I'm a pretty big Star Wars fan and grew up with the original trilogy. As I've mentioned before, I try to avoid going crazy on the theme just because I've missed so much and I don't want to build the urge to get them all. The modular bug is bad enough. Return of the Jedi was the first movie I ever went to see in the theater though, so it was really hard to resist this set once I knew it was coming out. Also, it comes with Boba Fett.


The skiff comes in at 213 pieces and retails for $24.99 in the US. It's actually a fairly decent bargain when you consider that it comes with four minifigures. You get Luke, Boba, Lando in disguise, and Kithaba. I admit I had to look that last one up. All of them have the high level of torso printing and detail you would expect from modern figures.

Boba Fett will probably be the big draw here. Between the leg printing, a cape, jet pack, a nice big gun, and his helmet, he really is just as amazing as I'd hoped he would be. I will admit the antenna on the helmet is a little large, but how often are minifigs in a realistic scale? Worth noting is that you get three extra antenna in the set, so kids should not have to worry if one gets misplaced.

Inside the box, you get bags numbered 1-3, the instructions, and three loose 2x16 dark bley plates. The instructions were a little folded in my set, but a little pressure will likely flatten them out just fine. The book does appear to be glued at the spine though, so you probably will end up with a little folding if you build from them.

Bag one is all about Luke and Boba, along with the brick-built Sarlacc. The dreaded pit of doom that slowly digests you over a thousand years is actually a pretty simple build, with just some shell pieces on hinges and a few little teeth and tentacles to add in details. I guess it's fortunate that the updated cut of RotJ gave the Sarlacc more of a "head." Otherwise, I highly doubt we would be seeing this piece of scenery in LEGO form. He makes a cool feature, but I was not highly impressed with the finished product.

The skiff itself is a vast improvement over the 2000 release and is easily three times the size. It has a very cool plank that can swing underneath the deck and the adjustable stabilizing wings on the back make an excellent play feature. The center section of the deck can also lift up for some minimal storage. There are two extra little black blasters included to place in there.

An interesting inclusion is several 2x2 round trans-clear bricks, which are placed on the bottom of the skiff to lift it up a little off the ground. I think this is a great touch by LEGO and really helps to improve the display potential for this set. Of course, now I'm tempted to order a few extra so I can increase the height.

The finished product feels very solid and I can certainly see a lot of play potential here for younger fans. The inclusion of so many great figures makes this well worth the modest price for a small set and I can easily see this being one of the best sellers out of the summer line of Star Wars. Now we just need a re-release of Jabba's Sail Barge. Based on the Tatooine focus in recent OT sets, I'm hoping the wait will not be too long.