[REVIEW] 75276 - Stormtrooper Helmet

[Clone OPatra]

Ah, the iconic Stormtrooper. Can LEGO hit the mark with a model of this very smooth, rounded helmet?

75276 Stormtrooper Helmet | 2020 | 647 Pieces

USD $60 | GBP 55 | EUR 60 (variable) | CAD 80 | AUS$ 90

___________________________

This is one of four review topics for the Helmets Collection: an individual detailed build and review for Boba Fett, Stormtrooper, and TIE Fighter Pilot, and an overview review looking at the whole line including the packaging, all three together, value and the concept in general.

These sets were kindly provided by LEGO but all opinions are my own.

Now, let's look at the Stormtrooper!

__________________________

Bag 1

Much like the the other two helmets, bag 1 is all about building the core and contains a lot of SNOT parts. A couple of teal 1x2 tiles snuck in too, since everything now needs some teal.

The core is comprised of two semi-hollow levels, which is just fine and goes quickly. This is the bottom one:

At the end of the bag you've just got a lot of SNOT bricks at the ready and a bit of the top of the head.

Bag 2

Bag 2 has the parts for the stand and the back of the helmet, and gets a lot more black and white. Start saying goodbye to colours.

The stand is more symmetrical than the TIE Fighter Pilot one because it doesn't need attachment points for anything. It's also exactly the same as Boba's besides for a different colour for the technic beams.

At the end of bag 2 we've attached the helmet's core to the stand and added the back of the helmet, which doesn't look like much at this stage. Captain Rex is standing in again as a size comparison. At this point the model is of course not getting any taller, so you can already get a sense of how large (or not large) it is.

Bag 3

Plenty of white in bag 3, with the parts for the eyes, mouth, and upper parts of the sides. You can see the only printed parts in the set apart from the display plaque - the 2x2 dark grey tiles with black stripe print for the mouth.

The builds for the eyes and mouth are pretty much the same as the TIE Fighter Pilot's, but with all of the colours swapped of course. The white bracket with four anti-studs on the side is semi-rare in that colour, appearing in only six sets, which makes it the rarest part in the whole set.

Voila - the top of the helmet has been finished all around, eyes are attached, and the mouth is ready to be put on.

Bag 4

This bag heads into nearly all white territory, finishing off one side.

The build here involves a lot of stacking, and doesn't look like much of anything as you go along.

Here it is at the end of bag 4 with the whole side slab, ready to be attached.

Bag 5

Bag 5 builds what's left: the other side, the air filters, chin, and plaque.

The chin has a bunch of clever direction changes, and the air filters are cleverly attached with ball joints to sockets that have been waiting patiently since bag 2 to receive them.

Completed Model - Without Stickers

Just like with the TIE Fighter Pilot, I decided to leave the stickers off while building so that I could show you what the helmet looks like without them. It's annoying that there are stickers in a set like this anyway, but LEGO seems to have their rules, like 4+ sets get a bajillion prints but a high-end product line like this for adults, which doesn't introduce any new pieces or parts in new colours, can't. 

The TIE pilot looked fine without stickers, but the Stormie.... doesn't. You can do without the little blue lines on the side, but the mouth looks quite off this way.

Completed Model - As Intended

To be honest, which I'm going to be, since it's my review, it still looks off even with the stickers. The mouth is way too chunky and steep, almost like the Rebels show design, the air intakes seem a bit too prominent, and the whole thing really just looks ugly.

It'd be nearly impossible to capture the complex curves of the Stormtrooper helmet in LEGO, especially at this scale, but a big problem here that works against it, unfortunately, is the colour. Whereas the TIE Pilot has the benefit of being all black, so your mind smushes everything together, in white in almost any lighting every detail is laid bare: every seam between parts, every shadow of one part against another, heck even the little shadows of the studs. The blockiness becomes really apparent, and the stepped bows at the side are never going to look like they're supposed to be one continuous smooth section.

The side profile looks ok, but the model does feel slightly too flat at the sides, especially nearing the eye area.

And here's the plain back, for those who care.

Final Thoughts and Rating

The Stormtrooper helmet is one of the most iconic Star Wars images. I think that most people who have heard of Star Wars can recognise it, so it's a good choice for a line like this.

Unfortunately, I don't think the model works. The whole thing looks flattened and squished in at the sides around the eyes; the mouth part is too large and sharp and subsequently looks too close to the eyes. Like I already wrote about, the blockiness is laid bare by the colour. Obviously there's nothing that could be done about the colour, since Stormtroopers are white, but that doesn't make the problems go away.

