Lego Star Wars anniversary sets celebrate 20 years of tiny space battles

Lego and Lucasfilm quietly released five new special edition Lego Star Wars sets earlier this month, in anticipation of the collection’s 20th anniversary and this weekend’s Star Wars Celebration.

The Lego Star Wars line was announced at the 1999 International Toy Fair and released on April 9 of that year. Those first sets mainly featured scenes and characters from Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, which hit theaters that summer, but five of the 13 new kits were based on George Lucas’ original trilogy.

Since the spring of 1999, the Lego Star Wars brand has expanded exponentially. Lego has released over 700 Star Wars sets, including the biggest Lego kit ever, a whopping 7,541- piece Ultimate Collector Series Millennium Falcon. Lego Star Wars characters later migrated to video games and TV mini-series; Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon even made a cameo in The Lego Movie.

The Lego Group

In a blog post announcing the new collection, Lego revealed a bunch of fun facts about its 20-year-old collaboration with Lucasfilm. Some gems: The Jar Jar Binks minifigure was the first to get a unique Lego head sculpt; the 10188 Death Star set had enough minifigures to reenact almost every scene set on the moon-sized space station; and the 10179 Millennium Falcon prototype had to spend a day in a sauna since it was too large to fit in Lego’s heat-resistance testing oven.

For the anniversary collection, Lego is bringing back classic sets from throughout its 20-year history, including special edition minifigures based on their original iterations. Two of the five sets are recreations of original 1999 models: the Empire Strikes Back Snowspeeder and Anakin’s Podracer from The Phantom Menace.

The Lego 20th Anniversary Collection is available now at Amazon, Walmart, Target, and the Lego Store. They range in price from $19.99 for a 125-piece Imperial Dropship to $119.97 for Boba Fett’s Slave 1. Each set includes a bonus limited-edition minifigure with a 20th Anniversary stand. Check ‘em all out below!

Grid View

• Lego Star Wars Slave 1 set — $119.97 The Lego Group
• Lego Star Wars Clone Scout Walker set — $23.99 The Lego Group
• Lego Star Wars Snowspeeder set — $31.99 The Lego Group
• Lego Star Wars Anakin’s Podracer set — $23.99 The Lego Group
• Lego Star Wars Imperial Dropship set — $19.99 The Lego Group