Tag Archives: The Empire Strikes Back

You can keep your LEGO minifigures. Just bring me Han Solo!

I am absolutely in love with this exquisite LEGO rendition of Hoth-version Han and his tauntaun by Mitch Phillips. Creating the look of fur can be quite challenging when using smooth bricks, and Mitch utilizes nearly every texture in the LEGO arsenal to make it happen, employing rocky pieces, tubes, Bionicle bits, and of course official cloth parts. They all come together to make quite the epic “horse” and rider combo from Empire Strikes Back, full of detail and character while also being highly poseable.

Han and Tauntaun

I am altering your LEGO build. Pray I do not alter it further.

Say what you like about Darth Vader, but he sure has an eye for the dramatic. You’d expect nothing less from a guy who walks around in a cape. Remember when he stopped a laser bolt with his hand in The Empire Strikes Back? If you don’t, Nathan Smith is here to jog your memory with this superbly-framed scene. It makes you wonder how long Vader was waiting there. Was he waiting in that dramatic pose for hours before our heroes arrived? Maybe that’s why he was so sassy when they finally did show up. The Dark Lord of the Sith doesn’t take kindly to tardiness, it seems.

It would be an honor

Causing a ruckus in a LEGO robot Zuckuss

My favourite LEGO theme these days is probably Star Wars, but when I were a nipper that dubious honour went to the mech theme, Exo-Force. Greg Dalink‘s bounty hunter mecha are therefore right up my street. Among others, we’ve had 4-LOM already, but he’s been missing his partner in crime, Zuckuss. Thankfully he is missing no longer! What I love about Greg’s mecha (and there have been a bunch) is how they all have their own individual style, each has something to set it apart. Zuckuss gets a four-legged ride that is a bit more insectoid in nature, and it really suits him. We’d be remiss not to draw attention to that head as well. With curved slopes and a wheel neatly surrounding a CCBS shoulder shell, it’s a real work of art!

"We're putting the band back together, we need you man!'

Dengar’s dangerous in this Dieselpunk dynamo

Greg Dalink is a builder on a mission. For the last couple of years, Greg’s been outfitting the bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back with themed mechs that would make Tony Stark swoon. Greg’s latest proved to be a bit of a challenge. Unlike his fellow bounty hunters, Dengar isn’t a Mandalorian, or a lizard person, or a cool droid. He’s just some dude with some bandages on his head. So Greg kept to Dengar’s color scheme, but let the build move beyond the usual “giant robot version of the character.” The result is a Dieselpunk-style walker with an incredible arsenal on its back – everything from missiles to a couple of old pirate cannons. Now I kinda regret calling Dengar “just a dude with some bandages.” No hard feelings, right, Dengar? Old buddy? Pal? Yikes…

"A Message for Dengar"

For the love of money...and chicken legs

You can be forgiven for barely remembering the droid bounty hunter 4-LOM who boasted roughly one second of screen time in The Empire Strikes Back. But for LEGO builder Greg Dalink, 4-LOM (stands for; For the Love of Money) holds a special place in his heart. He’s working on a series of battle mechs that houses the Star Wars bounty hunter for which it resembles. You know, for when a bounty hunter wants to work more conspicuously. I love the greebly details and overall black and gun-metal color of this mech. The Bionicle shoulder pads make great compound eyes and the breathing device (do droids breathe?) is an amazing touch.

4-LOM Hopper-Class Battle Mech

The best part is the head opens to reveal a 4-LOM minifig driver nestled inside as seen in this photo. It seems 4-LOM loves money and the feeling of being inside himself…or something. Ahem. Just click this Greg Dalink link to see some of the other bounty hunter mechs in action.

4-LOM Hopper-Class Battle Mech

Snowspeeding like it’s 1999

Does this picture look familiar to you? If you answered yes, you’re either student of LEGO box art, or you’re a LEGO Star Wars fan of a certain age. That, or you’re a fan of 2bricks‘s work. Not content with building an iconic Star Wars vehicle, they’ve gone ahead and replicated the box art for the original snowspeeder, released in the very late ’90s. The resemblance is uncanny, and very well executed – even the AT-AT leg in the background is made of bricks. Let’s take nothing away from the speeder though! The way all those angles come together at the front is just *chef’s kiss*. Nostalgia be damned – this is some upgrade compared to 1999!

Recreating the 1999 Lego Snowspeeder box art using my MOC

Just a few pieces create an epic scene.

