I picked up the Return of the Jedi themed Lego Star Wars Home One 7754 set during the Christmas sales that were changing from week-to-week at Toys’R'Us. It comes with a boatload of minifigs, though admittedly not as many as in the Death Star set, an A-Wing Fighter, and the command deck of the Home One Mon Calimari battle cruiser. This was a particularly enjoyable build, because it has lots of compartments and moving parts that add something to the model when you display it. You can make a change here and there occasionally so that it is always ‘made new’ again. I really do want some of the other large sets like Cloud City and the Death Star, but Home One will have to suffice for now.

What was by far the best wedding gift, at least in my opinion and maybe Yufang’s as well, was the Lego Star Wars Darth Vader’s TIE Advance Fighter 8017. Our good friend Kolter, who is now living it up in New York at Columbia University, gave us this Lego kit when he came to our wedding back in October 2009. I cannot really speak to the pleasure of building this particular Lego model, because Yufang beat me to it–she put it together while I was busy reading and providing feedback to my 50 students last semester. I do think that she had fun building this Star Wars Lego set, but I think I will take it apart in the near future so that I can see how it is put together. Again, I really like the updates that Lego made to Vader’s TIE Fighter. I used to own the first version from the beginning of the Star Wars Lego line, but it seems that this version has more detail and more accurate use of colored bricks (something that all of the first kits suffered from–particularly the 7190 Falcon, which is why I am giving it a ‘refit’).

Luke’s updated Lego X-Wing Fighter 6212 was a particularly fun build. Originally, I had the first version of Luke’s X-Wing from 1999 or so, and though cool, it doesn’t muster next to the awesomeness of this particular model. The wings crank open, there is a storage pod underneath the X-Wing as shown in The Empire Strikes Back, and it uses some smart building techniques to give it the angular look and color scheme. Also, the kit included extra minifigs of Wedge, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca from ESB.

My favorite Millennium Falcon Lego kit is the 4504, which followed the 7190 A New Hope theme with an Empire Strikes Back theme. Included with the Falcon is a lone Imperial Snowtrooper and tripod cannon. Little does the bastard know that the Falcon’s anterior blaster is about to smoke him.

For the time being I am leaving the 4504 alone, because it is so much more polished than the 7190. However, I do have some ideas about how to add the tunnel-like feel to the interior without too severely mucking things up. But first, I want to complete the 7190 refit, which I suspect will take some time since I can only work on it during short breaks between reading.

My current LEGO project is a rebuilt of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon 7190. These pictures show what it looked like before I got my hands on it. Above is a side quarter view of the cockpit and the entry gangplank down. Below I have included a gallery of some more views of the original build.