Dave's Lego Exo-Force Rantlet 7713 Bridge Walker and White Lightning See http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Lego/Exoforce77 for general line comments. This was a Target Exclusive in the U.S., two mechs in one set. It's easily the biggest Lego set I've ever bought, and I only got it because it was half off after Christmas. CAPSULE White Lightning is a somewhat stripped-down medium mech, but reasonably cool. Bridge Walker is big and heavily armed, if not as big as the Venom Striker. Recommended. $49.99 MSRP, $24.98 when I got it, but it's cleared out of most places by now (took a while for me to find the time to build it). RANTS Pieces: 659 between two mechs. Build Time: Not keeping track this time. It took over an hour just to sort all the pieces, and I had to clean the apartment first to make enough space for that! Instructions: Separate books for the two mechs. Book 1 has White Lightning and pictures of the alternate models. Book 2 is much thicker, and has Bridge Walker. Both have two-page catalogs of the 7700 series toys and the same one page comic. Main Model 1: White Lightning Secondary Model 1: Fire Eagle Pilot: Ha-Ya-To Pilot Hair Color: Red Main Mecha Colors: White, red, gray, black. Weapons: Not officially named - six-shortbarrel cannons on each arm, disc launcher, two-longbarrel cannon on top. Armor: Not officially given, probably 8" of Intractium Unit Descignation: A.03 (ha! Another number in the font!) Unit Type: Ground Nickname: None (the Japanese sticker just says White Lightning) Dimensions: If you just measure to the cannon barrels on top, the mech is 8" (20cm) tall. But there's an antenna on top of that, raising the total effective height to 11.25" (28.5cm). Colors: The limb skeleton bits are medium gray with red joint caps. The torso skeleton is mostly white and gray with some black and red. The armor is white with only a few red bits. The arm cannons are black with some light gray pulley bits, and the bottoms of the feet are black with little red accents. The cockpit is clear smoky with a red flatfront brick. The disc launcher is also clear smoky, and the discs are yellow-green blend. Stickers: Stickers are overwhelmingly red, with a few black lines and some halftone black for silver. The only Japanese stickers say "White Lightning," "Ground Unit," and the symbol for light that all the human Mechs have. And yes, the figure has an A designation for air unit, plus has flight jets and is shown flying in the comic on the back of the box...but the sticker calls it a ground unit. Ground support, perhaps? :) Anyway, the "light" sticker is supposed to go on the disc launcher, but as with the Mobile Defense Tank, it doesn't stay on. So I moved it to the left torso armor. [Later note: I meant to mention this, but forgot. Definite A-10 Warthog vibe off the ground support role here. :)] Articulation: Knights Kingdom ratcheting universal joints are used for the shoulders, hips, knees and ankles. There's also a swivel in each foot that lets the front part of each foot stay more or less flat in spread-leg poses, although it's not stiff enough to really support things on its own. The waist is a stiffened swivel (Ha-Ya-To's Sentai Fortress mech also has a waist, but he's the only one to get waists in the 7700 series). I've gotten some pretty dynamic stances from this mech. There's no elbows unless you count the fact that the forearm cannons can rotate. The cockpit window is the simple 2-side clear piece on a swivel. Weapons: The only actual shooty weapon is the disc shooter, which I hate already, after only three toys carrying it. It spills its ammo easily and never comes with any sort of lid. So I end up jamming it with poster putty to avoid having it dump all over. There's a twin-barrel long cannon like Uplink's on a universal mount behind the pilot's head. There's a long whip antenna on top of this, which looks kinda goofy. I moved the disc launcher to the back of the cannon and stuck the antenna behind it, looks a little better. Okay, the disc launcher now shoots to the side, but it IS a universal mount. Each arm ends in a six-barrelled rotating (but not free-spinning) cannon that uses Technic wheel rims and pulley pieces. White Lightning is essentially a walking turret, like a Spartan Destroid from Robotech. Other features: The torso armor pieces are held on by a single tiny clip each, but this is a feature. The intent is for the missile from the Bridge Walker to blow off the armor pieces. They even have "EJECT" stickers on them. Each hip has a piece that looks like it was originally designed as the air intake for a Formula 1 Technic car, and the comic indicates that these are rocket thrusters. Unfortunately, they leave loose pegs out and just sort of flop...having pipes run from the loose pegs to the torso would be nice. White Lightning looks really bare from the back. It has no light brick, both of the bricks in the set go to the Bridge Walker. Pilot Figure: The body is white except for black hands and pelvis. The hair is red, and the two faces are calm and smiling in excitement. The printing on the front of the