Toy Bender

Since a reader requested it, here’s my Lego Star Wars Celebration IV coverage. Oh yes, I do sometimes take requests.

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Apparently this is Lego news week or something. Action-Figure.com had a recent news post stating that Lego’s way of celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars is by having a ,”These are the Droids You’re Looking For” promotion. In June, Lego will stuff 10,000 metallic gold C-3POs in random Lego sets. If you find one, then you can enter the contest. The winner will recieve a special prize pack, but no details have been released on it. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s good.

Not only is this sure to move a lot of Lego sets off the shelves, but if you get one of these figures you also have an rather rare version of C-3PO that so far hasn’t been produced (they’ve only got a gold colored one, not a shiny metal version). If anyone wants to donate one to me that they don’t want, I’d be totally grateful and maybe I’d do a R2-D2 impersonation for you. I hear it’s really quite good and worth giving up your C-3PO for.

Toy, toy collecting, Lego, Star Wars, C-3PO, R2-D2, contest

During the New York 2007 Toy Fair, Lego had some groovy new Exo-Force sets. It’s time to give the series the respect and I’ve been meaning to give for awhile now. Even though I detest nearly 99% of all anime, I do love giant robots and I ended up getting Stealth Hunter, Grand Titan, and the Toys R Us exclusive (and best mech so far) Supernova before I could stop myself. My roommate has the sweet looking tank, the Mobile Defense Tank and I have to say that I’m pretty envious.

If you don’t dig on the anime style pilots, but love giant robots like me, my solution was to ditch them in favor of some spare clone mini-figs I got laying around. Hey, if there can be 78 different planet destroying weapons in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, then clones can pilot mechs.

The last wave of figures was just as cool, the Shadow Crawler, which features a skeleton in a rear “prison pod.”

Prison pod my ass, that’s a vat of acid. Just look at that awesome skeleton in that bubble. I bet he’d tell you that wasn’t no normal prison cell, but he can’t because the evil robots melted his pink spikey haired skin off.

With the new Exo-Force sets coming down the pipe, this series keeps getting better. Head on over to Figures.com for some sweet pictures of the upcoming sets, including a big wheeled vehicle that has enough room on it for one of the medium sized mechs on the back. If your mind is blown, don’t blame me.

toys, toy collecting, Lego, Exo-Force, Anime, Mech, robot

One of the biggest bits of news to come out of the ‘07 New York Toy Fair is Lego’s new version of the iconic Star Wars craft, The Millennium Falcon. This time around this time it’s called the Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon, and for good reason as it is both ultimate and for serious collectors.

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Over on the RebelScum.com forums, a user has posted a picture of a Lego TIE tank set with a Shadow Trooper mini-fig on display at the German toy fair.

Now if this real, this marks a big step into the mucky suckitude of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. The TIE tank, or Crawler as it is officially known, has got to be one of the dumbest of all the E.U. vehicles. Really, how brilliant is it to have an assault vehicle with almost no armor and no rotating gun turret? The damn thing would have to have the pilot facing the enemy, which means he’d be completely exposed to enemy fire. Hell, he couldn’t even see anything besides what was in front of him. Those treads are so big and exposed that they are just asking for a Wookie with a wooden missile launcher to blow them apart. Don’t even get me started on the source of the TIE tank either, which is the comic book series Dark Empire that features Palpatine being resurrected as a clone. Talk about crapping on Vader’s triumph of redeeming himself by killing the old jerk in Jedi.

Please Lego, if you’re going to make this set then you owe Star Wars fans a TIE Phantom. Now that’s one hot looking TIE fighter variant.

toys, toy collecting, Lego, Star Wars, TIE

Rebelscum.com has recently posted three pictures that give a look into three new sets that will be coming out for Star Wars Lego fans in ‘07.

