Thoughts on 21109: Exo Suit
Set 21109: Exo Suit is the seventh entry in the LEGO Ideas (formerly LEGO CUUSOO) series, released in 2014 and comprised of 321 pieces, it retailed for $34.99 (US.) Originally designed by Peter Reid, a prolific Classic Space builder and co-author of LEGO Space: Building the Future, it was redesigned after its successful LEGO Ideas campaign by Mark Stafford, with Reid having plenty of input during the process.
2014 was a particularly big year for Classic Space fans, with a triple-whammy of the inclusion of Benny in the LEGO Movie early in the year, set 70816: Benny's Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! in the summer, and this set in the fall (and set 5002812: Classic Spaceman Minifigure, but being a gift with purchase it's not so much a whammy as a gentle bump.) It might not sound like much, but after the theme's quiet retirement in 1987, modern-helmeted versions of all five colors in the Vintage Minifigure Collection volumes 1-4 and a couple magnets and keychains, Space fans were starvin' for new stuff.
Of course, this would be the last new stuff for another five years until the LEGO Movie 2 and set 70481: Benny's Space Squad, but I'm already digressing pretty hard. Let's take a look at the minifigures and side builds before this intro goes on any longer.
Here we have our space-faring pair, Pete and Yve (Pete on the right, Yve on the left) named after the Ideas submission designer, the aforementioned Peter Reid, and his partner at the time (hopefully still his partner!) Yvonne Doyle. I can't imagine anything sweeter than making you and your loved one into tiny plastic astronauts, can you?
These two are clad in glorious green, one of only four colors (official colors, anyway) to be added to the original five, followed by pink in 2019, orange in 2020 and brown in 2023. Green feels like a natural fit alongside the classic red, yellow and blue, but almost certainly couldn't have existed at the same time as them. Green was an incredibly uncommon color, even in 1987, relegated to select elements and larger bricks, plates and baseplates. The only minifigures to have parts in green in 1987 were those in the Merry Men-esque Castle faction, the Forestmen, in their single set that year, 6066: Camouflaged Outpost. It just wasn't easy being green at the time.
Still, these two are excellent, despite their non-smiley faces and their modren helmets and visors, though if you've seen any of Peter Reid's work they're accurate to his style, though the heads in his designs are flesh-tone instead of the classic yellow. But speaking of his designs, let's look another adaptation of one.
Even a cursory skim through Pete's flickr will show you how much he loves this robot turtle design, and it is taken almost exactly from his work with some minor alterations to the head for improved stability and less falling-apart-ing. Besides the head it's identical to Pete's design, though his have much bigger gun turrets.
The brief story in the manual suggests that this robo-turtle is a top-of-the-art, state-of-the-line surveillance and survival drone, capable of tracking signals and defending the operators, should the need arise.
Which is pretty good, for a turtle.
The robo-turtle's walking ability is a little questionable but with those big chunky legs and metallic silver shell, it's hard to question its cute factor, even if the inverted tile gives its big scary red eyes a permanent angry brow.
But depending on how you feel, that's cute too.
But now for the other side build, a metal grate.
Grate, right?
Just a plain old dark grey part #4151b with some green lights and slopes on the edges, and a pair of drums to rest on it.
These drums are pretty much only here to be picked up by the Exo Suit, which will be demonstrated a little later, but we've got to talk about the suit, first.
It's a big boy, the Exo Suit, decked out with huge arms and multi-jointed legs, coated in exhausts and antennae, and hit maybe a bit too hard with the greeble stick, but that's only a matter of opinion.
The bulky body is made with a lot of clips and hinge elements, and what the manual calls the Protective Cage on the front of the cockpit (sort of a cockpit, anyway) can be flipped up to place a pilot in the very narrow space given to them. There aren't any controls for a minifigure to directly grip onto, a pair of standard lever pieces wouldn't have gone amiss and were part of the original design, but the pair of nozzle elements on either side, part #60849, seem reasonably manipulable with a little imagination.
