Review of Rick and Morty
Spaceship & Garage Building Set

Introduction

I love Rick and Morty, as do many, many of you. It's a much more intricate cartoon than the naysayers would have you believe, and the third season has been better than the previous two in many ways.

Of course, any hit geek show is going to get collectibles. Funko has been doing Pop vinyl figures, as well as some 5" figures and smaller 3" blind bagged figures. McFarlane has entered the fray with their building sets, a pretty unique idea. You'll remember that McFarlane has a lot of success with their Walking Dead building sets, but the Game of Thrones concept crashed and burned.

These building sets are kinds, sorta like Lego...but not really. You do put them together, but there's not much point in taking them back apart, and they are going for a final look that's cleaner and leaner in many cases.  After the GoT disaster, they've regrouped around animated shows, and have sets for Rick and Morty along with South Park and Steven Universe.

The first set popped up at a local Wal-mart this week, and it's the largest announced so far. It includes a Rick and Morty figure, along with 293 pieces to build the garage and spaceship. It retails for around $30. There are several more sets planned, ranging from small ones that cost $8 - $10, to medium size sets in the $13 - $15 range. I've got my fingers crossed that these do much better, and we see McFarlane jump on a few more releases soon.

Packaging - ***
Nothing special here, but it works as expected. There's 14 bags of accessories inside, and you'll have to tear them all open of course. While it's not collector friendly, it is attractive, and the photo on the front of the finished diorama can be very helpful during construction. I wish more of the bags had pieces grouped together that centered around steps in the assembly, but it's a minor nit.

On the back there's photos of the rest of the currently announced sets, and the included instruction booklet is reasonably well done.

Sculpting/Design - ***1/2
This category covers the design of the garage, the spaceship, and both figures. If it were covering only the building sets, I'd go four stars. If it were covering only the figures, I'd go two and a half. That's how great a difference there is for me in my appreciation for the distinct pieces.

The garage - and the Rick figure - are based on the episode "Auto-erotic Assimilation". Toward the end of this episode, Rick attempts suicide. The look on Rick's face, along with key specific accessories on the workbench, make this pretty obvious. For a quick review of the scene, check out this clip.

The garage design is great, with a ton of cool little features on the bench and walls. The construction was relatively straight forward, and they managed to create recognizable but unusual items, like the sink and faucet or the bench clamp, and yet stuck to the building set style.

The spaceship is a great design as well. Creating circular objects with blocks can be tricky, but the ship looks terrific when complete. Again, assembly was straight forward, although there was one oddity around the seats. More on that in the Things To Watch Out For section. The ship includes an opening hood, allowing you to see the 'engine', and opening doors and canopy, making it easier to get the figures inside. The tires are rubber, and roll cleanly.

I'm less impressed with the figures. First, don't be an idiot like me. When I got to the section of the book where they instructed you on how to assemble the Rick and Morty figures, I was flummoxed. Where was the parts for Morty? I searched around for ten minutes before I remembered he was already assembled and still visible in the front of the box. Duh.

Rick's head and arms are rubber, with a hard plastic body, legs, feet, and hands. I'm not loving the choice. The rubbery material doesn't work as well with the paint application, and feels cheap. Trust me, you're going to wonder why they went this route. They did this with a few of the other accessories as well - like the headlights on the ship - and it's hard to attach them and keep them in place because of it.

Morty is a little better. He's hard plastic all around, and they managed to get a great expression including his trademark ball sack lips. They're still ham strung by the way he's drawn - on screen, he really has no neck. That makes it tough for any figure to look exactly right, but this one is an improvement on the Funko action figure attempt.

The scale on the set is about 3", with Rick standing 3 inches tall and Morty at 2 1/4". I included a photo with the Funko Rick figure to show that you could swap those in and it works pretty well, at least with the garage.

Paint/stickers - **1/2
Remember what I said about the sculpt and design? There's a similar effect here.  I love the stickers, and I'm not a fan of stickers. But the paint applications are generally poor.

The bricks come in a variety fo colors, which works well with the garage and ship design. There's some paint in key places, like the accessories on the bench or the pieces of the engine, and these are average at best.