I saw someone suggest that it looks like a buildable model of LEGO's Stormtrooper helmet, and it's a good suggestion. For sure it looks like a model of a stylised cartoon Stormtrooper helmet, and not the movie one. Above all, it looks ugly.

Parts: Once again, I can't give this a rating. There's nothing exciting in the parts, but if you like white especially and want a bunch of SNOT, it's good.

Build: 8/10 - It's the least interesting and most tedious of the bunch because it's relatively plain. The front of the face has some clever techniques, but the rest is primarily just stacking.

Design: 6.5/10 - While nothing could have been done about the issue of it being white, the angle and size of the mouth certainly could have been improved, as could the overall dimensions. If it was just widened a tad, it might be more convincing, but the mouth area especially is what throws it off.

Overall: 7.25/10 - As a build, and as a completed model for display, the Stormtrooper helmet is the one I'd recommend the least of the bunch. I'm really not a stickler for "accuracy" or something like that, but I'm looking at the model and something looks wrong about it. It is recognisable of course, but it just doesn't look nice.

[Merlict]

Ugly and overpriced , still gets a 7.25 / 10 . 

Good not to bite the hand that feeds I suppose. 

[Clone OPatra]

2 hours ago, Merlict said:

Ugly and overpriced , still gets a 7.25 / 10 . 

Good not to bite the hand that feeds I suppose. 

Maybe it's a regional thing. Where I grew up and had any experience with grading (the east coast of the US), 90-100% is A, 80-89% is B, 70-79% is C, 60-69% is D, 50-59% is F, and below 50 effectively doesn't exist. Therefore, when I gave the design a 6.5 that's a D in my eyes, which is pretty awful. It's not flunk out of school awful, but it's bad. 7.25/10 is a hard C or C-, which is also very average to bad.

I didn't say anything about overpriced though. I didn't discuss value at all, since I'm going to talk about that when I talk about the range as a whole.

[Kit Figsto]

Looking at the second photo you took of the completed model, I really can't shake the idea that this was modeled after the original helmet piece that LEGO put out.  It looks alright, the box art I think makes it look weird, but I definitely think that Boba Fett works the best in this scale.

[Mandalorianknight]

7 hours ago, Clone OPatra said:

Maybe it's a regional thing. Where I grew up and had any experience with grading (the east coast of the US), 90-100% is A, 80-89% is B, 70-79% is C, 60-69% is D, 50-59% is F, and below 50 effectively doesn't exist. Therefore, when I gave the design a 6.5 that's a D in my eyes, which is pretty awful. It's not flunk out of school awful, but it's bad. 7.25/10 is a hard C or C-, which is also very average to bad.

I didn't say anything about overpriced though. I didn't discuss value at all, since I'm going to talk about that when I talk about the range as a whole.

As a student, I can confirm that in america at least a 72.5% is bad, and a 65% would probably kill me.

1 hour ago, Kit Figsto said:

Looking at the second photo you took of the completed model, I really can't shake the idea that this was modeled after the original helmet piece that LEGO put out.  It looks alright, the box art I think makes it look weird, but I definitely think that Boba Fett works the best in this scale.

yeah, the way the mouth comes out really makes it look like the original helmet print.

[icm]

7 hours ago, Clone OPatra said:

Maybe it's a regional thing. Where I grew up and had any experience with grading (the east coast of the US), 90-100% is A, 80-89% is B, 70-79% is C, 60-69% is D, 50-59% is F, and below 50 effectively doesn't exist. Therefore, when I gave the design a 6.5 that's a D in my eyes, which is pretty awful. It's not flunk out of school awful, but it's bad. 7.25/10 is a hard C or C-, which is also very average to bad.

I didn't say anything about overpriced though. I didn't discuss value at all, since I'm going to talk about that when I talk about the range as a whole.

Guess it depends on how you distribute ratings with a 1-10 scale.  Some people think of it as a uniform distribution, others think of it as a Gaussian distribution centered at 5 with a standard deviation of somewhere between 1 and 2, others as a higher-order distribution looking somewhat like a shifted Gaussian with the peak somewhere between 8 and 9 like a grade distribution ....

Sorry, I'm just working on a paper with a bunch of covariance stuff in it right now, so I had to comment ....

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

I love it: very nice final result!