The dark side of the brick

A few weeks back I posted about the Poe X-wing from 2016, noting at the time that I had originally bought the 2015 black edition version ( 75102 ) and therefore didn't buy the recoloured re-release.  I've now finally gotten around to building the black version: The build was pretty much identical to the 2016 X-wing so I'm not going to talk about it again.  In fact, once I finished, I put them side by side and struggled find more than a few part differences - really the only difference is colours. They do look quite good together though. Here's a fuller set of X-wings on the shelf...  

Last night's build was another x-wing, but after two of the more recent vintages, I went back to the early 2004 version ( 4502 ).  In common with a few of my recent ebay purchases, this one was also missing pieces and had a range of colour swaps (mainly reddish brown for old brown and LBG for LG).  So, once I'd cleaned and inventoried it, I then spent the best part of a month slowly buying the missing parts.  I'm still not quite there (found a couple more missing parts as I built and I've still not got the chrome lightsaber handles) but I was close enough to build. The first thing I noticed about this set is that it's in old colours and must have been one of the very last sets to have been released before the full switch across.  Indeed, the set was originally from 2003 and my version is the "Original Trilogy Edition" re-release from 2004. It's an interesting question as to whether I prefer the old Lego colours of my childhood or the newer colours from...