LEGO Star Wars 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge review

Jabba the Hutt sails back on to shelves in the latest LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series set, but demands a bounty greater than many of us will be able to stomach.

It turns out we should have been paying attention when the LEGO Group debuted 75396 Desert Skiff & Sarlacc Pit with an eye-watering price tag earlier this summer. It was only a sign of things to come for its companion set, 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge, which transforms the Hutt’s luxury cruiser into an awesome 4,000-piece model that you will definitely want to buy – but may not be able to justify.

Release: October 3 (Insiders), October 6 (wide), 2024 Price: £429.99 / $499.99 / €499.99 Pieces: 3,942 Minifigures: 9 (plus Jabba and Salacious Crumb figures) LEGO: Order now

A barge for the ages

Before we get bogged down in talking about price, because like nearly all LEGO Star Wars sets this is one that will hopefully be discounted eventually, let’s talk about 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge. This is the third rendition of the great Jabba’s personal sailboat in LEGO bricks, and it immediately outclasses both 6210 Jabba’s Sail Barge and 75020 Jabba’s Sail Barge – mostly because those were playsets and this thing has nearly 4,000 pieces.

Selecting this Return of the Jedi icon for a coveted UCS slot was a shrewd move, though. It’s like nothing you’ll have built before from LEGO Star Wars. Yes, you’ve built capital ships, you’ve built cantinas and you’ve even built characters… but you’ve never built a giant space boat. The sense of something fresh and different on such a supersonic scale hits you by the end of the first few bags, when the Technic base on which everything else sits is firmly in place, revealing the true scope of 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn it’s massive.

It’s 77cm long, in fact, and commands a huge presence in the same way the barge did on screen, and in a way the playset versions have not really translated to bricks so far. You’re still mostly working within a singular palette – browns – but hey, at least it’s not greys. (There are some greys too.) And while it sticks with the tried-and-tested approach of a removable deck (in two separate sections here for better accessibility and stability) and folding panels, there are some clever touches along the way to account for the bump in size and weight.

The heaviest panels at the back of the barge use a loose bar and hole connection to stay in place, for example, ensuring everything stays together without compromising access to the interior. The deck itself manages to find ways to keep things interesting too, with hatches that reach down inside and turrets that can be picked up and moved around the extensive tubing, which forms the rails that run the full length of the top level. And the giant paper sails, packaged separately to avoid creasing (although ours still turned up folded over by dint of everything else in the box), are far more pleasant on the eyes than the shiny vinyl versions used in the 2013 set.

Where the panels that form the shell of the boat could have been a blinding mass of brown that swallowed up any potential details, the designers have employed a smart combination of dark brown pieces, grille tiles, hinges and other greebles to keep things visually interesting. Piecing it all together is inevitably repetitive in stages, but it might just remind you of running alongside this thing in LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga – especially all those hinged window panels you could snap off for studs. (Although there’s only space for them on the back panel here, unfortunately – the rest are fixed tiles.)

UCS or MBS? (Why not both?)

While it’s just too dark to see through those windows, pulling open the panels reveals a fully fleshed out and incredibly detailed interior. 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge really didn’t have to go as hard as it does inside, but the end result is a set that feels like a hybrid of the Ultimate Collector Series and Master Builder Series. The kitchen in particular is packed with so many accessories and utensils that for a moment you’ll feel like you’re assembling a modular building – a sensation that is only heightened by the one-two combo of tiling the floor and stacking standard bricks for the walls.

The full interior includes the cockpit (with two seats and multiple control panels); a prison (with removable rear wall for a quick escape to… the barge’s outer shell?) and armoury; a kitchen (complete with a tiny olive green frog that you could generously call a newborn Hutt); and what the LEGO Group is calling the ‘entertainment room’. It’s here where you’ll place Jabba on a removable bed, with Max Rebo standing just next door playing his Red Ball Jett keyboard. That the sandy bed can be removed to stand alone is a nice touch, and calls back to sets such as 10316 The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell and 21336 The Office, which both also have removable sections for smaller displays.

