Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Daily Fail: Interstellar Battleplan




First time here? Please take a moment and read the DAILY FAIL DISCLAIMER. Thanks!
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Missing letters. We've seen in before in sets from BRICK like "City Ancgl" - add a vowel or two and suddenly you have real words. But what about when dropping a letter (or two) gives you a name that still (sort of) works? Is it intentional? Is it a mistake? Does anyone really care?

Case in point: Interstellar Battleplan. Did they mean "plan" or "planE"? Or maybe "Plain"? Or how about just "SUCK"?







Yes, anther Spider-Fail. Yes, it's the same as the other BRICK Spider-Fails. Pack-of-cards sized box. The same bad translations around the sides. Nothing too special there.

The set itself is a copy of another bootleg set: Xin Qi Le's Intelligence Toy Glider, which is itself a bootleg of LEGO's X-Treme Stunts 6561 Hang Glider. (Or maybe Battleplan is a direct bootleg of LEGO's set. It's hard to be sure.)

Notice that background? We've seen it before in another BRICK set: Star Wars. Fans of Greg Bear's writing may have seen it before then:



Don't see the connection? Look closely at the background behind Spidey-Bootleg in the close up below and compare it to the cover above.



Yep. The background is a clone of Anvil of Stars. Perhaps that was BRICK's Interstellar Battleplan.



The instructions have the usual strangeness in step five - this time it's Spidey-Bootleg leaping up to grab hold of the harness. At least he's in scale this time.



The actual toy is nearly identical to the package art - the only changes being the color of the harness-hose and Spidey-Boot's hands.



Try and play with this toy and you're in for the usual round of failure - once again Spidey-Boot has a hand that doesn't want to stay attached to his arm.

There's only one more Spider-BRICK left in my review pile - and I saved the best for last. Tune in tomorrow for the stunning conclusion to the Parade of Failure.

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Once again, many thanks to Joe from The Undiscovered Playthings for sending me this set to review.

5 comments:

Max said...

Great catch on the Anvil of Stars background being used again! Oh, and if you look closely at the cover art, one of Spider-Bootleg's legs is at an awkward angle! *ahem* Excuse me, Ancgl.

Ranger said...

Actually, both this and the Intelligence Toy Glider aren't slightly modified X-Treme Team hang gliders, they're direct copies of half of a Lego Island set.the more you know *starwipe*

Christopher Doyle said...

@Ranger:

Good catch! Although I could argue that both LEGO sets are within 3-4 bricks of being used as the base. ;)

(I do think you're right though - the Island set is just a revamp of the X-treme model, and the racer brick shows that BRICK was most likely looking at the later version.)

Anonymous said...

Seems as though the bootlegger's "Battleplan" was to make a knockoff as bad as "Plan 9 from outer space"...

Anonymous said...

Hmm..... Aparrently this "Battle Plan" involves freakish spider-man abominations on hang-gliders falling out of the sky. Maybe they're supposed to land on people, because I don't think that interstellar hang glider could support a germ.