@Maxximus said:
"Nice! But what's going on with that rifle muzzle?

Looking fwd to a discussion on 75283-1."

I just noticed that!!! That is one of the coolest LEGO guns I think I’ve ever seen in an office set!!!

In other words, without saying it, LEGO confirmed that MandR’s campaign is what got this set made in the end! Which is great!

@Cooliocdawg said:
" @Maxximus said:
"Nice! But what's going on with that rifle muzzle?

Looking fwd to a discussion on 75283-1."

I just noticed that!!! That is one of the coolest LEGO guns I think I’ve ever seen in an office set!!!
"

Technically all the rifle is is a standard long-rifle with the new-ish candle piece in black, but it does still look really good regardless.

@Echolord said:
"Loved this, though I have to wonder how everyone forgot that the 501st Jetpack Trooper appeared first in season 5 of The Clone Wars (Sabotage)"

Star Wars Battlefront 2 predates season 5 of The Clone Wars by several years

@The_Toniboeh said:
" @Echolord said:
"Loved this, though I have to wonder how everyone forgot that the 501st Jetpack Trooper appeared first in season 5 of The Clone Wars (Sabotage)"

Star Wars Battlefront 2 predates season 5 of The Clone Wars by several years"

My bad, I mistakenly thought the Battlefront II referred to was the 2017 version

@Khorvog said:
"Maybe after this set a Separatist battle pack to go along with it for army building

Would be nice to see in it:
1 501st trooper
4 battle droids
2 super battle droids
1 dwarf spider Droid
1 tactical command Droid
1 speeder bike"

Replace the Speeder Bike with a six legged Crab Droid (which you can turn easily into it's four leg cousin).

Hopefully we'll get a new captain Rex in a future set, the old versions are so expensive nowadays and it would complement this battle pack really well ;w;

“ Jens: As you know, there was enormous demand for this set online!” took you long enough!

I would like to see a Siege of Mandalore “battle pack” with 3 332nd troopers (Ahsoka troopers) and 2 Maul Mandalorians next. No idea for the builds, but I’m open to suggestions!

As sets go, I think we’re at the ‘Rise of the Clone Wars’ era and I expect to see lots of 7th series sets like the Bad Batch shuttle, a new AT-TE based on the Siege of Mandalore and a (UCS?) Venator. Also, an Ahsoka and Maul duel set would be cool, maybe with ARC Trooper Jesse or Captain Vaughn.

A new Phase II Captain/Commander Rex, a Phase II Commander Cody with a dual-moulded helmet, a Captain Vaughn and an ARC Trooper Jesse are my next minifig requests.

Thanks for interviewing the designers. I like reading the interviews, even on sets I don't plan on getting. I would like this set for the 501st figs.

@Echolord said:
" @The_Toniboeh said:
" @Echolord said:
"Loved this, though I have to wonder how everyone forgot that the 501st Jetpack Trooper appeared first in season 5 of The Clone Wars (Sabotage)"

Star Wars Battlefront 2 predates season 5 of The Clone Wars by several years"

My bad, I mistakenly thought the Battlefront II referred to was the 2017 version"

No, you're correct on this one, this specific design of the jet trooper was in the 2017 Battlefront II, not the original. Clone Wars season 5 was its first appearance.

I am glad that the set gives the minifigures blasters and blaster rifles. It would make sense for a LEGO Star Wars set like this, that has been wanted for around six years by fans, to fit the desires of the public.

Great interview and proof that there are still people at TLG with a general understanding of the product and the audience plus a down to earth attitude. Complete opposite to the other one about the new Arts line.
Love these interviews.

Great Interview! Now can we have a Geonosis Arena?

Great questions! It made the interview very interesting and informative

@magmafrost said:
" @Pekingduckman said:
"I'm glad the Bounty Hunter Battle Pack sold well. Not all of us buy Battle Packs for specifically for army building, I bought the Bounty Hunter and Jedi & Clone Troopers Battle Packs specifically for cheap ways of getting unique Minifigures, like what Lego used to do back in the early 2000s."

I daresay relatively few people *do* buy large amounts of battle packs for army building. I see a lot of AFOLs (or possibly TFOLs) act like army building is some god-given right and that they're somehow being wronged when TLG produces anything else. Most of Lego's customers are children, most people buying battle packs are children. Very few people are buying dozens or hundreds of the same battle pack, though they act like they're the core customer base. Its frankly delusional how some people act about battle packs...

I dont see anyone here acting like that, thankfully. Ive seen it a lot on Eurobricks though."

Well, I bought seven of the Jedi/Clone Trooper battle pack- five of them on clearance. But I don't believe LEGO ever said that battle packs would always be good army builders. The bounty hunter one was awesome!

@Brikkyy13 said:
" ...I hope people realise he is in no way representative of other TFOLs."

