It comes as no surprise that what is probably the most fan demanded set ever is a total bestseller and is pretty difficult to hunt down in these early days after its release. As with everything somewhat special there is a controversy surrounding this very set, let me explain. Some people are angry that there was a huge social media fuss demanding this set and I can agree that this might occur as wee bit annoying to some, but you are not forced to watch any videos and read comment section on Instagram under the posts of a huge corporate which is probably a sign of you having way too much free time at your disposal. The second part of the controversy is that very similar group of people belive Lego has been bullied into making this set and thus they complain. Nothing could be more stupid honestly. Lego as every brand or company should listen to their fans if they want to make profit. If fans tell them to make a set which will sell incredibly well, it would be foolish not to create such set. Same case is when bands perform fan favourite tracks live. They know what people want to listen to and what will bring in the biggest crowd and thusly the biggest profit.

Furthermore, this is not a Battle Pack and I will not judge it is as such. Why you may ask? It is not a 15 dollars set with four minifigs and most importantly the set is not called a Battle Pack.

It is a fantastic army builder, but not every army builder is a Battle Pack, even though every Battle Pack should be one despite recent years proving this statement completely false.

PRICE

This has to be one of the most fairly priced $30 sets ever from a licenced line of sets. Two fantastic vehicles, four clone troopers and two battle droids make this an awesome package which definitely pays off. I honestly yet have to meet a person who would claim that this is not a well-priced set.

MINIFIGS

I am blown away by how much Lego went above and beyond Call of Duty here. Not only did they include four regular minifig Clone Troopers here one of which is a brilliant Jet Trooper, but they also changed the angry clone face and as a sweet sweet cherry on top they included two Battle Droids.

• 501st Legion Clone Trooper. A state-of-the-art Lego Clone Trooper and nothing less. These bad boys come with the best and the most detailed chest print yet for a Clone Trooper with equally detailed back print. Legs do have a wee bit more simplistic print, but they come with a toe printing and that is rad. The helmet is as beautiful as ever but has a grey shadow imitation on the cheeks which may throw some people off. And as already mentioned there is a new head print with darker and more accurate skin tone and no more angry clone face. The only possible improvement I see right now is an arm printing.
• 501st Legion Jet Clone Trooper. The Jet Trooper has the same legs as the regular 501st Trooper, but comes with a pair of blue arms, different chest and back print and a different helmet. The cheek “shadows” are of a regular blue this time and the pattern at the top of the helmet is little different. There is also a red mark at the forehead. As for the armour, there is a different blue pattern in the upper area of the chest and some blue at the otherwise same back print, which is covered by a blue jetpack. All of this make for even more detailed minifig.
• Battle Droid. A regular Battle Droid with nothing new or changed to my knowledge.

Everyone here is armed with a regular mid size blaster in a black colour except for one Clone Trooper who will be armed with a long rifle blaster extended by a black candle piece. The BARC speeder also carries two more mid size blasters with lightsaber hilts as extensions on the barrel.

BUILD

Or rather builds in this case. The set has two pretty awesome vehicles.

The BARC speeder is an incredible build and a lot of fun to complete. New building techniques are introduced here with the handlebars and other small areas on the speeder. For the detailing purposes there are 4 stickers and two of those are pretty difficult to apply, so take care here. You can seat one minifig as a driver in this vehicle at the front there are two stud shooters whose removal will not alter the look significantly. As already said previously, the back area provides two handles for blasters and two are standardly attached. There are no major drawbacks to this build as it is fairly simplistic and straight forward with its design. One small trouble is when the pilot holds the handlebars in his hands and you unplug him recklessly, the handlebars might remain the pilot's hands.

