This is beautiful and a treasure, and if you can't see that, then you don't deserve it.
I managed to get lucky and found a seller that had everything sans the box for just over $100 a few years back, and it was a joy to build, and even fun too play with.
I posit this question: Can you hold any other playset style Millennium Falcon with just one hand and have it do a barrel roll?
I bet you can't. That's the power of the supersized UFO panels.

The new smart play Millennium Falcon looks a lot like this.

First set to have Leia and C-3PO.

This set gets too much hate. Sure it looks awful by today's standards, but if I was a Star Wars kid back in 2000 I would've been ecstatic to get this for my birthday.

Even though LEGO sets today are objectively better beyond comparison, there's just something undeniably charming about pre-2005 LEGO Star Wars - and that's coming from someone born in 2006.

@Maxbricks14 said:
"The new smart play Millennium Falcon looks a lot like this."

Honestly while the new one is downsized, it has better shaping than this (Interestingly enough, the upcoming 2026 Falcon will also retail for $100). 2000 had some classics that have aged very well, such as the AAT, but this Falcon is a dud to me with the lousy windscreen piece and the big ufo plates. The 2004 Falcon is an incredible upgrade compared to this version.

Stumbled on this at an independent educational toy store back when it came out, so I think I may have been the first person in town to own it.

Got this one for the first time at the end of last year. Absolutely love it. I love that you can turn the thing upside down and it doesn't open up. Plus the little cargo doors in the front, right where they are in the Incredible Cross sections book.

I bought this from maybe a Target? I can't remember. It was back when it came out, and it was magical. I was actually at a friend's apartment, and his wife was like, "What are you doing?" I thought it was obvious so I just shrugged.

During the coof lockdowns I got an extreme case of cabin fever. So I tracked down all the parts that had been scattered around, and dug the rest of it out of the AT-AT box, and reassembled it with the original instructions and minifigs. Man it is glorious.

Geez I can't believe that was over five years ago already. It seems like just last year.

The instructions are so pleasant to read. You even get a comic strip and multiple secondary builds. How good is the little escape ship in the main build?!

@namekuji said:
"How good is the little escape ship in the main build?!"

Depends on how you feel about being able to breathe in space, I guess.

Great set: I still remember picking up all the sets of this wave at one time when they first came out and walking to the cashier feeling giddy.
Swooshable and awesome.
It did bug me that the laser cannons looked like a weird mixer, but flipping the antenna pieces around so the antistud faced out and they attached with the help of a cylinder piece made them so much like cannons.

People who complain about how bright colors on the inside of sets are ruining Lego need to be reminded of how far they've come from sets like this, where they put those colors on the outside.

@CommanderR3x said:
" @Maxbricks14 said:
"The new smart play Millennium Falcon looks a lot like this."

Honestly while the new one is downsized, it has better shaping than this (Interestingly enough, the upcoming 2026 Falcon will also retail for $100). 2000 had some classics that have aged very well, such as the AAT, but this Falcon is a dud to me with the lousy windscreen piece and the big ufo plates. The 2004 Falcon is an incredible upgrade compared to this version."

Agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. I thought I would love a LEGO Millennium Falcon at the age of 11, but once I got a look at this in the catalogs, I was not impressed. I definitely felt LEGO could do better, so I skipped over it in favor of the UCS TIE Interceptor in 2000. So glad I waited for the 2004 version! It has held up so well that, aside from the UCS Falcon (2017), the next LEGO Falcon I got was the Dark Falcon last year.

@MCLegoboy said:
"This is beautiful and a treasure, and if you can't see that, then you don't deserve it.
I managed to get lucky and found a seller that had everything sans the box for just over $100 a few years back, and it was a joy to build, and even fun too play with.
I posit this question: Can you hold any other playset style Millennium Falcon with just one hand and have it do a barrel roll?
I bet you can't. That's the power of the supersized UFO panels."

I own two Falcon's, this and the newest UCS release.

Sure the UCS release is cool. But it will never be as cool as the Falcon where time-displaced Revan, golden bikini clad Bastilla, and gun trigger happy HK-47 joining Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Leia, R2, 3PO and totally cool CD-P1 the Jedi astromech (O.C. please don't steal) and the Toa to fight the Makuta on this alien world they came to as Palpatine recruited the Rahkshi to the Dark Side for the Empire. That's 7190 to have that story, UCS ain't got anything on that.

Man, the early 2000's Space themes were so weird...

Got curious and started trawling the database after seeing this. The Millennium Falcon appears to be the second most produced Star Wars starship in Lego, falling only behind the T-65 X-wing, unsurprisingly. From there it goes to Boba/Jango Fett’s Starship, the standard TIE Fighter, Y-wing, A-wing, TIE Advanced, and then…Jedi Interceptor, of all things. Of course, that includes all the micro builds from over the years, and the Interceptor has the advantage of having been used by multiple prominent characters.

Dumb nostalgic story time, please ignore:
I found this set to be kind of ugly even back in 2000 (compared to sets in the 1999 wave like the X-wing or Snowspeeder). However, I was bored during high school summer break, and Mom was going to Walmart or something (which was 1hr away, so we didn't go often). On a whim, I handed her five $20 bills from my summer job and asked if she would pick up this set up for me. It felt like a very inaccurate build, but also felt very 'Lego' given the number of play features. I'm glad I have it, and plan to display it next to the UCS Falcon at some point as a nice depiction of the evolution of Lego or something...

