The dark side of the brick

Next off my shelf was the set of Corporate Alliance tank droids.  There are three of them, though one of them comes in a set called "Wookie Attack" and includes a Wookie airship.   The three sets are: 7258 from 2005 ("Wookie attack") 7748 from 2009 75015 from 2013 Wookie attack has the sand blue colour scheme and, in my book, this gives it a good recommendation.  The two sides also hinge up to give access to a droid seat and the wookie airship gives great playability options.  I also really like the printed trans neon orange 10x10 dishes.  This makes it my favourite of the three by a strong margin. 7748 has really boring minifigs and only the printed dishes rescue it from obscurity. 75015 is fine but also a bit dull.  

Back in 2019, before the helmet collection came along, Lego released two sets which could almost be considered prototypes.  Both were called "busts" and one was Darth Vader ( 75227 ) and the other a Sith Trooper ( 77901 ).  Also, both were limited edition sets which could only be purchased if you won an online raffle ahead of a convention.   Clearly, my sets are therefore both rebuilds from parts bought online.   They are about 1/4 the size of the helmets and about half the number of parts but pack in a good level of detail, and also include shoulders.  I quite like them, though the Sith Trooper is by far the better of the two.

So, after a couple of years of steady blogging, the last 8 months have been a bit of a drought... Three things have conspired to take my attention away from Lego Star Wars: firstly, my uncle died in July last year - you can pretty much see exactly when.  Sorting out his estate has taken me quite a bit of time, not least because I inherited 2,000+ CDs, 378 LPs, c. 1,000 DVDs, boxes of cassettes and hundreds of books.  It's actually turned out to be pretty valuable in parts and I've been selling individual items on ebay for upwards of £100, though a large part of the DVDs went to resellers for pennies. But listing and posting 1000+ items takes time. Secondly, my new role at work last year has meant significantly more travel - I'm now on a plane to Asia once a month and - like the last few weeks - twice in quick succession.  This takes out a lot of nights at home.  Finally, I also spent quite a bit of time playing back through Skyrim on my xbox... and am likely to lose time to

Again, not had much time for Lego over recent weeks and I suspect that's going to get worse before it gets better.  Still, found a bit of time to take apart my two T-16 Skyhoppers. First up is one of the older sets: 4477 from way back in 2003.  This is a pretty simple and straightforward set but with the use of printed parts is quite effective.  2015 brought 75081 with more than double the parts twice the number of minifigs and a desert rat.  But not that much extra fun.  My version has the stickers applied (it was second hand) but the wrong way round on the cockpit which is slightly annoying. Anyway, here's the photos: