I remember seeing this set on the catalogues and always wishing to have it. Absolutely loved the Slave I's design ever since. Too bad my family couldn't afford it (and well, Star Wars sets were kinda hard to be found back then too).

Last year I bought 75243. Fantastic set, and it was simply amazing to finally fufill my dream of getting this ship.

I prefer Boba’s in the way of colour and all, but another one of Jango’s might be nice.

I lucked into this set without the minifigures in a large cheap used lot. I was able to get Young Boba in a cheap lot, but I couldn't bring myself to pay the $60 Jango was going for at the time. I sure wish I had since he's now going for nearly double that just a couple/few years later.

Never found the version with the black case. Lego used to do some interesting stuff back then. Like the Target version of the Durmstrang ship with four bonus minifigures.

I purchased 7163 from a Facebook garage sale for $25, and included in the box were seven sets in total including this and the UCS Naboo Starfighter. Then they posted a few more sets which of course I bought as well. In the end I purchased 4 sets for $100 but received 33 Star Wars sets from 99-06. Best part was many of the bonus sets were larger than the set I was paying for. Easily my best Lego score ever. Although it was this particular set that I was the most excited about getting.

@Nokturn said:
"Gosh, I really wish we'd get a new one of these. I've owned this one since it released in 2002, and it's a great set with lots of cool features. However, it's definitely time for an upgrade. I've always preferred this color scheme to Boba's, of which we have far too many versions of anyway. Rumor has it we're due for yet another Boba version soon, which is somewhat unfortunate. I'm also personally much more attached to Jango as a character in general, mainly because of the EXCELLENT Star Wars: Bounty Hunter video game."

I agree, Bounty Hunter is an absolutely fantastic game! I recently played it all the way through again, then I went and bought this set off Bricklink as a graduation gift to myself :)

It is odd how this hasn't been remade, especially as a natural variant to Boba's ship, similar to how the Resistance remakes of OT ships have allowed for those designs to be refreshed more recently. Or Jedi Starfighters and clone walkers, for some prequel examples.

But then again, AotC is very underserved by lego, and Slave I in these colours is exclusive to AotC. It may of had a very minor role in the Clone Wars when baby Boba appeared there, but that otherwise strict association with Episode II may be the key issue here.

I prefer 6209 as the additional 4 years gave them time to perfect some of the detailing for around the same price, whereas this version still seems a bit home made to me. The more recent versions for twice the pieces and price just seem to be for display, whereas these were more for kids play and fun with other mini-fig sets.

@MandalorianCandidate said:
"Never found the version with the black case. Lego used to do some interesting stuff back then. Like the Target version of the Durmstrang ship with four bonus minifigures."

Select Walmart stores had them as a promotional bundle, and clearance prices were very low when they didn't sell at full MSRP

Ah yes, I remember getting this set. It was so nice to have a Slave I with an actual cargo hold and weapons that looked like they could do damage to something bigger than a minifig!

@sbpyrat:
Someone involved with ILTCO (International LEGO Train Club Organization) found out they simply threw away parts when they no longer wanted to inventory them, and was able to arrange to collect the parts and disburse them to all the member LUGs, including mine (now the parts are often earmarked for charitable purposes). This happened twice that I recall, and I think both times I ended up snagging a Jango Fett minifig when my LUG drafted our share of the haul. I used the torso from one of them to make Firefly from The New Batman Adventures:

https://brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2953502

I highly doubt I would have ever made that minifig if I hadn’t received the sacrificial Jango for free, and the later version of Jango wouldn’t have worked.

@MandalorianCandidate:
The black case version released later than the standalone version, and may have been exclusive to a single retailer. It may also have had a much more limited supply, such that they either sold out right away, or hit clearance in markets where that was not the case. Either way, I remember seeing it at one point, and seriously considering buying a second copy of the set just to get that case, but the $50 price tag was just too high to pay just to get a small storage case when I’d already built the model. But I remember it didn’t stick around very long, so by the time I was leaning towards grabbing a copy I couldn’t find one anymore.

@AustinPowers:
Oof. I mean, this was nearly 20 years ago now, so it’s hard to say for sure, but I think numbered bags showed up in SW sets prior to the debut of Bionicle, which would have had to take place in 1999-2001 (SW had a January release window, while Bionicle didn’t hit the US until June/July). As an Ep2 set, this was probably released between January/May 2002, so I don’t think it was in the first wave of numbered bags. The PDFs on LEGO.com would show when they did make the switch.

Great set for the time, really good build. And you can't go wrong with a Jango minifig.

"She's a firespray pursuit special: one of six prototypes manufactured for the prison. She's the last of her kind now."

