Microfighters

One of the more enduring themes of recent years in the Lego Star Wars pantheon is the microfighter range.  I have to start out with the view that these aren't my favourite sets - while some of them manage a pretty good design with a relatively limited number of bricks, most of them end up quite cartoonish. 

The real problem, in my view, is that the minifig is always placed on a prominent position in a way that is totally out of scale with the rest of the model. That said, I guess cartoonish is what Lego was probably going for, so maybe they've hit their mark.  I suppose these are really aimed at younger builders who probably don't have the aesthetic sensibilities that I do.

Least favourite for me are the AT-ATs (and variants) with their clumpy 3x3 dish feet.  At the other end of the spectrum, the dewback and bantha are pretty good, partly because the scale is right.  

So, what do you get?  In general you get around 90-100 parts (minimum was 62 with the very poor value Naboo Starfighter, and maximum is the ski speeder/first order walker with 215 parts between them), a minifig and some sort of firing weapon (originally a technic pin and later a stud gun), and occasionally some sort of articulating wing or leg.  Though in the worst cases, the legs articulate so much that you can't ever get the things to stand up (hello again AT-ATs).

I cound 40 microfighters in current release (2014-2022), with 30 of those in single sets and 5 pairs.  I'm not counting the comcon version of the ghost, nor the build-it-yourself y-wing as neither of those are officially in the microfighter pantheon.

I'm too lazy to list them all so here are some photos with broadly ordered oldest at the back and newest at the front.