2maxwell

Is there any reason why lego doesn't use 3L bar pieces for shoto sabers for characters like Yoda and Ahsoka? They already have it in the trans bright green and light blue colors so they might as well. Hell, I'm planning on using them for double bladed sabers myself since the 4L bars just seem too long and unwieldy in lego form.

Price is in large part set by demand. The social media campaign to get the 501st BP was a bunch of fans basically getting on their hands and knees begging Lego to let them buy their product. Of course they were going to set a premium on it.

Slightly confused, could people not just make their own yellow lightsabers using trans yellow bars? Or are people looking for something unique that lego hasn't made possible yet?

This is awesome. It looks like it actually fits with the other one rather than being too overly complicated to be a genuine set.

Lego won't miss a chance to add to their lineup of bobbleheads lol.

Yeah I've seen those. I feel like that's a dangerous game to get involved in money-wise haha. Also re: Vader- count me as one of those who still feels that the current Vader helmet is a downgrade for all the reasons you'd already mentioned previously.

The reality is that actual clone trooper models have a lot of black in small amounts to break up the white. Lego figures, until recently, couldn't come close. Even though clones dont wear black thongs, it looked more right from afar because it had the correct white/black balance on the whole. The new clone troopers have leg printing which helps, but they need more black sprinkled throughout to make it work. I don't see it looking right to me until clones start getting arm printing, because that's where a lot of the actual clones get their black coloring. It's part of why, to me at least, the white hips don't look as bad when the arms are colored.

Is the Legends line even a well differentiated thing? According to Bricklink, there have been 4 new Legends sets since the new canon was established, but none of them carry any real "Legends" branding. The last one was the Republic Fighter Tank which was in 2017. That was 2 years after the first 3 Legends sets. I don't see that as so long ago that they'll never do it again, but it's worth considering that pretty much all of them other than the Anakin starfighter don't really contradict anything in the current canon. They're not exactly introducing new characters or anything. The fighter tank even got included in the Battlefront game making it canon again.

With the new Ahsoka figure coming out, I wanted to ask about paint wearing on the headpiece. Other than just sealing the figure away in a display case, are there any good ways to prevent wear? Also, if I'm trying to get an older figure that already has wear (such as a Shaak Ti), has anyone found any good ways to convincingly replicate the original paint?

For Anakin you could always hack the bottom off the mullet piece haha.

On a different note, I've come around to agreeing with the people who think ROTJ Luke needs a new hair mold. It's still a very accurate piece for that hairstyle, but the softness of the edges and the texture set it far apart from current hairpieces and make it feel dated. I can see why everyone felt it needed an update.

Totally agree with everything you said. I've been collecting since the first SW sets were revealed and I definitely am picky and choosy about what I get. Even now nearing 30, I still go back to get 1 or 2 sets from the last several years that I didn't pay attention to at the time. I mean, like I said the Greedo interaction is so famous that Harrison Ford gets annoyed when it's brought up. No one talks about the others, even if the scene was impactful. It doesn't hold the same cultural cache. And as someone who already owns a Cantina set, I'd only buy a new one if I felt the new one was structurally a big step up over the one I already own since you know, I already own a Cantina. No new minifigures alone are going to make me update a set of a building I already own when, as an adult, I can always just bricklink the new figure I want for much less than the total cost of the set. A new Cantina with a bunch of characters most people couldn't name might sell well to the 10% of lego buyers who are AFOLs, but would probably do pretty poorly among the rest of the 90%. I totally agree that they can (and should) cycle background figures more than they do, as obviously we all want more characters. But some characters make a scene, and selling that scene without that character would be a fool's errand.

The Han/Greedo interaction is so famous that Harrison Ford still gets asked about it regularly. If I was getting my first Cantina set, I absolutely wouldn't buy one without a Greedo. I'd love if they alternated the background characters to give us more (as they've done do a certain extent already) but, if you think a Cantina set would sell well to the 90% of lego buyers that aren't AFOLs, you're VASTLY overrating the fame of the other patrons in comparison to Greedo. It would be like making a Cloud City set without Lando. I mean he's in other sets, so why bother right?

Do this with any other era and you'd find people who feel very similarly about the sets they're receiving. Say what you will, but the AAT is exactly what I wanted. Will I modify it? Yes. But I wanted a moderately sized CIS AAT with an Ahsoka fig and tank driver battle droids, and look at what I got. So there's one PT fan who is perfectly satisfied with this wave.

