Enjoy the Silence(r) – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, October 2022

Time flies as fast as a TIE Fighter and so here we are again at it with the LEGO Star Wars magazine only four short weeks after the last one. This is because next weeks holiday weekend here in Germany is messing with the calendar and release schedule, so we’re getting the October issue almost one week earlier.

The comics are getting a bit concerning. Every second one of them is in some way ridiculing Darth Vader and Blue Ocean really need to stop it. It’s not that everything needs to be dead serious and strict to canon, but these “Vader is bored and messes up his surroundings” stories are really reaching a level of nonsense where it’s hard to enjoy them if you’re not a three year old.

The secondary comic follows in a similar vein and makes even Kylo Ren look bad and the empire once more like a congregation of morons.

The posters have a distinct 1970s early 1980s vibe with striped patterns, but don’t quite mange to pull it off. The back side with Obi Wan is a bit better than the front with Vader, though.

The extra is Kylo Ren‘s TIE Silencer from The Rise of Skywalker where it gets sliced to pieces by Rey. The model more or less follows the standard build pattern for these vessels we have seen so many times, but swaps out shorter panels for more elongated ones. Just like the Mandalorian Starfighter it uses the new 2 x 6 wedge plates, this time in Black of course, so if you don’t have any yet, here’s a good way to start adding some to your parts collection.

The extra once more saves the day, but otherwise this isn’t a great issue. There’s very little to gawk at and beyond the “I buy it every month, anyway.” There’s really not much to say about it. There’s just nothing standing out.

Blue Trooper – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, March 2022

The craziness of current events makes time fly even faster plus there’s still some slight disarray in Blue Ocean‘s publishing schedule, so it’s little surprise that it feels like the last issue of the LEGO Star Wars magazine only came out two weeks ago.

The comics are really getting a bit stale and weirder by the mile with the March 2022 edition of the mag having yet another spin at Vader engaging in extracurricular activities outside his evil overlord duties. I can hardly believe that anyone finds this truly funny and this can only be excused as being aimed at children who might not know better or don’t care. Still, I wish this would be more connected to the actual goings-ons in the Star Wars universe and have a more serious tone.

The secondary comic takes a similar spin, but again it’s not really funny.

The posters are pretty good this time. The first one depicts six of the Knights of Ren in a nicely arranged table. this time, however, the second poster on the reverse side takes the cake, showing a chase scene on Hoth with a Wampa going after our heroes. There’s even a Tauntaun and the power station in the background. With the exception of the Wampa perhaps looking a bit too much like a red-nosed Yeti the poster is very well drawn with a dynamic camera angle and an overall pleasant composition and style.

The extra is a Storm Trooper minifigure, but not any kind of trooper. It’s one of the more special ones of the 501st Legion. This got a few people’s underwear in a twist when it was previewed in the last issue and while it’s always nice to have a few more of these guys, the 501st Legion Clone Troopers (75280) set is still widely available and with discounts, making this only the second best option to bolster your troops. Unlike with some more exclusive figures from expensive sets (see Palpatine’s grand appearance) there’s no reason to storm the newsstand and buy entire stacks of the magazine just to get enough of the troopers.

The posters and extra are really this issue’s saving grace. Otherwise it devolves a bit too much into cheap comic relief territory, which I think doesn’t really befit Star Wars. not everything needs to be doom & gloom, but at least they should not ridicule central characters so much in my opinion. How do Disney/ Lucasfilm even let them get away with this? *sigh*

Falcon Chase – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, February 2022

January flew by quickly and the jumbled up release schedule of the LEGO magazines certainly contributed to that feeling of “Didn’t I write an article just last week?”. Things should be a bit more predictable from here on out, though, and the cycles become more regular. For now let’s have a look at the February 2022 edition of the Star Wars magazine.

The main comic is back to utter nonsense with the Knights of Ren having a pie (throwing) contest. I really do not like these settings and I’m sure even younger Star Wars fans may not view them favorably, given that they are too silly to fit with the rest of the universe. The secondary comic is equally odd, though in a different way. just not my cup of tea.

The posters are pretty decent. I still wish they’d forego those obnoxious texts in favor of letting the image speak for itself, but at least they didn’t plaster the slogan all over Vader‘s face and everything can be recognized clearly.

The extra is another version of the Millenium Falcon. It’s a bit too short, but actually pretty accurate overall in terms of proportions. It being so thin took me a while to adapt to, but yes, this is more correct. One just had gotten so used to LEGO‘s “wrong” thicker interpretations across various scales and on older builds.

