In the week of May the 4th...

As per the annual hum drum that is Star Wars day, May the 4th we have had an expansion of this annual phenomenon to week long proportions.

currently there are give aways all over the internet:

Lego has their traditional May the 4th exclusive give away to coincide with a release of the next UCS set (this year it is the Sandcrawler).  the give away consists of a Darth Revan poly bag and a poster as shown below (there is also a competition where once a product is purchased you go in the draw for a 6 set prize):

Sideshow collectibles is also running a May the 4th special which releases a new product for the few days leading in to Star Wars day starting on the 1st which was a life size Boba Fett, there are several sets to be release over the coming days.  Not only will new product be released but there is the opportunity to win yourself a life size bust of Darth Vader with no purchase required. 

Amazon also gets in to the act this year by having a select number of the Star Wars Rebels t-shirts for order along with some other specials...

Perhaps the biggest news of the week is reserved for Starwars.com which has shown a picture of the cast from Episode 7 sitting down and doing a reading of the script.  

Also here in Asutralia we have the major cinema's doing there own tributes to May the 4th with both Hoyts and Village screening Star Wars Episodes I-VI over 2 days....

However you choose to spend this weekend, may the 4th be with you!

New York Toy Fair 2014

So New York Toy Fair is on at the moment...

This year we definitely received some great looking products from both Lego and Hasbro for the upcoming year.

First Up Hasbro:

Hasbro provided lots of images on the upcoming Rebels Series and the black series figures for this year.

Quite a number of them looked rather impressive:

Above: An imperial and the Character Zeb

Below: an Imperial of some sort and the character Ezra

Below is the Jedi Character Kanan

Above the imposing (sic) Chopper a droid of all manner of parts, whom we have been lead to believe is a rather cantankerous little droid.

Below are the Stormtrooper and the Sith Inquisitor.

The Black Series also showed a number of characters to come to the 3.75" line:

Darth Vader - Episode 3.
Wedge Antilles - Episode 5.
Doallyn -Episode 6.
Ree Yees - Episode 6.
Luke Skywalker Hoth gear.
R5-G19
Luke Skywalker Dagobah Fatigues.
Snowtrooper
Toryn Farr
Yoda - Episode 5

The 6" series also showed a number of character to come out for 2014:

Stormtrooper
Episode 3 Darth Vader
Chewbacca
Clone Trooper - Episode 2
Sandtrooper
Darth Vader - Episode 6
Luke Skywalker Episode 6

Some Deluxe figures are:

Jabba the Hutt
Biker Scout on Speeder Bike.

Vehicles:

There were a couple of Vehicles on offer from the Rebels TV Show coming out as well:

Star Wars comics return to where it all began.

Over the last few days starwars.com released an update on their page regarding the licensing for comics and graphic novelization for 2015 and beyond.  The page with its content can be viewed here.

Effectively, with Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm over 12 months ago it has decided to pull the comic and graphic novels of Star Wars back under its own publishing arm Marvel as soon as the contract with Dark Horse expired.

Dark Horse have been exceptionally good for Star Wars, it has maintained a presence in the market place when none existed for a considerable period of time for the franchise and from an avid dark horse comic reader this will be a sad when that last Star Wars comic is produced...

The response from Dark Horse has been short but to the point and can be read here.

One can only hope that Marvel treat this franchise with the same respect that Dark Horse did and give us as many exciting characters and arcs that have popped up in the last few years too...

Lego 2014 Sets – Preliminary list…

Below is a list that has surfaced on Eurobricks of the upcoming Star Wars sets that are scheduled for a mid-year release this year, on first inspection there are some really good sets potentially.