The torso's carrying over from the Mustafar set really is confusing. Any look at figures shows how often Lego likes to change up prints, even when they really don't need to. I get that the Mustafar set isn't one you'd buy multiples of, but it seems weird to me that it would sell so poorly. It was cheap, had two main characters most people would want, and had decent play features. Amusingly, the main reason I didn't get it was because of the battle damage on the prints haha. Still, that set selling poorly is the answer that makes the most sense to me at this point.

Seeing the AAT up close, I still like the set a lot but I'm going to modify a lot of small things on that sucker.

This is me. I'm not really interested in large display pieces. I definitely would consider buying a new, deluxe playscale gunship, but not the classic style UCS ship that is just for display. But I also recognize that the latter is more likely than a playscale version for this UCS set,

This definitely might be a regional thing, but there is a huge financial difference between someone in their early and late 20s here in the US. You can't just say that 20-30 year olds uniformly have a lot of buying power. Remember what we're talking about here: a $200-$700 object that you can't really do anything with but build and then look at. And then find the space for. If I were Lego I'd be using my marketing information to make sure most of my audience was in their late 20s before releasing a UCS set for them in this economic environment. If lets say 30% of the audience of a CW era set is in their early 20s and most of them can't afford it, that set would sell much more poorly than if I waited 3-5 years to make the same set.

$100 is pretty cheap as far as UCS sets are concerned, and non-minifig scaled UCS sets didn't come with minifigures until after that set was released. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see more PT stuff too. I'll always be a bigger OT fan, but I did grow up with the PT movies. But we have to just be honest and admit that, as far as giant, expensive UCS sets go, the buying power has been with the adults for the last 2 decades. And those adults wanted OT sets. The fans on this site are not representative of most people. Most children cannot afford such expensive toys, especially ones that aren't actually designed to be played with. Obviously the people on this site will want to scrimp and save to get the sets, because we're fanatics. Most normal people will look at a $200 UCS A-Wing set and say "hey that's the same price as a Nintendo Switch Lite, something I can actually play with. I'll just get the next A-Wing playset when it rolls around for $30; it'll look nice on my desk and I can swoosh it around too." That being said, I'm sure we'll start seeing more UCS PT stuff going forward. People are right that this does send a message about what people want and, if it sells well, that the PT audience now has the income to make their voices heard.

They did actually make the Malevolence, which was Grievous's flagship for a while on the Clone Wars cartoon. That one was available until 2014.

You're not wrong that there's a strong overlap between people who grew up with the PT and those interested in the Clone Wars. The problem is that many more people who fit that are interested in the Clone Wars era and not necessarily the TV show. My friends and I were obsessed with the Republic and clone troopers and the Jedi order growing up and we'd stage huge lego battles with them. Of all of us, I'm the only one who ended up watching the new Clone Wars show. The thing is that many of us at my specific age remember (and actually prefer) the old canon and the old Clone Wars cartoon by Genndy Tartakovsky. I won't speak for everyone, but I think for many of us in my age group, the Republic Gunship (which featured prominently in the most famous episodes of the original Clone Wars cartoon) sticks out in our memories much more than the Venator. If I went to my old buddies and told them a UCS Gunship is in production, I'm sure each and every one of them would be stoked. Not that they'd run out and buy it right away, but they'd def be interested. But the Venator? That's just something that was largely in the background before the new Clone Wars show made it a centerpiece for Anakin and Ahsokas intragalactic adventures.

The point isn't whether older fans of TCW exist, but whether enough of them exist to make whatever TCW UCS set they make into a success. There's also a big difference between someone working an entry level job while living in a studio apartment at 24 vs someone who's a homeowner and has been in their career for a half decade at the age of 30. Many more people can find the money and the space in their home to shell out for a large lego display piece at the second age than the first. Lego probably knows that they can maximize the sales of TCW UCS sets by waiting a few years as the average would-be consumer for that product grows up and gets to a place where they can comfortably blow a few hundred dollars like that.

I've mentioned this before but I'm certain that a big consideration for these sets is the age of the consumer. People who grew up with the PT like me are now starting to hit their 30s, where they could reasonably blow a couple hundred dollars on a large display piece. Stuff that gained its prominence during the Clone Wars era though still appeals to an audience with a much lower average age than what I would assume works well for selling UCS sets. I can't see a Venator selling well until the kids who grew up watching the Clone Wars tv show are also comfortably past their college years and no longer living in one bedroom apartments.

What I'd really like to see again some day is the republic y-wing. Ideally in yellow again haha. That was a really striking color.

Any source on this? If anything, the evidence suggests that a new mold wouldn't be what's holding back this figure from being made. I was just thinking about how we haven't seen a Dooku in 7 years. His only good figure is absurdly expensive.