Kit Figsto

Hit my local Target here in the US. They had multiple IT-S sets out and space on the shelves for the other sets but none of them. They also had a ton of Mario and summer Harry Potter sets. Strangely, I saw someone trying to buy a HP set but were denied due to the street date being later in the month, so I'm not sure how the 501st or AAT or other new sets had been sold unless only that one specific cashier was enforcing it but others didn't care or weren't paying attention to it.

Okay, I said before I’d reserve judgment on Ponda until we got better pics, the last one looked goofy to me but this one looks awesome. Definitely a little on the large side and I think the thing throwing me off is that most action figures have his tusks (or whatever that is) closer to his chin, so I’m used to that design even if it’s not accurate, but this actually looks fantastic. So far I’m still very much planning on getting this set!

Also, I said something to this effect a few pages ago but it applies again here - I don’t work for LEGO so I can’t say this with 100% certainty, but just from a business/marketing perspective, I’m almost positive that they’re not using the sales of UCS sets to determine how to price system scale sets that are 1/10th of the price or less. They’re appealing to different markets. People who are going to go out and put down $700-$800 on a UCS ship (which really equates to more like $1,000 if you buy in store due to taxes and the restocking fee that the brand stores charge on large items) are different consumers than those that are buying an $80 playset. Sure, there’s some overlap between customers, but I seriously doubt that they’re jacking up prices on system sets due to those high priced UCS sets selling well.

I'd contact LEGO directly and see if they either have logged this as an issue and have a solution, or if not will send you a new one. Their customer service is usually great about these things, especially since you just spent $60 on it and the major focal point isn't working correctly.

Well, you can do the individual mosaics as well (Maul, Vader, and Kylo Ren), but obviously not at the same time as the big Vader. I do agree that it's expensive but in terms of price per piece it's actually pretty solid, it's just that the pieces are all the 1x1 plates.

They all look fantastic! I've always thought the Troop Transport design was a bit odd, why have the Stormtroopers (or prisoners, as seen in Rebels) on the outside of a moving vehicle, but nonetheless, your rendition looks great. I also love the updated Rebel Scout Speeder, I think you nailed the idea of the original while getting it up to modern standards.

I think it's a different market, though. The Death Star, sure (but even then, it's been out a decade, I think most people who really want it have probably got one by now or are no longer interested in it), but the ships and smaller sets are a different targeted consumer altogether. Very few UCS sets would be an impulse buy, most of them are going to be purchased by collectors who are up-to-date on what LEGO is putting out and plan on buying them before going to the store to get one. I think occasionally you'll get someone that wanders into the LEGO store browsing at their local mall and decides on a whim to get a UCS set, but people who are putting down $300+ on a LEGO set are different from the people LEGO is targeting with their X-Wings or whatever else. I don't know if the set will stick around for 12 years like the Death Star, but I think it'll sell. I mean, the Ewok Village isn't nearly as iconic or well known as the Cantina, and that set stuck around for like 3 years. This one will have more desirable figures, a more well-known location, and could even attract people who had the Kenner playset as a kid.

Yeah, I had a tough time with the figures. I feel like pilot Luke is tough because it's hard to not include him in one of his most iconic scenes, but the figure is also very, very redundant for probably 70% of people buying the set, and it takes away another figure. I don't really see them doing a RO combo either if they were to make it, but I just thought it'd be an interesting idea and probably the best way to get an updated Mon Mothma/General Draven, but if they included those two, they'd probably need to give us main characters too (since people might question why we got some minor RO characters and everyone else being from ANH). I actually had no idea they'd never given us Red Leader, definitely would've thought he'd had a figure, so he definitely stays. And good call on the Honor Guard, forgot about those guys. Ah, of course, how could I forget!! I did think about a Rebels inclusion, but I don't think we've had animated characters in a D2C set ever (not counting the Ewok cartoon of course ), so as much as I'd LOVE to get some Rebels characters in there, it'd be a long shot sadly.