Plenty of pieces here are given names by the manual, the stacked pairs of sci-fi guns and binoculars (parts #95199 and #30162) are called Twin Blast Exhausts and the articulated bits on either shoulder are apparently Quantum Processing Units, odd choice putting some of your computational parts on the outside.
The long ribbed hose element, part #57539, runs from the back of either leg and into a pair of part #11458 to secure it, and is referred to as the Coolant System, helped by the pair of set-exclusive flat silver #62359s, called the Excess Heat Radiators. These are interesting pieces, not just because they're the only ones in this color, but that they're some of the only ones in any set. The piece debuted in the incredibly short-lived Speed Racer theme from 2008, a tie-in with the Wachowskis' film of the same name and was featured a scant twelve times in three sets, three out of four sets total. In all of them, sets 8158: Speed Racer and Snake Oiler, 8159: Racer X & Taejo Togokhan and 8160: Cruncher Block and Racer X, it was in the basically indistinguishable pearl light grey color as tire spokes for Speed and Racer X's cars. The piece was used fourteen times in six years before being retired, or in this case, de-tired.
Pun out of the way, let's look at the only printed piece in the set, other than the minifigure torsos.
It's whatever this is, a printed version of the inverted 2x2 tile, part #11203, with some kind of flamey thing going on. This goes right on the very bottom of the Exo Suit's torso and unlike all those other bits isn't given a name by the manual. Typically flames are the last thing you want on the bottom of your mech, or just your bottom, but it can be kind of assumed this is some form of jump booster given a little outside context.
The context being the only two other sets that this piece is in, a pair of Legends of Chima sets, 70003: Eris' Eagle Interceptor and 70141: Vardy's Ice Vulture Glider. It's not readily apparent from the boxart or images where these pieces are located, but a quick skim through the instructions shows that they're placed on the underside of either bird-mech-plane's feet, solidifying my assumption that this is a booster of some sort. Adding to that, Mark Stafford was the designer of 70003, so he made the majority of sets to use the print.
Two outta three ain't bad.
Now we get Pete in the pilot's seat for some ACTION POSES.
While this pose uses a couple pieces to prop the set up, make no mistake, balancing the Exo Suit is easy-peasy thanks to its low center of gravity (even with those huge arms and hands) and its double-articulated ankles, being able to twist them at the foot does wonders for the mech's stability on any terrain. And about those arms and hands...
I'd have included a picture of Pete lifting Yve in one hand, but that felt rude, so I'll be rude in a different, less hands-on way.
I'm sure these two are fine people, very fine people who are in a very fine set, but just as Peter Reid is keen to spruce up his classic spacemen with modren helmets and modren heads, I am very, very keen to spruce down, with un-modren heads and... well, semi-modren helmets. You'll see.
The point is, all respect to these two, but I recognize my own taste just as I recognize mister Reid's, so I've decided to relieve them of their space-faring duties and send them home for a while.
And just like that, a pair of green classic classic spacemen are here and accounted for, featuring the new style of classic space helmet, part #50665 in green and the good old grin on their faces.
You might be wondering, "Are you always this pedantic?" and the answer is yes, obviously. You might also be wondering, "Where did you get those helmets from?" which is a less rude question with a more painful answer.
This piece is in a single set, the enormous Monkie Kid set, 80054: Megapolis City from 2024, which features one of this helmet as one of the three prizes (along with a red hard hat and purple bicorne) in a vaguely Time Cruisers-themed claw game. But I wouldn't go and buy two of a very large, very expensive set just for a couple of helmets, I wouldn't even buy one for two helmets, and so I didn't. I didn't spend 400 dollars just to get a pair of helmets for my little green spacemen, thankfully, I just ordered them off LEGO's own part catalog, LEGO Pick a Brick, which carries most parts from all their sets currently in production, which at the time I ordered them included these very specific helmets.
