TeddytheSpoon

I wouldn't consider myself an expert on rare parts, but my 2 cents... Best case, it's a prototype part. My understanding is that LEGO tended to make these in red, as stress lines and fractures are easiest to spot. But parts do get made in other colours too, to test the different pigment mixes. With my design engineer head on, though, I'm leaning towards a convincing knock-off, for two reasons. One, some of the design aspects, in particular the lack of a line breaking the anti-stud into two halves. Even back in the 90s I'm pretty sure a lot of headpieces had this split, to prevent minifig heads getting stuck (particularly important for all-covering helmets like this one!). Two... it just doesn't look much like a scout trooper to me. If anything it looks more like something out of Spaceballs! It's possible this design would've still been made as a prototype, but if the drawing was on the table at the same time as what eventually became the production model, I wouldn't be taking it forward for prototyping. As I said I'm not so knowledgeable on what prototype parts got made, so I would be interested to see what someone wiser than me would think. But that's my inference. Good luck finding the answer!

The orange-flavoured ones are my favourite.

Your creativity is rapidly turning this into one of my favourite running jokes on this forum

Very nice. They look like wheels for a Q1, is that right?

Thing is, Ninjago isn't just a theme - right from the start it's had a big push in other forms of media, be that online, in comics, TV series, video games, movies etc. It basically set the standard for how in-house LEGO themes should be marketed to kids in the 21st century (Bionicle also did this to an extent). Nowadays, TLG have probably figured they can make more money marketing such sets for nostalgia value rather than creating an entire new theme and all the associated baggage.

I personally prefer the new one, but only with @mcphatty's excellent mod to create some more room inside. I was never a fan of the way the underside was done on the 2016 one, and the design somehow looks a bit sleeker with the new U wing. Just need someone to figure out the sliding door now...

Very nice! What scale is it approximately? Looks like it wouldn't be too far off the Invisible Hand set?

Oh wow, this might be one of your most creative alt builds yet!

Don't they basically already do this? Sets are no longer 'UCS Jango Fett's Starship', just 'Jango Fett's Starship'. TLG appear to be relying on the black background to market sets to the AFOL-curious and AFOLs alike.

A thing on wheels is also more fun as a toy than a thing on legs (stability issues notwithstanding).

Wow, this is rad! The gunship mechanisms are especially fun. Although I must admit that watching it tilt was quite unnerving! I'd be fascinated to see how the internal mechanisms look.

I always thought it had too much yellow. Yea, TLG's logo has red and yellow in it, but it has WAY more red. The yellow is just an accent. On Ronald McD2, the spread is more even, which makes it look more McDonald's than LEGO. I think it's a funny bit tbf.

I like this walletbuster idea. Here's mine - obviously there's a bit of bias towards certain media here... 212th BP: 2 airborne, 2 regs, crab droid Imperial v-wing: Republic Crosshair, TK trooper, commando trooper Flash speeder: Naboo guard, Padme in Naboo drip, droideka, 1x battle droid Starship collection Radiant VII Starship collection Lucrehulk cruiser Starship collection Hammerhead corvette B-wing B6 prototype: Hera, Sabine, Quarrie, BG-81 S-91x Tri-wing Pegasus: 2x Aquilian rangers, astromech droid... plus maybe young Leia and L0-LA? UCS Radiant VII (yes I'm putting it on here twice, I really want one OK): Maoi Madokar & Antidor Williams, and/or Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan

I agree with @Max_Lego - if you told me these were MOCs made from scratch rather than alt-builds, I would totally believe it!

What colour would you have given him? With the contrast for the cheek bones I think sand green is an OK colour match. Dark green would be too dark IMO.

That's fair. That's where the mythology comes in for me - it's all just versions of the same story that's been passed down to us, so there's gonna be variations depending on who tells it, regardless of what the 'true' version of events is. Like a galaxy-wide game of telephone. I see your POV, though. Admittedly I haven't seen Rebels since it came out but the Gold Squadron thing didn't bother me. The Rebel alliance at this point seems very cliquey and distrusting, which also feeds into RO a bit, with everyone still arguing about things right up until the last second. So to me it didn't seem too out of place for them to go 'yea we're the cool kids, we'll take it from here'. But I might change my tune on that when I finally do a Rebels rewatch. And tbf, I assume plan A would've been for her to go with Gold Squadron from the start, assuming that's who Bail was in contact with.

Oh wow. I know we have a load of talented alt-builders on this forum, but your work is just as impressive with just the parts from the one set! I've still got Obi-Wan's JSF built to your specification. Are there many leftover pieces after the mod, out of curiosity?

Honestly, I'm not too bummed about getting less K2 than might have been expected. Obviously Rogue One is meant to be watched straight after Andor, but when I did that yesterday I found the difference in tone to be noticeable to the point of jarring. RO is a lot more pulpy, and there are a lot more funny one-liners, mostly from K2-SO. So yeah, I agree it would've felt out of touch for much of Andor. (although to clarify RO and Andor are still a comfortable 1-2 in my list of favourite Star Warses.) Another thing Andor has made me think about - and with discussions had elsewhere online - is how people experience Star Wars. I've always elected to see it as a mythology: historical in nature, but with enough vagaries for the fantastical elements. (it's a very useful tool to explain inconsistencies and retcons - it's just 'oh there are conflicting sources on this one, believe whatever one you want'). Specifically, Andor reminded me of the adage that history is written by the victors. Since in the OT, that was the Rebel Alliance, the stories we get are heroic ones about Luke, Han etc; the dodgier aspects like Cassian, Luthen, Saw etc get swept under the rug, or forgotten/erased altogether. IMO it's fun to think about it as historical sources in this way, biases and flaws and all.

My first thought (admittedly biased, since I lived there) was Switzerland. Alpine landscape, French phonetics, slight Germanic influence as you say, wealthy place dealing in luxury goods - at least before the Empire turns up.

I'm going to be in the same boat I think. I was already planning to get it but now I'm itching to get my hands on it. (I still think it could've had one more good guy figure included, but I'll take the selection it does have.)

Yeah, the podracers (even though I don't own them) and the Naboo Starfighter are the standouts that year for me. I'm not overly fussed by the SSD - good model, but it's just a big grey triangle. I did kinda skim over the Falcon though so that's a fair cop.

I agree, '21 in particular stood out as being a strong year now that I've looked back through them. And man, they really cooked in 2015 too. Worst is a bit difficult to judge, since a lot of the older sets are starting to show their age with the lack of parts and techniques we have now. But I'll say either 2008 or 2011. A lot of the early TCW sets just didn't really do it for me, and in 2011 virtually nothing interested me apart from the TPM sets. (And even then we've had far better Sith Infiltrators since.)

Ooh good question. Off the top of my head I was gonna say 2016 because of the Rogue One sets, but looking at it 2017 might have it beat. Some of my favourite sets - the Y-wing, Republic Fighter tank, UCS Snowspeeder - all came out that year. 2019 was pretty solid too but it's mostly carried by the anniversary sets. I might come back to this once I've had a closer look at other years.

My word. I know there's 15 years between these figures, and Star Wars figs especially are done to a pretty high standard on the whole these days, but that's a massive improvement. And in such a cheap set too!

Bold of you to assume they'd put a fourth figure in! But you could throw in Bix or Brasso just as easily as another baddie. It'd be a good way to get more Andor-specific characters in there, so I daresay it might even be preferable to Krennic.