It was touch and go for a while as to whether or not this set was ever going to actually come out or not, but one of the last early Halo Mega Bloks 2013 sets has arrived–the long-awaited Halo Mega Bloks ODST Recon Specialist Drop Pod 97105! It’s been a long wait since 2011 to get the set, but it’s finally here. And for fans of ONI Officer Dare or the “Halo 3: ODST” video game, this Recon Specialist Drop Pod is an absolute must-have…

The Right:

Hard as it may be to believe, the ODST Recon Specialist Drop Pod 97105 is actually the very first Halo Mega Bloks ODST Drop Pod I’ve ever purchased. In fact, it’s the first ODST Drop Pod I’ve ever purchased from any line, as I skipped the McFarlane Halo Universe and Halo Micro Ops Drop Pods as well.

While I love me some ODSTs, I’ve never found their Drop Pods especially compelling or essential for my personal collection. Of course, this Halo Mega Bloks Drop Pod was different. This particular ODST Drop Pod was unquestionably coming home. This Drop Pod came with a figure of Veronica Dare.

Okay, it’s not officially Veronica Dare, as it’s very rare for MEGA Brands to do a figure of a named character from Halo. But for all intents and purposes, this figure is the same colors and dressed in the same ODST armor with Recon helmet as ODST Dare, so we might as well call the figure as such.

Halo Mega Bloks 97105 includes three painted weapons, and I’m happy (at least) for all three of them. The big treat here (at least for me) is the included M6C SOCOM. The M6C SOCOM pistol is quickly becoming my favorite Halo Mega Bloks UNSC weapon, and I am ecstatic to own a painted version of the gun so soon after its first release with the Covenant Spectre last month! Dare’s signature gun is a pistol, and she looks terrific wielding this one.

The set also includes a Rocket Launcher and a M7S Submachine Gun (SMG) with paint detailing on them. Neither gun is especially rare in the Halo Mega Bloks line, but we also don’t have a glut of them (and certainly not with paint deco), so both are very welcome additions to my UNSC armory.

And oh yeah, this set also includes a Mega Bloks Drop Pod. As I mentioned earlier, this is actually my very first ODST Drop Pod, so it’s totally new to me. The big difference between this and prior Mega Bloks ODST Drop Pods is, of course, the color scheme–which looks absolutely wicked. The Recon Specialist Drop Pod is painted primarily in slick black paint, with shiny gold paint as a secondary color. It looks sleek and immensely cool, and is certainly the best-looking ODST Drop Pod I’ve ever seen (even if its colors are a little unconventional).

The UNSC ODST Recon Specialist Drop Pod 97105 has all the features of a standard Halo Mega Bloks ODST Drop Pod (since it is one), including two different poles you can use to adjust the length of the Drop Pod’s chute, a removable front hatch, and side hatch panels that swivel outward. I much prefer hanging the weapons on the panels and swiveling them out to the way they sit on the ground on the Covenant Drop Pods, which have a front hatch hat goes directly down.

The Wrong:

For some reason–for some crazy reason–MEGA Brands is initially packing this ODST Recon Specialist Drop Pod at just one per case. Considering that the ODST Recon Specialist figure looks like a well-known character from the “Halo 3: ODST” video game, the Drop Pod itself looks super-cool, and fans have literally been waiting since 2011 for this set, packing it at one-per-case just seems way too low. This set is going to be hot and hard to locate in stores for quite some time.

Other than the case-pack, the only thing I’d have liked improved with this set is a little more detailing on the ODST Recon Specialist figure’s armor. It looks nice and all, but I’d have liked just a bit more deco to make the figure really stand out as special.

“Where Can I Buy It?!”

I got my Halo Mega Bloks UNSC ODST Recon Specialist Drop Pod from online retailer BA Toys, who always seems to get Halo Mega Bloks first. This set should be hitting retail stores over the course of the next month, but it’s likely to be very popular and scarce for a while.

Overall: While this set is obviously not anything groundbreaking or revolutionary, it does give us some things we’ve never had before–namely, a painted M6C SOCOM and an ODST with a Recon Helmet that looks like Veronica Dare. The ODST Drop Pod itself looks extremely slick, the figure is a necessity if you’re building an ODST squad of Mega Bloks figures, and the weapons included are all valuable ones anyone will want in their collections. The Halo Mega Bloks ODST Recon Specialist Drop Pod is a well-done, low-priced set that easily earns a high recommendation.

GRADE: A-