The NMPD Pelican Airbase is an interesting set. As the fourth entry into the Halo Signature Series, expectations are high and, when compared to previous Signature sets, it sits in a unique place. I’ll get into all that in-depth near the end of this review, so to start let’s look at the set itself.
Packaged in the now-familiar Signature Series carry-box, the Pelican is a hefty 1792 piece set that will cost you $180 US at your local Toys “R” Us. The price-to-piece ratio is in that reasonable range, but you sort of suspect that there might be a bit of a “TRU Tax” applied here. Opening the box you get a nice bit of interior art on the inside flap and two boxes containing parts printed with New Mombasa Police Department logos. The set is put together around the confrontation that takes place on the top of the NMPD Headquarters during the Halo 3: ODST game, and it’s fantastic to see such a large set representing a set-piece from what I consider to be one of the best Halo games.
Digging through the various and sundry parts bags you come across the figures and weapons. Following along with previous NMPD releases, we get a standard officer outfitted in armor this is probably not going to help him much during the Covenant invasion. There’s also a police pilot with the same gear. Both figures have bare forearms, further distinguishing them from previous NMPD figures.
The antagonist in this set is a Brute Chieftain with wonderfully detailed armor wielding a Gravity Hammer. There’s a great yellow to red fade in the colors of this guy’s armor that makes him really pop visually. Opposing him is Mickey Crespo, ODST trooper of squad Alpha-Nine and one of the main characters in the ODST game.
Mickey’s figure is notable for having unique armor, more specifically the ODST/UA Personal Protective Equipment variant. The helmet and left pauldron are new moldings, and there’s a rubber ammo strap that goes around his right ankle. Mickey doesn’t have the distinctive backpack he carries in the ODST game, but the attention to detail lavished on just the base figure is pretty remarkable despite this.
The weapons and other little environmental incidentals included for the set are pretty expansive as well. The inclusion of a missile pod is a nice touch, and the small buildable piece of equipment is a nifty little addition.
Getting into the building, eventually you notice all the printed pieces. The Pelican continues MEGA’s effort to move away from stickers, and the sizable array of printed pieces is impressive. It’s nice to know going in that you’re not going to have to mess with a sticker sheet at any point during construction. I never realized how much I really disliked stickers until I didn’t have to deal with them, and now I might be on the way to becoming one of those anti-sticker builders. That won’t stop me from applying any I run across, but my tolerance for them is definitely decreasing.
The first thing you build is the little block of the NMPD Headquarters. The front of the building itself is largely unremarkable and carries through a lot of the design cues we’ve seen on previous MEGA Halo structures. There’s a ubiquitous mounted machine gun, a nice little ramp, and some appropriate looking comm equipment up-top. Again, nothing particularly interesting, but then you get to the interior.
What could have been just an empty false-front is actually a fairly fleshed-out little playset.
There’s not much to the bottom floor, but the trio of orange barrels brings a nice bit of visual interest to the area.
Upstairs there’s a command station with a control bank that includes three of the afore-mentioned printed tiles. One great inclusion is the icon for the Superintendent AI, or Vergil on one of the display screens. This is a clever way to include another “character” from ODST in the set. A series of handles and levers fill the control bank out and, while simple, affords the space with surprising detail.
The next room over is just the door to the outside, but again a few small accouterments make the space seem super-detailed. MEGA didn’t have to put any detailing inside the building, but I’m glad they did, because even if you can’t see them in the set’s default configuration, they make the building structure feel more finished.
The next big section of the build is the pad for the Pelican. It’s not anything exceedingly special; just some of those big landing-pad plates held together with tiles on top and bracing plates on the bottom, but the completed pad looks especially nice and is good and solid. Have no fear about picking this thing up and moving it around, it’s engineered to stay assembled.
