Royal Talon Fighter Attack – Throwback Review

Welcome my friends to a special throwback review. This Friday, November 11th sees the theatrical release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. It’s the highly anticipated sequel to 2018’s original Black Panther, which is hands down one of the best films in the MCU. As a fun tie-in to this, I’m going to check out the Royal Talon Fighter Attack (76100) from 2018. This set is from my personal backlog of unbuilt kits. It’s also one of two sets that were released with the first film. If you’re eager to learn more about the current film’s sets, please check out our articles here and here. In the meantime, join me in checking out an older release – enjoy!

SET SUMMARY

ROYAL TALON FIGHTER ATTACK | #76100 | 358 pcs | MARVEL SUPER HEROES

QUICK REVIEW

• VALUE: 91% (great value base on original MSRP, good build time as well)
• BUILD: 90% (great small build with good shape, weight and details)
• MINIFIGURES: 90% (excellent figs with mostly exclusive prints and accurate details)
• ENTERTAINMENT: 94% (fun play set, well built and makes a decent display)
• OVERALL SCORE: 91% (great set at a very good price with great minifigs)

VALUE: 91% (original) / 77% (purchased)

The Royal Talon Fighter Attack (76100) retailed for $39.99 CAD when it released in 2018. If you managed to snag it at that time, it was a pretty amazing deal. Because of those 358 pieces, you got an awesome cost-per-brick of $0.11. That’s nicely below the current average of $0.13-$0.15 per brick that we see nowadays. And with that great cost-per-brick, we would get an awesome score of 89%.

I picked up the Royal Talon Fighter in the summer of 2020. The set had already retired but I found a seller on Kijiji offering one brand new, unopened in the box for $55 CAD. At this higher price, I technically get a cost-per-brick of $0.15 and a score of 73%. Like many a set on the aftermarket, the price has gone up. After 4 years, the cost has more or less doubled to $80 CAD for a NIB set. Thankfully I managed to at least pick this up with only a 30% mark-up. Gotta take the wins where you can haha.

I built this fun little set in a lean 72 minutes. It’s not a huge set, but I do like that I got a good hour of construction out of it. With the original cost of $39.99 I get a cost-per-minute of $0.56. That translates to a score of 93%. And for a smaller build, that’s a pretty great score. If we look instead at the purchased price of $55 CAD, I get a cost-per-min of $0.76 and a score of 81%. That’s right at the average for all the superhero sets to date – so not bad by any stretch. Consequently my final value scores are 91% for the original price and 77% for the purchased price. To keep it consistent though I will be using the original price for the final scoring.

BUILD: 90%

The Royal Talon Fighter Attack (76100) is packaged in the typical super hero box art of the time. We still have the ‘Super Heroes’ logo and a prominent image of the character in the lower right corner. The ‘Infinity Saga’ and ‘Marvel Studios’ branding is still a couple of years off. And biggest surprise of all? Taped box flaps – no push-in tabs despite how small the box is. This is luxurious by some AFOL standards. Inside are 3 numbered bags, a medium-sized sticker sheet and a 99 page instruction booklet.

So how does a 4 year old set stack up? Very, very well. Now yes, it’s only 4 years so it’s not like the entire LEGO®️ landscape has changed. But it’s fun to see how great a set can be without a major price increase, supply chain disruption or pandemic in the way. I look at the latest Black Panther: Wakanda Forever sets and while superb, they’re a bit more expensive. Thankfully it’s not a drastic increase, mostly just on par with inflation. This really is an awesome deal (under $40, 4 minifigs, solid design) even for 2018.

Solid Build

The primary, and only, build for this set is of course the Royal Talon Fighter. It’s a Wakandan shuttle of sorts and it features nicely in the film. Looking at the source material, this is a decent recreation. The fins on the side are the most striking visual element, and although the real ship has many more, it’s very closely mimicked. Aside from that though, I’m really happy with the proportions, the shape and even the pared down details. This is a robust little vehicle that sits in the perfect balance of ‘big enough’ to be detailed and ‘small enough’ to make sense and be affordable.

The build for this little fighter is very straightforward. But there’s plenty of nice assemblies and interactive elements. The aforementioned fins on the side are put together easily but sturdily. I really feel like this vehicle is structurally quite sound. OK that sounds like I built a 2 storey building LOL. But you get the idea. Let’s talk stickers – in that, there are some. In this case I think they work really nicely. The larger ones add some great detailing to those slope bricks, and frankly I don’t think it would be as interesting without them. Overall this is a very successful build. I’m happily surprised with the final result and I give it a final score of 90%.

