REVIEW | 42103 Dragster

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Set Number: 42103
Set Name: Dragster
Pieces: 225
Price: $19.99 USD | 19,99 € | £17.99 | $29.99
Links: Lego.com | Bricklink | Brickset

Hello everyone and welcome to my review of the Dragster, one of the two pull-back sets in the 1HY 2020 technic range. Based on some of the most ridiculous "funny" car drag racers, this thing looks like it's built to be crazy fast, but how good is it as a set? Let's find out.

As with the other reviews I'll be posting today, this set was provided by Lego graciously for us to review. The opinions in this review are my own, however, and do not reflect those of Lego. 

 

The Box

Front

The front of the box showcases the dragster, hold on to your seats, drag racing. I know, what a plot twist. The functionality of this one is interesting, you can see a preview there on the bottom we will detail that more in a bit.

Rear

Here's the rear of the box. Again, we will look at the function soon. But basically, you can adjust the wheelie bar on the back, and this will determine whether or not the dragster pulls a wheelie then it launches forward. Also you can see the B model, which looks to be a dragster with more of a body as opposed to the bare frame A model. Instructions are not yet out for this, but I will post additional photos when they are.

The Build

Track Light

Similar to the Race Truck, we get a little side build in the form of a track light to indicate when the race begins. It's a decent build, and if you are into collecting pull-back models, this serves as a nice addition to your display. 

Beginning build

 

The frame for the dragster is pretty basic, we can see here it's mostly a few technic beams mounted to the rear pull-back motor.

Wheel bar mount

Next we begin to build the wheel bar function, the long gray technic beams here will be the main bar. The red 1x2s serve as the "activation" for the function, but again we will look at that shortly.

Mounted to frame

Here we can see the finished wheelie bar mounted behind the pullback motor

Body Panels

Here we use some modern day panels to shape up the vehicle, again keeping that very thin triangular shape in mind.We also fill out a spoiler fit to be a dinner table.

Completed Set

Finished Set front (No stickers)

I thought I'd share a photo here without stickers, since they tend to be quite aggressive like most stickers on these racing sets.

 

Front

As ridiculous as I think these tiny wheels are when used on sets as actual wheels, they are actually a decent choice for what this is based on.

Rear

Here we can see how well that massive spoiler is secured, and the wheelie bar in the "down" position

Profile

Alright so here we can talk about the function. As you can see, the design of the set is very back heavy. As a result, when you pull back the set, it has a tendency to naturally pull a wheelie for a few feet of its journey. So, we can drop the wheelie bar down to prevent this, though it's manual process. You must remove the red assembly as seen in the photo above, move the wheelie bar and the 1x3 black beam inside of that into a different position, and reattach it.

Detail view

Here's a closeup of the cockpit. The stickers are busy, but make sense given the set we are dealing with here.

Inner detail

The only detail in the cockpit is a small "fuel gauge" printed 1x1.

With Race Truck

Here's the two pullbacks together as well as their accompanying accessories. 

Here's also a... well, an attempt at showing the wheelie functionality. You get the idea.

 

Overall:

I share similar thoughts with this set as I do the race truck. Its a set with a very limited audience. It doesn't offer anything groundbreaking in terms of parts, the wheelie bar is a fine function but not exactly something a flagship-buying fan would care about, and it's very limited in what you can do with it. For most people, I doubt this is worth a buy.

But if you like pull-back models, this might be worth picking up. It's overall a decent design, certainly evocative of those "funny car" design, and it's one of the best performing models I've seen next to the very similar 42033 Record Breaker. The accessory is nice, and I do like the ability to alter whether or not this can pull a wheelie. I guess, as far as a "pullback" goes, this is the first to my knowledge where the function can actually alter the performance of the pullback feature itself, and that's certainly neat for those into these models.