I’m usually not a huge fan of environmental structures added in to vehicle building sets, but the Halo sets have always done a decent job of including structures that look great and are relevant to the overall universe. So, even if I don’t display a structure with the set it came with, I almost always find some use for it in some other Halo-related display or set up. The NMPD building is sure to find its way onto one of my Halo shelves at some point or another, and the landing pad will be great for displaying any number of UNSC vehicles, air or ground. So while these pieces might not be the stars of the set, they’re certainly worthwhile.
Now the NMPD Pelican is the star of the set, and it certainly earns its spotlight. Building the main aircraft took me a little longer than I anticipated. This is partly due to the fact that I didn’t sort the pieces as thoroughly as I normally would. The craft consists primarily of silver, white, and blueish bricks and I simply separated by color. This cut my sorting time down considerably, but it cause me to hunt quite a bit during construction because the Pelican is composed of more of the set’s pieces than I assumed.
I spent the better part of a Saturday getting the whole set together, and the build was probably the least-tedious Signature Series assembly I’ve done. Not that there’s anything wrong with previous Signature offerings, but their sheer size tend to make them a little repetitive at times. The Pelican, however, has so many unique curves and angles that each assembly step is unique and interesting.
The finished model is a beauty and is packed with well-thought-out details and additions. Starting from the nose, one of the major differences between this and a UNSC Pelican is the lack of armament. Instead, the NMPD Pelican has an array of audio and visual monitoring and recording equipment packed into the nose. Where you’d expect a gun to be on a Military Pelican is either a camera or a searchlight, whichever you prefer. Above that is a silver structure which is reminiscent of the forward-looking infrared equipment on contemporary aircraft and which is also part of the AV recording suite.
The cockpit canopy is the same piece that was used on the original Mega Bloks pelican, and works fine here seeing as that old Pelican is the same base model as the NMPD variant. Mine does stick a bit and needs a little extra push to snap shut. Inside the cockpit are positions for two figures, but only one actual seat. The cockpit is also full of printed bricks and there’s even a pair of control sticks for the pilot figure to hold on to. This has got to be one of the better designed block cockpits I’ve ever seen.
Just behind the cockpit is a light-bar which makes the vehicle scram “POLICE”. It seems a little silly for an aircraft this size to have a light bar on its dorsal surface, but it’s also kind of cool, so we’ll let Bungie slide for this little design indulgence. The main thrusters and wings are on pivot mounts, but are really only attached this way to afford them the correct angle in relation to the hull. However, if you’re inclined to rotate them during pay, they’re sturdy enough to hold up to quite a bit of manipulation.
Flipping up a door on the main section of the body allows access to the passenger compartment. It’s roomy and has seats for four figures, although they have to sit with their legs stretched out onto the floor. There’s plenty of room for figures to stand up inside and spare weapons are attached to mountings on the underside of the roof.
The rear thrusters are also on pivots and, again, are solidly constructed and durable. Like the Halo 4 Gunship Pelican, this set also has a lift arm and carry-hook attached to the back of the ventral surface which you can snag a Warthog or Mantis with. I can only assume it'll be compatible with the NMPD Warthog and possibly even the NMPD Cyclops with a little jiggering.
Finishing up around the aft of the craft, the ship has the expected rear boarding ramp which leads into the passenger compartment. The rear stabilization legs are also present and flip up alongside the hull when not deployed for landings. Sadly, there isn’t a machine gun mounted inside the ramp (the NMPD Pelican’s only in-universe armament), but I would argue that it’s not really needed. Still, it’d be easy enough to install one. Perhaps even the gun that’s mounted on the headquarters portion of the set.
The total construction of the aircraft is pretty robust. The Pelican isn’t as hefty as the first version, but it’s still satisfyingly stable and solid. It holds together rather well when picked-up and handled, and has satisfying swooshability.