75048 - Phantom
75049 - Snowspeeder 278 pieces
75050 - B-wing 448 pieces
75051 - Jedi Hunter 490 pieces
75052 - Mos Eisley Cantina 615 pieces
75053 - The Ghost piece number unknown yet
75054 - AT-AT  1138 pieces
75055 - Imperial Star Destroyer 

There are some sets that can be assumed to be from the rebels series starting mid-year, I’m assuming that the Phantom, Jedi Hunter and the Ghost may be from this television series.  There has also been some imagery posted on the Star Wars website regarding one of the character from the show being the Inquisitior:

(Images Courtesy of Starwars.com)

The phantom is one of the ships from the concept art of the Rebels television show with imagery shown here

The others appear to be from the Original Trilogy (OT), which seems to be in keeping with pushing people into the OT frame of mind prior to the release of Episode 7.

I’ll provide a brief commentary on my expectations for the OT sets as at least they are a known quantity…

75049  Snowspeeder: We’ve had a few of these recently 2013 gave one on the battle of Hoth pack (set number 75014)  Be interesting to see what this produces, hopefully we get an updated model and not the same one we’ve in the previous versions.  It would be nice if it included another Rogue Squadron pilot other than Luke although we have had a number of additional Rogue Squadron pilots in the last couple of years Lego may revert to giving us another Luke.  Personally I’d like to see some more Hoth troopers included in the set to help continue the army building capabilities that been growing over the last 12-18 months.

75050  B-Wing: An unusual choice considering this was the subject of A UCS in 2012, so not too sure why its making a system appearance. I imagine with the B-wing pilot that was part of the Series 4 planet release the need to take full advantage of this character could’ve persuaded Lego to revisit this model.  Previous versions of the B-wing have had some form of docking or hangar arrangement.  This set could do with a few more mechanics, personally there aren’t enough of these people, who kept the rebellion afloat during the war against the Empire, it surely wasn’t MacGyver and bubble gum.

75052 Mos Eisley Cantina:  Perhaps the most anticipated re-release of a long time.  This set has been one of the few scene sets that Lego Star Wars fans have been after for a long time (along with Cloud City), I imagine that it will be greatly anticipated and quickly snapped up when it arrives in stores.  Figures that should be included are: Figrin D’an (Bith musician), Ponda Baba (Walrus Man), Dr Evazan (as he is in the same scene as Ponda Baba), Momaw Nadon (an Ithorian who appears in the background, Han Solo in the booth and the waiter who says “No Droids…” There will most likely be some Sandtroopers and perhaps an upgraded Dewback if the rumors are to be believed.

75054 AT-AT:  As we’ve had a couple of these in the last few years I can only imagine that Lego have some new parts to make this more movie like or additionally some new characters that they wish to include.  It will most likely include several Snowtroopers (you couldn’t have one without them!) an AT-AT driver, maybe a commander (General Veers was released in the 2010 set so highly unlikely that he will make another appearance so soon…).  Perhaps this will be an Empire only set with the Snowspeeder above taking care of the Rebellion component of the battle of Hoth.  The last set for an AT-AT was the 8129 in 2010: 

75055 Imperial Star Destroyer:  In my mind a set that has been crying out for a remake for a considerable amount of time.  This set will most likely include Darth Vader (probably a new likeness) several Stormtroopers and a commanding officer (perhaps a Captain or Admiral).  

I feel that this set will most likely cover Episode IV as Vader uses his Executor class ship (A Super Star Destroyer) in Episode V and it appears in Episode VI, hence the likelihood  of this being Episode IV focused.

If my assumptions based upon the rumoured list are accurate there will be several sets from Rebels, 2 from Episode IV, 2 from Episode V and 1 from Episode VI. However, I believe that one of the unknown sets will most likely cover some EU based theme either the highly successful Old Republic or Perhaps the Yoda Chronicles which is still currently screening.

Regardless to say 2014 looks like a great year if you’re an OT fan….

(Images sourced from Eurobricks, Bricklinks and Hothbricks)

Lego Star Wars 2014

Some of the new Lego Sets for 2014 are up on the website for purchase:

http://shop.lego.com/en-AU/Star-Wars-ByTheme

The sets that are currently listed are:

75038 - Jedi Interceptor
75039 - V-Wing Starfighter
75042 - Droid Gunship
75043 - AT-AP
75044 - Droid Tri-fighter
75045 - Republic AV-7 Anti-Vehicle Cannon.
75046 - Coruscant Police Gunship

Not all the sets have been released but its not a bad start considering they aren't supposed to be out for a little while...

