@SearchlightRG:
Retailers aren’t going to want to stock the sets and a bundle of the sets. They did this with a few four-packs that were D2C, but in order to attract buyers they had to make one of the four models exclusive to the bundle.

$90USD equivalent in today's money. That value doesn't compare favourably with 75348.

I bought this when it came out, and I'm pretty sure I got it on sale for about $40. I really liked it at first, but eventually I couldn't quite get past the weird color choices for the TIE fighter. I rebuilt it with a family member a couple of years ago and that was fun. Then I sold it a year or so ago, for more than I paid for it and just about break-even adjusting for inflation. I was glad to have the proceeds to buy other Lego stuff.

My very first Star Wars set, which I had been eagerly waiting for since I saw an announcement of the theme in an SW magazine. Nearly 25 years later now, including a dark age, I am still expanding my collection.

Cutting off products for the sake of composition! Cool box art and such an Icon!

I think they should make a new Clone Wars BTL-B Y-wing instead these days.

@deathmoth said:
"Legendary clearance find in my youth: 2 copies of this found at a K-Mart in decline for exactly $12 dollars each. Having 2 Vader’s TIEs was no bother ??"
Hey, I can tie (pun not intended but welcome ) that bargain. A colleague of mine sold some old Star Wars sets a while ago and I paid 100 Euro for the entire lot. Considering what else was included makes this about 10 Euro, what I paid for it. OK, it was second hand, but complete and in great condition, including instructions and box.
I am happy with that :-)

@Atuin said:
"It's also weird that for the 2nd re-release of this set in 2004, the TIE Advanced got more or less completely redesigned, whilst the Y-Wing only changed from old grey to new grey... (this might also be the only set to contain the brown haired Space Police II head that was used for Dutch Vander)"

10131 was out the same year as that re-release, so between two sets they might have considered the redesign worth it. Although the TIE Collection is also an odd set in its own right, and I'd love to know how it came about.

A fun fact about that re-release, 7262: While there is a version of the set image with the updated TIE, there is also one with the original, including the box image right here in Brickset's database.
It's a little hard to tell what was actually printed onto boxes, photos I can find of physical boxes seem to show the correct image, but there are definitely instructions (including my own copy) that display the older TIE, notched wing plates and all.

@tmtomh said:
"I really liked it at first, but eventually I couldn't quite get past the weird color choices for the TIE fighter."
I mentioned earlier liking it when the Y-Wing's engines got more accurate, I also liked it when Vader's TIE got more accurate colors in 8017. Incidentally, I just noticed that according to Brickset's database, 8017's inventory is 102% complete. @PurpleDave, feel like tracking this down like you did when 6858 was RSotD and I pointed out a similar issue? Perfectly understandable if you don't; 8017 is the bigger set, after all.

@Ridgeheart: What I want (and what I think you really want, if you'll think about it) is for Lego to bring back TNG and TNO so they can mold some of those wonderful new pieces in it.

One of the classic Star Wars sets from the early days.

@Brickalili said:
" @sir_vasco said:
"If the Y-wing is called that because of the Y shape, is a TIE fighter called that because it's shaped like a bowtie?"

In-universe no, it’s an acronym based on its propulsion.

Out of universe I strongly suspect yes, that’s exactly the case"

But 'Y'?

@ozbrickcreator said:
" @Brickalili said:
" @sir_vasco said:
"If the Y-wing is called that because of the Y shape, is a TIE fighter called that because it's shaped like a bowtie?"

In-universe no, it’s an acronym based on its propulsion.

Out of universe I strongly suspect yes, that’s exactly the case"

But 'Y'?"

MCA!

What I distinctly remember about this set is that it came with comics and photos showing potential alternate designs for both builds, including using one of the Y-Wing's nacelles as a battering ram.

@MCLegoboy:
Um…by 2001, both Star Wars and Bionicle had generated about 100 new molds each. Granted, Bionicle did it in one year vs three for SW, but that’s not exactly a “handful”.