The worst of the paint work is on the figures themselves, especially Rick. Lots of slop on his face, some weird rub marks, and even a bit of gloppy-ness to his skin. Morty is a little better, although there's still some inconsistencies.

The stickers are all cool, and easy to apply. I generally hate stickers, and I'm usually bad at placing them properly, but I didn't have any real problem this time. Of course it helps that much of the drawing is on the uneven and sloppy side, but you'll still know if you don't have them on correctly. These stickers do adhere very well, but you can actually pull them up and re-position them, at least once, something not always possible with cheaper stickers.

Articulation - ***
There's articulation on the sets and the figures, making these a lot of fun.

The figures have joints at the assembly points - cuts at the neck, shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles.  No extreme posing here, but you can move the limbs around a bit and turn the head.

The ship is quite articulated. The hood opens up, the doors open up, and the rear half of the canopy flips back. This last one is tricky, since the fit is so tight between the canopy and hinge. You'll tend to pull the brick loose, but it's easy to snap back on.

The wheels turn as well, making the vehicle pretty mobile. Some of the pieces tend to fall off, including the back engines and head lights, but it's nothing a little super glue can't fix.

The garage is far less articulated. The arm on the death ray machine moves up and down and turns, and a couple handles can move up and down, but that's about it. Still, overall I'm pretty impressed with the way the articulated pieces add to the play value.

Accessories - ***
There are actually a few pieces that are intended as extras, to be placed in their hands or around the dioramas. I've included a photo below, but the best extra is the portal gun.

I also ended up with a half dozen extra pieces, and I'm not sure why. This happened with most of the Walking Dead sets as well, so I'm not surprised.  I know they are extras because I checked the quantities against the instruction sheet, and I definitely wasn't supposed to have them. Better a few extras than not enough!

Fun Factor - ***1/2
The sets are fun, and the articulation and extras make for plenty of play potential for any kid that's warped enough to watch the show. You will probably want to glue things all together eventually - I found that useful with their earlier sets - and that will make it easier to handle and work with the completed pieces.

One negative - getting Rick and Morty in the ship. They do fit, as you can see in the photo above, but it was a trick. I removed the feet from Rick to get him in place, and they aren't really sitting on the seats perfectly. Still, they do fit, and look pretty good in the cockpit.

Value - ***
This big of a set at this price point is a solid value. Most Lego sets are going to run you quite a bit more, although the number of pieces can vary quite a bit in this price range.

Things to Watch Out For -
Assembly is pretty straight forward, and I suspect you'll take things apart and glue them the second time around. I'd suggest completing the sets once first though, to avoid irreparable mistakes.

The one spot that seemed wrong to me was the seats. They attach in front of the tubular nuclear device, but the instructions show using one additional flat support brick. I tried that, but it put the seats too close to the nuke to attach. I skipped that brick, and moved the seats one slot forward, and everything worked great. Your mileage may vary.

Overall - ***
I'm very happy with the sets themselves. If I were going off them, this score would be at least another half star higher.  There's plenty of cool detail, especially in the garage, and the articulation and playability of the dioramas is excellent.

But I'm not loving the figures, especially the Rick. I get what episode they are going for, but this is a really specific - and unique - look for the character. I'd probably be less annoyed by it if I'd gotten this set later, after I had a regular Rick, but with this one being my only one...it's weird.

Now to hang out in the Lego aisle looking for the rest!

Score Recap (out of ****):
Packaging - ***
Sculpting/Design - ***1/2
Paint/Stickers - **1/2
Articulation - ***
Accessories - ***
Fun Factor - ***1/2
Value - ***
Overall - ***

Where to Buy 
I picked this set up at a Wal-mart for $30. It's the only one I've seen on the shelves so far, ut the others shouldn't be far behind. Online options include these site sponsors:

- search ebay" rel="nofollow">Entertainment Earth has the set for $30 as well.

- or you can search ebay for a deal.

Related Links -
Other Rick and Morty goodies include the first wave of action figures from Funko.

You should also hit the Search Reviews page, in case any other applicable reviews were done after this one was published.

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