The following have yet to make an appearance online:

(Images sourced from Eurobricks)

Grabbed 3 so pretty happy post boxing day...

Star Wars the Black Series and sneak Peak of some Lego 2014 sets

The black series has been in Australia for around 2 months now and so far all that has been seen retail wise is series 1 and 2 of the 3.75" and series 1 of the 6", series 2 has already dropped in the US and can be found here at on line e-tailers in most countries presently.

Series 2 of the 6" is rather impressive, I think the character selection is stronger with Boba Fett being there, Greedo is a far stronger character than Biggs and has been long overdue also, both Han and Leia Speak for themselves too.

My criticism of the 3.75" line has been its rather week character selection wave 2 does nothing to refute this idea either, clearly Pablo Jill, Mara Jade Skywalker and Luminara Unduli are the strength of the wave although this has also been tempered by a sub par Mara Jade figure, the full wave can been seen below:

Personally I feel that Hasbro have thrown far too many troopers into the first two waves and really should have thought about some other characters to break it up a little.  

A list of the current waves and the pending third wave can be seen at Yakface in their toyguide section, several other figures from the second half of this year can be seen there also.

Jedi Temple Archives have had some images up of some of the third wave of figures coming out in the black series 3.75" the more impressive figures are Darth Plageuis, Vizam and Merumeru, suffice to say that Rex and Neyo are the only clones of this wave too, hopefully this trend continues next year.

Lego:

Someone on the internet has shown some images of the upcoming lego sets for next year as you can see from the clip the figures are place holders only, these are working images one would imagine, on first impression I think the cannon lacks, the little 'chibi' vehicles look rather good, the AT-AP which has been previewed at SDCC looks rather good but its a little light on as a wave, personally I believe that this is the wave suffers from being the first of Disney's involvement since the takeover of Lucasfilm and its subsidiaries, hopefully it is only a glitch.

Star Wars product starting to hit Australia

In the last few weeks we've had a number products from Hasbro and Lego arrive in Australia:

There have been the mission series figures found at toyworld

The vehicles have started appearing at Target. Selling for $35 each.

K-mart has the saga legends selling for $10 with the 2 pack mission series selling for $15, both prices are quite reasonable.

The black series has been found at Minotaur in Melbourne, however these are imported and the prices are extremely over the top! (check the link - the prices will shock you!)

Toys R Us have the vintage X-Wing in stock (this is Bigg's one from Episode IV)


Also Lego have had their mid year wave arrive in the last 3-4 weeks, with the sets shown in prior posts. click here to view them

lego, hasbro

Celebration Europe and Star Wars.

Wow... what a start to celebration!

starwars.com has a few blogs, one confirming John Williams as the composer for episode 7, possibly the worst kept secret! The other cool piece of information related to Star Wars Rebels, Dave Filoni provided some screen grabs from the upcoming season, the man never disappoints.  

Here is some of the artwork from this upcoming series..

These images can be found at starwars.com

Looking at these pics it can be clearly seen that McQuarrie has definitely inspired this series.  I cannot wait till we see some more.

On a local note there has been a recent influx of Star Wars products with the Lego 2013 line being:

• 75015 Corporate Alliance Tank Droid.
• 75016 Homing Spider Droid.
• 75017 Duel on Geonosis.
• 75018 Jek-14's Stealth Starfighter.
• 75019 AT-TE
• 75020 Jabba's Sail Barge.
• 75021 Republic Gunship.

These can be found on the Lego store here

Another product that has shown up without much fanfare has been The Vintage Collection X-Wing (specifically Biggs red X-Wing), I purchased this item my self yesterday at Toys R Us in Melbourne.

(Image from rebelscum.com forums)

 

a UCS Nebulon B Frigate

Over at Eurobricks someone has done their own MOC of the iconic Nebulon B Frigate seen at the end of The Empire Strikes Back and more prominently throughout The Return of the Jedi.

