Bafflingly useless LEGO Star Wars trivia!
Posted by CapnRex101,
Over the course of 25 years, LEGO has released almost 1000 Star Wars sets in total, as well as approximately 1400 minifigures!
Naturally, the long-running range has yielded some interesting trends since 1999 and today we are sharing some absolutely useless LEGO Star Wars trivia, continuing our semi-annual series on the topic!
Jar Jar Binks peaked early
Jar Jar Binks minifigures have appeared in eight sets since 1999, over half of which were released within the first two years of LEGO Star Wars! The infamous Gungan appeared four times in 1999 alone and again in 2000, but has subsequently returned in only three sets: 7929 The Battle of Naboo from 2011, 9499 Gungan Sub from 2012 and 75080 AAT from 2015.
Diminishing firepower
LEGO renditions of Star Wars vehicles have tended to increase in size and piece count over time, giving more opportunity for details and functions. However, the Hailfire Droid bucks this trend, as its four models have actually become smaller and include fewer elements with every design.
- 4481 Hailfire Droid (2003) - 681 pieces
- 7670 Hailfire Droid & Spider Droid (2008) - 189 pieces
- 75085 Hailfire Droid (2015) - 149 pieces
- 75366 LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar (2023) - 14 pieces
Note: Piece counts only consider parts comprising the Hailfire Droid in each set, omitting any minifigures or other models.
Parental peculiarity
Parental relationships are clearly essential to Star Wars, but it seems unlikely that a Star Wars minifigure would appear in a set with both their parents. After all, the relevant characters never really share any screen time as complete families, given the Skywalkers' tendency to fall to the Dark Side or perish before their time.
Surprisingly though, that has once happened, as 75258 Anakin's Podracer - 20th Anniversary Edition contains Anakin, Padmé and Luke! The circumstances were unusual, admittedly, since Luke was included as an anniversary minifigure, but I still find this notable and I presume it was intentional on the designers' part.
Tusken Raiders peaked late
In contrast with Jar Jar Binks' many early appearances in LEGO Star Wars, Tusken Raiders were only available in a single set between 1999 and 2014, 7113 Tusken Raider Encounter. However, the Sand People returned in 2015 and in greater numbers, having now appeared in eight sets since the release of 75081 T-16 Skyhopper.
Millennium Falcons aplenty
LEGO Star Wars notoriously returns to certain vehicles consistently, ensuring they are always available for new fans to buy. As expected, the Millennium Falcon and the classic T-65 X-wing have appeared in the greatest number of sets, actually appearing more than once per year, on average!
Here are the top ten most common vehicles, excluding non-LEGO items and product collections:
- 32 sets - Millennium Falcon
- 32 sets - T-65 X-wing
- 25 sets - 74-Z Speeder Bike
- 24 sets - Snowspeeder
- 21 sets - TIE/ln Fighter
- 21 sets - BTL Y-wing Starfighter (including a version built from parts in sets 4488, 4489, 4490 and 4491)
- 21 sets - Slave I
- 19 sets - X-34 Landspeeder
- 19 sets - AT-AT
- 19 sets - AT-ST
Other vehicles nearing the top ten include the Imperial Star Destroyer, the RZ-1 A-wing and the Eta-2 Jedi Interceptor, which is the most common Prequel Trilogy vehicle.
What are some of your favourite LEGO Star Wars facts? Whether useless or not, share them in the comments!
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37 comments on this article
Fact….. i need a George Lucas minifig.
I’m curious why, when I click the link for number of 74-Z Speederbikes, 8000 shows up. Was a speeder bike one it’s suggested alternate models?
@Brickalili said:
"I’m curious why, when I click the link for number of 74-Z Speederbikes, 8000 shows up. Was a speeder bike one it’s suggested alternate models?"
Yes it was, they were even instructions for it!
Trivia like this is always fun, Cap'n! Thank you for the nice read!
@Brickalili said:
"I’m curious why, when I click the link for number of 74-Z Speederbikes, 8000 shows up. Was a speeder bike one it’s suggested alternate models?"
