Beyond its iconically adorable minifigures, Lego can be sometimes up or down when it comes to capturing a character’s likeness in brick-built form. Over the past few years, the company has tried, over various lines, to step aside and focus on replicas of helmets and masks. But now they’re doing something different for Star Wars… and well, take a look at the results for yourself!
This week Lego announced a new subline for Star Wars, inspired by its previous helmet displays and the few busts it’s done for the Marvel Superheroes line. Kicking off with Darth Vader and Yoda, the busts create small, poseable takes on iconic Star Wars characters, and give them a little plinth to display next to a little plaque and minifigure (a big difference from the past Star Wars helmets, which never came with them).
Star Wars has done a couple of small busts as event-exclusive sets in the past, but these look quite a bit different, and unified in such a way that it’s clear this will be a new series Lego comes back to. And for the most part, they do look great—Darth Vader especially goes a long way in capturing the likeness at such a small scale (the Vader bust is 349 pieces, the Yoda bust 399), and does a much better job than the prior helmet display of recreating the smooth lines of his helmet.
Yoda even has some fun stuff too, especially the micro lightsaber in both his hands, with a clever use of solid and transparent pieces to give the blade a bright white core. But then there’s the eyes. Oh, those inset, squinty eyes.
They’re not even bad, per se—although the default shape of the brow being so flat definitely doesn’t help. Lego seems to realise that, too: a few of their own promotional pictures show them tilted inwards, to make it look like Yoda is furrowing his brow in concentration, and it looks much better. But it’s just like when the company added a buildable Chewbacca to its line of statues that had, up to that point, mostly been scale models of Droids. The moment you get to something organic, things start to just look a little freaky in Lego!
Hopefully it won’t put off the brick-maker from dipping into more unmasked characters for the line in the future—especially as the helmet range has already covered a lot of the masked characters already. But still, maybe make whoever’s next look a little less like they’re trying to stare into our soul?
The Lego Star Wars Darth Vader and Yoda busts will release on April 26—an odd choice, considering they could wait a week for Lego’s annual May 4 celebrations. Vader will cost $50, while Yoda will cost $40. Size matters not, but only outside of pricing.
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