LEGO Star Wars BrickHeadz: 41627 Luke Skywalker and Yoda, 41628 Princess Leia, and 41629 Boba Fett [Review]

Back in late 2017, before LEGO released any BrickHeadz characters from the Star Wars Classic Trilogy, we reviewed the New York Comic-Con exclusive Boba Fett & Han Solo in Carbonite. I excoriated LEGO for creating artificial scarcity in what would inevitably be an incredibly popular set. That set is now selling for at least $200 on eBay, but there’s good news: LEGO has now released another wave of Star Wars BrickHeadz characters, this time including Boba Fett (41629), Princess Leia (41628), and Luke Skywalker & Yoda (41627).

The packaging & instructions

The Luke/Yoda two-pack includes parts in three unnumbered bags, as does Boba Fett, while the pieces for Leia come in the usual two bags. It’s interesting that the Luke/Yoda two-pack has a different packaging shape from the double-wide style of box from previous two-packs like Rey and Kylo Ren. Similarly, the instruction booklet for Luke and Yoda has a different orientation from the others.

The builds

We’ve had a long run of LEGO BrickHeadz reviews that have pointed out the boilerplate nature of the build process, and we’ve had a tendency to skip this section of the review entirely. But lately, LEGO designers have begun innovating on the template, not just with variations on the studs-out portion of the character’s face, but with more intricate brick-built details. Although both Luke and Leia certainly follow the standard BrickHeadz pattern, Boba Fett incorporates some remarkable building techniques to achieve the design of his Mandalorian helmet.

The double-corner panels hold the small sub-assemblies shown in the photo above in place, creating the center-line of Boba Fett’s helmet.

These sub-assemblies simply sit in the pocket created by the corner panels. While hobbyist builders quite frequently use techniques like this that expose tiles on their sides, we don’t often see this kind of unique solution in an official LEGO set. (In fact, the NYCC Boba Fett uses an entirely different technique — we’ll take a closer look at a comparison later.)

Innovation doesn’t stop at the black nose piece. Notice in the photo above that the green 1×2 brick highlights the difference in height between the two sub-assemblies on their side and a “proper” brick height. To hold the two sub-assemblies in place, a pair of brackets sit under a plate that extends from the rear of the body. This is a bit of “LEGO geometry” you don’t see often in an average LEGO set.

New pieces & printed parts

One of the major appeals of BrickHeadz sets is the wide array of unique printed parts in each set (beyond the usual eyes). This batch of characters is no different. Luke Skywalker has a shirt and belt while Yoda has a printed 1x2x2 brick for his Jedi robes.

Princess Leia’s belt is also printed, but combines a 1×2 brick as well as 1×1 plate printed on the side (with one extra belt plate).

Finally, Boba Fett features a plethora of printed pieces. Those concerned that the NYCC Boba Fett had never-to-be-seen-again parts will be pleased to see that three of the printed pieces are identical between the two versions.

The finished characters

Luke Skywalker wears the jumpsuit that he appears in when he battles Darth Vader on Bespin, and is thus the same character variant as the newest Luke minifig in 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City. His jumpsuit is dark tan, and his hair is also dark tan. Luke’s lightsaber handle clips onto his belt, and he carries a blaster, while Yoda carries a simple walking stick (there’s an extra lightsaber handle in the set, along with a trans-blue blade).

When LEGO first started making BrickHeadz, they began using tan for Caucasian skin tones, rather than producing new bricks in “light flesh” just as they do with minifigures in licensed themes. BrickHeadz characters like Finn use colors like brown to mirror the skin tones of corresponding minifigs. But by making that decision for the first BrickHeadz characters a couple years ago, LEGO has now backed themselves into a corner in situations like Luke’s in which his jumpsuit should actually be tan rather than dark tan, thus making his clothing and hair the same color, in turn making Luke appear as though he’s wearing a hoodie. That impression is mitigated, though, by his highly textured hair.

Yoda follows the 3×3 template of smaller characters like the snowy owl in 41615 Harry Potter & Hedwig. Yoda’s big ears and the white hair behind them are built from small sub-assemblies attached via headlight bricks, but otherwise Yoda is just a smaller version of the standard BrickHeadz template. His Jedi hood is a lovely touch in back.

