Random set of the day: AT-ST & Endor
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 9679 AT-ST & Endor, released during 2012. It's one of 38 Star Wars sets produced that year. It contains 65 pieces and 1 minifig, and its retail price was US$9.99/£9.99.
It's owned by 11,370 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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34 comments on this article
The third moon of the planet Endor (planet is depicted in 75010) is also named Endor? Strange (and confusing!)...
Planet Sets were awesome. I do enjoy the Microfighters, but I really miss the Planet hemispheres, and there was potential to use them in other things had we gotten more that were just plain colors or had different printing. An Octuptarra Magna Tri-Droid would have been pretty good with a Planet as the bulb. Scale accurate, too. Definitely feels missing from the Clone Wars sets. We got that small combat one with the Utapau Troopers Battle Pack, but that's not good enough, I want one of the big ones.
@Murdoch17 said: "The third moon of the planet Endor (75010 ) is also named Endor? Strange (and confusing!)..."
Yeah, I was just about to ask, I don't know anything about the original trilogy (beyond the pop culture basics), but wasn't it the moon of Endor, and not the planet itself?
@Zordboy said:
" @Murdoch17 said: "The third moon of the planet Endor (75010 ) is also named Endor? Strange (and confusing!)..."
Yeah, I was just about to ask, I don't know anything about the original trilogy (beyond the pop culture basics), but wasn't it the moon of Endor, and not the planet itself?"
Moon and planet were named the same, at least, that's what's inferred from the film and made canon by Lucas. It's called the "Forest moon of Endor" and the "Third moon of Endor", so take that as you will.
@Murdoch17 said:
" @Zordboy said:
" @Murdoch17 said: "The third moon of the planet Endor ( 75010 ) is also named Endor? Strange (and confusing!)..."
Yeah, I was just about to ask, I don't know anything about the original trilogy (beyond the pop culture basics), but wasn't it the moon of Endor, and not the planet itself?"
Moon and planet were named the same, at least, that's what's inferred from the film and made canon by Lucas. It's called the "Forest moon of Endor" and the "Third moon of Endor", so take that as you will."
I think in universe, the reason is because the Forest Moon was the only life sustaining body in the Endor system, so if you were going to Endor, it didn't really matter, everyone knew you were heading to the Forest Moon. That is before that whole Kef Bir thing in Rise of Skywalker was invented. Couldn't have just had crashed Death Star parts on the moon with Ewoks and include them in the story, no, we had to invent a whole other moon but still show Ewoks on Endor in the montage at the end of the movie, too. -_-"
Oh well, it's not worth getting too upset over, it was a rushed production, and I'm glad it came out in 2019 just to get it over with instead of getting the extension it needed only to wait two years through a pandemic and still be disappointed.
And once again I will rage at Lego for not releasing the last series in the US.
@MCLegoboy: I remember seeing an astromech droid MOC that used the top half of the Death Star from 9676 for the dome.
One of the best series of sets Lego could have released, in my opinion. You got a swooshable toy to play with, a neat little minifig with display and a colorful planet you could hang from anywhere, all at a price point under $10 USD. I would love to see an updated series come back into the fold.
Not only do I miss these I want them back, but it would be cool if LEGO did them for non-Star Wars IPS. I'd love to have a globe of Ninjago planet or Spherus Magna. General audiences wouldn't buy them at all, but I'd adore 'em!
@Murdoch17:
We do it all the time. Unless the person who discovers it suggests a vanity name (honoring themselves, friends or relatives, or a favorite subject), planets tend to be genetically named after their stars (see Ceti Alpha 3 and Ceti Alpha 4 from the original Wrath of Khan). Moons also tend to be named after the planets they orbit. This is not the case in our neighborhood because the discoveries were spread out over thousands of years, and certain classical naming conventions have long prevailed (all the planets through Pluto were named after Roman gods, and many of their moons were named after minor characters from Roman mythology). These days, exoplanets are so frequently discovered that they just need to be cataloged efficiently. Exo moons are probably far less common, but if nobody cared enough to give the planets fancy names, keeping to that tradition with their own satellites makes it very easy to match things up across the vastness of space.