An interesting tidbit is the half round 4 x 8 plate used twice in the rear section. This element has been around for forever and I have tons of it in Lime Green and Medium Azure from Friends sets, where it is regularly used for water and lawn, but in fact now is the first time ever we are actually getting it in Light Bluish Grey. It’s part of the UCS AT-AT (75313) and the Boutique Hotel (10297) released end of last year/ January, respectively, and here you get a chance to obtain it without spending a ton of money, should you want it. This will also make buying it from secondary markets like Bricklink much more bearable and less costly. There’s also two 1 x 2 plates with side rail in Dark Red hidden inside the hull. I have a few of them from the Madrigal House (43202), but one can never have enough, I suppose.

Despite the strange comics this issue felt satisfying to me, but of course that may be entirely down to my obsessive proclivities with the parts and some of the graphical design. Still, it’s by all means okay.

Hothian Winter – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, January 2022

Wouldn’t you believe it? We actually had a bit of snow on Christmas this year! Really only a thin layer, but better than nothing. That makes it kind of fitting that the January 2022 issue of the LEGO Star Wars magazine takes us back to Hoth and its snow and ice covered regions.

The first comic starts out on the opposite side of the temperature spectrum, though, taking us to the jungle planet of Quatal after Luke crashes there. Naturally, as he tries to escape and get off the planet, the usual running away from imperial pursuers and dangerous animals ensues. The blue monster seen in the image is a bit funny and really looks to me like the artist had a bit of fun  exploring what a mutated Stitch (from the Lilo & Stitch movies, of course) might look like. The similarities are really striking and I can’t un-see them.

The second comic references the extra and is based around a group of Snowtroopers getting lost in the endless white void during the Battle of Hoth.

The posters are a bit of a misfire, unfortunately. The one depicted here with Darth Vader is simply too dark and the overly bright type and light saber completely distract from Vader himself. This clearly would have needed some work to enhance the contrast and balance out the overall appearance. The second with Han Solo and Chewbacca in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon suffers from being doctored, i.e. the cockpit frame being just a 2D background artwork created after the fact instead of being integrally rendered in 3D with the figures.

The extra has been causing a bit of a stir and gotten a few people very tizzy due to it being being a female Snowtrooper/ Snowtrooperess minifigure. Not only is the latter an interesting tidbit, with all previous such characters having had the male generic “angry clone” face (or unprinted black heads), but also the fact that this lady otherwise could only be found in the huge UCS AT-AT (75313) only released in November. Considering that this big model has a full 40 seats and only a few of them are covered with minifigures, clearly there is a market to buy more – a lot more. People lucky enough to be able to afford this certainly should make it a point to buy this magazine once at least.

The value of this issue for adults hugely depends on how much you are after the minifigure, but on the bright side at least the comics are pretty decent and can give a bit of enjoyment. the rest isn’t really worth mentioning with a lot of bad Photoshop work hurting my eyes and the activities and puzzles being bland. I would predict, however, that the minifigure alone will be attractive to anyone owning an AT-AT model, big or small, and thus sell stacks and stacks of this issue…

Wheely Tank – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, October 2021

I’ve been out of town for a few days, so I’m a bit late with my article, but I guess two days isn’t that bad and there’s still plenty of time to get the latest LEGO Star Wars magazine should you decide that what you see here is to your liking.

In the main comic Vader once again becomes the subject of ridicule in a weird chase across planets while at the same time being busy with homemaking and his ambitions as the TV star in his own show. Whether you like it is of course up to you, but I’m just puzzled by them taking such liberties even if you concede that not everything to do with the black man needs to be doom & gloom.

The secondary comic inevitably connects with the extra, the Clone Turbo Tank or Heavy Assault Vehicle HAV A6 as it is called more correctly, even if in fact it is more of a glorified infantry troop transporter like the Russian BTR-80, not an actual tank or truck-based vehicle.

The poster is one of those situations where the disconnect between the original artwork and the slapped-on text becomes evident. Of course they do so to produce the localized versions for different countries/ regions, but my feeling is that a simple “501st”, possibly with the battalion’s crest would have worked better with the specific point being that the lettering cuts off too much of the helmet.

Other LEGO magazines from Blue Ocean have been doing it for a while already and it seems that the Star Wars one is now following suit and also offering coloring pages. Whether this will become a permanent fixture remains to be seen, of course. for an October issue it is more than adequate to have a Halloween them and Grievous with his many Jack-O-Lantern buckets is a fitting subject, if a tad on the small-ish side. Your kids will be done with it rather fast and the few simple puzzles on the preceding pages won’t extend the time they are occupied by much.