Yes, it was the set's alternate model. I'm impressed it was included in the list!
https://brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=417772
Some of my own useless trivia!
I own 49 LEGO Star Wars sets.
My first - 7101-1
My last - 75339-1
That's 113 Star Wars Minifigs, with 10 versions of Luke Skywalker!
Now that I know about the Hailfire, i kinda want the original. It looks cool
Also stemming off another comment I own 85 sets
75295 is my first
75348 is my last (as of rn)
No i haven't finished any movie or tv show yet.
One of the best parts of the holiday. Thanks Cap'n!
4481 is a great set, and my only significant Technic set.
When are they making a Droid Control Ship?
I think that will be a monumental May the 4th when that happens.
We've already had 16 TIE Interceptors (and even a new one!), and not one Droid Control Ship.
Maybe even a microscale DCS instead of the AAT would be better. Speaking of, £35 for a GWP??? I mean at least add a droid minifig!!!
Only 19 Landspeeders? That can't be right!
@GiggityMatt said:
"When are they making a Droid Control Ship?
I think that will be a monumental May the 4th when that happens.
We've already had 16 TIE Interceptors (and even a new one!), and not one Droid Control Ship.
Maybe even a microscale DCS instead of the AAT would be better. Speaking of, £35 for a GWP??? I mean at least add a droid minifig!!!
"
The droid control ship and any Naboo ship that's NOT an N-1 would be nice.
Capn says: “the Sand People returned in 2015 and in greater numbers”. Ha ha, I see what you did right there. Some of these are very interesting (and not entirely useless) facts!
Owning 5/8 JarJar sets sadly not the big ones, didn't realize he came in so few sets.
Speeder bikes 1st place, Tie fighter 2nd and X-wing 3rd, seems the empire wins in my collection
Still no Shmi Skywalker.
Should 4488-1-b1 be included as an appearance of the y-wing? It was technically part of 4 different sets, but it is an appearance nonetheless!
Very fun: I might include a little trivia of my own.
In Spider-Man Homecoming (2017), Ned mentions to Pete that he just got a LEGO Death Star and says tat it has that it has 3803 pieces. This lines up with the piece count of 10188, but the Emperor Palpatine minifigure he displays is the one from 75159, which has 4016 pieces. So which Death Star is it?
One of my favourite film mistakes.
My first SW Lego set was Snowspeeder 7130 and I still have it in the sealed box. (I’ve since bought two open ones because it is the best snowspeeder model.). I consider this one to be my favorite SW set of all time.
My most rare set is the Chrome Vader polybag I found in a battle pack.
@azureGyarados said:
"Should 4488-1-b1 be included as an appearance of the y-wing? It was technically part of 4 different sets, but it is an appearance nonetheless!"
Good point; I had forgotten about that one!
The only star was sets I buy are the mechs. Gotta stay true to cannon. Really want a Yoda mech!!!
@RaiderOfTheLostBrick said:
"Very fun: I might include a little trivia of my own.
In Spider-Man Homecoming (2017), Ned mentions to Pete that he just got a LEGO Death Star and says tat it has that it has 3803 pieces. This lines up with the piece count of 10188, but the Emperor Palpatine minifigure he displays is the one from 75159, which has 4016 pieces. So which Death Star is it?
One of my favourite film mistakes."
If I recall correctly, you can see the white assassin droid when it's being rebuilt towards the end, so it's the older model. He could have just had the newer Palpatine from a different set.
@G_man284 said:
" @RaiderOfTheLostBrick said:
"Very fun: I might include a little trivia of my own.
In Spider-Man Homecoming (2017), Ned mentions to Pete that he just got a LEGO Death Star and says tat it has that it has 3803 pieces. This lines up with the piece count of 10188, but the Emperor Palpatine minifigure he displays is the one from 75159, which has 4016 pieces. So which Death Star is it?
One of my favourite film mistakes."
If I recall correctly, you can see the white assassin droid when it's being rebuilt towards the end, so it's the older model. He could have just had the newer Palpatine from a different set. "
Would make most sense.
