Early LEGO Star Wars Concepts and Prototype Falcon

[Tazakk]

A little while back I linked to this piece by Christian Faber from Advance, the ad agency that works closely with LEGO. Now he's put up a few more things - a concept for how LEGO Star Wars would be presented and marketed, and a mockup of the original Millennium Falcon box, featuring a very different prototype for the 2000 model.

[Vectormatic]

I got to say, i think that rock miners (or whatever the theme was) cockpit on the falcon looks quite decent, i think i like it better then the very very open translucent piece they ended up going for

The front tunnel seems like a miss, but it suggests quite a bit of height and playability in the model

[1974]

Very interesting! Looks like they got the mandibles right on this one ... If the burger got flattened a bit and the large panels got some studs I think I'd prefer this one to the newer version actually

I can also spot several of my protoype parts

[M'Kyuun]

Thanks for posting this,Tazakk. Prototype and concept pics are always of great interest. It's neat to see what might have been as compared to what we got officially. Those early prototype parts look great, 1974, esp that panel. I'd be interested to see more prototype elements, as I'd imagine there are quite a few that many of us would love to have seen produced.

LEGO's history with Star Wars is especially interesting, as there was internal conflict over acquiring the license, their first outside of their homegrown brands. I love seeing these early prototype models, and hope that more can be shared in the future.

[1974]

I'd be interested to see more prototype elements ...

Knock yerself out :

http://www.blacktronite.com/odd.htm

[1974]

I got to say, i think that rock miners (or whatever the theme was) cockpit on the falcon looks quite decent, i think i like it better then the very very open translucent piece they ended up going for

That is not the RockRAIDERS cockpit, it's a prototype part. The Rockraiders part look like this :

Anyway, I just had a chat with someone in the know (from back then), here's what he has to say :

" .. yes that MF .. I've seen many versions of it, but not that particular one. The cockpit is an early version (looks a bit weird and overdimensioned) and as you have spotted, there are bricks not commonly available. Quite often prototype parts were used in early moc-ups and if they were usefull they would get approved for commercial sale, but usually one used common parts in the design stage. Anyway, you would get the message from 'upstairs' that's it was expensive anyways and get asked to do 'the same' with half the bricks - and that's not easy!

But I clearly remember there was a lot of fussing about with the big quarter plates, especially if they we're to be painted/needed stickers and there was a gentleman in my team named XXXX that had a couple of those MFs on his table. He was very involved in that model

There was a LOT of secrecy regarding those early SW sets. The designers had their own little 'cave' where they could watch unrelased clips from the movies because it all had to be ready for the movie

I do not have pictures, sorry, as we we're not allowed to take them inside the building, but I can tell you that LEGO spend as much money on the set as they did on the box"

(I've redacted out names and other markers as it's not important)

'Back then' is of course around '98-99 and the movie is TPM. TLG works differently today I'm sure, but I do find it quite interesting that the designers had a load of prototype parts to use when making moc-ups

Parts are - or where - expensive to make (not today with 3D printing), but still TLG turned out loads of parts never to be seen in any sets back then

As you can gather from the Faber blog, TLG have had a very special connection with Lucas' empire (now the same 'special relationship' can hopefully continue with Disney) since day one and I'm sure we're in for a massive treat in the future!

Cheers,

Ole

[joebiwankenobi]

Absolutely incredible to read Ole! Not very often do we get a behind the scenes look at how things came to be. Thanks for sharing Tazakk!

[Vectormatic]

That is not the RockRAIDERS cockpit, it's a prototype part. The Rockraiders part look like this :

Right you are, the theme fell squarely into my dark ages, so im not too familiar with it, but upon seeing the piece, cant imagine i confused the two :D

Still, that rock raiders canopy in grey wouldve been a decent falcon cockpit imho

[Artizan]

looks more like these pieces:

[YellowCorvette]

Interesting. Seriously, I prefer the solution of the cockpit canopy in the prototype version, but I don't understand why TLC decide to choose the solution on their original Falcon set.

[LegoPercyJ]

Interesting!

[Tazakk]

Another post, this time on the background art for the original assortment's packaging.

[1974]

Exellent!

It's evident (once again) that it's not possible to judge a set's price solely by the amount of bricks/weight of bricks, but that we have to remember the huge amount of work that goes into special designers/pics/graphics/boxes for certain themes

The current 40% LucasDisney "tax" does not go all the way to America so it seems

Interesting that Advance/that dude is letting all this out now though ...

I cannot tell more tales puplicly now, sorry, but I can say that the SW thing was a VERY big thing in TLG HQ around '99/00. Funny they put out such crap sets that was miles behind say Johnny Thunder/Adventures (but of course much better than the City/Town sets of that era) .. took quite some years before they got their act together .. imho that is

Cheers,

Ole

[Blondie-Wan]

Holy smokes, there's some awesome stuff in this thread and on the pages it links to. I'm agog.