The extra is the aforementioned Turbo Tank in miniature form. The vehicle itself never struck me as particularly attractive, so I never took much interest in the bigger LEGO versions with their somewhat flimsy and lofty construction, making this my first rendition of this vehicle. It can be seen quite a bit in Attack of the Clones and the Clone Wars series and plays some role there, but as a lightly armed support vehicle it doesn’t really do that much.

The model is okay, though I wish they had settled on a different approach for the wheels. Maybe it might be time they produced a plastic wheel mimicking small tires like this one to represent the ones used on the larger models. The Dark Bluish Grey 2 x 2 round bricks of which you get ten (!) just with this model are serviceable, but just don’t look particularly believable. Other than that there is a number of other pieces in greys and Black such as this T-shaped bracket and a bunch of different slopes. All usable stuff, just nothing too extraordinary.

Overall this is a well-rounded issue that manages to convince on multiple fronts, give or take a few minor criticisms. There have definitely been a lot worse editions in the past and you’re getting a good value for your money here, in particular with the model turning out larger than average due to it using some voluminous parts.

Ketchup Trooper – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, August 2021

This month feels like it has passed particularly quickly and so here we are already again with the latest LEGO Star Wars magazine for August.

The comics are again a bit of an acquired taste as it’s back to weird clownery by the evil guys, this time Kylo Ren and Palpatine, and mixing scenarios from different episodes and eras of Star Wars. It’s a bit odd that they keep doing that, as Blue Ocean actually recently did their own survey which indicated that around 44% of all of their magazines are read by adults. I would bet this number is even higher for this one. So perhaps they really need to “grow up”, shift the target age range towards adolescents and grown-ups and stick to canon?

Anyway, the comics are not bad stylistically and the secondary one provides a comical, though rather low-brow and predictable explanation as to why Sith Troopers wear red armor. Sandwiched inbetween the two comics are of course a few other pages with puzzles, games, reader feedback and so on, but really nothing special. The games may occupy two pages at times, but ultimately they are still simple “find the way” puzzles, not demanding trivia quizzes.

At least one of the posters could have been pretty good, the main one depicted here, but I feel that they went a bit overboard with the vignette/ darkening effect. It very much sucks out the life of everything. Even the lightsabers aren’t really glowing. If I were to put it up I’d likely at least cut off a bit of the dark areas to make it pop a little more.

The minifigures are a case of old meeting the new with the Finn character being a version included e.g. in the Jakku Quadjumper (75178), one of the first sets I reviewed here on this blog. The Sith Trooper on the other hand is from last year’s eponymous battle pack (75266). As always with these things, the value of these figures to you personally will depend on what you have in mind and how much you are a fan of a given Star Wars film. Since The Rise of Skywalker wasn’t that popular with fans, though, I doubt there’s that much demand for additional red troopers, either.

This issue is a bit of a wild ride again and doesn’t have a recognizable through-line nor does it boast anything extraordinary that you shouldn’t miss. As such it will still provide a bit of diversion on the beach during your summer holiday and the sand may even tempt you into re-playing some Jakku scenes, but overall you’re not missing much. Nothing to lose sleep about if you should be unable to obtain this item while away from home…

Jedi Dart – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, June 2021

Things are slowly looking up for the Corona pandemic, but everyone still has to be careful, so getting your LEGO fix is still not easy. That’s why I enjoy my little excursions to the newsstand even more, be that just as a means of getting to build a small model once a week. That is also the case for this months LEGO Star Wars magazine, technically the June 2021 edition.

The main comic is again of the slightly weirder type with the Mos Eisley Cantina band having been transplanted into some sort of other musical venue and the blue guy, Rebo, being chased by Boba Fett. Aside from the plain strangeness of the concept it unfortunately looks rather sterile and empty, not just  because of the blue colors. It kind of fails on both fronts, that is idea and execution. The other, shorter comic as usual ties in the extra, which is Obi-Wan‘s Jedi Starfighter, and is much more vibrant and vivid, though equally crazy.

The posters are okay-ish with the primary one taking a stab at the original Drew Struzan movie poster style from the 1970s made so famous by Star Wars, Indiana Jones and many other films. The backside poster is at least interesting in that it depicts the three different Darth Vader minifigure helmet styles we’ve gotten so far, but otherwise doesn’t offer much.

