Over the past two decades, LEGO Star Wars has released more than 700 sets and 1,000 minifigures. It is no surprise that the theme has racked up a significant amount of interesting milestones along the way. From the first flesh-colored faces to the first new hair piece in 20 years, LEGO has explored a lot of new territory within the Star Wars product line.
Below we have two lists, one of interesting LEGO Star Wars trivia and the other an abbreviated history of the product line. To whet your whistle, which droid has appeared the most throughout the entire LEGO Star Wars history? How many LEGO versions of the Millennium Falcon have been created? How many bricks were in the world’s largest LEGO X-Wing that was built in Times Square? Read on to find out.
Trivia: Fun facts about LEGO Star Wars
- The 1999 Jar Jar Binks minifigure was the first ever to have a unique LEGO head sculpt
- Yoda, Boba Fett and Ewoks were some of the first minifigures to receive short legs (2002)
- Did you know that except for Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, clone troopers and battle droids, R2-D2 is the character that appears in most LEGO Star Wars sets
- The Jedi Bob minifigure appears in just one LEGO set, the 7163 Republic Gunship from 2002
- The Darth Vader minifigure has changed many times over the years, but his helmet remained unchanged from 1999-2015
- The 10179 UCS Millennium Falcon spent a day in a sauna, since it couldn’t fit into the ovens used to quality check a product’s resistance towards sunlight
- The cockpit windshield element in the 7191 X-Wing Fighter is based on a mould for a 4.5-volt battery box from a LEGO train set
- The 24 minifigures and droids included in the 10188 set enable fans to re-enact almost every single scene taking place on the Death Star
- The Zam Wesell minifigure from 7133 Bounty Hunter Pursuit was one of the first minifigures to have double sided face decoration
Timeline: 20 years of LEGO Star Wars nostalgia
- 1998: Licensing agreement with Lucasfilm is signed. This licensing agreement is the first of its kind for the LEGO Group
- February 1999: The launch of LEGO Star Wars is announced at the International Toy Fair in New York by the LEGO Group and Lucasfilm
- 1999: The first new male hair piece in 20 years is designed for Qui-Gon Jinn
- 1999: The first specially designed minifigure head is designed for Jar Jar Binks
- 1999: 13 sets + a LEGO MINDSTORMS Droid Developer Kit were launched
- 2000: Two more advanced sets – #7181 and #7191 – launch the LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collectors Series
- 2000: #7190 included the first version of a Chewbacca minifigure. It was a challenging design, until the design team came up with the idea of creating a head with fur covering the back and front of the torso, which has been used in many minifigure designs since
- 2001: #10018 Darth Maul launches as a set exclusively available on LEGO.com and in LEGO stores – at a whopping 43 centimetres tall!
- 2002: Ewoks, young Boba Fett and Yoda, included in sets #7139, 7153 and 7103, are some of the first LEGO minifigures to have short legs
- 2002: Only 12 elements are required to build the 2002 TIE Fighter #3219. The set is among the early LEGO Star Wars Mini Building Sets launched in the beginning of the new millennium
- 2003: The introduction of more natural skin colours in all licensed products also reach the LEGO Star Wars universe with #10123 Cloud City from 2003
- 2007: #10178 Motorized Walking AT-AT launches. The model can move its head and walk – forward and backward
- 2007: #10179 Ultimate Collector Series Millennium Falcon launches. The biggest LEGO set … for a while
- 2011: The UCS Super Star Destroyer 10221 is launched. With a length of 124cm it is the longest LEGO product ever made
- 2013: The world’s largest LEGO model, a 1:1 replica of the LEGO Star Wars X-Wing starfighter, is revealed in New York’s Times Square. The massive replica took 32 master builders, 5.3m LEGO bricks and over 17,000 hours to complete
- 2014: The trend of constructing tiny, but ever iconic models, re-surfaces with the MICROFIGHTER series. Small enough to fit into a hand – big enough to carry a minifigure
- 2015: The CCBS platform (Character and Creature Building System) with its large-scale buildable figures infiltrates the LEGO Star Wars portfolio from this year onwards
- 2017: #75192 Ultimate Collector Series Millennium Falcon launches – 10 years after its impressive predecessor. It succeeds the previous model by 2344 elements, reaching a total of 7541 pieces
- 2019: Five special 20th anniversary sets featuring iconic ships with exclusive throwback minifigures launch in tribute of the LEGO Star Wars history – a recreation of some of the most iconic and popular sets from the last 20 years
- 2019: Star Wars Episode IX… stay tuned to see what this means for LEGO Star Wars!
Which LEGO Star Wars milestone were you most excited about? What do you want to see from the theme in the future? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
I guess, arguably, the full introduction of natural skin colors didn’t appear in licensed sets until 2004-2005. Lando Calrissian would rather be an exception with the unfortunate implications that all prior yellow-skinned minifigures would represent caucasians.
Looking back on the original 10123 Cloud City box, I notice how heavily marketed the minifigure was on the front cover, as a new minifigure and a fan favorite character.