It took the better part of a month for them to ship out and get to me but it was all worth it to see these sweet, sweet spacemen match all my other sweet, sweet spacemen. If you're the kinda guy I am, you can see the value in that.
But my home-style improvements didn't stop there! I don't do a lot of big alterations to sets, I generally like to preserve them as-is, but Exo Suit is a rare exception and I felt like it could use just a little fixing up, such as...
These elbows are absolutely unsightly, the blue Technic pins sticking through the round tiles with holes (part #15535) on either side of the joint muck up the entire color scheme. Now it's not the most exciting color scheme, dark grey and light grey and a little silver and transparent yellow, about on par with your average extremely grey LEGO Star Wars set, but it's still a set of big, glaring blemishes.
But what can be done?
Thankfully, the answer is very simple.
The humble "boat stud", or part #2654, is all you need to get those elbows from drab to fab.
Thanks to the part's unique design, it has a large recess in the middle of the studs, so the protruding technic pins don't interfere with its ability to close the gap, we'll just get all four of these popped into place...
Just get these guys on here real quick, being careful on the ladder, of course...
This solution feels so natural to me, like they could have included it in the set and it would've flowed perfectly normally.
I won't do any own horn tooting or talk down to actual LEGO designer guys, but I think this change is about the only one of the bunch that is a 100% improvement in my eyes, the rest are just 97% or so.
Speaking of, here's the next one.
I've already spoken pretty highly of these grandiose grabbers, but something about them does bug me, and it's bugged me for a while, it's the fingertips. The claws used here, part #53451, give the fingers just the right amount of length to properly grip things, and the way they taper down can aid in grasping certain objects, but they've just never sat right with me. This is a big industrial-style machine, in Peter Reid's own description a walking mechanical maintenance unit, and the enormous clawed hands feel like they fight that description just a bit.
But what can be done?
Thankfully, the answer is very simple.
Swap them all out for part #58176, the old Barraki eye, which much like part #48267, the old Bohrok eye, has long since outlived its species of origin.
Ten of these in light grey are just the right thing to replace the scary claws, they give the hands a more chunky, industrial (and definitely more friendly) look, reminiscent of the fingertips of the gloves of actual space suits.
I considered using silver instead of grey, but they blended in with the fingers too much.
And just like that, the hands are less monster and more mech, with only an extremely minor loss of dexterity compared to the claws.
You could argue that, like the new helmets, these pieces are a bit of an anachronism, seeing as they weren't produced in light grey until 2017, though they were available in flat silver like the fingers, and would've been a more than suitable alternative to the claws.
Before we move on to the last of my little improvements, I forgot to bring up the last set-exclusive piece!
The four light grey part #15395 used in the wrists of either arm are completely exclusive to the Exo Suit, despite being such a common color. It's especially bizarre compared to its closest colors, the piece is in 46 sets in flat silver, 48 sets in black, and 132 sets in white, the most common color of the bunch.
Despite all that, these are only the third rarest, beat by light nougat with two instances in one set, 10342: Pretty Pink Flower Bouquet, and yellow with one instance in one set, 80101: Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner.
So if you were planning on making something with some round grey flowerpots, it won't be easy, but it'll be easier than light nougat or yellow ones.
Back to business, here's my last bugbear with the Exo Suit, this specific pair of part #11477 on top here (the Twin Blast Exhausts removed for visibility.)
They're perfectly fine for what they do, holding down the two of part #85943 that hold the two #50923s for the arms to attach to, but they have a tendency to wiggle out of alignment, and by tendency I mean always, they are always out of alignment.
But what can be done?
Thankfully, the answer is very simple.
Instead of two pieces, use one!
Popping those off and replacing them with just one of part #93273 makes the entire assembly less weird and wobbly and just a little more smooth and cohesive.
