In Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens, as Rey and Finn try to escape Jakku, they run toward a parked spacecraft with four enormous engines, only to have it blown up by First Order TIE fighters. The vehicle, a Subpro Quadrijet transfer space-tug (or “Quadjumper”), never leaves the ground and only appears in the film for about three seconds. Nevertheless, here we are 18 months after the release of the movie with the LEGO Star Wars set 75178 Jakku Quadjumper, which includes 457 pieces with 5 minifigs and retails for $49.99.

We first saw the LEGO Quadjumper in person at Toy Fair in New York back in February, and the set is part of the summer 2017 wave of LEGO Star Wars sets.

The Build

The set comes in a standard LEGO Star Wars box (featuring Rogue One imagery), with the instruction booklet and sticker sheet loose among the four numbered bags.

The first bag includes Rey and Unkar Plutt’s brute, with the pieces for the lower half of the vehicle’s hull. Like most LEGO vehicles that require sturdiness for play, the core section of the Quadjumper is full of Technic beams and stacked plates. There’s a large gap in the middle of the vehicle to accommodate another Technic mechanism, which we’ll come back to in a moment. Note the stickers applied to the interior surface of brackets — something I don’t think I’ve seen in a LEGO set before.

The second bag builds the remainder of the Qudjumper’s hull, including the cockpit, rear compartment, and the Technic mechanism in the central section of the vehicle. The outward-facing Technic pins make it obvious that that’s how the four large engines will attach next. This is also the best view you’ll have of the little landing gear.

You build the lower engines with the parts from the third bag and the upper engines with the fourth bag. The engines are fairly repetitive, though the upper engines do have a wrap-around sub-assembly that adds some color and detail.

The stickers are not particularly integral to the final design, and I would argue that you could save them for your own use later.

Despite the set being a $50 set with over 450 parts, it’s a very quick build given the modular construction, with larger pieces for the engines and a high degree of repetition to build them.

The finished model

Despite my qualms about such an unimportant vehicle from a plot standpoint, both the source vehicle itself and its LEGO incarnation are actually kind of cool.

The dark orange color scheme works well with the underlying silver and grays, and the craft is well-detailed from all angles.

The cockpit opens to seat two minifigures comfortably. Here we have Finn piloting the Quadjumper to take Rey as a passenger off Jakku rather than Rey piloting the Millennium Falcon to meet Han Solo and Chewbacca. What a different movie that would have been…

The rear compartment also opens, and is roomy enough to fit a minifig standing up.

Despite mainly being long tubes built from fairly large pieces, the four engines that give the Quadjumper its name look great from both the front and rear. The 2×2 round tiles for the engine intake fans are printed rather than stickered, and will be useful in many other contexts.

People have been speculating about the little knob on the top of the Quadjumper since our coverage from Toy Fair, hoping that it would be the mechanism for blowing up the vehicle. As our handy animated GIF proves, why yes, you can indeed blow up your own Quadjumper — no First Order TIE Fighter required.

Pressing the knob pushes the Technic mechanism down, forcing the mechanism’s arms out, in turn knocking the top engines off the Quadjumper.

Pushing another, flat knob on the vehicle’s underside resets the Technic mechanism and upper knob.

The minifigs

The minifig choices for this set were severely limited by the three seconds that the source material appeared onscreen. LEGO could have chosen to go the direction they’ve always gone with the T-16 Skyhopper and some early LEGO Star Wars sets, with a non-canon pilot, random ground crew, and so on. But if you’re a 7-year-old who wants to recreate this brief scene from the movie rather than expand your minifigure collection as an adult builder, Rey and Finn had to be the set’s main characters. Similarly, they’re running away from Unkar’s thugs and First Order stormtroopers, so having one of each makes a whole lot of sense. Still, it’s a bit disappointing that there’s only one unique minifig in the set.

Unless I’m blind (and that’s been known to happen), Rey, Finn, and BB-8 are identical to the versions released in 2015 and 2016 with earlier waves of LEGO Star Wars sets from The Force Awakens.

The First Order stormtrooper is identical to the one wearing a harness in the original 75132 First Order Battle Pack.

The stormtrooper wears a 1×1 “backpack,” with a printed tile that first appeared on First Order snow troopers in the First Order snowspeeder set.

Thus,the only new minifigure in this set is Unkar’s brute, Unkar’s brute first appeared as an “exclusive” minifig with the DK book LEGO Star Wars: Chronicles of the Force. This character looks pretty much like an Egyptian mummy. He wears a tattered green hoodie over a dark tan shirt, with wrappings that shroud his face.

The head is highly detailed, with one eye peeking out from the shroud of ragged wrappings.

Conclusions & recommendation

As I noted earlier, I had some pretty significant misgivings about this set. Given the limited number of new or interesting vehicles in The Force Awakens (do we need another Resistance X-wing?), it was inevitable that we’d get the Quadjumper. But with the set in hand, it’s certainly a fun little vehicle to blow up on the ground or pick up and swoosh around.

At $50 for 456 pieces and 5 minifigs (counting BB-8), the cost of the set is about normal for LEGO Star Wars sets, though not nearly the excellent value of many of the Rogue One sets. One disappointment due to the source material’s limitations is the minifig selection, with just one no new minifigs. Even the previously exclusive minifig is just a minor character that himself only appeared onscreen for a few moments. The parts selection is largely composed of grays, but the dark orange pieces in a variety of shapes are a nice addition. The highlight from a parts standpoint is the four printed engine intake pieces.

Overall, 75178 Jakku Quadjumper is a fun, quick build, priced fairly with the correct minifig selection and a literal handful of great parts. I’m recommending the set for hardcore LEGO Star Wars fans, as well as LEGO builders looking for some cool new “spacey” parts, but it’s hard to give a higher or broader recommendation for a LEGO version of a spacecraft that never even lifts off, with minifigs we’ve (mostly) gotten in previous sets.

75178 Jakku Quadjumper includes 457 pieces with 5 minifigs and retails for $49.99. It’s available now from Amazon.com and the LEGO Shop online.