May is coming, and with that, International Star Wars Day: May the 4th (Be With You). There’s a lot going on, from nine new sets being revealed today, gifts with purchase revealed, Star Wars Celebration this weekend, and a New LEGO IDEAS Activity.
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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.
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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The first LEGO® Star Wars sets hit the market back in 1999. It seems like yesterday that we were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the special relationship between Lucasfilm and the LEGO Group. This year we have a new series of Midi-scale ships, as well as a new R2-D2 buildable model, and a model of the scene that introduced us to the first characters to appear Star Wars, back in 1977, – the arrival of Darth Vader on the Tantive IV. (I acknowledge that I didn’t see the film until 1978,for some reason that escapes both my memory and that of my family. That said, it made for an awesome 9th birthday party).
Along the way, we see our first minifigure appearances of a couple of previously unrepresented characters in minifigure form.
Read on for more details and images.
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This year marks the the 20th anniversary of the Clone Wars – the animated series from Genndy Tartakovovsky – introducing new characters and events to the Star Wars storey, it helped to prepare viewers for the Revenge of the Sith in 2005 – introducing characters such as General Grievous, Asajj Ventress and more.
To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of delving into the mythos of the Clone Wars, the LEGO Group have today officially revealed a 5374 piece version of one of the the Republic’s Capital ships, the Venator Class Attack Cruiser. Priced at 649.99 USD/649.99 EUR /999.99 AUD/559.99 GBP /15254.9 TRY /263990.0 HUF /849.99 CAD/5499.0 CNY, the set will go on sale on 1st October for LEGO Insiders and on the 4th for everyone else.
I have to admit, I am kind of excited for the new Ahsoka series (coming real soon now… or at least 23 August). And, after seeing a revamped Ghost unveiled a week or two ago, we have three new Star Wars sets revealed at SDCC today: Coming in September 2023: 2 from Ashoka (Ahsoka Tano’s T-6 Jedi Shuttle, and New Republic E-Wing™ vs. Shin Hati’s Starfighter™) and a new Buildable Sculpture…of Chewbacca
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Last week, I presented my review of the new 75341 Luke’s Landspeeder. While this latest UCS set comes with 2 minifigures, the set has been designed at decidedly greater than Minifigure scale – greater even than Jack Stone or Belville Scale. And so I put together some figures using techniques used for building the figures populating the Miniland Displays at the LEGOLAND theme parks. Don’t confuse these with the Minilands in the LEGOLAND Discovery Centres – they just use minifigures.
One of the great things about Miniland figures is that they can be built with the bricks that many of us have close to hand, and there is no obligation to make them posable – but you might need to think about the pose to strike before you start building.
Today, we will take a look through the pictures I have of the Star Wars Minilands from over the years, and we will look at building Luke Skywalker at Miniland scale.
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Over the last couple of years, we have started to see two different lines developing in ‘Things that used to be called Ultimate collector Series’ – Direct to Consumer, highly detailed, Star Wars sets, with lots of detail: True UCS sets – such as the Millennium Falcon, Imperial Star Destroyer, Awing Fighter and so forth, and the Master Builder Series: Essentially a large, detailed playset – First seen last year with Betrayal at Cloud City, with origins a few years earlier in the Attack on Hoth, this year we move to Tatooine, and that first wretched Hive of scum and villainy: Mos Eisley, and more importantly, the Cantina.
With 3187 pieces, a jaw dropping 21 minifigures, and a recommended retail price of $AUD529.99/ £319.99/€349.99/$USD349.99 this is the most detailed version of the iconic location seen to date.
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I have been feeling a hankering for Mandalorians, following the series finale of ‘The Mandalorian’ on Disney+ last week. Unfortunately, I have been unable to secure either of the sets associated with the series at this time. So I had a look through my shelves and found the next best thing: a set with Boba Fett: the 75423 20th Anniversary Slave I. The LEGO® AFOL Engagement Team sent this set to me last year, along with other sets in the 20th Anniversary range (20th anniversary of LEGO® Star Wars that is). However, by the time I got those sets built, I was a little exhausted by LEGO® Star Wars – and so I put the set on the shelf for a while, awaiting inspiration. And today inspiration had finally arrived, so I opened up bag 1 and started to build . All opinions are my own.
Slave I is one of the spaceships from Star Wars most frequently represented in LEGO® form. Despite having less than 2 minutes of screen time between 1980 and 2000, Boba Fett’s spaceship has appeared in at least 10 sets – 1 UCS, 5’minifigure’ scale and 4 microscale, 2 magazine cover gifts, a keychain and two Advent Calendars. Certainly it has a distinctive shape, and is readily amenable to representation in LEGO bricks, at any scale. That said, none of these representations is perfect.
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At the Start of Episode V, we hear about the Snowspeeders before we see them:
“Are the Speeders Ready?”
“Not yet: we are having some difficulty adapting them to the cold.”
It’s 1980 and already, we worry about this machine that we have never seen before. Unlike the first time I saw Star Wars, I had not waited over six months before having the chance to see The Empire Strikes Back. I only knew one other person who had seen the film before I went to see it. And he had spoiled the ending. But I didn’t believe that what he told me could possibly be true. So I entered in, hopeful and optimistic.
Continue readingIn which it becomes apparent that the LEGO group are celebrating the 20th Anniversary of LEGO Star Wars. With some of their Archive material, as well as some of my own, from a simlar era, we look at the Early Days of the Star Wars print ads.
LET ME TELL YOU A STORY. Forty two years ago – a Long, Long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away… Star Wars was released on an unsuspecting world. Fan based consumerism would never be the same again.
Star Wars consumed 9 year old me. I read the novel, again, and finally saw the film at the cinema for my ninth birthday. The Belgrave Cameo Cinea, in March 1978 for those playing at home. Drawings, LEGO models and action figures. I couldn’t get enough. I had a ‘making of’ magazine – covering movie history, the special effects, and some of the concept artwork by Ralph McQuarrie, and more still by the Brothers Hildebrandt. Eventually my brother and I managed to combine LEGO with our actions figures. Fast forward to the future…
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