The dark side of the brick

Continuing my attempt to deconstruct most of my smaller Lego Star Wars sets, I'm now onto "polybags".  I'm starting with the 200## and 30### sets which covers most of the polybags released since 2008. Starting with the 20000s, all of which are rebuilds in my collection as these are pretty hard to come by: 20006 Clone Turbo Tank (2008).  Apparently a random Brickmasters giveaway in the US 20007 Republic Attack Cruiser (2009).  As above 20009 AT-TE Walker (2009). Also Brickmasters exclusive but available from "shop at home" in the UK 20010 Republic Gunship (2009) As for 20009 20016 Imperial Shuttle (2010) Another Brickmasters exclusive 20018 AT-AT Walker (2010). Another Brickmasters exclusive 20019 Slave I (2011). Yet another Brickmasters exclusive 20021 Bounty Hunter Assault Gunship (2011) Guess what...Brickmaster's exclusive So, I realise now that all of these were basically Brickmasters exclusives!  Which now begs the question... what is/was Brickmaster

As a Star Wars Lego nut, something that has bothered me for some time is the inconsistency between what is and isn't a UCS set.  There are various lists out there such as this one at Brickset and a fairly comprehensive review at Brickipedia .  The series launched back in 2000 with 7181 (Tie Interceptor) and 7191 (the excellent X-wing) and broadly speaking, around 2 a year have followed, though with some breaks. The problem is that Lego has been pretty inconsistent over the years, by including large playsets such as Assault on Hoth, Cloud City and Ewok Village but not Betrayal at Cloud City or the Cantina.  And why is the 2012 R2-D2 a UCS set but the near identical 2021 re-release not?  And how on earth did the Tie Fighter Collection get to be classed as UCS?   In 2011, Lego tried to be definitive by producing a UCS promotional poster.  However, this includes sets that had previously not been labelled UCS and didn't give any greater clarity as to the logic. So, here are my own

To continue my theme of small SW Lego sets, I'm now on to my exclusives.  Almost all of my versions are rebuilds from parts, with the only one that is "genuine" being the 2019 Tantive IV store build.  I went to the London Lego store for the Luke build in 2019 but they were doing a ticket system and mine was #52.  I hung around for as long as I could but they'd only got to about #20 and I had a team event at work that I needed to go to.  So that one was a painful rebuild too. Here's my list of what I consider to be exclusive mini-build sets (there are some larger ones such as the Yodachron, LLCA53 and SWMP which I've covered elsewhere, and I've not included the minifig only exclusives).  Basically, these are the sets which don't have standard Lego set numbers. TANTIVEIV - 2019 in-store build XWING - 2019 Australian "make and take" build at the Westfield Chatswood shopping center near Sydney LUKE19 - 2019 in-store build MAY2013 - 2013 in-store

If anyone ever reads these posts, they'll get the sense that I've been sorting out all my smaller sets.  It's getting to autumn and I'm going to have to turn the underfloor heating on soon and I therefore want to get all my Lego off the floor.  Apart from a couple of random sets, the majority of what's on the floor is the smaller sets in boxes.  That's how it rolls! So, today's post is about the TRU sets - released typically as in-store builds at Toys R Us.  As a kid we used to take a yearly trip to Birmingham and the highlight was always the pre-Christmas shop at TRU on High St.  However, the Brum store closed down years ago and TRU shut up shop in the UK a few years ago now.  So, I can't say I've been in one since about 1992... and therefore all the sets here are rebuilds and I've only done the ones which are not duplicates of other sets.   The TRU in-store builds are not the best Lego sets by any means.  Most are pretty naff, with only a coupl

So, a week on and I've now finished deconstructing and sorting my battle packs.  Work has also kept me busy in the evenings so I've had less chance for legoing.  But... on to the next sub-theme: the magazine gifts.  I am not even going to bother trying to count or describe all of these so this "review" is going to be thematic. Back in 2015, Lego launched another sales avenue with comics aimed squarely at the sub-10 market.  Each magazine comes with one or more "gifts" though really you're paying for the Lego and the magazine is secondary.  This is clear as the price varies from month to month, depending on how many "gifts" you get and their complexity.  I've got several years' worth of magazines but I can't say I've actually read any of them.   I've only ever made up the "gifts" that are ships or scenes - the minifigs have all stayed safely in their polybags to maintain value.  As a result, what you see below are p

Back in 2007, Lego started something new with the release of two "battle packs".  The first was the Droids BP ( 7654 ) which came with a mini tank and an STAP and 7 minifigs.  And I have a soft spot for this one as my girlfriend (now wife) bought it for me for Christmas that year.  This one didn't quite set the mould but the next one, the Clone Troopers BP ( 7655 ) had what is now the standard 4 figs.   Two a year were pretty common but there was a brief increase to 3 and then 4 around 2015/16/17.  It's worth noting that at this point, the "battle pack" label was dropped for a few years and the sets I think conform to the BP mould are starred (they were generally called "troopers").  In total I think there are 36... though none for 2021 as yet! The BP sets range from 58 parts (the Clone Troopers one) up to 125 parts (Bounty Hunters BP from 2017) with an average that looks to be around 100 parts.  You now typically get 4 minifigs and some sort of sh