Ah, this'll go down well.

I liked this line. There's been a couple of attempts to do similar micro ship lines since, between the planet ones and arguably the microfighters. So lego clearly sees value in this concept, but now a minifigure is always involved. The two midi-scale ships from 10 years ago are another case where the lack of a figure seemed to kneecap a good idea.

And I do wonder, would I buy more microfighters if they were closed off? I bought the new Maul one, and almost immediately modded it to be a sealed ship without a seat for Maul. But I can see loads of people buying that same set to get Maul in a widely available, £9 set. Same with other characters.

And unlike the Mighty Micros, the Maul I got works well with any other star wars stuff, instead of being stylised like the ship. Maybe that's why Mighty Micros isn't around but Microfighters are, the minifigures actually help sell small ship builds? I know I'm not happy with the Iron Man and Thanos figures I got from their Micros set, at least not as fully valid options for a standard Iron Man or Thanos.

So a minifigure adds to the price of a set, but it's worth it if it helped make a mini-scale ship line like this viable. Microfighters has lasted for twice as long as this microscale line did, and three times as long as the planets line did.

Oh no! This doesn’t fit into any of my categories! I can’t have a conspiracy theory about this one! It’s too random! Augh!!!

Huwbot finally giving us a random set.

I love how back in these days Lego had no qualms about stacking bricks on top of each other thus creating very unstable structures like the fin on this ship.

Today, this set would never get released do to Lego's sensible in-house standards for solid builds that don't generally fall apart easily.

Still, I miss the simpler days.

Note that all the Star Wars Minis from 2002-2004 had a few printed pieces included that were exclusive to them, like the slope that forms this Shuttle's cockpit.

Actually the earlier Star Wars Minis were no polybags (only the 3 Kabaya promos and 3219 TIE Fighter were).

This set came in some sort of clear plastic shell (relatively soft and flimsy) that had a 2x4 brick-like shape extruding from one corner, that could loosely connect to a brick or plate if you were careful. Inside was a cardboard insert that sshowed the actual box images and fully hid the sets contents like a normal box.

I kind of liked that - it gave the set a bizarre form of 'special feel' despite being a totally regular item. Also it was only closed by 2 stripes of tape, so you could get it out easily without harming the box.

The only real bad thing about this set is that it's from Series 3 of the Mini line, which didn't create a fifth model when you bought all four in the series.