Believe it or not, this piece pre-dates part #11477 by a full two years, it is literally the piece's big brother in size and age. It makes sense that this wasn't included originally, easier to have four of a piece than two of one and one of another if you can help it, easier for sorting and inventory.
With those little changes out of the way, I have my own personal, preferred 21109: Exo Suit, a few little tune-ups to an absolutely excellent set that along with a couple others paved the way to a short but extremely sweet revival of Classic Space later on. But even as a Classic Space set it stands alone, there's no other set quite like it, the shaping, the articulation, all the greebles coating it, it's nowhere near as detailed as the design it's based on but it's unlike any other LEGO mech before or after it.
The use of pieces designed for Bionicle and the amount of Technic elements make the Exo Suit almost a mixed media set despite it all being LEGO. Despite its changes to make it more stable, more playable, more kid-friendly, the set carries that spirit of the MOC, in a much better way than most fan-designed sets do. Compromises were made, sure, but it's not toned down, not smoothed over.
It strikes me as something LEGO wouldn't do again, even as they continue to make minifigure-scale mechs for so many themes, Ninjago continues to put out at least one colossal robot a year, Monkie Kid has loads of huge robots, humanoid and otherwise, and a load of licensed properties, LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Marvel and LEGO DC have all had multiple waves of little themed mechs, built on pieces introduced with the similarly-sized mechs of Nexo Knights.
Like I said, Exo Suit stands alone, unlikely to ever be repeated or emulated by anything other than fan creations, and I have no doubt there are plenty of submissions on LEGO Ideas that are at least similar, but likely won't ever be picked up, even if they surpass that 10,000 vote threshold. That's all really a case of the whole thing getting too big, too many submissions to sift through, too many people vying for their favorite theme to get a revival or their favorite property to get its own LEGO set, but most of all it's all about the demographics.
Ideas as a theme has entirely shifted to the 18+ branding, it's by adults, for adults, the change beginning in late 2019 as the suggested age ratings went from 12+ (and the occasional 10+ for simpler builds) to 16+ before getting totally subsumed, the boxes became black with the colored border, and everything became 18+. No more babies allowed, this is the big kids' table, we've got extremely important and serious, only-for-adults sets like... 21324: 123 Sesame Street and, and uh... 21326: Winnie the Pooh.
I'm being disingenuous for the jokes, but the theme continues to make licensed sets based on things for all ages or even young children, yet the branding is severe, stern, piano black boxes with the set in a void, even when that set is Pooh bear's house with his jars of hunny and all his friends over to visit.
The Ideas line is just about to number more than sixty sets (at the time of this writing) and the last one to not be 18+ is the wonderful and vibrant 21322: Pirates of Barracuda Bay, with its equally wonderful and vibrant boxart with that imitation of the LEGOLand logo stripe on the front. It just so happens to be (as of this writing) the halfway point of the entire theme, before everything was eaten up by the advanced darkness of the "adults welcome" concept.
My distaste for the whole branding thing is just a personal opinion thing, but I can't help but feel that what LEGO really means by "adults welcome" is "children don't have money." Ideas sets have been growing bigger and bigger and bigger over the years, the last one to cost less than fifty dollars was 2018's 21314: Tron Legacy, which retailed for $34.99, and it barely counts as an Ideas set, fan-designed or not, the final result looks like just a regular licensed set with its two vehicles and three plot-relevant minifigures. The rest of the line from there just gets huge, sets numbering close to or past a thousand pieces, sometimes two thousand, sometimes three, ballooning piece counts and prices to hit that perfect mark of just big enough to not fit comfortably in one shelf of a Kallax.
Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm just not ready to pay two, three, five hundred dollars for a LEGO set I won't have anywhere to put, but I'm not lying. Of the last ten Ideas sets released, two of them were less than a hundred dollars, and both of those were eighty.
Aren't all suits exo suits, since you wear them on the outside?
You'd hate to wear an endo-suit, I can tell you that.
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