There was some discussion of an MBS Yavin in the 2020 thread but I didn’t want to go too far off topic (as I do, sorry mods!) so I wanted to post a concept idea here. Recreate your favorite scenes from Star Wars: A New Hope, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: Battlefront II with the new UCS Yavin IV Rebel Base! Fly into battle and defend the Rebels against the Imperial TIE Fighter with the X-Wing and Y-Wing Starfighters! Flip the switch to change the screen display in the briefing room and plan your attack on the Death Star! Refuel and repair Rebel ships in the hangar bay! Stand guard in the lookout tower with working lift! Honor the heroes in the awards hall! (I think I got enough exclamation points in there for it to be an official LEGO set description ) Basically, I’d do something similar to that sketch model we’ve probably all seen. The front facade would be the Temple exterior, while the back is open for access. The bottom level would have a fairly large hangar section with a midi-scale Y-Wing and X-Wing and a cargo sled, as well as the general stacks of crates and other stuff scattered around. One level up I’d put the briefing room on one half and the area with the maps and displays for the leaders to view the battle. On the very top, I’d put the award ceremony room, probably using forced perspective/stickers to make it look big. On the outside, I’d have that lookout tower with the ability to raise and lower the actual guard post. Like I said, I’d base it off of RO, ANH, and Battlefront, just like how the DS is based off of ANH and ROTJ. I think this gives more playability potential and better figures, since the only really exciting ANH figures would be Dodonna and celebration Luke/Han/Leia (even though we’ve had the latter 3 before). Minifigures: Luke Skywaker (pilot), Han Solo (award ceremony), Chewbacca, Princess Leia (award ceremony), Luke Skywaker (award ceremony), General Jan Dodonna, General Davits Draven, Senator Mon Mothma, Wedge Antillies, Biggs Darklighter, “Dutch” Vander, Garven Dries, 4x Rebel Fleet Trooper, 2x Rebel ground crew, Imperial TIE pilot, Imperial Stormtrooper, Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor, R2-D2 (possibly with a second “damaged” dome) and another R2 or R5 unit. I know that some people would prefer a few new pilots, but those are probably the most recognizable/“fan favorite” ones. You could probably swap Red Leader with a different pilot if you really wanted, maybe a blue squadron pilot, but I feel like Wedge/Biggs are necessary and they’d need a Y-Wing pilot in there, so Gold Leader is probably the one that most people are going to remember. Retails for $350 USD.

Cloud City and Hoth may have not sold incredibly since they both retired after one year, but there Ewok Village and Death Star both hung around for quite some time. DS is going on 12 years, I believe?

Another set that could be made is Yavin. The main argument against it (and one that I absolutely agreed with) was a lack of playability other than including a TIE fighter. Mos Eisley, whether it's a Cantina or a collection of buildings, you could stage a battle with Sandtroopers vs. Obi-Wan/Luke/Han/Chewbacca, but there isn't really much direct playability either other than small functions like "Han shoots Greedo" or moving doors, which I assume would also be present in a Yavin set. But I digress. Given recent trends with October UCS releases, we could see a press release in the next two weeks, so hopefully we get some pictures soon. Seems like usually once the first UCS figures leak, it's not long before the entire set is unveiled (I remember the Cloud City pilots leaking and then us getting a press release very soon) since it seems like they keep the UCS stuff under very very tight wraps.

They did manage to get around that by including Leia as Boushh in the last Jabba’s Palace set, but the problem comes if they were to do a Sail Barge, since she was a pretty crucial character in that scene and there isn’t an alternate outfit they could use. But I think the slave Leia design hasn’t been used in toys since before Disney even bought Star Wars, I think I remember Hasbro stopping a few years before then.

The tusks (or whatever those things are) look like they go down too far on the torso to me. Evazan I agree looks fantastic, but I'm reserving judgement on Ponda until we get better pictures. And considering jdubbs was the one to originally mention these pics, I'd assume they're probably legit.