MINIFIGURES: 90%

The Royal Talon Fighter comes with 4 minifigures, 3 of which as still exclusive to this set. Our two heroes include titular hero Black Panther and Nakia. The latter is exclusiveand fetches about $16 on bricklink.com. Her torso printing is fantastic with patterns on both sides. She also has dual-sided expressions, plain legs and two great disc weapons that are pretty accurate to the film. Her hair piece looks great as well even if it’s a stock part.

Black Panther was exclusive to this set, but then reused in the Corvus Glaive Thresher Attack (76103) from Avengers: Infinity War. Because of that he only goes for about $9 on the resale market. The figure has a nice torso and face print, but no leg printing. In fact, NO Black Panther figure has any leg printing. What is the deal with that? It’s really bizarre. And until the Marvel Studios CMF came out, there was no minifig of T’Chala out of costume. Consequently this Black Panther gets lower marks for no alt face, leg printing or even an accessory.

The Baddies

Our big bads in this set are Killmonger and Ulysses Klaue. Killmonger has a superb molded mask/head piece. It’s pretty accurate to the film and looks great on the minifig. The torso and legs have printing, although just barely on the legs. That torso however gets awesome detail on both sides. Killmonger gets a generic head underneath that mask with sadly just the one expression. I wish a hair piece was included because he’s not bald in the film and it’s pretty weird and honestly lazy to leave it as such. Despite this, it’s easily the best of the figs. He gets a small rocket launcher build as his accessory. Erik Killmonger is the most sought after of the figs, averaging $20 online.

Doctor Klaue (not really, but it’s funnier this way) has an exclusive dual-sided face and torso. Both look awesome and capture Andy Serkis’ likeness really well. The legs are blank which is sadly the trend with these figs. Admittedly that’s a good way to keep costs down on sets, so I don’t ever get tooooo mad at that. Happily that’s a feature that seems to be changing as the new film sets have LOTS of great, full printing. Ulysses Klaue also gets a small accessory in the form of a….hand blaster? Not sure what to call this, but there’s lightning. Close enough really. Like Black Panther he averages around $9 on resale sites.

All About The Figs

My interest in the set is, as always, the minifigures. And trying to get all 4 separately aftermarket in 2020 would have cost me roughly $45 CAD. So picking up a sealed box for only $10 more was a great deal! Today those same minifigs would be about $55 CAD. I regret nothing! With 4 minifigures and 358 pieces, we get a brick-to-fig value of 89 and an amazing score of 95%.

The minifigures in the Royal Talon Fighter Attack (76100) are great, but just short of excellent. The unique patterns are wonderful, but the lack of leg printing is a bit of a bummer. You do get at least one accessory with 3 of the 4 figs. Sadly it’s Black Panther that comes with the least details: no leg printing, alternate head/face or an accessory of any kind. Killmonger fares the best followed closely by Nakia and Klaue. Overall these are still great additions to the collection and earn a score of 86%. Combining both numbers, we get a final score of 90%.

ENTERTAINMENT: 94%

For such a small set, I have to say it packs a decent amount of fun. And that fun is for younger and older builders alike. The set is simple enough to entertain youngsters. It’s also robust enough that there’s plenty of play value without any obvious concerns for damage. It’s a very ‘swooshable’ model. There’s also good interactive elements like stud shooters and two accessible areas. The cockpit is the most obvious, but there’s a nice middle compartment to store some goods or other figs. AFOLs will be impressed with the final model as I think it makes a pretty fun display piece. And again, that price is a spot-on for what you get. If it was a touch larger, it would get a perfect score. In the end though, 94% is nothing to sneeze at.

OVERALL: 91%

I really wasn’t expecting to like this set this much. I only bought it for the minifigures. Ending up liking the build with these types of buys is usually just a bonus. And happily that happened here. The ship is well designed, sturdy and actually makes for a decent display piece. The minifigs are great, but just shy of excellent; mostly due to some missing details. Overall though, they still make for fun play and excellent additions to the non-stop MCU collection. If you can find this set for a decent price, I highly recommend picking it up. My final score is a surprisingly great 91%.

And that’s my throwback review of the Royal Talon Fighter Attack (76100). I’m happy I picked this up and held on to it this long. It’s great to have a tie-in for the weekend’s big movie premiere. I’m super stoked to see this film. Are you seeing it this weekend? What’s your thought on the first film’s sets? Do you have this set already and do you agree with me? Please comment below and let me know what you think. Thanks as always for reading and until next time, keep on brickin’. 🧱

-Frank

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