Honestly I wish MOCpages was still around to act as a memorial to Gen-Z's "Halo Kiddies" and "Sharpie Clone" phases. Don't get me wrong, I love Halo and Star Wars both and have plenty of Clone Troopers myself; but landing a few years older than the Sharpie Clone kids when I first got on MOCpages as a teenager I was shocked to see how many poor clone trooper figures had been ruined via application of permanent pen.

I guess its only natural though. I am sure my falling in with the later end of the millennial generation means me and my peers in this hobby have plenty of hidden "Custom Bionicle pieces" and other oddities from our childhood that seem weird or wasteful now as an adult (I took a Sharpie to some of my plastic green army men as a kid, not Lego but still much in the same vein). I guess its a natural part of growing up as a kid, to get hands on and try and create stuff... even if the results looking back with 20/20 hindsight seem pathetic. If anything its a learning experience on what not to do.

The thing that made the Halo Kiddies and Sharpie Clones so hilarious... is that MOCpages documented it all. It would take somebody hours to dig through the pages to find all the bad Sharpie Clones on the site. I figure with MOCpages finally dead, many young MOC'ers who are now a bit more serious in their young adult/late teen years are happy to have had the internet erase the evidence of their childhood"custom lego" experiments.

Excellent promotion for the set. If that was necessary...

The only Star Wars Battle Pack I have is 75226 Inferno Squad, just because I played Star Wars Battlefront II. I'm no Star Wars fan, but I appreciate all the passion that goes into Star Wars (I'm aware of the 501st Legion being entirely fan-based), and LEGO Star Wars in particular, even if I too thought the constant barrage of comments drowning everyone else out was getting extremely obnoxious, and hope these will be rare occurrences.

I'm still really disappointed in the lack of black hips, but the fun thing about LEGO is I can fix that myself... otherwise, I think this set is ideal and this interview is great. Look forward to picking it up.

@Graupensuppe said:
"This could have been the perfect set, but I think it turned out highly disappointing. If only they hadn't made the torso and helmet prints less accurate than the 2013-2019 style... IMO there's really no reason to base minifigures on the distorted and less detailed animated model when we know exactly what they actually look like from the photorealistic movies. And when Lego stopped making "cartoony" faces and even gave the Senate Commandos accurate armor prints in 2015, I thought they had come to this conclusion too. The vehicles aren't accurate and detailed enough to warrant this oversizedness either."

Same issue I have. This is one of the most disappointing wastes of a set slot in my opinion. Design was changed so it doesn’t fit the rest of the troopers people have accumulated over the last 2 decades. I have planned on customizing my figures to give them all white hips and use some darker nougat skin color for the clones, both things that the new set introduces to the official line, but it doesn’t help at all with the cartoony design change. I can’t even just use the helmets because 4 figurs for 30 bucks is way too pricey and will surely result in a too high price on the aftermarket. All in all, the set is as helpful as to not having released it at all.
I also dislike the prospects of Lego making Ahsokas orange helmeted legion into a regular battlepack next year because that will be harder to remove printing from and is far less relevant to armybuilding. Would have made more sense to make the Ahsoka troopers a more expensive set and leave the 501st to the regular cheap set. There is hope that they might choose white/grey troopers from Battlefront 2 but since it hasn’t happened in 2018 and the game lost all support now it seems unlikely.

@JVM said:
"I'm still really disappointed in the lack of black hips, but the fun thing about LEGO is I can fix that myself... otherwise, I think this set is ideal and this interview is great. Look forward to picking it up."

Well, you are right that it is an option but also costly and complicated. I wonder if I will even be able to get rid of the black/white legs that I will be left over with once I am done making this change to roughly 400 troopers of different types.

I don’t think I would even consider it if I weren’t so close to a full and complete collection of all the figures that I ever wished for. Only thing I am really missing are roughly 100 plain Phase 2 helmets for decals. Already have enough Phase 1 and Stormtroopers luckily were easy to armybuild with the Death Trooper pack.

@xboxtravis7992 said:
"Make no mistake about it either... the 501st set campaign was getting rather obnoxious at its peak. It was on the comments of almost every Lego social media platform... it was near constant and inescapable. I owe Mand a deal of credit for it though, since this set is high on my wishlist too... but I do think the method to raise it to Lego's attention were annoying and I hope the 'power' doesn't go to Mand's head.

Ultimately though... while obnoxious this campaign was ultimately harmless (if not beneficial to those of us wanting some 501st minifigures). So its not like I can blame Mand for any wrong doing other than his own inflated ego from this. If anything I should probably be thanking the guy when I finally buy a copy of the set myself. Hopefully he can humble himself and perhaps remember with his fans that "with great power comes greater responsibility" and all that jazz. "

There was clearly no other choice. Lego had 15 years to make a cheap 501st trooper set, let alone a single 501st trooper in realistic style (that still hasn’t happened yet lol). It wasn’t exactly a novel idea or new wish, Lego just chose to ignore it for a decade. Any and all interaction with fans would have made it obvious that 501st battlepack is the most common item on fan wishlists since 2007, it must have been pure strong willed ignorance or utter ineptitude on the product researchers part.
I also don’t know if you are aware but we live in the time of mobs and rioting. Not just since the destruction of Seattle but 2014. This behaviour is completely socially acceptable now, otherwise you are a bigot denying people their voice. I hate mob rule, too but it is more detrimental to deny reality than to push your morals on other people.

