Space: The final frontier.  Even though less than .001% of people will ever go into space, it has fascinated humanity since, well… ever. And that’s why LEGO has been releasing various space themes for decades now. Even so, it’s been a while since we’ve got a healthy dose of “realistic” space sets. But the time has come–the LEGO City Summer 2015 sets are now available for purchase, and I’ll begin my reviews of them with the 60078 Utility Shuttle!

The Right:

As crazy as it’ll sound, I’ve never owned a “realistic” LEGO Space Shuttle. I’ve got Star Wars ships and even Galaxy Squad vehicles galore, but “real” space ships? Never.

So when I saw the whole wave of LEGO City Space Summer 2015 sets at Toys R Us today, how could I resist, right…? And the sub-$100 LEGO Space set that intrigued me most was the 60078 LEGO Space Utility Shuttle, which became one of my first summer set purchases!

The 60078 Utility Shuttle is a quick and easy build, with very little possibility of misunderstandings or mistakes based off the instructions. The set is split into two numbered bags (with a smaller unnumbered baggie in each), but it’s simplistic enough that numbering the bags seems pretty pointless.

I built the whole set in about 20 minutes, which I think may be a record for me as far as $25 sets go. I don’t think any kid 5 and up old who wants this set will have any problems building it (although it obviously may take a 5 year-old longer to build than it took me). 

The LEGO Utility Shuttle set includes two Astronaut Minifigures which are totally identical, except for one thing: one of them is a woman! Yes, female representation in a space and science-based field, just the way it should be. 

Obviously you could always stick a female head on any astronaut minifig, but I thought it was a nice touch by LEGO to do so themselves. Thanks, LEGO!
Both astronauts feature identical printing on the front and back of their torsos (as well as having matching space helmets). 

I think I would have preferred a translucent gold or yellow plastic for the shield on the front of the helmet to the opaque gold that LEGO picked, but the helmets look nice nonetheless. 

The Utility Shuttle spaceship itself is a fair size, measuring about 7″ long. It’s not the biggest shuttle in this theme (by far), but I’m pleased to see LEGO offering a ship for those builders who don’t have $120 sitting around that they’re not using.

The front nose hatch of the Utility Shuttle can be removed so that you can see the two astronauts piloting the ship. 

Poor astronauts–there’s really not much room for them to stretch out inside the shuttle!

The control panel is a printed brick–the nicest and most elaborate of the printed bricks included with this set. There’s also a pair of dual control sticks for a LEGO Astronaut to use when guiding the shuttle.

The LEGO City Utility Shuttle has a pleasing white, black and red color scheme, which looks as authentic as we could have hoped for. I have so many wacky-colored brick-built space ships that it’s really nice to get one that looks realistic for a change!

There are three thrusters on the rear of the LEGO 60078 Utility Shuttle, and the solar wings can be folded or unfolded. These are pretty basic elements of the set, but they look nice and have no real issues.

Definitely the funniest feature of this set, however, is the opening cargo doors! The cargo bay doors swivel open smoothly to reveal a brick-built satellite within!

The satellite fits seamlessly inside the cargo bay, and can unfold once removed from the bay. I really like the translucent bricks used for the satellite, even if they end up having decals on them instead of being printed.

And speaking of stickers…

The Wrong:

This set includes quite a few stickers, and that’s a big irritating for a set with such a high cost-per-piece ratio (more on this in a bit).

I never particularly like decals, but trying to apply them symmetrically and evenly on two fins an inch apart from each other is really grating. I think we could have gotten at least a couple more printed bricks with this set.

One other minor issue I had with this set is that the large front hatch piece came a bit scratched up, as it’s thrown into the box during manufacturing with no plastic or packing materials around it at all. For such an important piece, you’d expect LEGO to take a bit more care with it.

The Ridiculous:

This Summer 2015 LEGO Space Utility Shuttle set contains 155 pieces… and costs $24.99. That’s over 16 cents per piece… for a non-licensed set! That’s outright ridiculous.

At $19.99 I might have let the “value” of this set slide, due to the decent-sized front piece of the shuttle. But at $25? Just no. This set is a bad value, an unfortunate trend I’ll be discussing for several of these LEGO City Summer 2015 sets.

And on that note…

Overall: I hate to be fickle, but as nice as this LEGO City Utility Shuttle 60078 set is, it’s not a $25 set. At $15, this set would be a solid ‘A’. It’d even be borderline at $20. But at $25… no. It’s a very fun little build and I recommend it to aspiring astronauts and space-fans, but the lack of value in the set definitely brings down its overall score. I appreciate the opening cargo bag door, the female astronaut and the cool removable satellite, but I would have been much happier with this set if it had been a more fairly-priced $5-$10 cheaper.

GRADE: B-