I regret never getting the original Jango Fett minifigure; there's something cool about him, to me, that the later versions lack, but he's stupid-expensive on Bricklink nowadays. I don't know when I would ever have picked him up, since I didn't become interested in having a Lego Slave I until 6209 came around, but it would have been nice to get him from somewhere... I'm with the small crowd who honestly likes Jango better than Boba.

@Nokturn said:
"I'm also personally much more attached to Jango as a character in general, mainly because of the EXCELLENT Star Wars: Bounty Hunter video game."
YES, THIS. That game seems so underrated, but it's absolutely fantastic; not only is it amazing to jetpack around shooting criminals and collecting bounties, but the amount it developed Jango's character makes it even more of a stand-out to me. I've played it through a couple of times now... haven't finished my last replay, I had some trouble in the battle with Gardula's Krayt Dragon and then forgot to come back to it. I should pick it up again, come to think of it...

Bought this one just out of my dark age on a whim. Got it really cheap, sealed. Had no idea at the time Jango was so rare... After I bought the it I saw that he was worth more than I paid for the entire set. I have kept him all this time. ...for no reason lol

@PurpleDave : my dark ages began in late 1997/early 1998 and ended in earnest around 2010/2011. I bought a couple of sets from those in between years later via ebay or BL, but even then it's only a handful. I missed quite a bit of LEGO history during those years.

Man I love this ship, LEGO is a dork not remaking this set.

It's an absolute crime we haven't gotten this version of the slave since 2002! That's crazy town!

@AustinPowers and @PurpleDave For what it's worth, the 2001 Hogwarts Castle was my first introduction to numbered bags. I remember the excitement of having a set so big they had to split it into different bags. Perhaps the Mos Espa Pod Race had numbered bags? Would make sense with the three distinctive pod racers.

As for the Slave I and that amazing Jango Fett figure, I loved it so much! Jango is definitely my most play worn figure of all time (maybe tied with a Johnny Thunder or two).

@AustinPowers:
Understood. I never really had a dark age, and was pretty heavily collecting around that time, though. Memory is a bit fuzzy on details like that, but I’m pretty sure the first year of Bionicle had numbered bags for the Rahi sets, and I _think_ SW had it before that.

@J0rgen:
Mos Espa Podrace is one that I was thinking of, just because it basically contained the entire Anakin’s Podracer set in addition to two other podracers. If it wasn’t that, maybe the first minifig Millennium Falcon, or the first two UCS sets?

One of the sets from my childhood that I had packed away unceremoniously in a cardboard box about 16 years ago. At the start of the quarantine period around this time last year I made it a mission to locate it and properly store it, and I did just that!... along with 200 other partially/fully built sets that I didn't have the heart to take apart as a kid lol

@PurpleDave said:
" @J0rgen :
Mos Espa Podrace is one that I was thinking of, just because it basically contained the entire Anakin’s Podracer set in addition to two other podracers. If it wasn’t that, maybe the first minifig Millennium Falcon, or the first two UCS sets?"

I had the Mos Espa Podrace, but I don't remember how it was packaged... it was my second big set and I was only about nine or ten, so my memories are blurry. Looking at the instructions, though, seems to suggest that each podracer was *boxed* individually within the overall packaging; or at least, each section of the instructions shows an image of a unique box, rather than a bag number.

Bricklink box entry corroborate this; one seller has listed the unique inside-boxes for Gasgano and Sebulba's pods. I... would have thought I would have remembered that more clearly, but apparently not.

Has any other set, except those recent premium Technic supercar ones, had individual boxes contained within the main? Or was Mos Espa Podrace unique for its time on that count?

@ThatBionicleGuy said:
"Has any other set, except those recent premium Technic supercar ones, had individual boxes contained within the main? Or was Mos Espa Podrace unique for its time on that count?"

7667 Ogel Control Center had boxes, despite containing less than half as many parts as the Podrace.

@Rob42
"Then put Captain Solo in the cockpit with me. Damn, I was hoping it wouldn't come to this."

@J0rgen said:
" @AustinPowers and @PurpleDave For what it's worth, the 2001 Hogwarts Castle was my first introduction to numbered bags. I remember the excitement of having a set so big they had to split it into different bags. Perhaps the Mos Espa Pod Race had numbered bags? Would make sense with the three distinctive pod racers.

As for the Slave I and that amazing Jango Fett figure, I loved it so much! Jango is definitely my most play worn figure of all time (maybe tied with a Johnny Thunder or two)."
Mos Espa Podrace comes with three separate boxes within the main box, one for each pod, so in that sense, yes, it does have bags, but also no. There is only one instruction book, and when it's time to build the next pod, an image of the box is shown. They are just images of the pods, pits, and figures on a dark blue background, but they're boxes, not bags, essentially sets within a set. It's pretty cool, probably not very common with other sets with multiple components that are distinctly separate from one another.

