REVIEW: 8968 Agents River Heist

[TheBrickDaddy]

Set Name- River Heist

Theme- Agents (2.0)

Year of Release- 2009

Pieces- 203

Minifigs- 3

Price- 19.99 USD (20.99 at TRU)

Resources- Brickset

Well, after the surprise mass release on Lego.com, I decided to go to my local TRU to see what they had; as I expected, everything was there except for Star Wars, Bionicle, and Indiana Jones. I picked up the two smallest Agents sets (I swear, only for the golden T-Rex! ) and the two small Space Police sets; I was turning hot and cold about using a coupon for the Troll's Mountain Fortress or Drawbridge Defense , but decided to wait . My little brother looked at this set and said, "His hair's FREAKIN' GREEN!" and that pretty much decided it. This set seemed barren at first, but turned out to be anything but.

Keep in mind that this is my first review, so go easy on me; let's get started!

SCENARIO: Dollar Bill and his girlfriend- uh, sidekick- Dyna-Mite have stolen a safe full of money from the City bank! The comic depicts them sneaking in- unnoticed?- blowing the safe out of the wall- still no guards in sight- and hopping into their conveniently placed airboat.... :wacko: A few missteps in logic, but OK then...

The box (slightly blurry) with a clever scene in the background, a smoking bank (from whence the safe was stolen). Does anyone else notice that the green time bomb thingy in the water has a grey knob sticking out of its rear end?... That's not in the set...

The back of the box, depicting the flick-fire missles, the figs, and the other Agents sets. The safe has fallen in the water, even though Agent Fuse is nowhere near it...

The figs on the top of the box.

The pieces, tossled around in four un-marked bags, and the hose piece.

The small instruction manual (sorry, blurry again...)

The small but noticable DSS (Dreaded Sticker Sheet)

The minifigs, I must say, are fantastic in this set. You get Dollar Bill, who has Dooku/Palpatine's hair in green, and a diamond for an eye... ouch. Dyna-mite seems to be a recycled Claw-Dette, with her hair in a dark red (not normal red). Agent Fuse is nothing new, but the body armor is most impressive, nice touch. Dollar Bill has a golden gun, and Dyna-Mite has (go figure) the new dynamite piece (both not pictured).

The double-printed backs, with Bill (let's just call him that) having a dollar sign and Dyna-Mite having the Dr. Inferno emblem. Fuse has no printed back, but his body armor does have a stud on the back.

The small but effective safe, with a sticker control panel.

The safe opens tho reveal three dollar bills smashed inside... almost not worth the effort, Bill.

The small Agents jetski, with plenty of room and moveable flick-fire missles. This behemoth is powered by...

Magic? :wacko: I think that the new Troll Sorceress must have helped the Agents with a new power source...

With Fuse on the jetski.

I will post Part 2 as soon as someone posts a comment; my picture attachments have reached their limit...

[Matn]

Thanks for the review. Your pictures are pretty good, but they are too small. You can make something out of it, but it's difficult. Try to make your pictures bigger, they may be up to 800x600 pixels big! And for hosting your pictures there are different ways, for instance, there is Brickshelf. Or Tinypic. They just copy the link of the image between [*IMG] and [/img*], of course without the *. As said, your pictures look great, with good light and soft shadows.

Edited May 24, 2009 by Matn

[Natman8000]

I need this set so badly. Great minifigs, and some cool parts. I really want it.

[TheBrickDaddy]

You know what, let's just start this again, with better pics from Brickshelf: special thanks to Matn for helping me with the picture issue.

Set Name- River Heist

Theme- Agents (2.0)

Year of Release- 2009

Pieces- 203

Minifigs- 3

Price- 19.99 USD (20.99 at TRU)

Resources- Brickset

Well, after the surprise mass release on Lego.com, I decided to go to my local TRU to see what they had; as I expected, everything was there except for Star Wars, Bionicle, and Indiana Jones. I picked up the two smallest Agents sets (I swear, only for the golden T-Rex! ) and the two small Space Police sets; I was turning hot and cold about using a coupon for the Troll's Mountain Fortress or Drawbridge Defense , but decided to wait . My little brother looked at this set and said, "His hair's FREAKIN' GREEN!" and that pretty much decided it. This set seemed barren at first, but turned out to be anything but.

Keep in mind that this is my first review, so go easy on me; let's get started!

