If there’s one facet of Halo I can never get enough of in the Halo Mega Bloks line, it’s sets based upon vehicles and concepts from the Halo Wars video game. Last year year I was beginning to think that that ship had sailed and we’d missed our shot at any further Halo Wars vehicles. To my astonishment and ecstasy, MEGA Brands then revealed prototypes of not just any Halo Wars set, but one featuring the humongous UNSC Rhino! Is this gigantic tank worthy of rolling into your collection?

The Right:

When someone sees this tank for the first time, their eyes are immediately going to be drawn to the huge freaking turret in the center of it–and rightly so. The UNSC Rhino Zeus Cannon employs reverse-engineered Covenant plasma energy, and is among the most devastating pieces of tech ever created by the UNSC. The Zeus Cannon turret on the Rhino Mega Bloks toy is equally impressive. The base of the turret can smoothly rotate a full 360-degrees, and the turret can pivot about 45 degrees upwards to blast at an arcing trajectory. These features are pretty much everything you could ask for in a tank turret, and the Rhino delivers.

The Zeus Cannon is so powerful that the Rhino tank needs to be in lockdown mode to utilize it. As such, this Halo Mega Bloks Rhino has unfoldable supports to lock it into stationary mode. The supports are a little fragile, but they work terrific. And as much as I dislike stickers, the yellow and black caution stripes really add a lot to the appearance of the supports.

As the UNSC Rhino is far too large to be controlled by a single person, it features two opening hatches: one in the base of the turret for the gunner, and another for the driver in the main compartment of the tank. It’s a simple feature, but it’s fun deciding which of your troops will be driving and which will be aiming the destructive Zeus cannon.

That brings us to the UNSC Rhino’s figure selection. The set includes four Mega Bloks Halo figures including a rare Recon Spartan, two Grunt Ultras, and a Marine. This is a pretty good set of figures for several reasons. We get very few Recon Spartans in the Mega Bloks line, so getting a red one here is a real treat. The paint deco on the Marine looks exactly like the iconic Halo Marine I picture in my mind’s eye, and I would love it if MEGA Brands released whole packs of slight variations of Marines looking just like this one. Finally, this set was one of the first to give multiples of the new, larger Grunt figures in it. I’m not crazy about the color of these Grunts–at all (more on this later)–but I appreciate this set for its Grunt army-bolstering.

The Wrong:

I was rabid with anticipation for this Halo Mega Bloks UNSC Rhino 97016 set, but that doesn’t mean I lost my objectivity about it and became blind to its flaws. There’s actually a few things that I really don’t care for about this set.

The first and probably most potent complaint about this set for most fans will be its price-tag: $84.99. While the Mega Bloks Rhino itself is a decent size, the Forerunner structure included with the set is clearly adding $15-$20 to the cost of this set. The Forerunner structure with the Halo 4 Warthog Resistance set was plenty good for me–given the choice, I would have definitely preferred to not drop the extra cash on the one here. A little Covenant turret or Ghost would have been a simpler (and cheaper) inclusion in this set.

The next thing I don’t like about the set–and this is going to sound petty, forgive me–is that I really don’t like the color of the UNSC Rhino. While on the box artwork and in the prototype images the Rhino appears to have a tan or brownish tint to it, the actual Rhino that you build in this set is an extremely dark green color. It ends up being far darker than the Rhino looked in Halo Wars and is a stark difference from the promotional shots, and I think in this case the difference is not for the better.

Also, while I’m ragging on the color selections for this set, I can’t resist taking a shot at the gold/yellow Grunt Ultra figures. I hated this color on the Elite in the Covenant Armory Pack II set earlier this year, and it looks just as awkward and bad here. This color just does not look good on Covenant troops, especially when there’s no weather or paint deco over it–it looks cheap and toy-like.

“Where Can I Buy It?!”
The retail price for the UNSC Rhino is $84.99, which is what it’s priced at at most major retailers. However, as of writing, Amazon has it for sale at an insane $56.80 with free tax and free shipping! If you think you might want the Rhino, I doubt you’ll ever see a better deal for this set.

Overall: The Halo Mega Bloks UNSC Rhino 97016 is a sturdy and wonderfully-engineered set that is rife with action features. Primary among them are the rotating, pivoting tank turret, independently movable tank treads, retractable supports, and dual opening hatches. The figure selection that comes with the set is pretty nice as well, including a rare red Spartan Recon figures, a great-looking Marine, and a pair of Grunts (with a fuel rod cannon!). The only real drawbacks to this set are that you’re going to pay an extra $15-$20 for a Forerunner structure (whether you want to or not), the color of the Rhino tank itself seems excessively dark, and the yellow color of the Grunts looks too bright and kiddy. I think this is a solid Halo Mega Bloks set and I’m excited to add such a huge and intimidating Halo Wars vehicle to my collection, but the set has some downsides to consider if you’re on the fence about it.

GRADE: B-