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 ...