Princess Leia Organa is the plainest of the three new Star Wars BrickHeadz characters, since she’s based on the character as she appears in her flowing white senatorial robe in A New Hope. Her side buns are built from two pairs of four identical sub-assemblies, and I’m not sure that her high forehead quite works. It’s interesting that LEGO chose to create her silver belt by building side-printed plates into either side of a 1×2 brick, rather than printing a single 1×4 tile, for example.

The most detailed new LEGO Star Wars BrickHeadz character is the bounty hunter Boba Fett. In addition to taking a close look at the character on its own, we’ll compare this $10 LEGO set with the similar version that’s now selling for a minimum of $200 on eBay and BrickLink. Boba Fett is built from 161 pieces, compared with 124 pieces for Princess Leia (or 104 pieces for Darth Vader). All the additional pieces comprise Boba Fett’s detailed helmet, cape, and jetpack.

Boba Fett looks fantastic from just about any angle, with several printed elements on his helmet, as well as his left shoulder pauldron and belt.

The biggest differences between the $10 Boba Fett and the $200+ Boba Fett are in several aspects of their color schemes. The new Boba Fett’s jetpack incorporates azure elements, while his cape is dark green. The previous Boba Fett has a dark tan cape and sand green jetpack.

If you’re wondering if LEGO got it wrong in either case, they didn’t — the first BrickHeadz Boba Fett depicts the bounty hunter as he appears in The Empire Strikes Back, while the latest version depicts him as seen in Return of the Jedi.

The next most obvious difference is in the entirely different way in which the helmet’s faceplate is built. While both versions incorporate 2×2 wedge plates as the key structural detail of his cheekpieces, the new version adds printed 2×2 triangle tiles on either side of the vertical nosepiece we noted in the build section earlier in the review. The previous version angled the cheekpieces on hinges, with the dark green wedge plates stacked on dark red corner tiles. While subtle, the helmet’s visor looks sharper with a black design printed on red rather than the other way around. (The forehead area of the helmet is also improved subtly by attaching the 1×2 plate with door rail to the top of Boba Fett’s head rather than sticking up from his face.) The new triangle tiles also give the Mando helmet a sleeker, fiercer look, which accentuates the changes to the torso area, with a lower waistline for the belt (which is flat rather than curved in the new version) and more obvious chest armor in dark green.

With major differences that reflect true-to-the-movies costume differences (leaving a distinct character variant in the hands of those of us who purchased the NYCC-exclusive set), the remaining differences are genuine improvements even when underlying structures like the nosepiece subassemblies aren’t immediately obvious.

Conclusions & recommendations

From the perspective of long-time collectors and hardcore fans, it seemed odd and a bit frustrating that LEGO delayed the release of Classic Trilogy BrickHeadz nearly a year after the first ones from the new trilogy (starting with Rey & Kylo Ren, Finn, and Phasma), and a year after releasing a limited-run version of Boba Fett and Han Solo in Carbonite, as if to taunt and tease LEGO Star Wars fans. But those frustrations can now be set aside with the addition of several key characters from the Original Trilogy.

In fact, these latest four BrickHeadz characters fit perfectly with the first small wave released this summer. Here we have Boba Fett reminding Darth Vader that Han Solo is most valuable to him alive.

And a Skywalker family portrait (with an invisible, ghostly Padmé).

For those of us less interested in Marvel and DC superheroes or Disney cartoon characters, it’s great to finally get a more complete cast of Star Wars characters to decorate our desks with. These three new BrickHeadz sets (with four new characters) are fantastic additions to the series, and must-have purchases for all LEGO Star Wars fans.


Each of these LEGO Star Wars BrickHeadz characters is available now.

The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick early copies of these sets for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.


1 comment on “LEGO Star Wars BrickHeadz: 41627 Luke Skywalker and Yoda, 41628 Princess Leia, and 41629 Boba Fett [Review]

  1. Ben

    The Yoda/Luke box and instructions are much like the Harry/Hedwig set that came out earlier this year. Smaller box because the second figure is about half the size of a normal Brick Headz.

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