@magmafrost said:
"I daresay relatively few people *do* buy large amounts of battle packs for army building. I see a lot of AFOLs (or possibly TFOLs) act like army building is some god-given right and that they're somehow being wronged when TLG produces anything else. Most of Lego's customers are children, most people buying battle packs are children. Very few people are buying dozens or hundreds of the same battle pack, though they act like they're the core customer base. Its frankly delusional how some people act about battle packs...

I dont see anyone here acting like that, thankfully. Ive seen it a lot on Eurobricks though."

Well, I for example bought 30 Death Trooper/Stormtrooper packs, let alone probably over 100 in total of the other types. When you are buying as many sets as a class of school children (while obviously not every child in a class would do that, so you are probably closer to the amount of an entire school or two) and you know other people are doing the same, it is justified to feel like you should at least be acknowledged. I think it was 10% of Legos profit coming from AFOLs in a statistic from around 2011. I estimate we are closer to 25% now with more and more children dumping physical toys far earlier in favor of video games/smartphones and Legos several campaigns to get adults interested with the “Lego for Men” brand, product photos of some sets presenting them not as playthings but display objects for Hipster houses, built by adults with no kid in sight and several sets that are obviously not targeted towards children like Sitcom studio stages.

Toy companies are in a funny situation, children are their main demographic but those care about their product in lesser and lesser quantity. Lego Movie 1 improved the sales but that bump already became invisible in their growth statistics. It’s obvious that when all the things they do to bait children have few or no effect they should concentrate more on their core fanbases wants and needs since they are less likely to leave you. You can argue “even if you are right with 25%, that’s still 75% of children buying the stuff”. You are right but those children making up the majority of buyers have lower standards for the specifics of the product anyway because they are only buyers because of being children, not because o

@magmafrost:
The one army builder pack I did actually buy several of was Toy Story 3's Green Army Men. Besides building one stock, and keeping one sealed, I've got a few that I gave yellow hands and heads to, and I've go an official Bucket O Soldiers bucket with a custom tank (wheels on the underside roll, but the treads are locked in place), custom 2-seater Jeep (only one minifig can actually sit in it), and a pile of loose Green Army Men (all in unique poses based on real plastic army men):

1x Tank Driver
1x Jeep Driver
4x Officers
8x Infantry
2x Infantry w/ bayonets
1x Infantry w/ grenade
2x Medic
2x Medic carrying "broken" Minesweeper on stretcher
1x Minesweeper
1x Bazooka
1x Mortar
1x Flamethrower
1x Communications
1x Machine gunner
1x Paratrooper (w/ real, working, camouflaged LEGO parachute)

@Judge_Fudge:
For a long time they operated under the theory that, since AFOLs only accounted for a tiny fraction of their customer base, that AFOLs similarly accounted for the same tiny fraction of their gross profits. AFOLs, on the other hand, inflated their purchasing power and many thought we accounted for more sales than non-AFOLs. Once they got the VIP system in place and started tracking pertinent numbers, they determined that AFOLs really do only account for a tiny fraction of the customer base (something in the 5% range, I think?), but we tend to spend a lot more as individuals, so I've seen statements that we're 25% of their gross (back when they first calculated it out with hard numbers) down to 20% (sometime this year). The decline in our purchasing power likely came as a direct result of the huge surge in sales they saw from The LEGO Movie. Levels have certainly dropped off since then, but they haven't fallen back down to their 2013 levels by a long shot. Even now they still have trouble keeping LEGO Store shelves fully stocked during the run up to Christmas, and they still do limited early rollouts for product that was originally slated for January 1st release just to keep product in the pipeline. Sure, Walmart, Target, and Toys R Us were all famous for shelving product as soon as it rolled off the truck, but LEGO Brand Retail obeyed those street dates, and they still only do early sales on stuff when they get explicit permission to do so, and only for those sets that they're told are allowed. So it's not so much that we're no longer buying as much, as it is that their general customer base has seen a huge increase.

does anybody want pokemon diamond and pearl remakes?

@FlyingAardvark said:
"does anybody want pokemon diamond and pearl remakes?"

What has that got to do with the 501st Legion Clone Troopers?Or the interview?

I'm interested to see why they put Ashoka and the 322nd clone in such a cheap set.

"We wanted to include as many minifigures as possible!"

*Includes 4 minifigures like a regular battle pack, doubles price*

@Slithus_Venom:
_SIX_ minifigs. Assume you were getting at least one Battle Droid for them to fight anyways, if not the pair. Right there you're up one or two 501st over what you normally would have got.

"Jens: Not really. We want to hear from the fans directly whenever possible"

Of course he's not concerned.
Jens is not the one managing LEGO's social media platforms and having to deal with the harassment from childish campaigns...