Eight years after breaking every record with an $800, 7,541-piece Star Wars Millennium Falcon, the Lego Group is introducing its first $1,000 set.
It’s an intricately detailed Death Star nearly two feet tall (52.3cm), a foot and a half wide (48cm) and over a foot (38.3cm) deep, with enough compartments to re-enact nearly every iconic Death Star scene from Star Wars and Return of the Jedi.
We’ve never seen a Lego set anywhere near this expensive. When the $999.99, €999.99 or £899.99 price and images leaked in July, many wondered how the Lego Group could possibly justify such a price for plastic toys!
Well, I’m here to tell you the company has been doing better than ever — record revenue and record profits outpacing the whole toy industry — ever since it started catering to nostalgic, deep pocketed adults and letting its prices and piece counts climb.
“$850 Millennium Falcons and $680 Titanics: Grown-Ups Are Now a Gold Mine for Lego,” The Wall Street Journal wrote last year. “Lego bricks have won over adults, growing its $10 billion toy market foothold,” added Fortune, writing that roughly 15 percent of Lego’s sets are aimed at adults. In my experience, that isn’t just because adults like to play with minifigs. Building is a relaxing diversion, a way to de-stress, and then you have a piece of home decor and a sense of accomplishment when you’re done.
But whether you’re looking for decor or a playset, this Death Star looks like an incredible one.
Instead of offering a spherical Death Star like earlier, blockier playsets, the new Ultimate Collectors Series (UCS) Death Star is a vertical slice, a diorama set like the Batcave Shadowbox that can live on a shelf with all rooms visible at once.
Almost every iconic scene is accounted for here, from the hangar bay where Darth Vader and a squad of stormtroopers can greet the Emperor arriving in the included Imperial Shuttle, to the detention block AA-23 shootout and escape, to the garbage compactor scare, to the comms room where R2-D2 and C-3PO wait and helpfully shut that compactor down.
Meanwhile, Vader can find a disturbing lack of faith in the conference room, Obi-Wan Kenobi can go tackle the tractor beam, while Luke and Leia swing across the chasm overhead; you get superlaser targeting and control rooms for Leia to give up Dantooine, and a turbolift to take minifigs to each of six different levels. Then, Luke can have his Return of the Jedi showdown with Vader and the Emperor and his Red Guards in his throne room at the end.
Luke and Han can also be multiple places simultaneously: the 38 minifigures include both “aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper” and Return of the Jedi versions of Luke as well as his original outfit, plus Stormtrooper and traditional vest versions of Han. Lego says there’s even a stormtrooper in a hot tub as an easter egg.
As excited as I am, I’m afraid it’s too rich for my blood, but I won’t echo some complaints that Lego isn’t even giving us a full spherical Death Star for $1,000.
I would prefer it this way, if it didn’t cost so much — because unlike the $850 Millennium Falcon, I could actually fit it in my home. Even though there isn’t enough room inside the hangar bay for a minifig-scale Millennium Falcon, or a full platoon of Stormtroopers, I can place them right next to this set and imagine they’re enclosed within — just like I’d imagine the rest of the Death Star’s reactor shaft after I send the Emperor over the railing to his doom.
The UCS Death Star will go up for sale on October 1st for Lego Insiders (it’s a free signup) or October 4th for everyone else. There’s a chance for Lego Insiders to win one starting today by spending 50 rewards points, and there’s a “while supplies last” promo gift for the first buyers: a “set with a Tie Fighter with Imperial Hanger Rack.”
The Death Star isn’t the biggest Lego set ever made — that’s the Art World Map or the Eiffel Tower or the Titanic, depending on how you measure — but it does have the most mini-figs.
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Here is Lego’s $1,000 Death Star, the most expensive Lego set ever