9488 Elite Clone Trooper & Commando Droid Battle Pack review

[Resh1138]

I’m not going to lie to you… I love the Battle Packs. I buy the heck out of these things. I even bought multiples of the Ice Cream Clones that we had last year. I even bought several assassin droid battle packs, so I take the droids, even though they’re fragile and annoying. This battle pack gives us both!

But I’m also one of those people that accuses LEGO of using the higher price-points to make glorified battle packs (I’m looking at you, Geonosian Cannon and Ewok Attack). This year, we got two battle packs. We have an upcoming review of the excellent Endor Battle Pack, which I’m buying up like crazy, and I’m going to take a shot at our obligatory Clone Wars battle pack. So, we’re going to go into this asking ourselves… how many more custom clones do we need?


I’m sure for LEGO, the answer is at least twenty more, guessing 1 battle pack and at least 1 custom set a year. Or as their marketing plan most certainly says, “alls your moneys!”

This year marked a different trend in battle packs. Previously, LEGO had been alternating years between the OT and the PT. It was a great system, and kept saturation a bit lower. It also meant that, with a two-year cycle, they always had four different battle packs on the shelves, typically. So if you were tired of Rebel Troopers, you could get Clones. Tired of Stormtroopers (who could get tired of Stormtroopers?), you could go buy droids.

This year, we get one of each, and the sides are split in the battle pack. I suppose that’s designed around putting the “battle” in battle pack, but a 2 on 2 fight would more aptly be called a “small skirmish pack.” However, I suppose that’d be harder to market. I don’t know what the issue was, in the long run. With almost every other toy, you get one thing per pack. Transformers, you can buy some Decepticons or some Autobots. GI Joe? Cobra or Joes. Yes, there were some two-packs, but those are premiums, not the front-line guys. This is even more generic, it’s about army building, so you want the basics. You can’t do that now.

It also means that this gives us three clone wars packs and only one OT pack. The actual PT movies are given the short stick entirely.

I’m not going to lie to you… the number of custom clones went over the “insane” cliff a couple of years back. We should have probably noticed, but we were buying them up like mad and just laughed it off. But once those Sherbert Wonders hit last year, we knew that it’d gotten out of hand. Outside of the fact that it was about the worst color scheme to ever paint a military uniform, the bigger problem was that they didn’t match anything. After all, this is the current landscape of Clone Troopers…

Kind of crazy, isn’t it? I remember how cool the first jungle and ARC troopers were, back in the Episode III days. They made a nice little accent to add to the mix. I remember even paying someone to make some little clothy bits for me so I could add a skirt and pauldron to him (though I never did add the purse as well) to my ARCs. Now, the only color that we’re missing is purple, and maybe a solid black. My bet is on solid black coming out next year sometime. Black Hole Clone Troopers.

And that’s part of the problem with the one-offs, much like the Clone Commanders, in the battle packs. These are intended to “build your army.” It says so on the box. But who wants an army that looks like a Vegas revue, and where the armor matches but the color scheme is worse than an explosion at a Crayola factory?

And because this is a “Battle Pack” it has to include something to make it something other than an action figure. For this pack, we get a big tripod cannon with a very tiny gun. After seeing the crazy-long weapons in other stuff, like the spider droid, or even the ships like the X-Wing or the ARC-170, this thing is positively tiny.

Overall, the whole build is just there, and feels exceptionally lazy. It’s not impressive, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.


Yep, that’s it. Even for parts, the only really nice thing is that these come with five 1×3 light grey tiles and a grilled round light grey brick. A splash of dark red makes them okay, but hard for the value. If you want the 1x3s, this is the most cost effective way to get them in a set, but they’ve gotten quite cheap on Bricklink.

You can go sell the clones, but with only 2 clones and 2 droids, this has less value. And that’s really the story of this set… like I should like it, but it feels kinda cheap, especially next to the Endor Battle Pack or even the Skittles and Mandos from last year. Certainly the weakest of the current lineup.

What I liked:

It’s a Battle Pack, and these are the cheapest sets to get
ARF Trooper doesn’t look bad
Tiny little blasters and extra armor parts in a new color

What I didn’t like:

Not a great army-builder set
ARC Trooper Helmet looks too much like a stormtrooper
Commando Droids are creepy looking, and use SBD legs, which mean they’ll be prone to breaking
Parts in the set are average at best, other than the 1×3 tiles
Gun looks like it should be launching T-Shirts into a NASCAR crowd

Verdict: Buy it on Sale. Once.

they are still kinda cool looking ....personally seeing as I never got any ...I think if I was to buy any I would start at perhaps fleamarkets.....the build sets may or may not be complete..but usually the mini-figs are all there....

or just get one from the lego website(with no worry about missing parts)

I never thought of that ....lol

it would be easier .....

yes it would