I wanted to start the list with something completely random, and this guy fits the bill. He looks like he could have stepped out of a Monty Python film with that mustache, but apparently he holds the important job of fixing things and walking around in the background when the important characters are talking. I’ve honestly never seen a full episode of the new Clone Wars show, but the design of this dude named Hondo makes me want to spring for the first season Blu-ray in November. He looks like a pirate circus ringmaster. This is no ordinary R2-D2, this is slave R2 from Jabba the Hutt’s barge in Return of the Jedi! Finally your minifigures don’t have to get their own drinks! From everyone’s favorite Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace, comes Aldar Beedo, a podracer that looks like a robot squid. Scout Troopers are awesome, but green Swamp Troopers from Chewie’s home-world of Kashyyyk are Most Awesome. The skeletal design of the prequel Battle Droids looks pretty cool in LEGO form, especially if you have a few thousand laying around.
I guess this counts as a minifigure, but there’s not much mini about it. It looks like a big pile of plastic, and is oddly all green, but with LEGO man hands Jabba is one of the weirdest minifigures there is. With heads that come off, you could easily recreate Anakin’s rampage from Episode II with these Tusken Raider minifigs. Donkey noises not included. Plo Koon was always one of the more intriguing prequel characters visually. I don’t know much about him, but I’m sure in Middle School I could have told you a lot. It’s bad that the prequels are entering nostalgia range now, but maybe that will make them seem better? Nothing is badder than a Royal Guard, and the LEGO version doesn’t disappoint. The Shadowtrooper, an expanded universe character, used a lightsaber and was all sorts of awesome. This version doesn’t have a lightsaber, but was in the first expanded universe set (#7664 Tie Crawler). Jabba’s slimey right-hand man Bib Fortuna may not be the weirdest looking, but he’s up there.
You’ve got to hand it to George Lucas, in what other franchise would kids play with a random background character with a messed up head, in LEGO form? Ok, probably Harry Potter, but still, Bib Fortuna minifig! There are many versions of Obi-Wan, but I think the Clone Wars version is my favorite. Maybe it’s his armor, or maybe it’s his crazy hair. Chewbacca isn’t a character you would think would translate very well into the LEGO world, but the cool head sculpt combined with the sculpted torso makes it work pretty well. Also, the bowcaster is pretty sweet. Like also comes in two flavors of awesome, regular or Clone Wars. I like the classic version the best; they really nailed the head sculpt. I love Greedo almost as much as I love watching Han Solo murder him. I mentioned the Mos Eisley Cantina set yesterday, and after staring at the Greedo minifig for hours upon hours (not really), I concluded that he is 4th Most Awesome. Also, it kind of looks like he’s wearing a thong, just saying.
Darth Vader may be a staple of most people’s LEGO Star Wars collections, but how many have the Battle Damaged Darth Vader? He came in the Rogue Shadow (#7672) set along with fellow The Force Unleashed stars Juno Eclipse and Vader’s Secret Apprentice. Apparently I didn’t finish that game because I don’t remember a battle damaged Vader, so excuse me while I go try to finally get past that darn Star Destroyer part. It’s really surprising that it took ten years for LEGO to release an Admiral Ackbar minifig. He finally debuted in set #7754 – Home One Mon Calamari Star Cruiser to gurgle his famous line “It’s a trap!” Most awesome because I love Admiral Ackbar, and you should too.A George Lucas minifig? OK, this one is kind of a stretch, and you’ll have to buy the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary to find out, but somewhere in those pages lies an awesome minifigure of the Bearded One himself! I’d love to have one; it would go great with my Steven Spielberg minifigure from the long-lost LEGO Studios Movie Maker set.
So there are some of my picks for the most awesome LEGO Star Wars minifigures, what are some of yours?In celebration of the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary and the 10 Year Anniversary of LEGO and Star Wars’ beautiful marriage, I hereby give you my top ten coolest LEGO Star Wars sets. Don’t agree with my choices? Let me know in the comments, or forever hold your peace. It may not be the most exciting vehicle from the Star Wars Trilogy, but the Sandcrawler is a pretty impressive beast, especially in LEGO form. This set came with 11 minifigs, including Owen Lars (pre-burn-victim), R2-D2, C-3PO, three Jawas, and a bunch of droids. The middle compartment lifts out, and it even has a tiny cockpit for a Jawa driver. So it only takes one Jawa to drive this thing? Part of the Ultimate Collector Series ($$$), the Imperial Star Destroyer boasts an impressive 3,104 LEGO pieces, is three feet long, and even comes with a scale model of the Tantive IV so you can play tractor beam. I’m not much into the non-minifig-scale sets, but I had to include this because of its sheer scale.
This is a new set, so you can still get it while it’s hot. This would be in my collection basically just so I could recreate Admiral Ackbar’s famous “It’s a trap!” line over and over. It has the bridge of Ackbar’s ship, complete with a holographic model of the Death Star, and an A-Wing fighter. Oh, and its got Mon Mothma. Return of the Jedi may be my third favorite original trilogy film, but I still love it. This is another new set, and runs around $90 on Amazon, but looks totally worth it. It comes with a Chewie-driven AT-ST, Imperial Bunker, two Scout Troopers on speeder bikes, an Ewok catapult and glider, and more! I saw this one the other day and almost grabbed it. As if my dream of owning any kind of toy incarnation of an AT-AT isn’t enough, this LEGO set actually walks. The Motorized Walking AT-AT may actually be cooler than the standard action figure AT-AT that I’ve always wanted looming over my desk. I don’t have any experience with building motorized LEGO sets, so I’m going to assume that it is harder than building a normal set, so it would take me days to finish this.
It takes me a half hour just to find the piece I need, but I digress. Finally, a set I can afford! I love the Mos Eisley Cantina set because it features one of the classic (and infamous) scenes in Star Wars history; Han solo shooting Greedo. Which do you prefer, Han shooting first, or do you think that makes him seem like a murderer? Have it your way, heck, you could have Greedo spontaneously combust for all I care. The only bad thing about this set is that it doesn’t include the full Cantina, including the band. This one tops a lot of lists I’ve seen, and rightly so, because it’s pretty awesome. It has 360 degrees of Death Star cutaway goodness, including a lot of scenes from A New Hope. It has 24 minifigs, including the trash compactor monster! Here’s some more features. It’s a fairly new set, so if you’ve got the cash laying around, you can pick it up for around $400 on Amazon or your local mega-store. The Tantive IV is of course the ship that is making a mad dash to get away from the Star Destroyer at the beginning of A New Hope, and for that reason it’s a spaceship that’s ingrained in a lot of people’s memory.
There have been a couple different versions of this ship in LEGO form, but I like this new one the best. It’s way too expensive for me to ever own it, but if I had my choice out of any LEGO Star Wars set, it’d be my third pick. Along with the Mos Eisley Cantina, this is a set I could actually afford if it was still around. Why is a X-Wing Fighter my number two pick? It intends to recreate the scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke lands on Dagobah and meets Yoda, so it includes Yoda’s hut! I know he lived in a tree, but come on, that hut is pretty cool! Yoda even clips on to Luke’s back for some Jedi training in LEGO form. All this set needs is a stick for Yoda to beat R2-D2 with and it would be perfect. Sorry if this is an obvious choice, but the Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon is my top choice for the coolest set ever. My biggest gripe about the other UCS sets is that most of the time they are not in minifigure scale, but that is not the case with the Falcon.