I like this one. It actually has an interior with walls! Interior walls in a spaceship! There are tools everywhere and it has a little escape pod ship thingy. That's just fun! And between the front mandibles it actually has a little cargo bay with a box printed with the rebel emblem. And I recall there were a few smuggle hatches too.

I miss this era of Star Wars for stuff like this. Actual creative extras that aren't source accurate but make for a more engaging and fun toy. You know, stuff that made Space so memorable in the first place (at least to me).

People may complain about this one but I think the crudeness of the early models has a certain Lego-y charm and I will die on that hill

I know it's not accurate compared to the solid alternative but the classic radar dish used for the Falcon is classic Lego in a way that feels so right despite being "wrong".

She may not look like much but she's got it where it counts.

I remember discovering it on the Internet (which was much of a luxury back then), printing out the illustration in colour (also much of a luxury back then) and looking at it for months before it appeared in a store. I still have it in prime condition :)

This one will always always always hold a special place in my heart. It was my first ever large set. My dad got it for me for Christmas in 2000. I still have it, and surprisingly I managed to keep all of the pieces throughout the years. I even still have a photo of myself proudly holding the box on Christmas Day.

What a piece of junk!

At the time of it's release, I couldn't find this set anywhere. I'm glad I missed it because 4504 was so much better.

The early Star Wars Lego sets are very special to me personally. As a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s, this was something I could only dream about: a combination of my two favorite things at the time: Lego and Star Wars.
These sets actually brought me back into the Lego hobby as an adult. I love their classic simplicity, and because of that, the humor and slightly caricature-like designs.
It was also a big win for Lego as a company. At the time, they were going through a rough period, and the decision to work with Lucasfilm was a smart move. No matter what people think of this first Millennium Falcon, it remains my favorite, and I’ll definitely keep it in my collection. Super nice boxart as well.

@Fandabidozi said:
"What a piece of junk!"

She don't look like much, but she'll make .5 past lightspeed.

@PurpleDave said:
" @namekuji said:
"How good is the little escape ship in the main build?!"

Depends on how you feel about being able to breathe in space, I guess."

FBTB had some Lego Star Wars cartoons by Greg Hyland, back in the day. One of them depicted Han, in the escape pod, regretting not making it airtight.

This was my Christmas gift in 2000. I don’t think I have ever anticipated a gift more highly in my life. I brought the catalog to school to look at the picture and show my friends, I was so excited. 25 years later, she’s still built and on display.

Say what you will about this set, it still looks far more magical to me than any Lego Falcon since. (And yes I'm aware I'm setting myself up for "it has to be magic, there's no way it would function otherwise" comments, SHHH x'D) I never owned it myself, but this was THE set responsible for sparking off my love for Star Wars as a kid, and it will forever be a thing of beauty in my eyes.

Granted, that is in part because I had no idea how the Millennium Falcon was *supposed* to look so I just saw a cool-looking ship (with an accessible interior!) with no frame of reference for it, but STILL.

I'd been passingly interested in Star Wars a little before that. I'd seen the Phantom Menace double-page spreads in Lego Advntures magazine in 1999 and been fascinated by these cool-looking minifigures with glowing blades and new hair/headgear pieces; I'd even got 7121 to sample them for myself. But though it fast became one of my favourite Lego sets to play with, I had minimal interest in finding out about the franchise the characters were *actually* from, and had proceeded to simply do my own thing with them.

That changed when the July-August 2000 Lego World Club (a.k.a. Lego Mania) magazine arrived. The double-page spread of this ship, the first time except for the cover image that I'd seen it, bowled me over. I knew nothing about the ship. I knew nothing about the story. I knew nothing about who any of these characters were (except for the names, which one of the images helpfully gave me). But it ENTHRALLED me. Besides the main image, there was a side picture showing the ship with the lid off, and labelling such intriguing features as secret compartments and escape pods; and there was also a description of the ship's role and a few movie screenshots. It had EVERYTHING it needed to hook me.

That same afternoon, I found a basket containing several of a Hasbro action figure of Luke Skywalker on reduction in a local cheap shop; recognising him from the pictures in the article, I decided to take a chance and buy him, and did my eight-year-old best, with my fairly limited part collection, to build my own version of this ship to fly him around in.

...since I mostly only had basic bricks and only a few specialied sets, and since it had to be pretty big to accomodate the larger-than-minifigure-size action figure, my result mostly ended up being just a multicoloured square box with pointy bits at the front, which only cemented my appreciation for how cool I felt the real set looked, since my attempt at replicating it was such an abysmal failure. ...but I still had way too much fun zooming Luke around in his multicoloured box!

It still wouldn't be until 2001 that I actually started watching the movies - starting with Return of the Jedi, weirdo that I am...! -, because as a kid I was scared to watch anything that was new to me; but if not for this set I would never have got interested in them at all. I dreamed of it for years, and even now after I received a later (and inarguably better) Lego version of the Falcon (7965) for my birthday a few years back, this original set is still extremely special to me for just how impactful it was on me.