How R2-D2 became LEGO Star Wars’ surprise must-have set of 2024
The LEGO Star Wars community wrote off the idea of another brick-built R2-D2 when rumours initially surfaced, but the smaller astromech droid is arguably now the surprise must-have set of 2024.
How many brick-built R2-D2s does one person need? It’s a question as old as… well, a year ago, when the first rumours of 75379 R2-D2 landed online. Promising a slightly smaller take on the astromech droid at €99.99, the March 2024 set sounded like a strange proposition given 75308 R2-D2 was still on shelves at the time, and wasn’t scheduled to retire until 2024 (so both sets would be available concurrently).
Cue the comments section: “Oh yay, another buildable R2. That will look great next to my buildable R2 and my buildable R2.” Word of an exclusive Darth Malak 25th anniversary minifigure only dialled up the cynicism, as many LEGO Star Wars fans assumed the LEGO Group was chucking in the Knights of the Old Republic character to boost sales of what would otherwise be a wasted slot in the 2024 range.
Fast forward to early 2024, and the first images of 75379 R2-D2 debuted online… to a similarly pessimistic audience. “So many other droids they could have done,” one fan wrote on reddit. “This will be the third UCS-style R2 and there was the old Technic one, and two different MINDSTORMS/BOOST versions almost the same size.” A few comments praised the idea of a cheaper and smaller Artoo, but this was certainly not a set considered essential among the wider community.
So it went for a few months, and while there was plenty of R2-D2-related activity on LEGO Star Wars Facebook groups and in other corners of the internet, most of the chatter seemed to be around Darth Malak (look at my new Darth Malak minifigure, how much is Darth Malak worth, does anyone want to buy my copy of R2-D2 without Darth Malak, and so on). And then the first images of 75398 C-3PO surfaced through a LEGO Certified Store.
The 25th-anniversary set promised to bring us our first System-led build of C-3PO on a bigger scale – but the real question on everyone’s lips was whether it would be a scale that matched 75379 R2-D2, because that would potentially be a gamechanger. It didn’t take long for more images to appear online, and one of those inevitably confirmed that, yes, these two sets were specifically designed to be displayed together.
Suddenly 75379 R2-D2 made complete sense, and indeed LEGO Star Wars Senior Model Designer César Soares has confirmed to Brick Fanatics that the intention was always for these two sets to stand as counterparts on shelves. “When we were developing the smaller R2-D2, we were also developing C-3PO at the same time to be in scale with R2-D2,” he said. “You can’t have one without the other.”
The community didn’t disagree. “I would’ve never bought only the R2 but now I’m dead-set on buying both and having them as living room decoration,” one redditor wrote, while another added: “I didn’t think I had a reason to get the 2024 R2 but now I do.” In fact, that single image of both R2-D2 and C-3PO together seemed to turn plenty of opinions from ‘wanting neither’ to ‘wanting both’.
This obviously isn’t the first time the LEGO Group has cooked up sets intended to be displayed together, and it’s even far from the first time we’ve seen that happen under the LEGO Star Wars banner. But it’s perhaps one of the only times (at least in recent memory) that the company has managed to retroactively improve the reputation of one set by releasing another a few months down the line.
The end result is that 75379 R2-D2 has gone from being a set easy to dismiss, or perhaps only to pick up for its Darth Malak minifigure, to one of 2024’s must-haves. That’s in the sense that if you’re going to buy C-3PO – and reviews (including ours!) suggest that you should, because as a set it’s got a lot going for it – you really must get Artoo to go with him. You can’t have one without the other.
75379 R2-D2 and 75398 C-3PO are both available at LEGO.com right now, and Artoo is also available at Amazon and GAME for 20% off. Both sets featured in this story were provided by the LEGO Group for review.
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