Random set of the day: Anakin's Y-wing Starfighter
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 8037 Anakin's Y-wing Starfighter, released during 2009. It's one of 36 Star Wars sets produced that year. It contains 570 pieces and 3 minifigs, and its retail price was US$59.99/£49.99.
It's owned by 6,021 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
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42 comments on this article
Oh boy! One of several sets I regret selling. Time for a remake.
It opens an interesting discussion to see one of these fully armored. If the armor didn't help enough to be worth maintaining, and that was most of the back half of the nacelles, what purpose do the remaining spars and that bit at the back? Are those supposed to be steering fins? Would they work in space if the entire nacelle has been stripped down to four struts that merely frame the gap between the engine and the steering vanes?
I like this set, but I will never understand why they didn't just make a normal Y-Wing from the Clone Wars. Anakin's has inverted colors, so you can't even easily make it a standard Y-Wing by swapping out the figs. I'm not saying that I would have bought multiples, but having it be very specifically Anakin's Y-Wing definitely hurt for any potential army building. Standard Pilots were even pretty rare in Clone Wars sets, you were usually just using a regular clone for some of the vehicles, which just felt wrong. Even if this set included a specific character like Matchstick, it would have been better than yet more Anakin and Ahsoka minifigures. The redeeming feature when it comes to Minifigures here though is Clone Wars R2-D2. He only comes in this set, although for some reason his head is combined with a standard Saga body for 10236 Ewok Village.
As for the set, it's decent, and I think the majority of yellow does make it stand out as far as Star Wars sets are concerned. Even getting just white is not always a given, but that's also pretty prominent for ships that are secretly a shade of gray. However, there is one major glaring error in my opinion, and that's the 3 1x2s and the bubbletop for the gunner. For starters, they're Trans-Clear when everything else that's a cockpit is Trans-Black. I bought replacements to swap them out with the correct color and have everything match. Then on top of that, the gunner seat can't rotate. I'm not sure how that would have been done at the time, but it is a little disappointing. The only other feature is the giant missile underneath that's triggered by wiggling the Astromech, which could be quite disastrous when slotting in or removing the droid if you're not too careful. It's a clever way to hide the trigger, but it is a concern. Other than that, the build is enjoyable and the use of snot makes it interesting. It's fun to see where the bones of the Y-Wing we're more familiar with from the Original Trilogy are within the Clone Wars variant.
Shame we never really got to see how and why the gunner seat and bubble was eventually replaced with a turret within the show, but maybe there were just two variants running concurrently throughout the Clone Wars and we just never saw the other kind in the show. We know they existed though because in Rebels they are dismantling Y-Wings from the Clone Wars, and they have the turrets. We also saw that a Y-Wing crash landed at the Syndulla residence on Ryloth, and it had the bubble design, which were still seen used quite late into the war, as in the literal end. So when was the switch?
Well that's enough from me, how are you doing?
I regret not picking this up. I love the Y-Wing.
I think this is one of the first SW sets where I balked at the price.
Oh no wait. That’s the year my daughter was born. We had to pull back on the LEGO budget, because diapers are crazy expensive.
The Y-Wing has always been my favorite snubfighter, and I was very glad to get a Clone Wars variant. The only problem was that Ahsoka is a plate to high; her shoulders keep the bubble from seating correctly, but that was easily rectified. Also, I like the lightsaber storage at the back; reminds me of the original Lego Y-Wing from 7150, which had a similar storage compartment in the same location.
@PurpleDave said:
"It opens an interesting discussion to see one of these fully armored. If the armor didn't help enough to be worth maintaining, and that was most of the back half of the nacelles, what purpose do the remaining spars and that bit at the back? Are those supposed to be steering fins? Would they work in space if the entire nacelle has been stripped down to four struts that merely frame the gap between the engine and the steering vanes?"
I haven't gone traversing Wookieepedia yet, but I imagine that much like the Naboo N-1, the Y-Wing was designed with both form and function in mind, but when the war started, the Republic just bought what was already being made without too much concern about how and why it looked the way it did. They were bombers, the Republic needed bombers, you get Y-Wings. Removing the armor did certainly make them faster though, but probably not by too much. The extra armor does provide a certain level of protection though. The Y-wings from the Original Trilogy are stripped down to basically nothing, and that's not even necessarily by design in universe. I'm sure the Rebels did their own modification, and removed anything that wasn't crucial, but they were already receiving them junked by the Empire. Original Trilogy Y-Wings also can't really take any damage if they're shields are compromised. At the very least, the armor provides enough protection for the mission to be completed, and just because a shot hits the Y-Wing doesn't mean it hit anything vital either with these more elongated connections across the body.