SCENARIO: Dollar Bill and his girlfriend- uh, sidekick- Dyna-Mite have stolen a safe full of money from the City bank! The comic depicts them sneaking in- unnoticed?- blowing the safe out of the wall- still no guards in sight- and hopping into their conveniently placed airboat.... :wacko: A few missteps in logic, but OK then...

The box (slightly blurry) with a clever scene in the background, a smoking bank (from whence the safe was stolen). Does anyone else notice that the green time bomb thingy in the water has a grey knob sticking out of its rear end?... That's not in the set...

The back of the box, depicting the flick-fire missles, the figs, and the other Agents sets. The safe has fallen in the water, even though Agent Fuse is nowhere near it...

The figs on the top of the box.

The pieces, tossled around in four un-marked bags, and the hose piece.

The small instruction manual (sorry, blurry again...)

The small but noticable DSS (Dreaded Sticker Sheet)

The minifigs, I must say, are fantastic in this set. You get Dollar Bill, who has Dooku/Palpatine's hair in green, and a diamond for an eye... ouch. Dyna-mite seems to be a recycled Claw-Dette, with her hair in a dark red (not normal red). Agent Fuse is nothing new, but the body armor is most impressive, nice touch. Dollar Bill has a golden gun, and Dyna-Mite has (go figure) the new dynamite piece (both not pictured).

The double-printed backs, with Bill (let's just call him that) having a dollar sign and Dyna-Mite having the Dr. Inferno emblem. Fuse has no printed back, but his body armor does have a stud on the back.

The small but effective safe, with a sticker control panel.

The safe opens tho reveal three dollar bills smashed inside... almost not worth the effort, Bill.

The small Agents jetski, with plenty of room and moveable flick-fire missles. This behemoth is powered by...

Magic? :wacko: I think that the new Troll Sorceress must have helped the Agents with a new power source...

With Fuse on the jetski.

The beginning of the airboat, with a shaft with 2 small wheels and a gear that spins near the back. This will power the propellor-motor.

A shot of the underside, with the blue circle pieces placed in slightly random places to hold the bottom together. Once again you see the shaft with wheels.

This is the mechanism that will link the bottom shaft to the propellor at the top. The Dr. Inferno emblems are stickers.

And once attached, the two black gears barely tough (at the bottom), but work surprisingly well.

The propellor, with stickers applied.

And once attached, again barely touches the gear below, but works very efficiently. An antenna and the hose are added.

The two time bombs, with a control panel sticker on top and a caution sticker wrapped all the way around.

They fit nicely into these ingenious little holsters, and are easily poppable and fall over the side.

A shot of the finished airboat; the steering station is excellent, with a printed control panel and a holster for the golden gun. It is still slightly empty...

With the figs and safe added.

And the complete set!

The extra pieces... nothing amazing here.

And here's a little extra fun...

Dr. Inferno: Your next mission is to find me the Klopman Diamond to power my THIRD superlaser, which will appear in Agents 3.0!

Dollar Bill: Uhh... It's in my eye.

Hey Bill, have you seen my T-Rex?... Wait, is that my gun?

I LOVE YOUR HAIR.

Final Thoughts:

I was pleasantly surprised with this set. I thought it would be sort of typical for an Agents set, but it is very unique! The figs are great, and the airboat has great... ummm... 'zoomability?' Don't know the word for non-spacecraft... Anyways, this looks like the best-valued Agents 2.0 set for the money, and would recommend it to any Lego fan.

Design- 10/10 Perfect, flawless, efficient. Even though the airboat looks empty, it is well thought-out and roomy.

Build- 9/10 unique, and the spinning propellor design is very interesting.

Playability- 9/10 This would keep you occupied for a while!

Minifigs- 10/10 Three in a twenty dollar set, and of course my little brother adores the green hair. Dooku's about to get a makeover.

Price- 9/10 The piece/price ratio is OK but not terrific.

Overall- 47/10, or a 94%. Lego passed this test!

Thanks for reading everybody, and happy building!

[BlueBard]

Mmh, I'm not the best fan of this set... The MFs are not bad (specially Dollar Bill, a great addition to the Agents Family ) but the vehicles are still too much macro-sized, it only brings three dollar bills (!) and I really think the air boat would have looked better in dark green than this flashy orange... But this is just my opinion...

Anyway I think is well designed but it could be really improved.

[Zarkan]

Thanks for the nice review, BrickDaddy.

Eh, as with the rest of the agents sets this year, this one just isn't working for me. The figures are much better than in the smallest set, but the vehicle designs look unfinished. The propeller spinning device is cool, but it's not enough to salvage the rest of the set.