That said, none of these “planets” except the excellent molded Death Star I actually depict much of anything. Each half-shell has a color pattern that has key allignment points that are evenly spaced around the mating edge, and you’d get two identical half-shells. No matter how you connected them, the patterns would appear to “line up” because they made sure this would always happen. This is most obvious if you play around with the asteroid belt “planet” from the TIE Bomber. There also aren’t _any_ defining features that match any official planetary maps.
@MCLegoboy:
I think if you were headed to the Endor system, people would ask why the heck you were headed to the Endor system. Besides being a minor smuggler way stop, there really wasn’t anything notable there (hence why it was popular with smugglers looking to lay low for a while, or exchange stuff without being observed by anyone who mattered.
For those arguing that Endor is not a planet and shouldn't technically count in the Planet Sets, let me remind you they made an asteroid field a planet set.
Printed tile thingy, cool round ornament thingy, a little build and a minifig. — all of which fit inside the globe when done. What’s not to like?
@TheOtherMike said:
"And once again I will rage at Lego for not releasing the last series in the US.
@MCLegoboy : I remember seeing an astromech droid MOC that used the top half of the Death Star from 9676 for the dome."
I know. I had to get mine ftom a Japanese ebay seller!
I use the whole set around this time to decorate our Lego Xmas tree along with key chain minifigs and the various bubble Lego oraments like 853345 .
@TheEpicLuke:
I know. It’s awesome. It’s the only one besides DS1 that I bought a second copy of just to get another planet ball. I’ve got a guy that kneels on top while holding up a PotC globe that’s clamped over his head. The whole thing is completely backwards (he’s supposed to kneel on Earth and hold up the sky), but a lot of people still figure out who it references.
@TheOtherMike totally with you. I finally gave up and took them off my wishlist. Love these, though--we still put the planets up on our Christmas tree every year.
It was a great way to get sebulba and lobot.
We’ve been putting these on our Christmas tree every year since they released.
Fun times seeing the Death Star hanging next to reindeer.
These Planet sets were awesome!
After I exited my Dark Ages and discovered these, I thought I’d pick up a few of the cheap ones, when I saw them for like $10-15 second hand.
I ended up buying all 12 over the course of a couple years, including one or two from overseas!
If there’s one Lego Star Wars subtheme that I’d love to see make a comeback, it’s this one.
There have been so many new planets to cover since these stopped, not to mention ones that were never covered to begin with. C’mon, Lego…bring these back (pretty please)! :-D
These thing’s definitely filled a niche that nothing else really covers. The battle packs come close, suppose that’s one of the reasons these never came back
One of the two planet sets I own alongside the Death Star. Love the AT-ST build.
I don't know why I didn't get a single set from this series but I certainly regret it now
I have 8-9 of these, was just going through the DB here last night figuring out which ones I missed. Endor is one of them, unfortunately. It was a novel idea, I'd like to see more. Value for the money was terrific. But I couldn't really display them -- I don't trust 4 studs of clutch power to hold the weight indefinitely, so I never hanged them from anything. I wish they'd used a Technic pin or Technic shaft instead to keep that little cap in place.
I saw one of these planet sets cheap and had to get it. Then I quickly added 8 more to my collection. But series 4 wasn’t released in America, and I couldn’t stand not having them. I searched for a while until I could find some that weren’t too expensive, and now I can say I have all 12. I’m really not into the small builds, but for some reason I just love these.
@Frobozz - The planet halves have a technic hole between the four studs, wouldn't it work to tie a string to, well, any piece with a hole in it and then thread it through from the inside?
I remember having a splitting headache one day, and tried building this to take my mind off it. Didn't really help, and to this day I think of this as the "headache planet". So while I've had the AT-ST and pilot on display, the planet itself got permanently exiled to the deepest recesses of my "big parts" bin.
@Brickodillo: Speaking of Lobot, I wish they'd update the cloud car.They've only done one as a stand-alone set, and that was back in the days of yellow-skinned licensed minifigs and the old grays!
@Frobozz: Just don't hang it with the pieces inside. Or don't hang it at all and use the part 75937 Parabolic Ring that's included to just sit the planet on something.
Loved these and have this one, these were still available as I came out of my dark ages and I picked up them up in places like Toys R Us as they were running down their stock. I never got the Death Star, it was the one which, not unreasonably was the rarest and most collectible but enjoyed the builds and minifigures. Checking the box I picked this B-Wing and Endor moon up for €10 on a Tallink ferry shop between Helsinki and Estonia on a family vacation to Finland. And agree with @peterlmorris these make great Christmas tree decorations.