If he was inviting Peter to build it, it implies it might still be unopened in its box, hence he would not have the Palpatine figure out of it yet.
The many early Jar Jars came at no surprise, given his prominence in Star Wars toys, before um... everybody had a certain opinion about him :D
That Anakin/Padmé/Luke connection was interesting, never noticed that!
A fact I like, is the number of odd and discontinued colors that did appear in early Star Wars sets, sometimes even the only appearance in a minifigure set. These include:
Bright Violet (Gasgano's Podracer/Gungan Patrol), Bright Yellowish Orange (Naboo Swamp/Gungan Sub), (light) Gold (almost exclusive to C-3PO), Sand Violet (Zam Wesell), Metallic Sand Blue (Super Battle Droid), Bright Bluish Violet (Jango Fett), Sand Red (Geonosian Battle Droids/Landspeeder), Dove Blue (Greedo) and probably a few more...
Star Wars also introduced Transparent Brown (although you could argue Energy Slizer used it before SW) and the original Dark Red.
EDIT:
Oh, before I forget: SW were the first sets to use the 7XXX number range after the old 12V Trains theme had it's last set released in 1986. The range remained exclusive to SW until Life on Mars and Dinosaurs in 2001.
@PeterGriffin said:
"When are they making a Droid Control Ship?
I think that will be a monumental May the 4th when that happens.
We've already had 16 TIE Interceptors (and even a new one!), and not one Droid Control Ship.
Maybe even a microscale DCS instead of the AAT would be better. Speaking of, £35 for a GWP??? I mean at least add a droid minifig!!!
"
There has been a micro Lucrehulk in 75279. It's too tiny to tell if it's a control ship or battle ship, but still.
@watcher21 said:
"
...Still no Shmi Skywalker."
Lego hates single, hard-working, moms!
My bit of trivia, particularly notable with this year being the 25th anniversary, is that Episode I broke the records for both most successful and least successful tie-in merchandising campaigns. If you were around at the time (and not subject to parentally-imposed bedtimes), TRU did a midnight launch with pallets of Ep1 merch just rolled out onto the floor. People were trying to buy everything on launch day for fear of missing something that would never be restocked (as if), but many were finding there was just _too_much_ stuff to buy in one trip. You could fill a shopping cart to overflowing, and not have doubles of anything. More merch was sold under Ep1 branding than for any previous film ever released.
Conversely, because every manufacturer was trying to get a piece of the pie, and Lucasfilm wasn't very restrictive about who got signed contracts, way more Ep1 merch was produced than there would ever be a market for. When the dust settled, there was still more unsold merch than had ever been left for any pervious movie. The best example is an warehouse, that, years later, was still filled with nothing but Jar-Jar and Darth Maul neckties. They weren't likely to sell, but neither was the owner willing to just write them off and send them out for destruction.
@Brickalili said:
"I’m curious why, when I click the link for number of 74-Z Speederbikes, 8000 shows up. Was a speeder bike one it’s suggested alternate models?"
Each of the prequel droid Technic sets got one alt model. 8000 built a Speederbike:
https://media.brickinstructions.com/08000/8000/076.jpg
8001, the B1 Battle Droid, also built an AT-ST:
https://media.brickinstructions.com/08000/8001/076.jpg
And 8002, the Destroyer Droid, could be rebuilt into an AAT:
https://media.brickinstructions.com/08000/8002/130.jpg
It's great to have an administrator who is a Star Wars fan here. So we can have fun articles like this!
Droid control ships and the arena battle of geonosis being unrepresented in Lego for this long remains my biggest ‘huh?’ of the franchise. I mean, I know original trilogy gets the favor, naturally, but especially the arena seemed ripe for play potential. The other one that got taken off that list a few years ago, but only on a technicality, was the medical frigate from episode V, though that set was not particularly available to the general public
Thanks this was a nice read
@Jraptor:
Early on, the prequels frequently got the most sets. 1999 saw eight Ep1 sets (including one that was basically part of another set). At the same time, the entire OT only got five, three of which were based on Ep4. Han, Chewie, and Leia didn't even get minifigs in the first year. If there was a new movie out, that's where the priorities were. It got even worse during the Disney era, with the prequels basically being shelved, and the sequels taking up an even bigger percentage of the total production.