Aido Kessler knows that LEGO can be an expensive hobby. As piece counts in official sets continue to rise, so too does the price of the sets. Heck, I paid less for my first car than I did for certain Star Wars sets on display in my house. That’s why it’s so nice of Aido to remind us that you don’t always need a lot of bricks to stage an epic build. Here, Aido has recreated the iconic Battle of Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back with scarcely more than a dozen pieces. It’s a budget build that’s big on blockbuster action.

Budget Hoth

This Adidas Originals AT-AT was pretty much a shoo-in feature

You may have heard that The LEGO Group came out with the official Adidas Originals Superstar set. Well, it was only a matter of time before someone built their own creations inspired by the iconic sneaker. Henry Gouw answered the call of duty and is a comfy fit for the kind of stuff we like around here. Here we see the Adidas Superstar is a perfect shoo-in for the body of the AT-AT Walker from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. This is certainly keeping in step with the icons represented in both franchises. So why would we pass up a feature in which the puns just write themselves? We don’t! You’re welcome.

LEGO 75296 Star Wars Darth Vader Meditation Chamber available for pre-order now [News]

LEGO just unveiled the latest adult playset from Star Wars featuring Darth Vader’s Meditation Chamber. The set comes with 663 pieces, a Darth Vader and General Veers minifigure. The set is available for preorder now (limit of 2 pieces per order) and retailing at US $69.99 | CAN $99.99 | UK £59.99 and will ship on August 1st 2021.

Click to take a closer look at the set details

New LEGO Star Wars busts revealed: 75276 Stormtrooper and 75277 Boba Fett [News]

LEGO continues to pursue the adult market with its range of Star Wars sets, and today we’re getting a look at two more unique display pieces, 75276 Stormtrooper and 75277 Boba Fett. The pair of busts was revealed by retailer Toysanta earlier today, and each features upscale box art in a style that’s new to the LEGO Star Wars lineup, with the character’s name displayed prominently across the top. Both sets celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, which was released in 1980, and feature the anniversary logo on the box.

There’s no word yet on when to expect these to hit stores or their official pricing, though Toysanta’s prices seem to indicate they’ll retail for around $70-$80 USD. Of course, this isn’t the first time LEGO has produced character busts from Star Wars. Recently the company has launched two similar (though smaller) sets, each available in a limited market. The 75227 Darth Vader Bust was available only to Target Red Card holders, while 77901 Sith Trooper Bust was only given away to randomly selected attendees at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019. We don’t know yet what the availability for these sets will be, but we hope that LEGO does the right thing and makes them widely available. Going way back, the much larger 10018 Darth Maul bust from 2001 was among the first LEGO Star Wars sets targeted at adult fans.

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This AT-AT’s hull is too strong for blasters

The Battle of Hoth is a popular scene to recreate with LEGO, and there are multiple versions of it as fan creations as well as official LEGO sets. My new favourite take on the battle has got to be Fuku Saku’s Assault on Hoth. He’s got all the essential elements: a snowspeeder, an AT-AT, and most importantly, a snow! On top of that, he’s built a turret representing Echo Base, a probe droid from before the battle, and an AT-ST coming up from behind.
Assault on Hoth
The designs on the vehicles are spectacular, the AT-AT in particular. For one, it actually looks armoured. On top of that, all the right details are present, such as the side hatches. It even has interior detail and space for snowtroopers to actually be transported. The overall attention to detail in the entire battle scene is on point – it’s not often that blaster bolts are built into LEGO models, flying through the air. But they’re included here, and it really feels like there’s a battle going on.

Functions

Breaking News: deadbeat dad ruins kid’s life, hand

A Tatooine man known as Darth Vader has ruined his son Luke’s life and chopped off his hand, sources told our reporters last Monday. This creation by Joffre Zheng depicted the scene immediately after the lightsaber duel on Bespin where Vader and Skywalker took the kerfuffle onto a dangerous overhang. After slicing off Luke’s hand, a portion of guardrail and some other mechanical doodads, the two exchanged heated words. Vader had reportedly goaded Skywalker about the power of the Dark Side before revealing that he was his father.

I'm your father

Unbelieving that such a deadbeat could be his dad, Luke jumped hundreds of feet then slid down what might have been a garbage shoot. He later emerged, clinging to a radio antenna beneath Bespin’s superstructure. Skywalker was later rescued on board the Millennium Falcon by his friends Chewbacca, Princess Leia Organa, and Lando Calrissian. “The kid was bummed”, Calrissian told our reporters. “Like, totally bummed, man.” Authorities were not called to the scene of the incident, and it was reported that alcohol was not involved. At press time Skywalker had also learned that Leia Organa was his sister, making the passionate kiss they shared earlier quite awkward indeed.