Flawless Cowboy

It’s important to remember that the intended target audience for battle packs (kids) overwhelmingly get one of each set. Most people don’t buy multiples of any set, they get enough to stage a “battle” between a handful of good guys vs a handful of bad guys. Buying troops en masse is limited to rich kids and AFOLs, and Lego is aware of this, hence why they’re not afraid to include named characters in these sets. Taking this further, I find it funny when people claim that stacking a hundred clones on a baseplate a la Solidbrix is “not real army building”. It’s Lego. More importantly, it’s Star Wars. Troop deployments and unit composition were never accurately captured or even attempted to be captured in the films or Clone Wars show. I’d love to see George Lucas’ reaction if he were asked why sandtrooper unit commanders appear in near-equal quantities as enlisted troops in ANH. I imagine he’d have a very Harrison Ford-esque response.

All this battle pack discussion just reminds me that we have all these massable figures, and nowhere to put them. We need more sets to store or display our figs! More gunships, walkers, carriers, troop transports. I’m not interested in gray baseplates

And the printing is STILL crooked in 2025

Curious. He just deleted his post about Hobbiton being a Hobbit set too…

TandN was the first to leak it, I believe

I’m thinking the opposite, he made a video claiming it’s based on the Fellowship, and half an hour later he flip flopped. Based on what? He’s not a big leaker. And this would strike me as very odd considering the Hobbit films were not well received and are nowhere near as popular as the LOTR trilogy.

Is Jedi Bricks a credible leaker? He’s claiming Hobbiton is based on the Hobbit rather than Fellowship, but I don’t see this being confirmed by TandN or anyone else.

Take the original 2003 Cloud City set, make it a bit deeper, and then just go to town with the details. Basically the Indiana jones temple of the golden idol set, which was really three dioramas lined up horizontally, on steroids. It would have a smaller footprint than the 2018 model and solve the “how do I display this?” dilemma. Cloud City 2018 tried to imitate the Death Star playset, but half that model’s charm was the outer shell resembling the Death Star itself. It just ended up looking like a bunch of discombobulated mini-builds rubbing up against each other in jarring ways, creating a ton of wasted space too (the Han/Leia room bordering the dining room is especially atrocious). Speaking of, I’ve seen 6+ City sets with more luxurious dining rooms.

Yuck! No! It was terrible, it was a giant, ugly kid’s set marketed at an adult collector price. There’s a reason it retired in under a year. Cloud City deserves a remake.

We’ll simply have to agree to disagree and that we travelled in different circles. These are anecdotes, after all. As to your other points, five years of nothing but build-up with vague references to characters and events does not compare, imo, to Clone Wars-mania post RoTS (which only took three years to start!) And again I’ll point out that sequel toys across the spectrum have been shelf warmers, a fate prequel-era toys never suffered even after the films were no longer showing in theaters. As to Disney’s treatment of the post-sequel canon? All it means is that higher-ups care. Which means…not that much, considering Disney just put out another flop of a series that will end on a cliff hanger on season 1. Clearly, their internal metrics of what the audience “wants” are poorly calibrated.

I admit that Lego’s approach to the adult market for Star Wars has worked on me like a charm, there isn’t a single subtheme that I dislike, although I’m indifferent to brickheadz. But where LSW disappoints me is the playset offerings. When I was a kid, my most-desired set was the 2002 Gunship. It was massive, glorious, it came packed with figures, it boasted a crazy design where the nose would split open to reveal a command center, and it even came with alternate builds. In short, everything a creative kid would love. But looking at most playsets nowadays, and using the Coruscant Gunship as a point of comparison, it seems to me that the playsets have become more like dumbed-down models than toys. I find the designs to be more accurate than ever, at the expense of classic play features that, even as an adult, would make me go “wow”. With my OG TIE Bomber, I had a massive spring shooter in the left pod that could darn near take your eye out, and a neat, retractable bomb-drop mechanism in the right pod. Fast forward to the modern bomber. Does it look better and is it more stable? Absolutely. Is it adult collector quality? Not even close. Do four flickfire missiles pointed at the ground, activated by jamming your finger into a hole even compare to the fun the original model offered? Nah.

Kylo’s shuttle is perhaps the most “iconic” new sequel vehicle and gets a healthy amount of screen time. Plus, it’s likely a TFA set, the most well-received sequel film. I don’t think a ship associated with a much-maligned scene at the end of TLJ would be a better fit. The very utterance of the Holdo Maneuver makes half the fanbase cringe.

