LEGO Star Wars Republic Gunship (7676)

What We Think Fun Factor: Durability: (what this means) The Good: Detailed gunship is ready for intragalactic battles The Bad: Nothing In a Nutshell: This Star Wars inspired building set is sure to keep imaginative kids busy for days At a Glance Ages: 9 to 14

This detailed ship is ready for battle. View larger.

Lightsabers make hand-to-hand combat exciting. View Larger.

Included Lego figures represent the well-known characters Obi-Wan Kenobi, Plo Koon, Asajj Ventress, and Commander Cody. Of course, there's Clone Trooper mini-figures as well. There's a cool speeder bike that deploys from the back, and multiple decals to create different gunships for your army. Arm your favorite figure with a lightsaber in Jedi blue-green or Sith red, and let the intragalactic battles begin. There's even a healing chamber that helps your characters recharge after a tough battle.

Preparing Your Gunship for Battle
With 1,034 pieces in 18 bags and two instruction booklets, the Republic Attack Gunship took our eight-year-old tester just under eight hours to build. He broke the construction up into three shorter sessions to make it more enjoyable and had only one slight difficulty. While Lego instructions are known for being colorful and accurate, there were a handful of pieces in our booklet that appeared clear when they were in fact yellow. This didn't do anything to diminish our appreciation for this model. Our tester struggled to find anything negative to say, and he gave this ship a fun factor score of one million, based on a scale of one to 10!

Cockpits in unexpected locations on the wings, unique sliding doors, the zoomer buggy, and an emergency capsule for sick and injured characters ranked high on the list of cool features. That's not all though. There's also a front side compartment that opens so you can remove the command station, eight positionable flick-fire missiles on top, two rotating missiles in front, and a top compartment which opens to provide access to the spy droids.

When asked if there was a downside to this gunship, our tester could only reply, "It's the best ever! I just like the whole set." Soon after completing construction, he had a big battle with all the ships in his collection and commented on how this set includes updated pieces that he's never seen before.

Even though there's plenty of features on just the Republic Attack Gunship to hold a child's interest for a long time, we can imagine how much fun the set would be with a whole group of friends and siblings plus all their Star Wars ships. We also appreciate the way that Lego systems never limit imaginative play. All the cool hardware that makes up the Republic Attack Gunship can be used to build any structure or vehicle your child dreams up.

What's in the Box
1,034 Lego pieces and two instruction booklets.