It’s curious that Lego decided to release its brand-new Star Wars AT-AT on Black Friday, but the lack of deals on the priciest-ever Lego set clearly hasn’t stopped people buying the set.
You can see the brand-new AT-AT here, which costs $799 / £699 / AU$1,299 – but if you’re in the US or Australia, you’ll find the kit has already sold out. In the UK there’s stock left but we imagine there are only a few sets left.
So why did it sell out so quickly? Well, it’s probably the fault of the lightsaber. You see, if you pick up the set while the Black Friday Lego celebration is going on, you get a free commemorative Luke Skywalker’s Lightsaber kit as well. This kind of lightsaber-hilt kit always proves popular, as they’re generally only ever given away in promotions and not sold separately.
If you were keen to buy a Star Wars AT-AT, this isn’t actually the only Lego version of the set, and in the US and UK the older (and cheaper) version is also discounted:
Opinion: not worth the plastic it’s made from
By Hamish Hector
When Lego first introduced these mega-expensive themed sets, the bar was set pretty high, starting with a 1:1 scale model of Star Wars’ most iconic ship the Millennium Falcon. If you’ve been to a Lego shop any time in the past few years you’ll have seen a display cabinet with this impressively large kit inside complete with its intricate details and collection of minifigures representing characters from the original and the sequel trilogies.
Lego followed this up with the Imperial Star Destroyer; a less fan-beloved ship but a striking model nonetheless. The detailing is impressive and once again the size completely blows you away when you get a chance to see this thing up close. It even includes a miniature Tantive IV – the rebel ship carrying Princess Leia in A New Hope that received its own full-size 1768-piece set which has since been retired – for scale and to help you act out scenes from the series.
We’ve also been treated to a Lego version of Mos Eisley Cantina (the location where Luke and Ben meet Han Solo on Tatooine) and more recently the Republic Gunship – however, these both launched at a much cheaper $350 / £320 and $350 / £330 respectively. And there is the Super Star Destroyer itself, a 3152-piece leviathan that had been priced at a staggering $1,799 / £1,590 (around AU$2,490) before its discontinuation in 2014.
By comparison, the AT-AT is a mess of bland gray. The Imperial Star Destroyer also suffered from overusing the world’s most boring color but at least the ship’s complex design tried to make up for it – apart from having legs there isn’t really much to the AT-AT.
A saving grace could have been to include a scaled version of a snowspeeder – the craft used by the Rebel Alliance to trip up these behemoths on Hoth – either as a ship in flight or as Luke Skywalker’s downed vessel – but alas, we aren’t so lucky. (Nor are collectors: Lego discontinued the latest 1703-piece Rebel Snowspeeder model, but a few can be found at inflated prices around Amazon.)
If you’re after an AT-AT model we’d instead recommend the much cheaper one that comes with 1267 pieces at just $160 / £140 / AU$250 – though neither of today’s models holds water to the motorized AT-AT set from several years ago that could actually walk.
Lego should either have priced this set to be more in line with the Lego Cantina and Gunship sets or opted for a more bold-looking option worthy of the lofty price tag. One easy option would be Slave One, the ship flown by Boba Fett that would have tied in perfectly to the upcoming Book of Boba Fett series.
Alternatively, we would have accepted models of the Razor Crest (from The Mandalorian) or the Ghost (from Star Wars: Rebels) – or of something that isn’t from Star Wars for a change.
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