(hashtag)bringbacktheblue
Seriously, I miss Blue TIE Fighters. Accuracy is great and all, but they look bland in the correct colors for toys.

Wicked Box Art!

I love this set and it's a great ppp ratio.

We need a 3-in-1 UCS version of this!

A cool-looking set that I never had, but I remember how it felt when the EU was finally ventured into by LEGO with the inclusion of the TIE Droid.

Would be cool if that TIE Droid was featured in some newer canon games or comics so we could get it as a set again.

I know the TIE Droid best from playing the original Rogue Squadron game on PC so much, where they were heavily featured in the final battle on Mon Cala.

I had the first Tie Advanced set 7150, which comes with the Y-Wing. I got it with much excitement but remember being very disappointed by the design. It only resembled the original. In later years, thankfully, Lego came up with a much decent set, 8017 in 2009. Although I missed it on original release, I managed to buy it second hand some years later. Standart Tie Fighters in this set looks fine, and I did not know the fourth Tie was a droid. Interesting.

The infamous 10131. On the back of the box of 2003's 4502 X-wing Fighter, a Death Star battle scene showed the number "10131" next to Vader's TIE and a pair of standard TIEs, with three more in the distance. It seemed to indicate that this was going to be a collection of TIEs, since there were two variants there and only one set number, but certainly not six fighters, right? Fans *definitely* didn't expect it to have a TIE/D in there, too. Even though it was the most unprecedented and unique part of the set, Lego understandably didn't insert an EU vehicle into the Battle of Yavin where it did not belong. The fans tried to figure out what this set was about, and things got weird. I don't really remember the details, (and the FBTB forum thread is now lost to time), but an old Rebelscum thread from 2004 shows the months leading up to the set's release, and the confusion that took place. Someone mentions how a Lego rep at a TRU claimed that 10131 would be a Death Star set. Another user e-mailed Lego, and heard from them that the minifigs would be Vader and a Stormtrooper. Both claims were wrong. On the FBTB side, I remember the Death Star theories taking place, and that maybe the "10131" digits were instead referring to the Death Star in the background behind the fighters. An April Fool's joke about the set that was also in the mix. The whole thing was kind of a mess. The set would of course end up as a TIE Collection after all. Since it is now just a jumbled memory to me, this set carries a vague sense of borrowed internet angst that I felt only partially involved in. Regardless of how much I still remember, I can recall this set's ID number more easily than any other set as a result of that debacle. I got the set that Christmas or the following one, as I was a more avid completionist back then than I am now.

The TIE Fighters do look blue-ish in the movies.

Back when a Tie-Foghter was cheaper to buy :/
There like £60 now for just one tie-Fighter :(

The only set missing from TIE-fighter collection.

682 parts to build 4 TIEs ! When it's about 500 to get 1 today .

It was a great Christmas when I got this set!

The TIE-D made canon in the 2019 Annual Star Wars Adventures comic.

@ra226 said:
"We need a 3-in-1 UCS version of this!"

Lovs the idea of a 3 in 1 UCS set.

The TIE-Ds were fun to fight in the old Rogue Squadron game. Cool set.

@Lipidusz said:
"The TIE-D made canon in the 2019 Annual Star Wars Adventures comic."

Ah cool, thanks for pointing this out! Looks like the new canon has renamed these "Auto-Fighters", with luckily no design changes. I always liked the design of these as a smaller, more angular looking TIE Interceptor.

Alright, so it's canon again, now where is the redesigned set, Lego? ;)

I assume the regular TIEs in this set were the same as the one in 7263 ? They look like it... and I had that one at the time, so this set didn't interest me much as a kid. Neat idea though, having several ships packed in together like this ^^

This is awesome! I had no idea this existed

I always thought this was a neat set, even though it was released WAY before I was into LEGO. I can't help but hearing the sound of the ion engines.

WROOOOOAAAAAARRRRMM!!!

That backstory around the release of this set that @Brickwright gave was most interesting. I wasn't very active on Lego sites back then aside from BZPower, so this controversy around 10131 went unnoticed by me. But yeah, it was amazing to see something from the Expanded Universe make it into a Star Wars Lego set. Even though I didn't quite make the connection between the TIE/d being the same ship as those being shot down by me in Rogue Squadron 3D on the PC. The Battle of Mon Calamari does not actually originate in Rogue Squadron, but in the Dark Empire comic book from 1991! Therefore, for their first EU set, Lego went back to one of the first "true" EU works in Star Wars. The TIE/d was a starfighter manufactured in the bowels of the World Devastators, new superweapons launched by the resurgent Empire in the wake of Emperor Palpatine's return. As the World Devastators ravaged the planet of Mon Calamari, their massive, automated assembly lines converted debris from destroyed rebel ships into raw material to manufacture TIE/d starfighters, among other war machines.

For all that cool background, I never felt particularly excited to get this set. Lego made only a token effort to repackage the other three TIE fighters, and I felt somewhat disappointed in that. Adding a few wedge plates to the TIE fighter panels and some tiles in place of plates on the TIE Advanced panels seemed like the laziest of "improvements" to the original sets, so although the TIE/d was new, it hardly justified the purchase if it included other blue-and-black TIEs.

Thankfully, Lego learned their lesson by 2009 with the vastly-improved TIE Advanced. It would be so cool if they released a new TIE fighter collection with gray-and-black TIEs. Maybe that way we could finally get a new TIE Interceptor!

That price! You'd get one TIE Fighter now...

@Vladtheb said:
"Unless I’m mistaken, I believe this is the first Star Wars set to draw from anything other than the movies. The TIE in the top right doesn’t appear in the films."

Nope, the tie on the top is a droid tie. It's obscure, but it did appear in Star Wars lore.

@Vladtheb said:
"Unless I’m mistaken, I believe this is the first Star Wars set to draw from anything other than the movies. The TIE in the top right doesn’t appear in the films."

Here's my source: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/TIE/D_automated_starfighter

It's interesting how Lego had a thing for old, obscure Expanded Universe TIE designs in the beginning.

After this was released in 2004, it would be a few years until the next EU set in 2007, which was the arguably even more exotic TIE Crawler.

I remember really wanting that one because it was so different. And who doesn't need more Imperial ground forces?