jdubbs

Yes but that announcement came long after the original Jedi Council MOC was submitted and rejected, at which point you could still submit designs based on Star Wars, LotR, etc.

An ESB-themed minifig selection in the UCS Falcon also helps differentiate it from the previous UCS Falcon. And there aren't many opportunities for exclusive or elusive minifigs if you stick to ANH characters... Luke, Obi, R2, 3PO, Han and Chewie are all available in abundance, leaving ANH Leia and maybe Luke w/Blast Shield Helmet as the only desirable minifigs. Versus an ESB Falcon which could include blue jacket Han w/breathing mask, Hoth Leia w/breathing mask, potentially even Battle-Damaged Bespin Luke, Blue Lando, Medical Frigate Lando, etc.

In a vacuum, you're right, it doesn't prove anything. But there have been rumors from multiple sources for months now that a new UCS Falcon is coming, and among them are reports that it would be the largest LEGO set ever produced, arrive in the fall, be absurdly expensive, be polarizing, and even that it would cost... $799. So, the Lego Store screen cap of a UCS set for $799 coming this fall (assuming it is authentic) is consistent with some of those rumors, and thus looks like tacit confirmation.

There are about a dozen stickers on the UCS Slave I. They're almost all subtle (weathering, texture, etc.) and not-that-essential to apply.

Price-per-piece on the larger Star Wars sets (including UCS) from 2016 and 2017 has been consistently 11-12¢. Unless it deviates substantially from this pricing, a $799 UCS Falcon would have in the neighborhood of 6500-7000 pieces. By comparison, the 2007 UCS Falcon had 5197 pieces (at just under 10¢ per piece). But then again, the $799 price could be complete fiction. As could be the entire set.

Right, but I was already factoring in the higher price-per-piece that LEGO SW sets now command... if you do a strict calculation of the last 10 years' inflation, a $500 set from 2007 would today be around $585, with no adjustment for how TLG prices their Star Wars line. I rounded up to $650 based on TLG's price bump for the UCS Death Star, which went from $400 in 2008 to $500 in 2016 (when, solely accounting for inflation, it would have bumped to ~$460). Which means a $799 2017 UCS Falcon would likely have substantially more pieces than the model that sold in 2007 for $499. But who knows...

Most UCS sets stay on the market for about 2 years. There are exceptions... the original UCS Death Star playset was on the market for 8 years before receiving a modest facelift last fall... it has proven to be perennially popular with kids so it could stay on the market for years to come. On the other hand, the second UCS X-Wing only lasted 18 months or so. In theory the UCS Slave I is due to be retired next (it is the oldest on the market, having been released 28 months ago) but if it's still selling well, it could outlast the UCS TIE Fighter or even the much-maligned Assault on Hoth. When it is retired, there should be several months' notice... big box retailers will start to mark it down (first 10%, then 20%) then shop.lego.com will label it as "retiring soon," and a month or so later it will be gone.

The original UCS Falcon was something of an anomaly... no other UCS set reached that level of insane pricing (up to 10x original cost) on the secondary market... so I'm not sure that its reissue is really going to change the way people buy and resell their sets. Anyone buying LEGO sets (UCS or otherwise) as investment purchases already has to realize that their resale value follows a bell curve over time... you can see this every time a redesigned set is announced... 3-4 months ago older-model UCS Death Stars and A-Wings flooded eBay, just as Episode II Jedi Starfighters and UCS Snowspeeders and Falcons are now. The resale value of all these older sets will crater once updated models are released. This is off-topic, I know. Mea culpa. On-topic, if we take the $799 price tag as fairly reliable at this point, and you do the math to account for 10 years' inflation, that would seem to indicate a higher piece-count than the previous UCS Falcon. Adjusting for inflation, a straight repack of the original $499 (US) set would be ±$649 today. If the new set is indeed $150 more than that, that gives hope that we might see an interior or an underside. Or TLG is just screwing us because they can.

Anything's possible, and I'd buy a battle pack containing most any combination of Cantina characters, including Wolfman. It's fun to speculate, but it's a lonnnnng way off; the Bounty Hunters pack isn't even out yet! I also think a battle pack of characters from Jabba's Palace would be nice. While I have all the Jabba's characters that have been previously released, I'd always welcome another Gammorean Guard, and Squidhead seems way overdue.

Looking at the Bounty Hunters set, they only did one new head mold... if that's true of a Cantina battle pack, I'd vote for Ponda Baba above anyone else. Even though I already have five Bith for my Cantina, the set originally only came with three, so I'm guessing a lot of collectors would welcome the chance to get another. The Wolf guy was cut from the Special Edition, if that counts for anything.

If this summer's Bounty Hunters battle pack sells well, I think a Cantina-themed battle pack would be a strong candidate for 2018 or 2019. Most likely a combination of previously-released characters/molds (Hammerhead, Bith, Greedo) and new ones... Ponda Baba and Dr. Evanza would likely be high on the list.

I concur. And I really doubt anyone who values his/her job would be so smug when creating product marketing materials — even internal ones — at a highly visible, consumer-facing company like TLG.

As long as there are new movies being released every year, we're not going to see more than 3 or 4 prequels-era sets per year. And if the last two years are any indication, the minifigs in those sets will be predominantly hero-oriented and/or rehashes of previously-released characters. That said, I think a Duel on Mustafar set with Anakin, Obi and Padme would be a good choice for one of those sets, that could easily be released in the next year or so.

