Once the Star Wars Rebels cartoon series premiered in the fall, I was instantly ready to devour any Rebels toys I could get my mitts on. Sadly, there were only two LEGO Star Wars Rebels sets in 2014–but lockout, a bunch more were ready to launch as part of the LEGO Star Wars 2015 sets! And because I prioritized completing my Rebels crew, 75090 LEGO Ezra’s Speeder Bike was one of the first sets I ordered this year. Was this set worth my excitement? Read on…

The Right:

Let me begin my 75090 LEGO Star Wars Ezra’s Speeder Bike review with a huge “bravo” to LEGO, because with this set’s release, they’re the first toy manufacturer to release the whole Star Wars Rebels crew in toy form.

Hasbro dropped the ball and failed to produce either of the Rebels women in their first series of Rebels toys, but LEGO got it right and has now produced both Sabine and Hera minifigures. I’ll be complaining (at length) about the actual Sabine figure later on, but I still appreciate that LEGO actually gave fans female representation before any other toy maker.

LEGO Ezra’s Speeder Bike 75090 is one of the “cheap” sets in the winter 2015 LEGO Star Wars sets wave. The set retails for $19.99 for 253 pieces–a very good value at under 8 cents per piece (even if many of the pieces in this set are quite small).

Seeing how small the LEGO Speeder Bikes were, I legitimately thought I’d have this set built in twenty minutes. But nope–the full build for the set (including applying stickers) took me a full hour (with the stickers taking me forever to place perfectly).

LEGO 75090 is a perfectly easy build with no standout difficulties or trickery involved, so have no fear–any kid old enough to watch and enjoy the Rebels cartoon should have no problems building this set.

When I saw the first images of this set, I seriously thought LEGO had created a non-canonical crazy-colored Speeder Bike for Ezra. But as we’ve seen in the most recent episode of Rebels, this green and orange Speeder Bike is actually real and LEGO was just ahead of the game. Nice work, LEGO!

We’ve had ample LEGO Speeder Bike sets released in the past, but this one is definitely the most unique-looking, with its wild Michelangelo-colored green-and-orange colors. It’s a lot of fun to look at visually, and easily my favorite Speeder Bike ever due to its vibrant color scheme (though I’m sure folks will hate it for the same reason).

The stud shooters on the bike work excellently and have quite a bit of accuracy and power, as well! And while the speeder bikes don’t technically have any action features besides the stud launchers, you can attach Ezra’s lightsaber or wrench to clip behind his seat and fly the speeder bike around cutting Stormtroopers to pieces. Fun!! (I know–I’m sick.)

The set also includes a second Speeder Bike: a white Stormtrooper Speeder Bike. I feel like this would be supremely difficult to keep looking clean, but who am I to question the Empire?

This Imperial Speeder Bike is the exact same build as Ezra’s speeder bike–just in primarily white with black highlights. It was a bit redundant doing basically the same build twice in a row, but I don’t want to whine too much over another nicely-designed speeder bike.

LEGO 75090 Ezra’s Speeder Bike includes three minifigures: another LEGO Ezra minifigure, another Stormtrooper minifigure, and the aforementioned Sabine figure.

All three minifigures in the set feature torsos with both front and back printing on them, as well as printing on the front of their legs. Ezra and Sabine each have reversible heads–both have a smiling/happy face, while Sabine has an angry face and Ezra has a unique, quizzical facial expression on the reverse side of his head.

The Stormtrooper includes a blaster rifle, while the LEGO Star Wars Ezra minifigure includes both a wrench and Ezra’s trademark blaster/lightsaber combo weapon.

While I don’t like the figure itself, the Sabine minifigure includes two blasters that she can dual-wield, which is an outrageously cool feature. I wish more Star Wars characters dual-wielded!

The Wrong:

I was surprised when I finished the build for LEGO 75090 Ezra’s Speeder Bike that I still had a ton of extra pieces left over. Including the extra studs for the stud-launchers, the set had over two dozen unused extra pieces!

That’s pretty annoying, especially when at a cost of about 10 cents per piece, LEGO could have just knocked two bucks off the price of the set and not included so many useless extras with it. With toys being as expensive as they are these days due to production costs, I hate seeing plastic (and cash) going to waste.

In addition, this is another set where almost all of the decorations on the vehicles are applied via stickers. It’d be great if LEGO would print at least a few bricks in each set.

The Ridiculous:

The main selling-point for this set is its one exclusive minifigure: the first-ever LEGO Sabine minifigure. I gave LEGO mad props for releasing the first Sabine figure of any company–and beating Hasbro to the punch doing so.

Unfortunately, LEGO missed the mark with Sabine and left out the absolute most important element of her costume: her helmet. As a Mandalorian, Sabine’s helmet is a hugely important component of her very being, and to have it omitted entirely (despite the fact that it is on basically every speck of promotional material for Rebels where Sabine appears) is shocking and frustrating.

In fact, LEGO basically botched Sabine’s entire costume. Her armor is maroon in the places where it’s meant to be bright pink, her shoulder-pads are missing entirely (including Sabine’s awesome checkerboard shoulder pad), she has no boots… It’s a mess.

Considering that the LEGO Sabine figure will be the main reason that many folks feel inclined to purchase this set, it’s a huge disappointment that LEGO did such a lousy job capturing the figure.

Overall: Four of the five portions of this set are completely solid, so this set earns an overall ‘B’. The price-per-piece value is totally fair, the LEGO Speeder Bikes are fun (particularly Ezra’s), LEGO Stormtroopers are always welcome for army-building, and it’s nice to have an Ezra minifig for those who didn’t want the Phantom set.

That said, the one true exclusive figure in this set (and the last member of the Rebels crew to get a figure) is one of LEGO’s worst minifigure efforts that I’ve seen. The Sabine LEGO minifig is terrible, and I hope they completely redesign her for another figure in 2016.

Overall, the LEGO Star Wars Ezra’s Speeder Bike 75090 set is a fun set–other than the Sabine figure–and a worthwhile purchase for those who need an Ezra figure or who enjoy cute little vehicles like the Speeder Bikes. If you only want this set for the Sabine figure, though, well… you’re in for a disappointment.

GRADE: B