In short, we’ve come a long way since 75192 Millennium Falcon’s limited interior: this set makes more than ample use of every square inch of the Sail Barge’s internal space, and even has a couple of removable ladders that reach up to those top-deck hatches, filling gaps inside without getting in the way when you want to interact with the interior. It’s very much up there with 75331 The Razor Crest and 75313 AT-AT from an internal perspective.

There’s a lot to love here inside and out, which is pretty much what you’d hope for from an Ultimate Collector Series set. Where 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge blurs the line between UCS and MBS even further is in its minifigure selection, which goes far beyond most UCS sets but doesn’t quite reach the heady heights of 75290 Mos Eisley Cantina, 10188 Death Star or 10236 Ewok Village.

That’s a shame for the price tag, but what we do have here is a generally excellent selection of minifigures. There are sore spots – Bib Fortuna reusing his Book of Boba Fett headpiece, rather than the more accurate Return of the Jedi element from older sets; Salacious Crumb’s missing pupils; Princess Leia’s dual-moulded legs that inadvertently (or not) give her shorts – but on the other hand there’s Jabba with improved printing over his 2013 version (which was already a mould ahead of its time), Max Rebo looking as great as ever, a couple of brand new and obscure alien characters in Vizam and Wooof, and the best Gamorrean Guard and Kithaba to date.

The great Jabba hopes that you will pay honourably

But then… that price tag.

There are some LEGO sets that come in at incredibly high price tags but are obviously worth saving up for – 10316 The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell, 10305 Lion Knights’ Castle – and then there are those sets that cost a lot and are easy to pass up (41838 Travel Moments, 76232 The Hoopty). Neither of those scenarios is necessarily ideal, but then neither will give you a headache. 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge occupies that terrible middle ground: this is a set you’re going to want, but it’s tough to say that it’s worth saving up for at full price.

Do you see where £430 is going here compared to, say, 10316 The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell or 76269 Avengers Tower? Those sets are the same price, include far more elements and even more minifigures. There are new character moulds here and Jabba probably adds a fair bit to the value, but it’s really not enough to justify this price. Especially when you consider 75396 Desert Skiff & Sarlacc Pit adds another £70, and is practically a compulsory purchase to complete this scene.

It’s even more frustrating given a fairer solution is staring us in the face: including the contents of 75396 Desert Skiff & Sarlacc Pit with 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge (still for £429.99 / $499.99 / €499.99) would have increased the value of this set enough to justify saying yes at full whack, and you’d still have had fewer minifigures than 75290 Mos Eisley Cantina offers for a much lower price (albeit many more pieces). Just look at the image above and tell us that doesn’t look much better for £430.

It’s a shame to have to focus the discussion here so heavily on price, because 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge genuinely is the best LEGO Star Wars set of 2024. The increased budget of course unlocks the potential for that, but it’s never a given even within this range – no series is immune to misfires – and it’s testament to the designers that a giant brown boat is this appealing. You’re just going to have to decide how much you really want it.

If it’s enough to get the nod on day one, you can at least soften the blow with 40730 Luke Skywalker’s Lightsaber, which is free exclusively with 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge from October 3 to 10 (or while stocks last). With one eye on previous lightsaber hilt gifts-with-purchase, selling that one might recoup a not-insignificant chunk of the barge’s price anyway…

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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Our honest opinion: An all-time LEGO Star Wars set punctuated by a price tag few will be able to justify. But if you see it discounted, snap it up: it really is the ultimate Sail Barge.

Author Profile

Chris Wharfe

I like to think of myself as a journalist first, LEGO fan second, but we all know that’s not really the case. Journalism does run through my veins, though, like some kind of weird literary blood – the sort that will no doubt one day lead to a stress-induced heart malfunction. It’s like smoking, only worse. Thankfully, I get to write about LEGO until then.

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