The already mentioned Jedi Starfighter extra is serviceable, just a bit on the sparse side. That’s not entirely LEGO‘s fault, though, as even the original is skinny as a paper plane. Still, I feel they could have added some more elements for the central fuselage. Also the whole thing is pretty apparently much too short, so just throwing in some more of them wedge plates could have made a difference. Interestingly, the 1 x 1 studs used for the engine exhaust rings are in Pearl Dark Grey, not he more common Flat Silver, so minor as it may be, it’s at least something special.

This is pretty much a very average issue. Not really bad, but not particularly exciting, either.

TIE Bombastic – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, May 2021

After last month’s surprisingly nice V-Wing edition, we’re now back in more mundane territory with the latest issue of the LEGO Star Wars magazine for May 2021.

That level of ordinary is true both for the model (more on it later) as well as the rest of the content. Where we got a nice comic that actually made some sense in the lore of the greater Star Wars universe, it’s now back to weird hijinx with Darth Vader. It’s almost tragic how such an iconic character gets ridiculed over and over.

Apart from the comic there is little to nothing to do. Aside from the many advertisements/ advertorials sprinkled in, there are literally only two (!) pages of activities, one with a labyrinth and the other with a “find the match” puzzle. The posters are okay in the grand scheme of things, I guess, but of course do not compare to the graphical finesse of the ones in the last two issues and therefore certainly feel like a step down.

The TIE Bomber mini model pretty much follows the standard pattern of every other such model and I’m slowly beginning to really be offended by the low effort. In particular the inverted sloped bracket pieces are getting on my nerves as they really look extremely unattractive. If at least they had prints for the radiator patterns! Similarly, the double fuselage looks underwhelming with its all too obvious cylindrical pieces. I really feel they need to sit down and come up with a new way to build these vessels.

Say what you will, but this is simply a lame issue. You can totally skip over this without even feeling the slightest bit guilty over having missed something. i seriously hope the next edition will turn out better and gets me more pumped… 

V is Victory? – LEGO Star Wars Magazine, April 2021

WordPress are driving me crazy with their forced transition to the Blocks editor, so bear with me if some things look a bit wonky. As an old school WP user I’m still too much used to working within a theme’s design rules and this new-fangled stuff takes some getting used to. Anyway, here we go again with the LEGO Star Wars magazine, this time for April 2021.

Unlike the wildly fictional concoctions in the last few issues, the comic is a bit more relatable again this time, depicting several encounters Yoda had/ has while roaming the forests of Dagobah. This is very akin to Luke‘s training in The Empire Strikes Back with all sorts of dangerous creatures and a force representation of Darth Vader also making an appearance. Of course there are some liberties here, but at least I like to believe that’s how it could have happened. I’m not an advocate of strict canon, but familiarity and adherence to existing the lore and rules of the Star Wars universe is always a bonus.

The posters deserve praise this month. Not only are they stylistically similar to the Storm Trooper chart from last month, but also both of them are actually good. To top it off, they even tell a story with Luke and Vader facing each other as exploded minifigures. Of course the downside to that is that you will actually have to buy two magazines if you want to put up both posters in the way depicted here.

The extra is a V-Wing fighter. Don’t ask me too much, as I have yet to manage to actually consistently watch The Clone Wars and catch up with its story and details, but apparently these fighters appear quite a lot there and are kind of important. Otherwise LEGO might have glossed over them and not done several models, obviously. as far as I know this is the first time it has been done as such a mini-model, though, so it’s something new.

The build is not particularly elaborate, but seems to capture the shapes well enough. The highlight are of course the Dark Red shield tiles, which so far only have appeared in the UCS A-Wing Starfighter (75275) and the smaller LEGO Super Heroes Hulkbuster (76164) set, making them a bit of a rarity item. The same goes for the curved slope, though it isn’t quite as scarce. On top of it you get five (!) full left/ right pairs of the 2 x 4 wedge tiles in Light Bluish Grey. Not a bad yield for such a small model!

On a funny side note, I was immediately reminded of Nintendo‘s Starfox games when I accidentally whacked the vertical air foils out of alignment. The details would need some refinement, naturally, but it’s surprising how similar the fighters look.

On the whole this is a fantastic issue providing some good value. A decent comic, some superb posters and a model that despite its simplicity looks cool. what more can you ask for? The only thing where it falls short is the activities/ puzzles, which are few and far inbetween…