Star Wars Celebration, the official Star Wars fan convention, went down over the weekend in Chicago, with its big reveals, celebrity signings, and massive show floor filled with artists and retailers. Celebration is always a massive thrill for attendees who come from around the galaxy to connect with other fans, and this year’s show was no exception.
The Exhibit Hall, a perennial favorite, showcases exciting exhibitor activations, props, sets and more. Checking out the sea of booths was a highlight once again, but one exhibitor brought the fun in a big way this year. We’re talking about LEGO, whose presence stretched beyond the show floor, to panel programming, a world-record LEGO minifig display, and more. We checked out all the awesome LEGO® Star Wars™ things at the show this year. Check ‘em out below…
LEGO® Star Wars™ 20th Anniversary Sets
2019 marks 20 years of LEGO® Star Wars™! The first-ever LEGO sets for a licensed property, LEGO® Star Wars™ first hit shelves in 1999 — the same year as The Phantom Menace. To mark the occasion, LEGO’s released five special editions LEGO® Star Wars™ sets which are all available now. Each of the new sets was on display — front and center — at the booth.
The five sets feature iconic ships with exclusive throwback minifigures — a recreation of some of the most popular sets from the last 20 years of LEGO® Star Wars™ history: Anakin’s Podracer™, the Imperial Dropship™, Snowspeeder™, Clone Scout Walker™, and an impressive 1007-piece set of Boba Fett’s iconic Slave I™.
LEGO® Star Wars™ Guinness World Record Breaking Build
As if 20 years of LEGO® Star Wars™ wasn’t epic enough, to kick off the weekend-long experience, LEGO achieved a Guinness World Records title for the largest display of LEGO® Star Wars™ minifigures.
Made up of 36,440 LEGO® Star Wars™ stormtrooper minfigures, the record-setting display was arranged in the shape of a stormtrooper helmet, measuring 20 feet tall by 20 feet wide. A team of 12 LEGO builders spent 16 hours assembling all of the minifigures, which were then shipped to Chicago to be arranged for display. The LEGO stormtroopers used in the model are the same stormtrooper minifigs in the new 20th anniversary commemorative building set, the LEGO® Star Wars™ Imperial Dropship™.
New LEGO® Star Wars™ Tantive IV Set Unveiled
Among the big reveals at Star Wars Celebration, is the brand new LEGO® Star Wars™set for the legendary Rebel blockade runner — Tantive IV. As seen in the 360 clip here, the 1,750-piece set faithfully recreates all of the Rebel cruiser’s signature details, including an elongated hull, detachable escape pods, elevating gun turrets, cargo hold, and 11 massive engines at the back. You can remove the hull plating to reveal a detailed 2-minifigure cockpit, conference area with table, weapon rack and a control console with 2 seats. The radar dish also doubles as a convenient carry handle, which makes it perfect for flying around the room.
The set also includes 5 minifigures — Bail Organa, Princess Leia, Captain Antilles, C-3PO and a Rebel Fleet Trooper — plus an R2-D2 droid LEGO figure. LEGO® Star Wars™devotees will be excited to hear that the Captain Antilles minifigure is an updated version from 2009, while Princess Leia’s skirt and Bail Organa are new.
And while the set was available as a limited exclusive for convention attendees, it’ll be available for the general public directly from LEGO Stores and shop.LEGO.com from May 4th, 2019.
The LEGO® Star Wars™ Booth
LEGO took it to the next level at this year’s Star Wars Celebration with a massive booth featuring product displays, themed builds, a massive LEGO® Star Wars™ timeline, a free-build area for the kids, and a full slate of fun and informative programming.
The standout build on display was a mosaic recreation of the poster for A New Hope, made of 1×1 LEGO bricks, with Luke Skywalker coming out from the wall in a three-dimensional hero stance.
Highlights from the programming slate include LEGO builder head-to-head competitions, LEGO fan group build-a-longs, and expert Q&As — not to mention fun “Bricktionary” challenges with popular YouTubers like Star Wars Theory and Star Wars Explained.
The LEGO® Star Wars™ Panel
The Force was with assembled LEGO® Star Wars™ creatives and brand spokespeople who took to the Galaxy Stage at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago to share highlights from the 20-year history, new announcements, and more.
Jens Kronvold Frederiksen, Creative Director of LEGO® Star Wars™, joined the team in 1999 — his first project was the Y-wing. Jens is the Jedi Master of LEGO® Star Wars™. He told the crowd, “You can build anything out of the bricks you have at home.” And he’d know because Jens has expert knowledge of both LEGO and Star Wars.
Lucasfilm’s Senior Manager of Global Product Development, Chris Gollaher, recounted a story which involved a particularly tricky problem the team was faced with when converting Sebulba’s podracer from The Phantom Menace into LEGO form. It was Frederiksen who had a lightbulb go off, left the room, and quickly returned with just the right piece. That’s when, Gollaher says, “I realized he had every single LEGO brick memorized.”
“Twenty years on,” Frederiksen said, “the Force is still with us and there’s still so much more to come.”
