May the Fourth

A long, long time ago, in a catalogue far far away…[LEGO Star Wars: First Look, 1999]

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Happy Star Wars Day! I’d like to start by thanking some of our readers for sending in fresh scans and new photos of Catalogs and Magazines from the early days of LEGO Star Wars. In Particular Sue Ann B and Trevor C, David L, and El Davo. You guys rock. Now…read on

It was 1999, and I was still in my LEGO Dark Ages, but something was afoot. The LEGO Catalogue for the year opened with some themes, tried and true on the cover: Top left led off with a rocket blasting off from the LEGO Town – Spaceport; on the lower left we see the Adventurers theme, this year exploring the South American Jungle. The bottom right image brought us a new, original theme: Rock Raiders; And finally on the top right was an image that would change the way LEGO was looked at for ever. Star Wars. At this time, roughly 22 years had passed since the first film was released, and nearly 2 years had passed since the Special Editions had debuted, introducing a new generation to the joy of Cinema.

Australian Catalog cover 1999. New Scan courtesy of Sue Ann B and Trevor C.

This year, 2024, we celebrate 25 years since the release of those first Star Wars LEGO Sets, and on May the 4th, and here at the Rambling Brick we are going to revisit that first look we had at LEGO Star Wars back in 1999, by revisiting some of the publications that came out around the time: first the 1999 Catalogue entries, and then the LEGO World Magazine. Now… I thought I had some of these catalogues in the archives at home, and while I might, I was unable to locate them in a timely fashion, so I am grateful to the readers who responded to a distress flare the other night. [read on for new scans and long-forgotten mangazines]

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75355 UCS X-Wing Revealed: May 1 Release

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UCS X-Wing, ramblingbrick bedroom edition c.1978.

Now, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that with May the 4th less than a month away, we are starting to see new LEGO Star Wars sets officially revealed. Overnight, we got our first complete views of the third UCS X-Wing. (The first (7191) being released in 2000, the second (10240) in 2013. Now the X-wing has always been the iconic Star Fighter for me, ever since my first glimpse back in 1977. It was also the first Star Wars ship that I attempted to build to accomodate my action figures, back in the day.

However, I totally missed the previous versions of this ship: I just wasn’t really ready to make that sort of an investment at the time. Life has moved on, and I am glad that I can reconsider adding one to my collection, without investing excessively on the secondary market.

And so, here is 75355 X-Wing Starfighter, due for release on 1st of May for VIP Customers…

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UCS A-Wing 75275 Announced In Time for May the Fourth

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Around the turn of the century, a new type of LEGO® set was released. Star Wars starfighter kits, designed for the AFOL to display, rather than to swoosh around the room. There were two released that year: 7181, TIE Interceptor, with 703 parts and the one we had all been waiting for: the 7191 X-Wing Starfighter was the largest Star Wars Set to have been released at the time.

TIE Interceptor and X-Wing UCS – images from Brickset.com

Twenty years have gone by and almost every major starfighter from the Rebellion and Empire has been represented.

Almost.

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May the Fourth Be With You: Tatooine Battle Pack Review

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IMG_1519Today is May the Fourth, the day when a pun is allowed to take over marketing of Star Wars related LEGO® sets for a limited time only, with a variety of special offers in place, changing daily.  Check Shop.LEGO.com in your country for details.

Tatooine

“If there’s a bright centre of the galaxy, you are on the planet that it’s farthest from.” – Luke Skywalker

When Star Wars debuted in 1977, Tatooine was the first alien landscape we encountered. A harsh, unforgiving desert planet, bathed by the scorching heat of binary stars, we see people enter a daily struggle against the environment: farming moisture to survive; fending off hostile desert nomads and dealing with diminutive scavengers. We see a variety of exotic megafauna, some just skeletons, some utilized as low maintenance transport in an environment which treats life forms and machine with equal contempt. It is far from the attention of authority: smugglers, gangsters and fugitives make this planet their base of operations. We also see hope: cautious optimism in the face of a deadly environment, a place of refuge from the Empire, and spectacular twin sunsets! It was a long, long time ago, and the locale took us to a galaxy far, far away…

And yet with its exotic locations and importance to the overarching saga- events take place on Tatooine in five of the first six movies- the indigenous races: Jawas and Tusken Raiders remain shrouded in mystery. And indeed , in my opinion,  sadly underrepresented in LEGO Star Wars sets.

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1978 X-Wing Fighter. 3 1/4″Action Figure Scale Luke Skywalker in place, and a makeshift R2D2 in the Astromech slot.

Melbourne, 1977

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