Overall, this is one pretty bird. The steel-blue and white look great together as usual, and especially so on this scale. The white does have “camo” marbling, but all it really serves to do is make the craft look weathered and used. The steel-blue does appear to have a small bit of silver or darker blue shot-through in trace amounts. It seems like a trivial thing, but that tiny bit of incidental color really helps to break up that “toy” look it might otherwise have with solid-color bricks. Finally, the occasional silver brick detailing on the surface add just the right amount of flair to round out the look of the ship, making it rather visually impressive.
After construction, one aspect of this set became glaringly obvious; this Pelican is noticeably larger than previous MEGA Pelicans. The first D77-TC model and the more recent G79H-TC/MA model (pictured) were roughly the same size. This Pelican is not only longer, but it’s heftier. This is something that the online pictures and images haven’t gotten across up to this point.
When this set was announced as 2015’s Halo Signature Series set, there was quite a bit of grumbling among fans as to its worthiness for the slot. Previously, Signature Series sets had been one large vehicle unlike anything released at regular retail that was obviously worth the larger price-tag. This appeared to be a simple recolor of a previous set with some structures tossed in to pad-out the price point. Having bought this set and assembled it; I can say that this assessment is both correct and incorrect.
First, we now have to reassess what “Signature Series” really means. Obviously it’s no longer one big vehicle in a big box. The NMPD Pelican Airbase is a vehicle and playset combo that would probably never be released at regular retail. And honestly, if the NMPD Pelican alone were to be released as a regular retail set, it would be at a higher than usual retail price point and, honestly, not garner many sales. But, as a TRU exclusive available in small quantities targeted at dedicated collectors and fans, it fits right in. So, the Signature Series should really be viewed as pieces that are more hard-core collector focused and which are large enough to merit special presentation.
Now, as for the price issue, again, after getting this set assembled and having it looming before me I can say that the cost issue isn’t as bad as I thought it was. As I stated before, the set is 1792 pieces for around $180 US which is good, but not quite the lower price for more pieces we expect from MEGA a lot of the time. However, some of the pieces are quite sizable, so if we consider the set on the amount of actual plastic contained therein, it starts looking reasonable again.
Breaking the set down, we can’t ignore the previous Pelicans. The original Pelican weighed-in at 944 pieces including three figures for $70. The more recent Halo 4 Pelican was 1161 pieces and four figures for $100. So one would assume that this set should follow suit, and now knowing that it is bigger than previous Pelicans ups the set’s value a bit. Now, I can’t say how many pieces of the NMPD Pelican Airbase are in the actual Pelican, but assessing its value at around $120 (including the figures) seems rational. Add in about $30-$40 worth of building and landing pad and you get a set that seems like it should be $160. Now, obviously by this reckoning, this makes this set overpriced by $20. It’s not nearly egregious as I initially though upon viewing the first online images, but still something to consider.
Luckily, Toys “R” Us does have a tendency to start distributing 15% and 20% off coupons around the last months of the year, so it should be relatively easy (with a little planning) to pick this set up for $144 to $153 before sales tax, which will make it a great value. I personally picked this set up for a total of $130 after applying sales tax, “R” Dollars rewards, and 10% discount for using a TRU credit card on a Thursday.
So, all that being said, who is this set for? Well, obviously serious Halo or building set fans will love this set. It might be a little much (price and construction-wise) for younger fans, but it’s a rewarding build if they can stick it out. If you’ve loved the previous NMPD offerings MEGA has given us recently, then this is a must-have addition. If you’re a little cash-poor at the moment, then wait for a sale or give it a pass but be cautioned; Signature Series sets do have a tendency to disappear and become difficult to obtain, so if you really want this set I’d recommend that you assemble a plan and get it taken care of sooner rather than later.
Personally I think this may very well be my favorite Pelican yet, and the included structures aren’t too shabby. Plus, the chance to get an ODST Mickey figure is too good to pass up. The only real deficiency in the set is the price, and that is the sole factor in my rating being a 4 and ½ out of 5 instead of being a perfect rating. Still, pretty awesome.
Now, when do we get a New Mombasa donut shop?