AT-RT is going to be compared to the one from 75261 and in my humble opinion this one is the better of the two. It is smaller and thus feels less awkward. The building technique in few areas is vastly improved and the colour scheme as much as I know is subjective feels better and more outgoing if you will. Legs do have fewer parts used and from the front they look little thin. The front of the seating area looks pretty sharp and is very well detailed with a heavy abuse of stickers. Now I say abuse since applying so many stickers is a great cause of pain inducing headaches to me as I am utterly unable to place at least two of them correctly. The improved part are the handlebars as they do NOT get unattached every time you plug out the piloting Trooper. The back Area has shortened the antennas and there are two handles at the back for binoculars or weaponry. The front shield wings can be moved in a wide angle and the upper middle shield can be slightly moved too. The stud shooter has a huge range of motion here. The antennas at the back can be moved in roughly 200-degree angle. The legs are posable mostly in a backwards fashion and thusly the walking cannot be simulated here. The regular standing position is the furtherest to the front the legs can get. One demerit the vehicle has according to same is the stud shooter at the front without any simulation of the long barrelled anti-personal cannon. I do not mind this and honestly the stud shooter looks better than a long barrel to me as the model is fairly smaller than the previous incarnation. The walker can be manned by one minifig. This model has seven stickers, and they are mostly an easy apply to a person blessed with a regularly working brain unlike me.

The front of the BARC speeder is a new piece I believe, but other than that this set bring no more new pieces except for the ones in the minifig category I believe. The parts used here are pretty regular and there is nothing too special I would say. Oh yes, the candle at the front of the rifle is probably a rare sight in the Star Wars line as is an actually good army building set.

PLAYABILITY

I believe that there is a lot of fun to be had with this set. Since there are two whole vehicles with well-incorporated stud shooters and a lot of minifigs from two sides of the conflict. Kids can reenact any battle they want. You do not need to purchase any other sets to make the experience complete as this set works perfectly well on its own. Of course if you want to make the battle even bigger you can get the 75283 and make the droid side much stronger.

CONCLUSION

This is the set which will go down in history as one of the better ones. A fantastic value, brilliantly detailed minifigs and vehicles, a lot of playability and the set can work as a display piece too since the builds are very well finished and the colour scheme is just such an eye-candy. Do I recommend you getting one? Yes! Get one, two or twenty. This works perfectly as a stand-alone set and when massed as there are no named characters. Army building perfection.

Thank you, Ryan and all the fans for making this possible and thank you, Lego, for listening to your fans. This set leaves a very sweet taste in my mouth and is one of the merrier things in this difficult year.

The 501st Legion Clone Troopers "Battle Pack" was a set that was heavily requested by fans (and a certain Youtuber you might know) for quite a long time. After a lot of begging, (unreasonably so by some folks) Lego finally decided to make this much needed addition to the battle pack line of sets. The result is not what people were expecting, but still turned out to be a good set in the end. Let's go over the cons first:

The price is a little high for what you are getting. The main draw of battle packs for most people is that they (were) an easy and cheap way to get several troopers for army building. Most traditional battle packs included four/three/two of the same type of trooper, and then a special variant or two of that trooper, along with a small but fun build; generally a walker or laser cannon. All for $10-$15! This set seems intentionally scaled up to justify a $30 price and get the most money from the fans that asked for this set, which I will get into below:

The builds. The speeder was not needed in my opinion, and the walker is way too large for minifigure scale (as AT-RTs commonly are in Lego for some reason.) The walker itself also uses a stud shooter for the front gun. Look...Stud shooters are controversial in the community. Personally, I think there are times when they can work. Other times, not so much. This is the worst usage of a stud shooter I have ever seen in any set to date, since it makes the normally pointy AT-RT gun seem very short and nubby.

Now, let's look at the pros:

Figures. Some might be a little upset about this new wave of phase 2 clone troopers being different from the previous iterations, but personally I think these versions still look nice. It comes with three regular 501st Legion clone troopers, as well as a unique jetpack trooper. These clones also introduced a new and more accurate (in my opinion) clone head in the color of what I believe is dark nougat. The battle droids add a nice set of opponents for the clones to go against, though are likely only there to add up to the $30 price.

