Technic

Firefighter Aircraft

A big, swooshable water bomber with the most satisfying propeller trigger in Technic.

Brick Rated Score

3.9/5

Set 42152 · 2023

Pieces1,134

Minifigsn/a

Year2023

Set number42152

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The verdict

This one won me over slowly, and it was the little trigger under the nose that did it.

You pull it back, both propellers spin in a smooth ratcheting whir, and suddenly you're eight years old holding a plane over your head again. It's a genuinely playful set that happens to be built the Technic way. Just know the build itself is more workhorse than showpiece, so you're buying it for the swoosh and the features, not for clever engineering.

Best for: Play-minded Technic fans who want features and swooshability over pure engineering

The full review

What it is

There's a specific kind of joy in a LEGO® set you can pick up and fly around the room, and this one leans all the way into it. The Firefighter Aircraft is a chunky twin-engine water bomber, 1,134 pieces, roughly 59cm long with a matching 60cm wingspan, and it's packed with features rather than statement techniques. The headline is a trigger tucked under the front of the plane. You pull it back and both propellers spin up in a fast, smooth cycle, and it's positioned exactly where your fingers land when you're holding the model, which tells you the designers actually thought about how you'd play with it. Flip a lever at the back and a hatch drops the water payload. That's the heart of the set, and it's good fun.

The catch

I'll be straight with you about the rest, because you deserve the honest version. The fuselage is, in the words of more than one reviewer, really just a long box with a bit of taper at the tail, and there aren't many advanced building tricks in it. That's fine if you came for the play features, less fine if you live for clever Technic geometry. The build also has a sting in the tail. Those first bags move along nicely, but the final group takes far longer than the rest, and near the end the instructions keep showing the whole plane at the same zoom while you're making tiny changes to the wings and engines, so you squint and hunt for where a pin actually goes. Splitting that last stretch across two sittings genuinely helps. Total build lands around three and a half hours. And if you were hoping the spinning props would push a breeze, they don't, they just look busy, which trips up a few people.

Who it's for

So here's my take. If you want a big, characterful plane you'll actually mess about with, features you can trigger one-handed, and a shelf piece with real presence, this is an easy set to enjoy for its 100 dollar price. It's also a lovely one to share with a kid who wants to make the propellers go. If your happy place is intricate gearboxes, dense parts geometry, and a build that shows off, temper your expectations, because the engineering here is means-to-an-end, not the main event. Grab it for the swoosh and the smile. Skip it if you need every session to teach you a new technique.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building it breaks into clear stages. You spend the early bags laying down that long fuselage box and the internal frame that carries the mechanisms, and it moves at a comfortable pace with nothing to trip you up. Then the good stuff arrives. The propeller drive is built around a push-powered gear rack, and gravity assists the ratcheting so the whole cycle feels smooth rather than gritty. The landing gear is the other treat, with the front strut folding up into the cockpit and the two rear struts tucking into the engine nacelles, mechanics you can watch work. The wings and engines come last, and that's where the pacing bites, because the final bag runs long and the instruction views get stingy about showing you exactly where small changes attach.

On pieces, the standout is a set of new Technic Panel Round Corners 5 x 3 x 2 (elements 2438 and 2442) that give the nose and body their curved, aircraft look and are genuinely useful in a parts bin afterward. A dark bluish grey 1 x 14 gear rack (18942) does the heavy lifting in the propeller mechanism, and ten trans-light-blue round 2 x 2 bricks stand in for the water you drop. There are no minifigures, as you'd expect from Technic. For value, 1,134 pieces at 100 dollars sits right around the fair nine-cents-a-piece mark, and with the set now climbing on the secondary market since retirement, the ones you bought at retail have quietly gone up in worth.

Fun facts

01Real water bombers like the Canadair CL-415 that this design echoes can scoop roughly 6,000 litres of water in about 12 seconds by skimming across a lake, no landing required.
02The set hides a full alternate B-model, and fans quickly rebuilt the parts into a fan-favourite Conwing L-16 Seaduck from the DuckTales cartoon using nothing but the pieces in the box.
03Working retractable landing gear is unusual on a Technic aircraft, and here all three struts fold away, the nose gear into the cockpit and the mains into the engine nacelles.
04At around 59cm long with a 60cm wingspan, the finished plane is wide enough that it needs more shelf than most 1,000-piece sets twice its part count.