[Peppermint_M]

With my secret ninja powers I shall snag these sets from an American TRU so I no longer have to wait!

(hmmm, that might be the Perno talking)

That looks great. I love how they made a different torso for Dyna-mite. The hair is really cool, I love colour variation. (Plus it will be great for a custom figure I wish to create) the boat looks good, continuing the colour scheme of Doctor Inferno. A nice mid-sized set. Yet another Fuse, no matter I can make more Agents with heads from my collection. The Dollar Bill is fantastic. A great addition to the bad guys. The jet ski isn't so good, but again, parts and stickers means more MOC fodder...

Thanks for the review

[soc399]

Thanks for the review. I got this set from TRU a couple of days ago, but I'm waiting to finish a work project before I build it. My favorite part of the box is the bilingual names. Did you know Dollar Bill is Joe Dollar in French?

[Svelte]

Thanks for the review.

As Grevious says, this set looks unfinished. Those empty boat parts look terrible. It looks like a bad MOC that would appear in the pages of Lego Club magazine!

Dollar Bill is cool, if only because the designer is clearly a Batman fan who wanted a different coloured hair for the Riddler. It's nice that Dyna-Mite has a new torso, but that Spalko hair looks cheap in red.

I'm not impressed, this just reinforces my view that the only really excellent set this year is the 8970 Robo Attack. I remember reading on The Brothers Brick last year that the designers had already done the 5 sets for 2009 at that point. I think they were burned out.

A mod might want to edit the post title to include the set name for those who haven't memorised the entire lineup of 09 set numbers!

[Hewman]

The green hair is great, I love the safe. The minifigs are pretty good, I like the $ sign on the back. Besides that, I have learnt that if I don't have anything positive or constructive to say about the set I should say nothing. Thanks to TheBrickDaddy for bringing us this review!

[user]

In short I would say good figs bad set! The review was good but the set looks skeletal and incomplete.

[Dark_Avenger]

Just picked this set up the other day. I, like most everyone else here, didn't much care for the set itself, but really wanted to grab the new baddie figs, the body armor, and the vault. I gotta say, once I had it all built I was impressed! From the box art I thought the boat was too flat and too barren, but having it in hand, I love it. I have to agree with you BrickDaddy, this is one you can't judge by its cover.

[Razzer]

Design- 10/10 Perfect, flawless, efficient. Even though the airboat looks empty, it is well thought-out and roomy.

Build- 9/10 unique, and the spinning propellor design is very interesting.

Playability- 9/10 This would keep you occupied for a while!

Minifigs- 10/10 Three in a twenty dollar set, and of course my little brother adores the green hair. Dooku's about to get a makeover.

Price- 9/10 The piece/price ratio is OK but not terrific.

Overall- 47/10, or a 94%. Lego passed this test!

Thanks for reading everybody, and happy building!

Nice review, this is definately my favourite of the Agents 2.0 sets and I especially lurrve Dollar Bill. Although I think you'll find 47/10 is not 94%

Edited May 28, 2009 by Razzer

[alex12]

Great review . I like the look of this and love the minifigs.

Castle is my favourite so may give the princess that cool head with shades!

Fits in well i know.

[wednesdayware]

I picked this up for my son, and it's a pretty decent set. The one strange things was that I was missing the wheels that attach to make the propeller work. This is thefirst time i've EVER been missing pieces from a boxed set, and I've bought/made over 100 easily.

The attractive thing in this set for me was the "Joker". My son is crazy about the Batman Lego since the game came out, but I can't seem to find Batman Lego or minifigs at a price that isn't insane, so, instant Joker, and even a Harley Quinn type, with a hat change.

[Batbrick]

Thanks for the review, this looks like a great set to me. The boat is a little lame but with some mods could look great, but the really score here is the parts and minifigs. Dollar Bill and Dyna-Mite are great, simply awesome figs. I'll be sure to use that green hair for the Joker too. Plus, I need more $100 bills for other mocs.

Batbrick Away!

[TheBrickDaddy]

Looking back, I would have definitely given this set a slightly lower rating- more of a 85-90%. This is probably the most debated of the new Agents sets, you either think it's bad or good. If you like orange pieces, this is a great set (then again, so are all of Dr. Inferno's contraptions ); the minifigs are the highlight of course ; but we can all say that it's better than Gold Tooth's Getaway or 4-Wheeling Pursuit.

Thank you for all your comments, and I will try to get my review right on the first try next time.

The Brick Daddy