Review — Fanhome’s ET: The Extra-Terrestrial Build-Up Kit, Stages 9-14

My fourth big box from Fanhome has arrived. This one contains build stages 9-14 of their ET: The Extra-Terrestrial Build-Up Kit. This is the most stages in a single shipment to date, and I’m excited. So far, I have one glowing index finger, the upper internal facial structure with moving eyes, and an avulsed face. 

With the exception of that finger, things have been moving pretty predictably from inside out, front to rear, so I predicted this box would have a jaw, servo motor to operate the jaw, and a few pieces to complete the automation of the eyelids. 

While the box isn’t as big as last month’s, the only reason that one was so large was to prevent the included movie still posters from needing to be folded or rolled. Despite the smaller box, this is the most building stages I’ve received at once. As it turned out, I got a lot further than I expected. Not only did the parts arrive for the jaw and eyelids, I also have three out of four of the skull pieces. 

Assembly time for every stage so far has been just about five minutes. That holds true with this shipment. Unpacking, assembling, and testing took roughly half an hour. I mentioned before how nice it is that Fanhome includes a power source early in the build so that each stage can be tested while you’re building. It’s very easy to see missed steps or incorrect assembly by simply turning on a servo and seeing the pieces either work or make a god awful grinding noise. Not that I’ve had the grinding noise. Yet. 

Each month, I have a substantially cooler thing to hold in my hand. Now my little Zrek can move his eyes back and forth, blink, and move his jaw up and down. Not all at once, of course, since it’s still that little temporary power supply. It can only be hooked up to one servo motor at a time. The moving jaw is the coolest new bit, so that’s what I’ll show you.

This model is coming together very nicely. There have been a couple little spots where I wish my hands were 11% smaller to handle witchy little bits, but even those steps were relatively easy. Fit and finish are excellent, and instructions broken down into sensible steps with diagrams.

I’ll probably get that fourth skull piece in the next box. And now that we have three sets of wires from servo motors, and one sneaky little switch inside the eye housing (which I believe will make that eyelid servo fire at intervals), there should be some sort of wiring harness. Maybe I’ll get the head skin, too? I think that will have to be assembled prior to attachment of the neck structure, due to the wedge shape of this guy’s head. We’ll see!