Two of these are in a Phantom Menace sort of a theme with the first one being a Naboo fighter and a Vulture droid two pack. If you’re a big fan of Phantom, then you can “whoops!” your way to blowing up Droid ships in your imagination with that set. The second one is a little cooler and I’m assuming its going to be fairly expensive. It’s one of the droid carriers and if the front of the box is any indication it comes with a lot of battle droids. The last set is another Jedi Star fighter from the Revenge of the Sith, this time it comes with a nifty hyperspace ring. What’s with that thing any way? How do they know that an enemy won’t find one and blow it up, leaving you stranded in the middle of space? Seems kind of silly to me, but I’m no fancy Jedi I guess.

Toys, toy collecting, Star Wars, Lego

It’s that time again, time for another:

I’ve got three items in one post for you today! First up, Sir Steve’s Guide is reporting that our good old buddies from the Republic Commando Delta Squad are available for purchase. It’s an internet exclusive, so don’t expect these to hit stores any time soon.

I also have a follow up on the rant I had the other day about the Lego Clone army builders not being available stateside. Well, it looks like I’m an idiot. I visited the Lego shop today and it looks like you can order them. If you feel lucky, it also seems to be appearing in some stores around the country. Hurry up and get a few before scalpers do.

Finally, Keith, a frequent Toy Bender commentator and fellow 451 Press slave, had a clonegasim over the Master Replica wearable Clone Helmet. I’m not so excited, because if I was then I’d want one really bad and I can’t afford one. Yet somehow if I did get one, then I’d want a full clone suit. Do you see what kind of slippery slope this kind of thing gets you into? Now I must go back to pretending that this thing doesn’t exist, just like the double bladed Darth Maul Force FX lightsaber doesn’t exist.

Toys, toy collecting, Star Wars, Clone Trooper, Lego, Hasbro

Rebelscum.com posted some links to upcoming Lego sets that appeared on the Australian/New Zealand Lego site. There’s some neat stuff on there, especially the Imperial Landing Craft pictured above.

What I found really interesting were the two sets that I most wanted are unavailable for sale in the U.S. Being a huge clone nut, the Clone Troopers Battle Pack is irresistable.

The Clone Wars are on! When the Separatists attack, the Republic fights back with its legions of Clone Troopers. Build your army with an assortment of battle-ready troopers, complete with a blaster turret and speeder bike!

* Set includes Shock Trooper, Star Corps Trooper and 2 Clone Trooper minifigures.

* Build your own army and stage a battle against the #7654 Droids Battle Pack!

These things better make their way stateside. Lego could sell mini-figs carded to suppliment their Star Wars sets and make a bundle. But they don’t, so the only way to get a bunch of mini-figs is to either buy a bunch of sets you don’t want, or get them on eBay. Unfortunately, demand for mini-figs is through the roof, so eBay prices aren’t cheap. Until then, I may have to use an Australian contact at work for this who is going to think I’m insane. Sigh, the horrible things you must do to feed the demon that is known as toy collecting.

Toys, toy collecting, Star Wars, Lego

I found a great article the other day detailing how Lego bricks are made. This thing is 10 pages (slides) long and goes into a good amount of detail, all of it very interesting. For example, did you know that only 18 out of 1 million LEGO elements produced is considered defective? Or that gun that John Wilkes Booth used to kill Abraham Lincoln was made of Legos? Did you know that Kennedy as in John F. Kennedy starts with a K and K is next to L in the alphabet and that L is the letter that Lego begins with!?* Well, you would if you read the article. For those of you who don’t like reading, there are pictures!

*Some statements may prove to be false.

Toys, Lego

Here’s a quick news item for you Star Wars Lego fans out there. StarWarsShop.com now has a “shared exclusive� with Toys R Us. It’s an X-wing that can be customized to be either Luke’s Red Five or Wedge Antilles’ Red Three fighter.

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Things aren’t going so great in the world of Lego at the moment. A more legitimate news source (i.e. not me), The Associated Press, reports that Lego is running out of toys. Apparently, do to several factors they are sold out of most of their stock before the holiday season.

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