@MCLegoboy:
On the back half of the nacelles, armor clearly increases the chances of being hit. If there's nothing there, the shot will pass right through. Besides, it's not like X-Wings (shielded) or TIE Fighters (unshielded) were really capable of shrugging off being shot the way they're depicted in the X-Wing series of games. Pretty much one shot in the film and the starfighter was a loss. In Ep4, I can only recall two times a starfighter got shot and remained functional. One was Wedge, who could still fly, but wasn't going to be able to contribute to the fight beyond parking on Luke's six and providing physical cover (which would have surely got him killed, and then who would shoot the north tower four years later?). The other was Luke, but they actually only hit Artoo. Sad that a droid is apparently more durable than the starfighter it's plugged into.
@MCLegoboy said:
" @PurpleDave said:
"It opens an interesting discussion to see one of these fully armored. If the armor didn't help enough to be worth maintaining, and that was most of the back half of the nacelles, what purpose do the remaining spars and that bit at the back? Are those supposed to be steering fins? Would they work in space if the entire nacelle has been stripped down to four struts that merely frame the gap between the engine and the steering vanes?"
I haven't gone traversing Wookieepedia yet, but I imagine that much like the Naboo N-1, the Y-Wing was designed with both form and function in mind, but when the war started, the Republic just bought what was already being made without too much concern about how and why it looked the way it did. They were bombers, the Republic needed bombers, you get Y-Wings. Removing the armor did certainly make them faster though, but probably not by too much. The extra armor does provide a certain level of protection though. The Y-wings from the Original Trilogy are stripped down to basically nothing, and that's not even necessarily by design in universe. I'm sure the Rebels did their own modification, and removed anything that wasn't crucial, but they were already receiving them junked by the Empire. Original Trilogy Y-Wings also can't really take any damage if they're shields are compromised. At the very least, the armor provides enough protection for the mission to be completed, and just because a shot hits the Y-Wing doesn't mean it hit anything vital either with these more elongated connections across the body."
I like your funny words, magic man.
Wow these are some long comments!
@PurpleDave said:
"It opens an interesting discussion to see one of these fully armored. If the armor didn't help enough to be worth maintaining, and that was most of the back half of the nacelles, what purpose do the remaining spars and that bit at the back? Are those supposed to be steering fins? Would they work in space if the entire nacelle has been stripped down to four struts that merely frame the gap between the engine and the steering vanes?"
Thrust vectoring.
@MCLegoboy said:
"Shame we never really got to see how and why the gunner seat and bubble was eventually replaced with a turret within the show, but maybe there were just two variants running concurrently throughout the Clone Wars and we just never saw the other kind in the show. We know they existed though because in Rebels they are dismantling Y-Wings from the Clone Wars, and they have the turrets. We also saw that a Y-Wing crash landed at the Syndulla residence on Ryloth, and it had the bubble design, which were still seen used quite late into the war, as in the literal end. So when was the switch?
Well that's enough from me, how are you doing?"
Well the Y-wings that the Yavin group is flying is supposed to be a entirely different model of Y-wing. The Clone Wars version is supposed to be a BTL-B, while the Yavin group flies the single seater BTL-A4. Star Wars Rebels messes that up and gives the Yavin group the BTL-S3 (two seater, without the bubble turret.)
10.5 cents per piece back in 2009, and 14.5 cents per piece in today’s money when adjusted for inflation. But of course that can’t possibly be true, since everyone knows that in the last year or two Lego has become outrageously expensive to an unprecedented degree compared to the good old days.
@Jo3K3rr:
That would work very well with the armor intact and no place for the exhaust to vent except for the far distant ends of those nacelles. Open on every side, though, most of your exhaust will spread out and go around the fin assembly.
I wish good luck to people who feels the need to buy every version of every vehicle. While I couldn't do that even in the 90's, I was trying to get at least one set from each theme. Then it all went crazy with themes and sub-themes. Today, one set from each theme means at least 20 sets, I can't even think of getting every set from a specific theme.
