CallumPears

To be fair the Jet Trooper is super inaccurate. For me 75280 was the start of the downfall of LEGO Clones. I made a post in the 2020 thread going over the Jet Trooper in particular back when that set first came out. Aside from the (in my opinion) awful hybrid armour style of Clones we've had for the past few years, he reuses the same leg print as the standard 501st trooper which is a bit lazy and inaccurate but at least it can be justified by saving a bit of money (even if we know they can afford to make it accurate). My main issue is the random patch of blue on the helmet between the visor and the black rim which just shouldn't be there. My guess is that they made the standard 501st trooper first, forgot to save a blank template and then just erased the blue markings to make the Jet Trooper but missed that spot. Honestly it's a similar issue to the new Commander Fox- something which could've and should've been easily caught if the designers actually cared enough to just double check their work.

I feel like eating away at the budget shouldn't be a concern in a $550 set, especially when they had her perfect in the 2013 set alongside Jabba, Max Rebo and Ree Yees. Also will be really disappointing if they do reuse Bib; he's completely different in RotJ vs The Mandalorian.

Really hope not- the 2013 hairpiece is already expensive enough without the price being driven up further by people wanting to replace the hair on a new version- but it's definitely something they might try to get away with (like Padmé using Jyn's head while the 2013 version had a great exclusive print). Even so that would be laziness, not censoring. The only thing I can think of is removing the "chest details" present on the 2006 version but they were gone in 2013 anyway so wouldn't be anything new.

I was thinking the same, though the red pattern on the side extends pretty high up so probably wouldn't look right. Could wipe it off, but depending on how valuable those legs end up being you might as well buy customs at that point. Really wish they'd just used dual-molding for the Shock Troopers (and with the colours swapped for Fox) to begin with.

Well, they got leaked so clearly someone would've fallen for it (or did fall for it if they are indeed fake)

Now you mention it, an ISB guy would work even if it is a Death Star set. We see a generic one with Yularen when Han and Luke are in Disguise (though he wasn't a Lieutenant but somehow I don't think people would complain- the officer in 75159 also wasn't a specific one from the movie). Ranked DS Trooper would be great too, could just reuse the Navy Officer's torso from 75159 and give him the big helmet. I managed to get a few of the captains from 75055 and they still hold up pretty well but yeah they do have a different style for the badge and code cylinders so a new version would be nice. Anyway, I'm kinda wishlisting here. Do we know if the set's actually real at this point? Same with the Dark Falcon and so on; the silence from leakers recently definitely seems like there could've been a sort of sting operation to catch them. The DS playset in particular was pretty shaky from the start with a bunch of different prices and minifigure selections.

Yep. I'm still super disappointed with the 2020 AT-AT. Some parts were really low-quality (pushing them together made the same sound as nails on a chalkboard) but the worst part is that the leg joints are too weak too hold up the model. It literally can't stay stood up on my shelf, nevermind when I tried to actually play with it. Compare that with the 2010 model which I played with pretty roughly as a kid and never had any stability issues. Low plastic quality, low print quality, lazy minifigure designs, poor colour matching between batches, not to mention how much more common it seems to be to have missing parts these days. All sorts of problems which we shouldn't have to deal with from a premium product whose price is only increasing. On a more positive note, I agree with this. I'm a sucker for getting new ranks of Imperial Officers; hopefully we get a new Lieutenant at some point, though wouldn't expect that from this set specifically- if they were to go down the 'Cal infiltrating a base' route then an ISB Officer would be cool to get.

Worth noting that the 1999 one didn't have black pupils either. Those were added on the 2007 version. The 1999 version has yellow/orange solid eyes, similar to the leaked one. Bricklink doesn't differentiate unfortunately but they are distinct figures. (According to Bricklink the 2011 Maul also has the same head as the 1999 one which clearly also isn't true.)

Well in that case Luke should have blue eyes, Han should have brown, etc. The yellow in Maul's eyes is the iris, not the pupil, so if anything they should be fully black the same as normal figures.

Not a fan of them- thought they looked awful on Palpatine and they look awful here too. Same goes for the weird coloured ones they started doing in 2014 (Hera, Barriss, Ahsoka, etc.).

It has been on since the start of last week but has been out of stock the entire time. Could be that they put up the listing for the part but it hasn't actually been in stock at all yet- that does sometimes happen when new parts are added.

Mainland Europe ones are a month ahead, but the Mandalorian Fleet Commander is 2 issues before the Shock Trooper. My local shops have had Palpatine for a while now. .

Cue the Reddit post from someone reading this and thinking "REBEL FRIEND CONFIRMED!!!!1!!1!!!"

I've got the 2009 midi Falcon and while the new one is a lot more detailed I don't think I need the upgrade. Invisible Hand looks great, definitely buying at some point during its lifetime. Really like how they made the bridge with a tile in a clip. Tantive IV also looks pretty great, though maybe a little flat in the midsection with those big 12x3 wedge plates. Love the little easter egg of Leia and C-3PO inside. Also glad to see they're continuing the trend of including a large brick with the anniversary logo printed on.

Just happened to be watching a let's play of The Complete Saga and noticed Captain Tarpals has a blue outfit in the game- could that be the blue Gungan in the Falcon?

