The new LEGO Star Wars X-wing manages something we haven’t seen since 1999

The latest LEGO Star Wars X-wing throws it back to 1999, pulling off a part of the iconic starfighter’s design that we haven’t seen in 25 years.

It’s tough to remember a time when you couldn’t buy a LEGO Star Wars X-wing of some sort, so intertwined is the franchise’s most memorable one-man fighter with the brick. It’s a staple of the theme, and one of those ships that the LEGO Group believes should always be available to kids, adults and newcomers to a brick-built galaxy far, far away.

The absolute glut of LEGO X-wings we’ve received as a result have varied wildly in size, scope, price and design over the past quarter-century. The LEGO Star Wars team briefly became obsessed with upgrading and improving the fighter to the point that things got slightly out of hand in the late 2010s, with prices rocketing up to £90 for 2018’s 75218 X-wing Starfighter.

The designers subsequently scaled things back for 2021’s 75301 Luke Skywalker’s X-wing Fighter, kick-starting a trend of downsizing sets that continues (to a degree) this summer with 75394 Imperial Star Destroyer. But throughout all those different X-wings, only one has attempted to capture the true shape of the ship’s nose – and it was the very first, all the way back in 1999.

7140 X-wing Fighter (re-released in 2002 as 7142 X-wing Fighter) is in many ways the most primitive of all the LEGO X-wings to date, but it’s also the only one that’s truly tried to capture the hexagonal shape of the rebel starfighter’s nose. The rest since have prioritised tapering the nose towards the front end, at the cost of relatively flat sides.

Fast forward to 2024, and the LEGO Group is on the cusp of introducing yet another new version of the ship in 75393 TIE Fighter & X-wing Mash-up – this time with the gimmick that its wings can be swapped out for the solar panels of the TIE Fighter. But that hasn’t compromised the X-wing’s aesthetics: instead, this is arguably the best-looking X-wing we’ve seen in years, and it’s all thanks to its nose.

Through canny use of 1×2 cheese slopes, this X-wing (which is also the first minifigure-scale version not to belong to Red Five, or Luke Skywalker) recaptures the hexagonal nose of the fighter for the first time since 1999. And from the images we have of the set so far, it doesn’t appear to have come at the cost of accurate tapering. The result is potentially the best LEGO X-wing at this scale to date.

We won’t be able to say for sure until we have our hands on 75393 TIE Fighter & X-wing Mash-up, but things are looking good for the LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy set at this stage. You can find out for yourself by pre-ordering your copy at LEGO.com now. It’s due to launch on August 1, 2024 alongside 75389 The Dark Falcon and (potentially) 75388 Jedi Bob’s Starfighter.

• LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy sets officially revealed, pre-orders open
• First look at LEGO Star Wars Dark Falcon, TIE Wing and X-Fighter in hand

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