This came out just at the tail end of my second Dark Age and before I started really picking up a bunch of sets. I'm a BIG fan of the Y-wing and this is one of the few Y-wing sets that I don't own (excluding micro-sized ones). The only other Y-wing I never got was the first UCS version. Regretted that, but bought the second version right after my son was born. (Not kidding. He was born and about an hour later as I was waiting with him for an hour or so before his mom came out of surgery, I was telling him all about the Lego we'd play with some day...and bought that set on my phone.) That set is still MISB in the basement. We'll built it together when he's older.
Ah... I always liked this one. Shame I missed out on it. Still holding out hope for a remake, but nothing yet :(
@PurpleDave said:
" @Jo3K3rr :
That would work very well with the armor intact and no place for the exhaust to vent except for the far distant ends of those nacelles. Open on every side, though, most of your exhaust will spread out and go around the fin assembly."
Yeah, it shouldn't work. But this is Star Wars, with its techno space magic. https://starwarslatinamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/1-115.jpg
(A page from Incredible Cross-Sections book)
I always found it weird how many starfighters Anakin seemed to have; this Y-Wing, a Jedi Interceptor, a -modified- Jedi Interceptor, the Twilight… Where is he keeping all these? How do they justify it in the budget? Why do they all get to be considered his ships when Jedi aren’t supposed to hold attachments…
Epic set change my mind
@Quinnly said:
"Wow these are some long comments!"
And never to be read again after today.
A great set, the way the white stripe is done done along the yellow fuselage looked amazing at the time and still looks great now. It also has a nice heft too it which makes it very swooshable. The only thing I wish was better was the ball turret, which you'd hope do at least one of looking good, rotating or being enclosed, but manages none of them.
@Brickalili:
Sponsored by a budget spread out across most of a galaxy. If every citizen of the Republic pays one penny annually towards the Jedi Order, they'd be loaded.
They need to bring Clone Wars sets back. After all, CW is canon, and has plenty of interesting vehicles to offer to fill your galaxy with.
This thing was so expensive back in the day. For a set that's basically a starfighter and three figures with one missle you'd think it wouldn't be such a near-flagship set price. At least, at the time anyway. Nowadays it might just be normal...
It sure is oversized for what it is.
@JoK3rr, you have the right approach. I often see people nitpick Star Wars for 'realism' when it's a universe with explosions in space and wizards weilding space magic. It's a fairy tale, npt a historical epic. Many visual things are just there to look cool, not because they would be the most practical. E.g.: bridges on Star Destroyers. There have been ad-hoc explanations before, but these things weren't thought up as world building first in many cases.
@PurpleDave said:
" @Brickalili:
Sponsored by a budget spread out across most of a galaxy. If every citizen of the Republic pays one penny annually towards the Jedi Order, they'd be loaded."
Yeah but they’re in a war economy where they have everything going towards clones and tanks and huge great capital ships. There was a whole mini-arc in the series about the banks. Amidst all that how is someone looking at Anakin’s finances and going “you need how many starfighters?!”
I got this one for a very reasonable price a few months ago. I'm looking forward to buidling it, a friend of mine picked it up in the Netherlands and it's still at his place.
I have such deep regret that I sold this for a song during my third (and last - knock wood) Dark Age. Getting it back in the same New Sealed condition would simply be too great an expense. Besides, with my love for Y-Wings if it came right down to it I’d probably spend the money on the recent UCS which retired so fast, before I even realized it. Not sure how that happened but it happened.
This is one great set with good play features.
@jkb:
And it wasn’t produced by Disney.
@Binnekamp:
As noted by @tmtomh, “this thing” was a mere $0.105 per piece when it released, which was fairly standard going all the way back to the dawn of the minifig. It just happened to use a ton of layered plates to achieve the look, plus the nacelles suck up a bunch more.
@Brickalili:
And the Jedi were put in charge of the clone army, which, BTW, was initially financed on the sly based on my take of Ep2. As for how many starfighters he had, it’s a literal arms race. We went through it during WWII, when US fighter planes proved to be horribly outmatched by Axis aircraft. Someone would design a new engine that amped up the speed/climb rate/max altitude, or they’d design an entirely new plane, and before you know it there would be entire squadrons with the upgrades. One of the keys to Allied victory in the Pacific was that the US could afford to swap out entire squadrons of planes to give experienced pilots an edge and rookie pilots a fighting chance, while Japan expended most of their experienced pilots in kamikaze attacks early on. Planes cost money, but in a wartime economy the money flows freely into military spending. Pilots cost time, which is something you can’t generally cheat. The Republic did a bit by having a surprise army handed to them at the start, and by using clones that aged faster than normal for humans, but they had no such advantage on the Jedi leaders. Besides, the unit leaders need to be able to keep up with their troops, right? And there’s also the high attrition rate of vehicles piloted by Anakin Skywalker…
Lovely solid set. It's so dense with bricks through and through.