They’ve done a kit-bash Mando AT-ST and Hoth AT-ST recently, not to mention the new ‘uglies’ X-wing and tie fighter that released this year. I’d say it’s definitely possible to do sequel versions of OT sets when they’ve already done non-traditional variants.

Yes, it’s a nice looking set, but it’s closer to a starfighter than a capital ship

Prequel appreciation started long before 2015, and most of the supplemental media (Clone Wars, Video games) weaved itself into the prequel era, whereas almost all post-sequel Disney content eschews the sequels and its characters, occasionally making tangential references. Not to mention that prequel toys were booming from 1999 and never stopped. I think it’s wise for Lego to lean into the adult market first for sequel sets, and a midi-scale ship is the cheapest adult set LSW can make. Agreed, but Lego already broke that rule by making a Falcon (which was also a waste of a slot, imo)

Kylo is the safest, most marketable part of the Sequels next to BB8, it makes sense. His shuttle is among the most unique and recognizable ships from the Disney era. I despise the latest trilogy, but I do like the work some of the artists did, and I can think of many vehicles from the Sequels more deserving of a set than a Justifier, Coruscant Gunship, Tac-Pod, Snub Fighter, etc.

Have there been any credible leaks pointing to a MBS Endor? I know TandN made some comments earlier regarding “redwood” while taking a photo of the Ewok Village box, but nothing beyond that.

You asked for an explanation why people are upset, I gave you an explanation, and instead of accepting that people have different opinions than you, you simply (condescendingly) invalidated those opinions. Yes, let’s move on, this is going nowhere. And don’t tell people how to spend their money.

Because it’s the result of corporate suits shadowing the work of creatives who came up with the original name and story behind the name. And the fact that people have known the ship by a particular name for almost two generations. It’s not unlike when people (some would say reasonably) had heart attacks when George Lucas, the most rightful heir of all things Star Wars, went back and modified the original films in the special editions, wiping things out in the process like the original voice actor for Boba Fett. Except now it’s not the creator and brain trust of Star Wars doing it, it’s marketers who likely were in diapers when the Slave I was first named in 1980.

No one is disputing that. We’re just not pleased with the disregard for long-extant canon for the sake of corporate correctness.

Perhaps, but Lego has shown that they’re not afraid to name ships by their lesser-known (sometimes downright niche) names. Even I didn’t recognize what the Devastator referred to at first, but I’m glad it got its name. Or the…Delta 7 Aethersprite-Class Light Interceptor. No way in hell am I memorizing that but the nerd in me loves it.

Lego named the Khetanna “Jabba’s Sail Barge” on the plaque and the box and the product page, but none of these mean the name “Khetanna” isn’t relevant or canon. It simply means it’s less marketable. Although even these seem to be random in Lego’s case. Most people would identify the Slave I as the Slave I, but I’d wager far fewer would know that Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer in A New Hope is called “Devastator”, which they opted to call it on the plaque.

So it wasn’t modeled on the rise of fascism, just the height of fascism, then. Ok. I fail to see how that makes any difference at all regarding Star Wars being modeled on things that are taboo out of context (like the name Slave I), which was the genesis of this entire discussion. And you said it yourself, the old canon isn’t obsolete. Which…makes it canon. “The source material is intended as marketing material” I mean, clearly not, else they would’ve used the original name, which you yourself admitted wasn’t obsolete, just “not in use”. Palpatine’s permanent death in ROTJ, for example, is something that Disney rendered non-canon with explicit screen proof. Meanwhile, Disney has not offered a new lore for the old ship and haven’t even “renamed” it, instead offering a technically correct, generic name.

“I’m wrong, but even if I wasn’t, it doesn’t matter” I don’t know how else to say this, but you’re wrong. Objectively. http://eleven-thirtyeight.com/2017/09/burden-of-empire-the-complex-relationship-between-star-wars-and-fascism/ Read JW Rinzler’s personal accounts as well. Were you hoping that by doubling down on a wrong opinion no one would fact check you? As for the Slave I name, it hasn’t been overridden, the old canon isn’t suddenly obsolete, you’re wrong again. It simply is marketed under a different name, which is less accurate to the source material.

Bruh George explicitly modeled the Empire and Palpatine on Hitler’s rise to power and WW2 Germany. Just because many of the symbols and names and looks weren’t exclusive to Nazi Germany doesn’t mean the inspiration isn’t obvious. Slave I was the original name of the ship, full stop, and if you want to change it, the onus is on YOU to prove why it deserves a change, and why you know more than the individuals who crafted the backstory of the name in-universe.