Here is the link to check it out, its impressive, hopefully one day Lego will actually make this model!

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=84136&#entry1632682

Star Wars Rebels to come in 2014

Hot off the Press courtesy from starwars.com Dave Filoni the Director and one of the creative genius' from the Clone Wars animated series over the last 6 years is involved in bringing a brand new animated series to screens the world over.

There undoubtedly will be numerous questions with this announcement, such as who will the characters be, what shape will the time frame be and how will these blend in with the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy?

I'm sure that in time and possibly the not too distant future some of these questions will be answered, most likely at Celebration Europe where Kathleen Kennedy (CEO of Lucasfilm) will be in attendance.

The statement from the Starwars.com website can be seen below:

New Animated Series Star Wars Rebels Coming Fall 2014

May 20, 2013

Production has begun on Star Wars Rebels, an exciting, all-new animated television series based on one of the greatest entertainment franchises of all time. Scheduled to premiere in fall 2014 as a one-hour special telecast on Disney Channel, it will be followed by a series on Disney XD channels around the world.
Leading the development of the series is a creative team of exceptional talent. Screenwriter/producer Simon Kinberg (X-Men: First Class, Sherlock Holmes, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) is an executive producer on Star Wars Rebels and will write the premiere episode. He is joined by Dave Filoni as executive producer, who served as supervising director of the Emmy nominated Star Wars: The Clone Wars since 2008. Executive producer Greg Weisman brings with him a wealth of animation experience with credits such as Young Justice, The Spectacular Spider-Man and Gargoyles.
Gary Marsh, president and chief creative officer, Disney Channels Worldwide, said, "The entire team at Lucasfilm has provided extraordinary creativity and innovation for over three decades, and we're thrilled to be bringing the expansive and imaginative world of Star Wars to Disney XD's viewers."
"I couldn't be more excited to explore new corners of the Star Wars universe," said Kathleen Kennedy, president, Lucasfilm. "I think Star Wars Rebels will capture the look, feel and fun that both kids and their parents love about Star Wars."
The action-filled series is set between the events of Episode III and IV -- an era spanning almost two decades never-before explored on-screen. Star Wars Rebels takes place in a time where the Empire is securing its grip on the galaxy and hunting down the last of the Jedi Knights as a fledgling rebellion against the Empire is taking shape. Details about the show are a closely guarded secret at this point.

Star Wars Rebels will be produced by Lucasfilm Animation, featuring many of the key talents that made Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Fans attending Star Wars Celebration Europe will be the first to get an exclusive look at the new series. Casting will be announced at a later date. More information about this developing project will be found on StarWars.com and on Facebook at facebook.com/starwarsrebels.

There is also a you tube clip of this impromptu discussion

75025 Jedi Defender-class Cruiser

Pictures from Eurobricks showing the new Old Republic set to be released this winter.

This will be one of the winter exclusive sets, possibly a Toys R Us exclusive here in Oz although you never can tell.

This set strangely comes with a Sith Holocron, perhaps this is the point as they are hunting the Jedi to get it back.

I like the way the front of the ship opens up, gives a nice bridge feel to the ship.

The engines look quite big which is nice it gives the appearance of a certain level of size to the ship, perhaps they could've doubled the blue translucent engine as indication of both speed and size, the one looks a little too small in its housing.

The minifigures that accompany this set are:

One being the Sith Warrior, Jedi Consular (white - Murilan) and the Jedi Zabrek.  Funnily enough they have not been given names just their game character class, an unusual step but possibly one that will allow lots of play-ability going forward.  having two of each Sith and Jedi in the one set is nice again, perhaps a republic trooper or two could've been added and that would've filled this set out nicely. 

Overall:

This is the 5th Old Republic set in the last 12-18 months which would be safe to assume that there has been a good take up of this product as a sub theme in the Star Wars Universe.  Perhaps going forward we can get a few smugglers and a couple of mercenaries.