Time for another Lord of the Rings set review!
This time we are looking at set #9470 Shelob Attacks. These Lord of the Rings sets have made me dust off my old copies of the extended Lord of the Rings movies. Add that to the fact that I have been sick for the last week and I have been able to watch all 3 extended versions of the movies. That’s like 12 hours of Lord of the Rings! You would think that I was all burned out of Lord of the Rings (LOTR) but here we are with a set review.
GOLLUM:
Yeah Gollum gets his own section in this review because he is one of the most important characters in the saga. (If you don’t know the story, go watch the movies! Or poke around on this site for a while.) He also gets special mention because this is the only set that he is currently available in. So if you want Gollum, go get Shelob Attacks.
So how did the figure turn out? Well it’s great and disappointing all at the same time. The sculpt and paint are great. This really looks like Gollum. However, the only part that is articulated on him are his shoulders. There isn’t much for poor old Smeagol to do except to hold a fish and maybe scream “My Precious!”. His arms are also a custom sculpt and Lego was nice enough to include an extra one in case you lose or break one of yours.
SAM AND FRODO:
The other two minifigs in the set are Samwise Gamgee and Frodo Baggins. These would round out the three most important characters in the trilogy and they are all 
available in the same set. This is also the only set that these two minifigures are available in as well. Although it’s kind of cheating to say this is the only set this version of Frodo is in since he is also in set #9472 Attack on Weathertop and is the exact same figure except for the cape which is green in the Weathertop set.
The figures are pretty fair representations of Frodo and Samwise. Although Frodo looks a little more like his movie counterpart than Sam does. They also both come with two sided heads. Frodo has both his regular face and the face from when he was stung by Shelob. Sam has both a happy face and a concerned face. You also get two copies of Frodo’s sword stinger and Sam has a clear jewel that is meant to represent the Phial of Galadriel.
SHELOB:
This is one big spider!
The bulk of the buildable part is Shelob. There is also a little rock formation with some sort of a catapult built into it that Gollum can watch what is happening to Frodo from. The spider is big. Almost twice the size of the Aragog that comes in #4738 Hagrid’s Hut. She also has a cool little feature where you can extend out a line to wrap up your unsuspecting Frodos with. The head is a printed brick that is detailed all the way down to Shelob’s missing eye. The only potential drawback to the build is the fact that Shelob’s legs aren’t attached to sturdily. This causing the legs to break off quite frequently while playing with the set.
VERDICT:
Once again, the LOTR theme does not disappoint. You get 3 of the most important characters in the trilogy plus a cool giant spider all in the same set for twenty bucks. Not only that, but the spider actually has a web! One other thing I forgot to mention is that you get 3 copies of the ring. The ring is the size of a 1×1 round piece and has a hole punched in the middle so a minifig can hold it. It’s not exactly ideal, but how else would you make a ring at minifig scale? But the bottom line on this set is: If you want Gollum, you need to get this set.
Bricks N More 