I too would recommend the Slave I of all the current sets... it has more interesting features and details than the TIE, which was a bit repetitive to build. But I'd also recommend the B-Wing first, if you can find one reasonably priced. According to TLG reps, B-Wings don't sell well so I doubt we'll ever see a UCS reissue of it.

We are getting two smallish Clone Wars sets this year — Yoda's Jedi Starfighter and the Republic Fighter Tank — which is more than I would have expected given how long the show has been off the air. Compare this to Rebels, which has only one small set this year... and it's still on the air. I suspect this says as much about the unpopularity of Rebels sets as it says about the enduring popularity of Clone Wars sets...

I think you will find that reissues/redesigns of existing sets — especially larger ones like the Republic Gunship — will stretch further and further apart. By the end of this year we'll have jumped from 6 to 9 movies (and then to 11 movies by 2019), not to mention Rebels, Freemaker, and whatever animated show follows Rebels in 2018. While Star Wars is an evergreen line for LEGO and clearly very successful, there are only so many product slots available each year, and a rapidly growing list of sets that can fill them. And looking at prequel-era sets, I suspect we'll see an updated ARC-170 before a Gunship, given it's been considerably longer since it was released.

I think the issue here is that TLG is clearly capable of better. Building techniques have evolved considerably and there are a ton of specialized parts now available to produce more accurate representations of ship designs, even in smaller, kid-focused sets. This feels like someone phoned it in from a decade ago. I don't expect perfection in non-UCS sets, but I do expect TLG to continually improve upon what they've previously released.... take the Rogue One AT-ST for example: it's not perfect by a long shot, but it is head and tails better than the previous scout walker. Obviously, scale has to get fudged a bit in any set, but there are ways to do so without compromising design. The First Order Troop Transport is about ⅔ the length it should be, but it still looks like the in-movie design. Having said all that, the hyperspace ring is fine, though I'm hoping the clear grip is removable for display purposes... I for one will probably pick this up once it goes on sale and hope that enough people post MODs to fix the engorged cockpit and diminutive wings.

Disappointing. The hunchbacked cockpit and undersized wings totally throw off the proportions. What's with the clear support pieces on the lower half of the ring? Did the previous hyperspace ring have those?

While I don't have the original UCS Falcon, I do have the UCS Star Destroyer and UCS Tantive IV. I would be very happy to see either of those redone, as well as a new UCS Falcon. I don't really care which comes first as long as they all get modern builds in the next few years. Between its appearances in Rebels, Rogue One, and the 40th Anniversary of Star Wars, I would have thought the Tantive IV had the best shot at UCS treatment this year, but all signs seem to be pointing to the Falcon.

Best peanut butter ever.

Given the blowback that the Jabba's Palace set apparently received, I doubt another one is coming any time soon. Another Jabba's Sail Barge is probably inevitable, but the last one was fairly recent... and with all the additional movies being released, the interval between rehashes of larger sets will only grow. The last Sail Barge was almost as long as the UCS Sandcrawler, so I wouldn't expect a UCS Sail Barge to be scaled more than 1.5x the last version of it. If they did a UCS version of it, I am guessing they would follow the Sandcrawler model and incorporate play/action features and lots of minifigs to appeal to kids, rather than focus solely on detail (which there isn't actually that much of on the barge)... There is also the question of whether TLG would even bother with a UCS Sail Barge, because they tend to favor builds that present a construction challenge, which isn't really the case with the Sail Barge. Most here tend to believe the next UCS set will be the Millennium Falcon. If that actually pans out, I expect the UCS set that follows it would be small ($100-200) since the Falcon is rumored to be the most expensive set ever released. An A-Wing seems the logical choice, since it hasn't yet received the UCS treatment and would break the cycle of UCS rehashes (and would probably sell for $150, if scaled similarly to the UCS X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Snowspeeder, etc.)

Everyone thought it was fake because it was fake. And confirmed as such every which way.

Sounds like a non-denial denial to me... but maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Did they actually use the word "re-release"? Because if it's a new Falcon UCS set they're planning, that wouldn't technically be a re-release.

I’m not 100% convinced that this is the case. Yes, Hasbro has an exclusive license to market posable Star Wars action figures in certain sizes… 3.75”, 6”, 12” (which they actually surrendered at some point to another company), but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have the exclusive license to produce any figure in any size. After all, TLG’s Star Wars license clearly covers its larger buildable figures, which are sold independently. And, TLG does release solo minifigs in polybags as promotional giveaways (which are sometimes sold in Lego Stores, if I’m not mistaken?) The point of all this is to say, it may be that TLG simply doesn’t want to sell individual Star Wars minifigs on a regular basis. Its Star Wars line is evergreen, and TLG has to manage it for the long haul… unlike, say, The Simpsons or The LEGO Batman Movie. The minifigs included in Star Wars sets are key sales drivers for those sets… releasing characters individually could easily cannibalize sales of future sets, or make it harder to put together compelling sets if the minifigs have already been released solo. Also consider that the polybag-based Minifigures Series have mostly been “deluxe” minifigs with unique or uncommon parts, accessories, etc. There aren’t all that many Star Wars characters that benefit from this kind of treatment…