The speeder is a decent build, and is in my opinion a slightly better usage of the stud shooter.

Ultimately, this is a pretty good set that brought the return of phase 2 clone troopers into Lego Star Wars. HOWEVER, if you are reading this in 2023 or 2024, I cannot advise getting this set as of now if you must only choose one battle pack. The newer 501st Legion Battle Pack with the Swamp Speeder that just released this year (2023) is cheaper than this set and includes a more compact build that is excellent for army building...If you can ignore the still relatively high price of $20. The original 501st "battle pack" is still a nice set, though.

This could have been a good standard Battle Pack if they'd skipped the droids, included the 4 clones with dark blue colouring, and had a sensible sized BARC like that in 7913. The clones are great looking but sadly the set is bloated and overrated.

This is my first Star Wars system set in 13 years and..... I'm disappointed. The midsection of the walker has odd gaps and the head neither swivels nor bobs up and down. Only the stud shooter moves, which was a long cannon in the movie and just looks kind of pathetic here.

Looking up other clone minifigs, I inadvertently noticed both the walker and speeder are practically copied and pasted from old sets from 10 years ago, yet the few changes that were made were not for the better. The walker's legs are bare!!

I was able to get the head to swivel and look up and down and fill in the midsection's gaps within 10 minutes and minimal effort, but that effort shouldn't have needed to be made for a battle pack that costs 3 times what battle packs originally did, and with not much more stuff! Sets don't need to reinvent the wheel. Heck, the Falcon's been using the same roof strategy since 2004 and it still works great. But here it just feels lazy. The same build except with parts and poseability taken out. I'd honestly take the 2005 AT-RT over this if not for the minifigs.

Speeder's.......... okay I guess. Ridiculously long and mostly copied/pasted again

Insanely overpriced, and the clones having white arms just adds to this feel of incompleteness.

*Disclaimer: I do not think Lego plans to abolish ~$15 USD battle packs in the future, though I'm aware of the rumors. This has not impacted my opinion of the set*

With the conception of this set finally coming into fruition, I was undoubtedly happy. The builds are average for modern system Star Wars, and the revival of the 501st troopers themselves is quite satisfactory. The centered placement of the helmet prints is far better than their older animated counterparts(despite the recurring issues with modern minifigure prints). The PPP is excellent for a Star Wars set, and the amount of figures for the price point is great, when compared to other recent sets in this theme. Most will find they get what they pay for, if not more. This set is great for children, and that is what is most important in the grand scope of things.

However, the greatest flaw of the set is the premise of the set itself. Besides 75037-1 , this is one of the first Star Wars "battle packs" to not be marketed as such. I find it rather petty to release the most demanded battle pack ever at a price point that is twice the price of a “normal” battle pack. From an army-building point of view, the consumer is paying twice the price of a “battle pack” for an additional 2(two) battle droids.

Lego made this set whilst being fully aware that many consumers would be willing to pay twice the MSRP of preceding army building sets, effectively doubling their profits. It is abundantly clear that they can get away with this when considering that the people who have the budget to build an army aren't children with rather limited incomes. And, seeing how this set has flown off of shelves, and people are continuing to amass their armies, LEGO knows that they can get away with this, assuming the troopers in question are desirable enough. It seems blatantly tone-deaf, when looking at many recent battle packs that feature unique, one-of characters. I have enjoyed many of those sets (75267, 75198, and 75167), but also wouldn't have minded if they had a larger build and were $30 USD, with the real estate given to a set with figures that one would want to army build.

With all that being said, those who lamented the (what some would consider obnoxious) campaigning for a 501st legion battle pack ought to rest easily, knowing that Lego didn't give them what they truly wanted. I am worried of the response from Lego to this set's sales figures, and if they will choose to place the army-building figures in higher price-point sets and place unique or undesirable characters in battle packs.