LEGO Star Wars 75402 ARC-170 Starfighter: the comeback story arc [Review]
Before the X-wing, there was the ARC-170. Well OK, technically there was nothing before the X-wing as the original Star Wars came out before the prequel films – but let’s not get into semantics just yet! While the former has seen plenty of LEGO iterations down the years, there have been just two sets of the Republic’s main starfighter, and none since 2011. None until now, that is! LEGO Star Wars 75402 ARC-170 Starfighter forms part of the new line of LEGO Star Wars sets coming out on January 1, 2025. With 497 pieces, it can be pre-ordered now for US $69.99 | CAN $89.99 | UK £59.99, and will likely be available on eBay and Amazon too. Does this hotly-anticipated comeback live up to its billing? Read on to find out!
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
The box and contents
The box art features the ARC-170 high above the skies of what appears to be Cato Neimoidia. How can I tell (other than the fact I’m a massive nerd)? That’s Plo Koon’s starfighter on the bottom right, who flew over that planet with these Republic fighters in Revenge of the Sith. Spoiler: it didn’t end well for him.
The back shows the crew of three preparing for a sortie, with some insets showing off some of the play features.
There are four paper bags inside, along with the instruction booklet and a pretty sizable sticker sheet.
The build
Tipping out the first bag, we start in fairly standard fashion sticking plates together. But before long we put in a Technic beam atop some 1×4 tiled plates, which will be the actuator for the s-foil mechanism.
That mechanism forms the bulk of bag one (and indeed of the ship itself). It’s quite clever, though. We start with a couple of assemblies involving Technic drums, which allow two stacked beams to slide over one another. There are two of these sub-assemblies either side of the lime green beams.
Progressing the build a bit, we can start to get an idea of how this will move all four wings at once, turning lateral motion into rotational. It’s not until a 7l beam attaches to the bottom that it all becomes clear how it’s connected.
You can see here how turning it swings each set of drums in opposite directions. Ingenious!
That tan Technic axle slots in to the actuator we put in earlier. It’s very satisfying to use.
That’s enough GIFs for now – we’ll come back to them later. For now we have a starfighter to build, and our second bag sees us build up the rest of the fuselage. The rear gunner’s, er, gun is on a simple ball joint.
Our first stickers are used up as the hull around the cockpit area is made. There is one printed piece in here, though: that’s the screen that goes in the co-pilot’s position. You’ll notice another ball joint cannon has been added to the rear, too: both rotate together in the movies, but they’re not linked here. They’re also quite easy to knock askew, as future photos will demonstrate…
In bag 3, we can immediately spot three trans-black canopies. All three use stickers to achieve the different detailing across them. I usually see stickers as a necessary evil in LEGO sets, but stickers on windscreen pieces is one of my least favourite uses of them. The colour matching is poor as the stickers are mostly transparent, and you frequently get stuck with air bubbles, particularly on curved parts such as these.
Still, I guess it’s cheaper than printing three different windscreens. Two of them are attached early on, either side of adding some transparent pink thrusters.
The rear of craft is now basically done, so we can turn our attention to the front. There’s some interesting building going on here! We go from two studs wide to one thanks to some jumper plates and Technic bricks.
All this allows for the plating on the nose to taper down slightly at the front with a smart dark red stripe all the way down.
As for the tip of the nose, that also makes use of some novel techniques. The highlight is a quartet of rounded 1×2 plates attached using short bars to invert the direction of studs in a small space. It’s clever, but I can tell you from previous experience that these will not be easy to take apart!
It does make for a strong frame, though, so this ARC-170 will probably survive a crash landing or two. (No, I’m not testing it!) Anyway, after closing out the gaps, our last handful of pieces go towards the engines’ intakes. I like the use of an ice skate for the turbine detail.
We can set the main build aside for now, and move onto our last bag, which contains the wings. The main wings incorporate a spring-loaded shooter on each side. While building them, their elliptical shape reminded me of WWII Spitfire planes, which had the same distinctive feature.
What Spitfires didn’t have, though, were s-foils. Although the opposite pairs (top left and bottom right, and vice-versa) are identical, they’re built separately, which I found a bit odd. They also use a printed 3×3 round tile at their tip to match the dark red on the main wings. The Republic Navy roundel is a sticker, though.
The wings and s-foils slot into their respective axle or pin holes, and we’re done with the ship. We’ll take a closer look at it shortly.
The minifigures
First, though, let’s inspect this set’s minifigures, starting with the clone pilots. From left to right, we have Captain Oddball, Captain Jag, and an un-named pilot. They all have unique helmets, but are otherwise identical figures. Which makes sense – they are clones, after all!
The prints are nice and detailed, and quite accurate. Speaking of accuracy – Captains Jag and Oddball technically never flew in the same craft, at least as far as we’ve seen, but I do appreciate them being thrown in together all the same. They’re the only two prominent named clone pilots, so it’s nice to get both at once.
But that’s not all! Every starfighter worth its salt needs an astromech droid to help out. In this case, that’s the green-domed R4-P44. It’s essentially a re-colour of the standard astromech design. That does mean no back printing.
The finished model
Here is the finished ARC with its crew in place. I’ve always been a fan of this starfighter design, and this set does a pretty good job of LEGO-ifying it.
Some elements do stick out a bit, such as the tip of the spring-loaded shooters, but for a toy that’s an acceptable compromised. Same goes for the separate rear turret: it would have been nice if the two cannons could have been linked, but it doesn’t affect their playability.
While it looks good from the top, the same can’t be said for the underside. One drawback of the wing play feature is that it makes the bottom of the ship six studs wide. Had it been reduced to four, it might have looked a lot better.
The crew all fit inside nicely, but you’ll probably want to put the astromech droid in before seating the co-pilot and rear gunner, as it’s quite cramped up there. The pilot at the front gets the comfiest-looking seat.
Previous iterations of the ARC-170 used a gear on the back to engage the s-foils, which could be a little tedious. This method is so much better. It’s a really snappy mechanism that you can even use while swooshing one-handed. I can also confirm that the ship is eminently swooshable!
Conclusions and recommendation
This is a really nicely-designed set. I’m impressed by the s-foil mechanism, the minifigures are great, there are some interesting bits of building, and it looks pretty good (albeit not great). But there’s one elephant in the room that’s gone unmentioned so far: the price. Star Wars sets (and some licensed themes in general, actually) seem to have been getting more expensive without really adding much value. And despite the praise that can rightly be levelled at the ARC-170, there’s nothing amazing in here that makes $70 for 497 pieces seem like a good deal. Knock 10 bucks off the RRP and it seems much fairer; 20% off and it’s definitely worth picking up. So unless you’re desperate to add one to your Republic Navy, I would wait to see what deals pop up on this one.
LEGO Star Wars 75402 ARC-170 Starfighter contains 497 pieces and four minifigures, and will retail for US $69.99 | CAN $89.99 | UK £59.99 upon its release on January 1, 2025. Pre-orders are open now, and you may be able to find it on third-party seller sites like eBay or Amazon once it has released.
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
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