The dark side of the brick

Back in the day, Lego TIE fighters were blue.  I've never understood this design choice from Lego as I don't believe that they ever featured much blue in them in the films!  Still, it doesn't look too bad and they now form a distinct subgenre in the Lego Star Wars universe.  Anyway, I reckon there were a total of 8 unique sets, though some of these appeared multiple times in different sets.  Here's my list: 7150 : TIE flighter (with Y-wing) from way back in 1999.  This is actually a Darth Vader (or Advanced) TIE and did indeed come with Darth himself.  Very simple.  Later reappeared in 7152 and 7262. 7146 : TIE fighter from 2001.  This one came with a TIE pilot and a standard stormtrooper but usefully a stan to precariously balance it on 4479 : TIE bomber from 2003.  This one really harks back after 7150.    10131 : TIE fighter collection (2004).  This introduced a new version of the Darth Vader TIE and a slightly remodelled ve...

A few posts back , I talked about the droid tie fighter that I rebuilt from the 10131 Ultimate Tie Fighter Collection.  At the time when I was buying the parts for this this, I thought it was the only model from 10131 that I didn't already have a copy of.  It was, in fact, only when I came to write a post that I realised that the Darth Vader advanced tie was also unique to this set. I couldn't leave it at that so over the last month or so, I've been slowly buying up the missing parts and have now built the advanced tie too.   It was a very quick build the other week but I was still missing the two printed round tiles which finally arrived yesterday so here's the completed set (there's a Darth Vader in the cockpit but he's got a very frayed cloak so staying hidden).   So, here's the complete collection (including my copy of 7263): The main observation is how fragile sets from this period can be - the wings wobble around and just moving it around half of the ...

As I was looking to start trying complete my collection, I realised that a couple of sets reused models from previous sets.  I've currently parked any ambition to buy the Imperial Inspection as I've already got the shuttle and I'm really not sure I can bring myself to buy something just for the (rare) minifigs.  Another example is the "UCS" set 10131 - Tie Fighter Collection.   This is a classic example of something which Lego should never have labelled UCS (along with Assault on Hoth) as it just consists of three standard minifig scale models, one of which is included twice!  And the classic Tie Fighter was released as a standalone set ( 7263 ) which did at least come with a light-up Darth Vader!   I was about to write that the Darth Vader Tie Fighter that came with the set was also a duplicate of the set which was previously released no less than three times (7150, 7152 and 7262) but this would be wrong.  The earlier sets were released in the ...