torso is in blue, black and silver, and looks kinda like a Gundam RX-78-2 torso. Poor Ha-Ya-To just can't catch a break, though, he's doomed to be in the expensive sets (over $20). Sentai Fortress, Gate Defense, this set...at least his mechs in the Golden City series are standalone and not part of a set with something else. I have no plans to make the Fire Eagle, but it's a nifty looking little fighter. Overall, I'd call this more of a $12 set, it's as tall as the $15 sets but a little stripped down. Main Model 2: Bridge Walker Secondary Model 2: Raven Attacker Pilots: Meca-One, two Devastators Pilot Colors: Black and gold, silver (no secondary color) Main Mecha Colors: Black, light gray, dark gray, green Weapons: Armor: Not officially given, likely 12" or more of Tenatium. Unit Designation: 7713 Unit Type: Ground Nickname: None. Dimensions: The box says it's 12.5" (32cm) tall and 14" (36cm) wide, and I'll go with that. It can actually be taller and wider depending on how you pose it and whether you count the whip antennae on the head. The head, by the way, kinda looks like a big black beetle perched atop the torso, although the green beetle eyes are not the actual eyes of the figure...those are red and placed farther back. It weighs 1.25 lbs (580g). Of note, each foot is 4.5" (11cm) long and 3" (8cm) wide, while the head is 9" (23cm) long without counting the antennae. Colors: the overwhelming majority of this toy is black, with some dark and light gray bits here and there. Yellow-green opaque and clear pieces are the main accent color, but there's a few clear red parts, mostly involved in the light brick gimmick (the bricks are mounted on the sides of the head, pressing the buttons directly causes the eyes to light up. You can have it wink by just lighting one eye). Clear yellow-green Bohrak teeth are at the front of the head and the fronts of the feet, while clear red ones make the eyes. The 2-wide cockpit windows protecting the Devastators are smoky clear. Stickers: As usual, the stickers are designed in a barcode and circuitry pattern, no Japanese. Stickers on the left side of the head have stylized 7713 and "BW" on them. The colors are mainly white and neon green, but there's also some yellow and black hazard stripes. The stickers are too thin for the yellow to really pop once placed on black. Articulation: Not a lot, but that's a concession to the mass involved. The hips use a pair of Knights Kingdom ratchets side by side to allow bending that points the whole leg side to side (rotating the toe direction, basically), but no other motion. The waist turns stiffly, and the neck can nod down one ratcheting click. Well, "waist" may be giving it too much credit, it's more of a neck part as well. The torso is just a horizontal bar. Each shoulder is a single Knights Kingdom ratcheting universal joint. The vanes on the right weapon are also ratcheting and swiveling. The antennae on the rear of the head are on ratchets to elevate or depress. The legs are "chicken walker" style, aka digitigrade. The whole thing looks like it's leaning a bit too far forward, but it's stable. Weapons: This is where this baby shines. It's a weapons platform par excellence, although it focuses on quality rather than quantity (sort of). Each arm is like a sponson mount with a Devastator gunner operating it, leaving Meca-One free to control movement overall and oversee the battle. The right arm is definitely the strong arm. Not only does it have the only actual launcher (a soft-tipped missile launcher connected to the torso by a flexible tube), it has twin spinning six-barrelled cannons. The root of each cannon is a pair of neon green pulleys, with six long barrels connected to them and tipped with the H-shaped Technic connectors to make it effectively trios of two-barrelled guns. They're not quite identical, having slightly different rear ends, plus they're staggered so the top one is a bit farther back than the bottom one. If you get them put together right, they spin freely, continuing to spin for a bit after you let go. I'd characterize these as gatling rail rifles, a wall of metal sort of weapon. The left arm only has two energy weapons on its mount, but the articulated vanes around them suggest a very high energy weapon that needs external channelling to make sure it's properly collimated. Other features: I'd just like to note here that it took me a goodly chunk of a night to put this together. Just the torso and one leg took about an hour. :) Pilot figures: Standard Robot pilot molds. None of them get 2-rods for eyes. The two Devastators are simply silver, no secondary clear color. Meca-One's torso piece is made of black with gold paint over most of it. They all have dark gray claws. I had a spare red x-cross rod in my baggie of leftover Exo-Force bits, so I gave Meca-One red eyes. The Raven Attacker is another flying vehicle, like a larger lankier (and black) version of the Fire Eagle. It uses Devastator parts as decoration. Dave Van Domelen, notes that there were about 8 of those short 2-long Technic cylinder connectors left over, among other leftover bits.