@magpie9:
Maybe, maybe not. RSOTD does have links back from the set listings. I’m not sure about RPOTD or VSOTW, but the links make it much more likely that someone may go back and read up on a particular set. I doubt many people would actually bother to browse the comments on every past entry, though.
Regarding Anakin's numerous ships: when you're the best, they're gonna keep giving you ships to fly!
@PurpleDave: That's the most baffling part. If they could have, they'd have made it themselves, but worse.
I've never seen The Clone Wars. I didn't know the Y-Wing had ever had a starring role in the franchise.
@Bornin1980something said:
"I've never seen The Clone Wars. I didn't know the Y-Wing had ever had a starring role in the franchise. "
It gets some good action early on, and a few notable roles here and there in later seasons as well. It's cool because you get to see the Y-Wing (which has always been termed a "bomber") actually doing full-on bomber stuff and air support.
I'm reading these critiques of model accuracy and then remember that, as a child, I had to pretend my Matel R5D4 was R2D2 and "Death Star droid" was C3P0 because, as we now say, "you get what you get and you don't get upset." I don't feel I suffered any permanent damage.
@jkb:
Well, they did make two seasons of Resistance. In the US, it barely cracked half a million viewers the first season, and it dropped down to the low six figures for the few S2 eps that actually have viewership numbers posted.
@Bornin1980something:
Clone Wars and Rebels ran several seasons each, so they managed to work in a lot of fan service stuff like seeing armored Y-Wings, I think a prototype B-Wing, and so on. For the most part these things did not come to dominate either series. The launch wave for Clone Wars featured a set based on the Twilight, which I don’t think even lasted the first season before Anakin and Ashoka were using different spacecraft (not to mention all the episodes they didn’t even appear in).
@Padmewan:
I think my brother got our first R2 from the Ep5 line (w/ periscope), and I got a really rough second-hand Ep4 version around the time I also got a new Ep6 R2 w/ launching green billy club. Our only C-3PO went to me, with the removable limbs from Bespin (but no Chewbacca to carry him), but I don’t think I got him until Ep6 either. No similar droids to sub in. And the kicker was my brother got the Y-Wing, and it was a while before he had anything to put in the droid socket.
@PDelahanty said:
"This came out just at the tail end of my second Dark Age and before I started really picking up a bunch of sets. I'm a BIG fan of the Y-wing and this is one of the few Y-wing sets that I don't own (excluding micro-sized ones). The only other Y-wing I never got was the first UCS version. Regretted that, but bought the second version right after my son was born. (Not kidding. He was born and about an hour later as I was waiting with him for an hour or so before his mom came out of surgery, I was telling him all about the Lego we'd play with some day...and bought that set on my phone.) That set is still MISB in the basement. We'll built it together when he's older."
And the cats in the cradle …
Nah man that teared me up a bit for real. Cheers to you and your kid(s)
@melvlee said:
"Lovely solid set. It's so dense with bricks through and through."
Well, not really. It's nice to look at.
However, it's armor is only secured by a few sideways facing studs. Like most of the SW sets from this era, it's a real parts shedder.
One swoosh, and big chunks of yellow are on the floor. No wonder the Rebels dispensed with the armor. ;)
Such an attractive ship. I'm a sucker for the Y-Wing and all versions. Funny little note, drove a SAAB 900 that absolutely reminded me of the venerable fighter-bomber.
@Padmewan said:
"I'm reading these critiques of model accuracy and then remember that, as a child, I had to pretend my Matel R5D4 was R2D2 and "Death Star droid" was C3P0 because, as we now say, "you get what you get and you don't get upset." I don't feel I suffered any permanent damage."
Kenner made the original Star Wars action figures, not Mattel.
Surprised no one mentioned how the front cockpit part was often mismolded so it couldn't close properly.
All that white. All that yellow. Useful for both Blacktrons. But missing black.