I would hate to see $15 battle packs go, but from LEGO's perspective, they really could do away with it and give us $30 sets with 4-6 figures and slightly larger builds. At this point, I was going through Brickset, and we really aren't getting that many Battle Packs that couldn't be adapted and sell well at the $30 price point. Anything Rebels vs. Empire or First Order vs. Resistance would probably do fine (and you can mix in a different figure, so say 3 regular Stormtroopers and 1 Imperial Officer or TIE pilot or whatever), plus you could swap it for a Hoth or Endor scene with different Rebel troops and Snowtroopers/Scout Troopers instead of basic Stormtroopers. This pretty much proves that any clone-related version would probably sell well, either a different clone legion (say, a Kashyyk based one or a Battle of Geonosis set) or maybe Gungans vs. droids. They could very, very easily milk this and essentially put two of these out every year and cycle through the same 8-10 basic ideas every time, which means that they can go 4-5 years without re-releasing the same one, but have some pretty much guaranteed sellers. It would suck for a lot of collectors though, since the price goes up and it would get rid of the more character-based or obscure-type battle packs, since no one is going to pay $30 for a Jawa/Tusken Raider or Assassin Droid battle scene.

That actually sounds very plausible. There's definitely been examples where it seems as though the designers got concept art that either differed from the final vehicle/character/scene in the film, or it was unclear about the actual role that the character/vehicle would play in the final film. Like, that's the only rational explanation as to why we got the Quadjumper with the first wave of TFA stuff, so this definitely could've been mis-interpreted as something that isn't a spaceship, because it for sure does look like some sort of tank. I wonder if the concept art or preliminary designs focused mostly on it over Pasanna, so they weren't entirely sure?

Bespin set looks good! I probably will pass on it since I already have Cloud City (and now that this Mos Eisley set seems to be coming for sure, I'd rather put the $40 towards that), but it's a nice way to get the figures and it's a good display piece for sure.

Wow, 3200 pieces is pretty massive if that's true. Cloud City was 2800 and probably a couple hundred of that was just building a foundation/skeleton to lay the floors/sections into, something a Cantina/Mos Eisley build obviously wouldn't need. The last two Cantinas were about 375 and about 600 pieces each, with some parts on each going towards speeder builds, so I feel like you could realistically do a moderately full-scale Cantina with 1700-2000 pieces or so, I guess depending on how many specialized wall parts are used. So I would agree that it makes sense for there to be other areas of Mos Eisley, even if the Cantina were to be the "central" focus of the set. Hope for Garindan increases! And yeah, while I'd like to get a different landspeeder build (not Luke's, one of the other random ones around Mos Eisley), I think the Falcon would make the most sense/have appeal, especially since people absolutely loved the midi-scale Slave I included in Cloud City.

If I'm not mistaken, it was like mid-August when we got official pictures of last year's UCS and Force Friday releases, so I'm thinking if there are those couple of other sets rumored (Child sculpture, Bespin-related thing), we might get a press release around that time? I hope?

Hm, that's unfortunate. I never actually bought the set so I was just sort of assuming, as I don't believe I've even seen the figure in person either. So either we get lucky and they make a new mold (which is by no means a given), they do use the old mold but it's less accurate, or we don't get Muftak at all.

I think at this point most people buying the old sets are after them either for nostalgia/liking the era, completing a collection, they happen to stumble upon one priced well, or they really like the vehicle. I don't really see many people seeking out the Slave I from 2000 or whatever because it's the best model of the ship, you can buy the new one and have money to spare instead of paying what some sealed copies of the 7144 version are going for right now (which apparently has shot way up, I don’t remember that being a $150 set). And on the topic of price, the 2003 TIE Bomber is like $200-250 sealed for a model that has just over 200 pieces. Very few collectors are going to be able to justify spending that on a sealed copy of the set. Of course, a TIE Bomber from 2003 isn't up to the same standard as what one would look like today, and although I really really enjoy sets from that era (and not just the Star Wars, but the Town/City and the Island Xtreme Stunts too) but most anything made today is going to be easily more accurate than the something based on the same source material from that period. So yeah, I agree, I would say around 2006-2008 was when things started to shift ot be a bit more of what they are today and by 2010-2013ish is when it really became the same style/standard that we're used to now across most themes that have been around for that long. I think with pretty much any sets, saying "we got one X number of years ago" and if that number is over like 10, it's probably due for a remake unless it's something stupidly obscure. Even though the TIE Bomber isn't heavily featured, it's got sort of a cult following due to the fact that it's a TIE and people love to collect those, and it's been in non-movie stuff quite a bit.