@ICAbricks said:
"I get it's an iconic set, but $225 is just... okay actually it isn't that outlandish. Compare it to the OG Ghost, which is currently worth $900 new..."

Honestly yeah, the OG flagship set from the first SW you’d expect it to be more, right? I’m guessing they probably made a lot, and by 1999 a lot of SW collectors were already doing MIB collecting for pretty much any product. There are probably more sealed copies of this set out there than the Ghost.

This was the set that first brought me out of my Dark Ages.

I like how the worked in a random cargo area on the Y-Wing and a cargo box. And then there's the comics in the instructions for the alternate models...
Star Wars might not have been at its most accurate, but I daresay this era was amongst its most charming.

I built that set this last weekend from parts of a lot I bought lmao. TIE Advanced was complete but the Y-wing has most of the engine parts missing.

My older sister was into jazz piano when this set came out. She was always talking about Thelonius Monk and how great he was. I didn't hear the name quite right, so I named my Y-wing pilot Felonius. Despite his name, Felonius was actually a pretty nice guy. He didn't have a criminal bone in his body.

I remember once I more-or-less built a variation on this Y-Wing out of parts in my collection using online instructions: because I had very few Star Wars spaceships at the time (almost all my SW sets were smaller and / or relatively ground based), it was fairly simple to do so, and of the existing ships it was the one for which I had the most of its parts already in my collection and what I didn't I could easily improvise.

...for which I had most of the right *shape* of parts, that is. I paid no regard at all to colour scheme, and the end result was a ship with an uglier mishmash of colours than any canon Y-Wing has ever had as a paint job! That said, it was a fun exercise, and I enjoyed flying it around for a while before I wanted to reclaim its parts back to their original sets.

I don't remember exactly when I did that, but it must have been about mid 2000s? And I definitely don't remember which Star Wars minifigure I set as the pilot since I never had Dutch Vandar... although I did have his head from 6463, so maybe I just improvised based on that.

I panned this one in my review for being the only way to get Darth Vader at the time (in an expensive set bundled with a Y-Wing), and for the Y-Wing's poor design choices even by 1999's standards. I love the 7140 X-Wing from the first generation of Lego Star Wars, and the 7130 Snowspeeder, too. But this one had issues. The TIE fighter was acceptable, but the Y-Wing had odd splashes of red, the pilot was practically laying down, and the engine struts were positioned wrong. Even classic space nearly 20 years prior had those funky bracket pieces (6931 for example) that allowed a pilot to sit up while allowing for strong structural support.

I always felt like the designs of the first gen of Lego Star Wars were a bit phoned in because they knew people would buy it because "It's Lego and it's Star Wars, finally!!" I'm sure there's more to it than that since Lego was having hard times in that era, but the introductions of wedges, curved slopes, and lots of new colors a few years later (and way more attention to detail) made the next iterations of these classics so much better.

I think I have this somewhere in a box of unsorted SW early sets. I remember buying it thinking I’d process it right away but noooooo there’s always a better box to sort on the other side of my green table.

@PurpleDave said:
" @MCLegoboy:
Um…by 2001, both Star Wars and Bionicle had generated about 100 new molds each. Granted, Bionicle did it in one year vs three for SW, but that’s not exactly a “handful”."
Well what's considered a new mold? If it's primarily minifigures, then that hardly seems fair because there are a number of characters that really do need a new mold like the battle droids, any character with a very distinct helmet (Vader, Stormtroopers, Rebels weren't necessary, but they're still around), any very alien character with molded head or just one singular mold, and there are of course the lightsaber hilts and the bars that make up the blades. There are the different windscreens, the TIE Fighter wing slopes, the Vulture Droid wings, Anakin's podracer flaps, maybe the connectors that were also used for the speederbikes, the sideways cilinders for engines, all of these were used in other themes or still in use to this day way more than Bionicle ever did. Alpha Team and Vikings made the most use of Bionicle pieces in their themes, occasionally you'd get a few parts here or there in something else. Any exclusives to Star Wars that only made it into 1 set within the theme were a rarity (Kaadu), and it wasn't until the past 10 years that some of those parts introduced in the early years were phased out with redesigns. If part of the list of 100 parts includes any new slopes or plates or bricks, they were certainly being used in other themes, too.