@axeleng, @TheOtherMike, thank you for the suggestions. I definitely would not have considered hanging one with pieces still inside it, even empty I worry about the clutch power of those studs. But threading something through the top hole and around another piece inside is a great idea!
(I tried sitting them on the included ring but found they still tipped over too easily.)
I second the request for more twin-pod cloud cars! I missed the recent Cloud City reissue and would love to have one. Strangely, the Bespin/Cloud Car planet set seems to have one of the lowest resale values of the series. It's one of my favorites.
The AT-ST in this set is weird. It uses the same build from the 2003 set 4486 AT-ST and Snowspeeder, but with different, longer legs. It even reintroduces the flag with printing, but now in dbgrey. And the tap on the side is placed in the opposite way.
I guess that it wasn't broken so they didn't have to fix it? It WAS a great design back in 2003 btw.
I second that a new cloud car would be great! I just built mine. It's from 2002, from before EP2 came out. It holds up rather well thanks to the curved pieces, but an earth orange one would look more accurate. And it has been 21 years...
Same goes for Bounty Hunter Pursuit and Jango Fett's Slave I!
I really like the planet sets and this was one collection I could realisticly afford. So I got all 12 now and the planets are going up in the tree this year!
@Murdoch17 said:
"The third moon of the planet Endor (planet is depicted in 75010) is also named Endor? Strange (and confusing!)..."
"We think Endor is, like, a moon in the binary Endor system."
"Aha. Of which planet?"
"The gas giant Endor. Duh."
"Are there any celestial bodies in the Endor system NOT named Endor?"
"The stars are named Endor I and Endor II. That's, like, different, right?"
(I dunno if anyone else here is familiar with Darths & Droids, but the reference was just asking to be made...)
I’m clearly in a minority to not like these sets. I don’t see the appeal of micro builds, and the planets are an odd gimmick.
The planet sets were after my dark age began, but I had the very similar AT-AT from 4486. Crazy to think they reused the same build almost ten years later, but if it works...
I wonder why they never included any planets specifically from Revenge of the Sith in this series? Utapau? Mustafar? Kashyyyk? Every other movie from 1-6 gets at least one representative set, but RotS gets nothing; even the Republic ship in the Coruscant one looks to be more based on the ones from the very end of Clones rather than the opening battle of Sith. I almost wonder if it's because that movie was rated as a 12, rather than the U and PG of its predecessors; but that's never stopped Lego from making toys based on it before.
Utapau could have maybe had Grievous and his wheel-bike; Mustafar perhaps Padme's ship? Give an excuse to make a minifigure of her in her Mustafar outfit, since I don't see them ever making a playset of the scene where Anakin chokes her. And the Kashyyyk battle had a ton of unusual vehicles, so any of them would have worked; maybe a Wookiee glider, and Tarfull as the minifigure to get him into a cheaper set?
And that's not even counting the planets from the Jedi-execution sequence, Mygeto, Felucia, Salucemi, Cato Nemoidia...
Other planets of note that never got included are Dagobah (though to be fair, the only vehicle relating to that planet is Luke's X-Wing, which has already been in a set; unless they went with Yoda and his escape pod from the RotS deleted scene) and Geonosis, which also had a literal ton of options from the battle. Plus the Death Star II (Palpatine and Imperial Shuttle, maybe?); Sullust (Admiral Ackbar and Home One?); and since we have both Endor planet and Endor moon, maybe the planet Yavin (...I notice none of these include a Millennium Falcon, so I guess that would be the obvious choice there). And that's not even getting into the myriad of Expanded Universe planets they could have included...
I know I'd definitely be here for an Ebon Hawk & Planet Taris, for just one example...!
@StyleCounselor said:
" @TheOtherMike said:
"And once again I will rage at Lego for not releasing the last series in the US."
I know. I had to get mine ftom a Japanese ebay seller!"
I did the same thing! I think I waited about a year and when I determined Series 4 wasn't coming, I hopped online to Japanese Amazon and got them. I think I paid about double what they cost, and maybe that's because it was free shipping, but better to get them then than to wait too long for some of the other sets I missed out as a child back in the early 2000s.
This article fails to mention that this is a 1 of 12 collectible.