I'd genuinely say he's the worst Clone figure they've ever made. Sure, the 2005 ones had oversized helmets but even then they maintained reasonable accuracy within that style (also those 2002-2010 torsos are unironically more accurate to the movies than the Clones we get now, 2nd only to the 2013-2019 design). Fox has parts of his armour which are straight up wrong. I've said previously that I don't like the 2020 style but this is completely separate from that and would be a problem with any armour template. Making Fox's chestplate and knees the correct colour would've cost them literally $0 (unless the designer were to charge for the 2 seconds it should have taken to look at a picture of Fox and use the fill tool in MS Paint); if anything it might've saved them some money since it'd use less ink on the torso. Same goes for getting Fives's helmet right- this issue has been present since the very first figures to use the new helmet mould (212th troopers) and could've been avoided if they put more effort into making sure that design for the mould would work with their printing processes. A cloth kama would cost more, you're right about that, but again I'll go back to the argument that they managed it perfectly fine a decade ago, and are still using them today in other themes which are aimed at kids even moreso than Star Wars (seriously, how many adults care about the new Dreamz sets?).

Same. Aside from the fact that any inaccuracies are bad, I'm mainly annoyed about the issues with Fives since I'm getting him basically by default since I want the boarding set. Honestly not caring for TCW is part of what makes me not care for modern Clones in general. They're using a hybrid design for the armour which mixes animated and realistic designs and as someone who's not really a fan of TCW it's annoying that I can't get figures based solely on the movie designs of Clones. Even back in 2014 when I absolutely loved TCW I tried to avoid the animated-style troopers since I want all my troopers to be consistent; to me they should never have made the animated design for the LEGO Clones back in 2008. Since in 'real life' all Clones would look the same, I want all my LEGO figures to be based on the realistic design. Same goes for stuff like the weird animated eyes the old figures had and the exaggerated proportions of the Rebels Stormtroopers. Forget the current issues with helmet holes and cloth kamas, to me they haven't made a good Clone since 2019 as they introduced the hybrid style in 2020. It stopped me from buying multiples of the 501st battle pack (a set I'd wanted for years since the 501st were previously only available in the animated style and I was hoping they'd be made in the 2014 realistic design) and has put me off any of the other Clone figures produced in the past 3 years.

Every Clone *since 2020. They managed it perfectly fine with the older figures, e.g. the Wolfpack and 212th troopers in 2014 and even as recently as 2019 with Commander Gree.

Shame about Vader having an inaccurate torso but it's hardly a surprise since the current Vader technically isn't accurate to any of his appearances anyway (it's close to RotS but even then it has the red switch in the wrong place). I guess they have the same philosophy with Vader as they do with the Clones- combining multiple designs which leaves the end result being not accurate to anything.

Yeah I think it's due to the walls being a couple of studs thick (vs Dark Trooper Attack which used panel pieces) and having a lot of greebles. Adds to the part count, and the price, but doesn't give much more to the perceived play value of the set.

'Boarding the Tantive IV' box picture on Reddit. Looks like a beefier version of the Dark Trooper attack, with what appear to be some triggers for play features (or maybe parts to connect multiple sets?) in the floor. Picture is a bit blurry so can't tell whether Vader has the correct torso yet.

Honestly Yularen is kinda low on my list- I know the previous version is a little pricey now but if it's a choice between him or someone with never had (e.g. Motti or Tagge) I'll always pick having a new character.

Before 2012 all Imperial Officer minifigures (except Tarkin) were Captains though they are in the old style so don't really fit in with modern officers. In the newer style they have made one, in set 75055, but he's expensive now so yeah it'd be nice to get a newer one but as Classic_Spaceman pointed out we don't see any Captains on the Death Star (assuming it's the first Death Star- if the set is a mixture of rooms it could easily also be the 2nd Death Star where some Captains would make sense). The most common rank for Imperial officers, as seen in Empire Strikes Back, is supposed to be Lieutenant; the reason we see a lot of Captains in the OT is due to a costuming error which meant every officer in RotJ had the same rank plaque (even Piett who had his correct Admiral plaque in ESB- I guess they lost his costume between movies lol). I'm hoping we get another Lieutenant at some point (currently exclusive to the UCS Star Destroyer- weird choice since that set is based on A New Hope where we don't see any officers with that rank, and it's annoying that what should be a common figure is tied to such an expensive set). A set of a Star Destroyer bridge would be nice, maybe the Executor's bridge then we could get Admiral Ozzel, Captain Piett and a Lieutenant all at the same time.

Yeah they're pretty much perfect. The only improvement they could make would be giving them all dual-molded legs but I'm fine with that being a UCS-only thing. They are a bit lazy with Snowspeeder pilots though- they're supposed to have slightly different suits which was correctly done for the LEGO figures in 2013 but for some reason they went backwards in 2019 and started using regular pilots for all of them; even Luke in the UCS AT-AT is in his X-wing suit rather than his Snowspeeder one.

Personally I'd say yes to that- even forgetting helmet holes and kamas in my opinion they haven't made a good Clone figure since 2019 as I can't stand the 2020 TCW/movie hybrid design.