You know this is basically a model of rickety old rebel ship being destroyed? None of the Y-Wings that went into the trench survived. In fact, didn't only three ships of the rebel squadron survive? It was a massacre.

@Bornin1980something said:
"You know this is basically a model of rickety old rebel ship being destroyed? None of the Y-Wings that went into the trench survived. In fact, didn't only three ships of the rebel squadron survive? It was a massacre. "

That we see on-screen, only five spacecraft escape the assault on the first Death Star. Luke and Wedge are each flying an X-Wing, Han/Chewie in the Millennium Falcon, and of course Darth Vader in his TIE Advanced x1, are the only four we ever see enter the trench and survive. But there’s also a lone Y-Wing shown flying back to base with the other Rebels. In the film, the pilot is never identified, and I believe every Gold Squadron pilot who appears in close-up on-screen also dies on-screen.

@MCLegoboy:
An important note is that I never said these were all theme-exclusive parts. I just said they originated with these themes. Of the parts produced by the end of 2001, I can only recall seeing one Bionicle part in regular rotation two decades later, which is the Voodoo Ball (Onus’s claws or Gali’s hook may also pop up here or there). The next two regular recurring parts I know of from Bionicle didn’t happen until 2002, which are the 2L friction axle-pin and the e Bohrok eye (not to be confused with the Bohrok tooth).

From SW, what I can recall off the top of my head include the X-Wing cockpit, the UCS X-Wing cockpit, the TIE cockpit, the UCS TIE cockpit, the Naboo fighter cockpit, the X-Wing cannon, the flight stick, helmets for Vader, Stormies, Biker Scouts, and Rebel pilots, Chewbacca’s head, Jar-Jar’s head, Battle Droid heads and legs (arms and torsos came from Mars Mission), the standard lightsaber hilt, the 4L bar (lightsaber blade), the Stormie gun, Qui-gon’s hair, Leia’s bun-hair, Padme’s hair, the Jedi hood, C-3PO’s head, Artoo’s head/torso/leg, Sebulba (one-piece), the vulture droid “wing”, the Landspeeder engine, the X-Wing engine, and the TIE Fighter “shoulder”. That’s 26 parts that I am 100% certain originated in the SW theme, and 99% certain came out by the end of 2001. I can’t recall when stuff like the podrace bucket, Jabba’s palace, or Slave I came out, and I don’t recall if the dorsal/ventral saucer sections from the first Millennium Falcon were original. I’m obviously missing around 75 elements from SW sets, but a lot of them may have been fairly generic, and a lot of them (like the two UCS cockpits) may have been single-use.

One real oddball is the original Toa torso. Clearly designed for use with the Toa, it actually launched in January 2001 with the Technic Stormtrooper. The Toa didn’t arrive in NA until that summer, and Europe shortly thereafter.

But a new mold is a new mold is a new mold. They still have to be approved, they still count against design budgets (whether they’re single-use or very generic), and (when allowed) they’re still free for any other theme to use without having to jump through the same hoops.

This was one of the first sets I ever received.
I don't really know who got this for me. At this age, I don't think I'd even seen Star Wars yet.
I absolutely adored the wordless comic at the back of the instruction manual, showing Darth Vader chasing the Y-Wing pilot through a series of misadventures, using the parts from their destroyed ships to build new creations. At one point, Vader uses the parts from the Y-Wing to create a lightsaber. After the comic, it has a free basic images of the real-world builds to inspire the reader to create their own alternate builds. It was a joyous inclusion I remember going back to for years.

Vader got his ship stolen.