And I still don’t have a Y-Wing!
@Jraptor said:
"Droid control ships and the arena battle of geonosis being unrepresented in Lego for this long remains my biggest ‘huh?’ of the franchise. I mean, I know original trilogy gets the favor, naturally, but especially the arena seemed ripe for play potential. The other one that got taken off that list a few years ago, but only on a technicality, was the medical frigate from episode V, though that set was not particularly available to the general public "
The new Lego Star Wars The Force of Creativity book confirms that there was a plan for a Geonosis Arena set, even a mold of a monster head was made, but they ended up scrapping the set. As well as the full chrome Naboo ship and from a interview we know that the Zam Wessel chase set was also going to be remade few years ago, but it never released. So Attack of the Clones is definitely not the LEGO designers' favourite movie. For the 25th anniversary of the film, it's not too late to change that, just saying LEGO.
@Trigger_ said:
"And I still don’t have a Y-Wing!"
You poor soul, you have my pity. I have all the minifig-scale Y-wings, not counting rereleases of 7150, because why would I bother, and not counting 75365. I also have all the Microfighter Y-Wings, or rather, I will once I get 75391.
Good article.
Never understood the worldwide obsession with Star Wars myself.
@bnic99 said:
" @G_man284 said:
" @RaiderOfTheLostBrick said:
"Very fun: I might include a little trivia of my own.
In Spider-Man Homecoming (2017), Ned mentions to Pete that he just got a LEGO Death Star and says tat it has that it has 3803 pieces. This lines up with the piece count of 10188, but the Emperor Palpatine minifigure he displays is the one from 75159, which has 4016 pieces. So which Death Star is it?
One of my favourite film mistakes."
If I recall correctly, you can see the white assassin droid when it's being rebuilt towards the end, so it's the older model. He could have just had the newer Palpatine from a different set. "
Would make most sense.
If he was inviting Peter to build it, it implies it might still be unopened in its box, hence he would not have the Palpatine figure out of it yet."
Except, we see that he had built the set himself (and accidently drops it later).
@Brickchap said:
"Good article.
Never understood the worldwide obsession with Star Wars myself. "
"Do not underestimate the Force,"
@RaiderOfTheLostBrick said:
" @bnic99 said:
" @G_man284 said:
" @RaiderOfTheLostBrick said:
"Very fun: I might include a little trivia of my own.
In Spider-Man Homecoming (2017), Ned mentions to Pete that he just got a LEGO Death Star and says tat it has that it has 3803 pieces. This lines up with the piece count of 10188, but the Emperor Palpatine minifigure he displays is the one from 75159, which has 4016 pieces. So which Death Star is it?
One of my favourite film mistakes."
If I recall correctly, you can see the white assassin droid when it's being rebuilt towards the end, so it's the older model. He could have just had the newer Palpatine from a different set. "
Would make most sense.
If he was inviting Peter to build it, it implies it might still be unopened in its box, hence he would not have the Palpatine figure out of it yet."
Except, we see that he had built the set himself (and accidently drops it later)."
I think that was after Peter kept ditching him due to being busy with the Stark Internship
@TheOtherMike said:
" @Trigger_ said:
"And I still don’t have a Y-Wing!"
You poor soul, you have my pity. I have all the minifig-scale Y-wings, not counting rereleases of 7150, because why would I bother, and not counting 75365. I also have all the Microfighter Y-Wings, or rather, I will once I get 75391."
Oh yeah I will get 75391
@Yrraabb said:
"Fact….. i need a George Lucas minifig."
Maybe for the upcoming 50th anniversary!
Thanks for the article! That was fun.
I'd like a new Snowspeeder. Having started buying Lego again in 2021, there hasn't been one available - I think the last proper one was in 2019. Surely about time!