@ThatBionicleGuy:
After the disaster of a pack job they did on 10179, the second UCS MF had numbered boxes (4-6, but I haven’t opened my copy yet so I can’t remember the exact count), and within each box was a consecutive range of numbered bags. So, you opened the first box, built all those bags in order, opened the second box...

@Norikins:
There was a fair amount of cubic footage in that cockpit, but not a lot of standing room. The only three likely options would have been to see if you could tuck him between the hull and the pilot’s seat, tape him to the canopy glass where he wouldn’t obstruct the view too much, or have him ride in your lap.

Funny, I just remembered that I have also got the only other version of Jango Fett's Slave I that LEGO made. The one that came in this set:

https://brickset.com/sets/4487-1/Jedi-Starfighter-Slave-I

Although I only bought this (two copies actually) for the very rare angle plate 1x2/1x4 in new dark red ( https://brickset.com/parts/4186921 ) of which I needed two for Anio's Venator Star Destroyer MOC.

It's criminal that Lego hasn't remade this set. Meanwhile we're constantly flooded with Boba's Slave I

@jango_e1_g3 said:
"It's an absolute crime we haven't gotten this version of the slave since 2002! That's crazy town!"

@Kalhiki said:
"It's criminal that Lego hasn't remade this set. Meanwhile we're constantly flooded with Boba's Slave I"
You guys are right. Maybe we should take out a bounty on the designers...

One of the nest sets back then. Surprised Lego doesn't release a new one since then.

@MCLegoboy:
So, I dug through some of the instruction PDFs. 7171 Mos Espa Podrace does indeed show individual boxes with color artwork (but missing almost all of the normal details of a retail set box). My guess is that they were sized to completely fill the interior of the main set box. This may be the earliest form of staged building they ever did. I then checked a few suspect sets like 7190, 7191, 7181, 10019, and 10018, and none of them appear to have included numbered bags. Then I checked Bionicle. There were five Rahi sets the first year. Each set included two Rahi builds, and each Rahi had its own instruction book (one of which was thicker to include instructions for how to combine all the parts into a single larger build). 8537 doesn't appear to have used numbered bags, but Muaka from 8538 shows bags 1 and 2, while Kane-Ra got bags 3 and 4. From 8548, the blue model uses bag 1 and the purple one uses bag 2. 8549 had blue in bags 1 and 2, and teal in bags 3 and 4. And 8539 had yellow in bags 1 and 2 with orange in bags 3 and 4.

Even this wasn't the end, though, as each of the three larger sets showed you two numbered bags right on the first page of each instruction book, instead of having you only open one at a time. For SW, 7153 and 7163 adopted the same pattern, with bags 1 and 2 on the first page, but then it got weird. 7163 went 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7, 8/9 suggesting the bag numbers may have been big/little (where now you'd just get a big 1 and a small 1 as necessary). 7153, on the other hand, was 1/2, 3, 4, 5. Without seeing the contents, I can't tell if 1/2 was a big/little combo, or if one of them was a bag of big, clunky parts that usually get an unnumbered bag these days (stuff like long pieces of flex-tube, 1x16 bricks and Technic bricks, 8x8 plates, etc.). Oddly, 10026 and 10030 don't show any numbered bags, so I think they were still working on the theory that younger builders needed them to make it easier to find the next part you need, while older builders could fend for themselves.

For Bionicle, 8558 is again split into bags 1 and 2 for red, or 3 and 4 for blue, but this time you only start with bag 1 or 3, and you don't open bag 2 or 4 until p47 of each instruction book. Unless I'm missing something big, this then appears to be the first set to use the standard numbered bag system after they'd worked out all the kinks.

But wait! There's more! From Technic Star Wars, 8000 and 8001 had full-color, numbered bags with the associated portion of the build in full saturation and the rest of the model semi-transparent. 8002 did the same thing, but split up 1/2, 3/4, and 5. 8007 and 8008 had individual numbered bags that showed the section being worked on by itself, and also as it related to the fully assembled model. The following year, 8010 had bags that were _not_ numbered, but which have the section they're for printed in black with the rest of the build greyed out. 8011 and 8012 have the same design, but the bags are also numbered.

Regular Technic sets from these years (2001 and 2002) don't appear to have used numbered bags at all, again suggesting that these may have been intended more for younger builders. Later on, I know numbered bags really kicked in for two types of sets. The first was sets designed for really young builders, like the current 4+ range, where they probably didn't want to throw too much at kids at one time (and numbered builds would allow a kid to pick one section to build and start playing, while someone else could build the remaining sections). The other is sets like UCS or Creator Expert, where huge piece counts mean you'd just have an unwieldy pile of parts to dig through if bags weren't numbered.

@AustinPowers :
It's not the only other JF Slave I. 75023 2013 Star Wars Advent Calendar included an even smaller version. It's there, third from the left in the top row.