I'm not saying those ships shouldn't be made but a TIE fighter is absolutely more recognizable and popular than all of those, and saying one came out in 2003 doesn't really mean much since I would guess over 75% of people who are collecting LEGO Star Wars today either weren't buying any in 2003 or don't have the Bomber. And technically we did get a Dreadnought, they put out the Maleviolence in like 2010 or so.

Things like the Police Gunship or AT-OT I'll give them since they had some role in TCW (the police gunship specifically at the end of Season 5 was in quite a few of the episodes) or are recognizable enough (the Dropship's basically a gunship, AT-OT basically an AT-TE), but yeah, the Wookiee Catamaran/gunship were literally in ROTS for like five seconds. With the Bomber, you could argue that it only has the one scene in ESB, but like you guys were pointing out, it's clearly a TIE Fighter and that alone makes it more recognizable than something like the Wookiee Gunship even if the actual screen time is similar. The old Cloud City figures are still as rare as ever. The cheapest Boba on Bricklink is $400, Luke with correct legs and torso is at like $200, Lando is another $30-40, etc. The figures from the new one also still have some value, not as much but the four or five most desirable figures are like $120 total if you were to buy them. Boba Fett from 2018 is lightyears more accurate than the 2003 version, but is hundreds of dollars cheaper, so even if we get a new cantina with a new and more accurate Greedo, the old one won't be affected in my opinion. I tend to defend most of LEGO's decisions, but do agree with this point here. The "lack of playability" argument didn't really make much sense. What's different between the playability of an X-Wing and a TIE Fighter? Heck, a regular TIE absolutely has less playability than the Bomber but we get one of those every other year. I mean, I get it with the re-releases, they're at a point where almost all of the iconic ships and locations have been done, there's less and less new stuff that they can feasibly do every year that will be guaranteed sellers. I'd like to see more new stuff too, but you also have to remember that we have gotten quite a bit more of that this year than usual. Duel on Mustafar, Obi-Wan's Hut, the Razor Crest, Night Buzzard, IT-S, and possibly now a Cantina is some major, major stuff that people have been asking for, some of it for 5-10+ years now. But at the same time, it's sort of baffling that they don't seem to say "Okay, instead of the X-Wing or Slave I at the $90 price point this year, we can rotate it out for one release cycle and do a TIE Bomber instead, we'll bring back the X-Wing next year."

You sort of touched on this, but the Ewok Village and Cloud City aren't super "play" oriented either. They have a few play features (the Carbonite Chamber, for example), but are mostly display oriented, but you could stage a battle or something if you wanted. I don't see why the Cantina is any different, they could include some Sandtroopers so there's a possibility of staging a battle scene, including the "Han shoot Greedo" feature that every Cantina has come with so far, and call it good. Most kids aren't spending $350 on something like this, it'd be geared towards adults, especially those nostalgic to this scene, which, again like you said, is arguably the most famous scene in ANH.

The $80 model was only about 1/4 the size of a full one, though. I think for $350 you could do a full cantina and some street scene/alley to add Garindan and maybe the door where the droids are hiding, but a full Mos Eisley for $350 wouldn't really be feasible in my opinion, as much as I'd like to see the spaceport.

Talz has been made before in the Freeco Speeder set, they’d have to slightly change the mold (it has a plume on the head) but it would be very minimal since it’s just removing a part extending off of the head and filling in the gap. Chadra-Fan is doable with the Man-Bat/Monster Fighter bat ear hairpiece, it’s not perfect but passable. I think a Givin, Duros, Abyssian, Siniteen, and Devaronian could work as minifigure heads, or with accessories on their heads like Maul, and you could also do people like Djas Puhr or Snaggletooth with a standard minifigure head pretty easily in my opinion. And, while aliens are awesome, there’s also a few human/humanoids that are pretty iconic too, like Dannik Jerriko (although he’s smoking so maybe not...), the Tonnika Sisters, Boshek...