The LEGO Group is getting weird and wonderful this summer with 75393 TIE Fighter & X-Wing Mash-up – but here’s why these zany vehicles are also embracing an obscure part of Star Wars history.
Another wave of LEGO Star Wars sets, another X-wing and TIE Fighter. Same old, same old. But this time, the LEGO Group is doing things a little differently: not only are these two original trilogy icons bundled together in the same set for the first time, they’re also intended to be pulled apart and recombined as a TIE Wing and X-Fighter.
That’s the TIE Fighter’s cockpit with the X-wing’s S-foils and the X-wing’s hull with the TIE Fighter’s solar panels, creating two unholy Star Wars ships the likes of which we’ve never seen officially advised in a LEGO set. But while this seems like an organic fit for the theme – who among us didn’t mash up our LEGO Star Wars sets as kids – the concept is actually rooted deep in wider Star Wars lore.
We’re talking specifically about Uglies, which debuted in the original Star Wars Expanded Universe in the 1995 novel Ambush at Corellia. Primarily appearing in comics and books, Uglies are ships cobbled together from parts of other starfighters, and were typically used by pirates and smugglers who couldn’t afford brand new vehicles. It’s a bit like when you got your first car and it had that one door in a completely different colour. (Anyone else? No?)
While Disney decanonised the original Expanded Universe in the early 2010s, the concept of Uglies didn’t go away. And they finally made their first canon appearance in 2016 in the eighth issue of the Poe Dameron comic book series, assembled by Stormtrooper-turned-crime-lord Terex for his crime syndicate the Ranc Gang. These ships mashed up Imperial and New Republic vehicles including TIEs, X-wings and AT-ST walkers.
Early examples of Uglies in the Expanded Universe include the TYE-wing – a TIE Fighter ball cockpit with Y-wing engine nacelles – and the X-TIE Fighter, the latter of which is pretty much one-for-one with the LEGO Group’s X-Fighter. It maintains the X-wing’s fuselage, cockpit and engines but swaps out its S-foils for a TIE Fighter’s solar panels.
The X-TIE Fighter appeared in a bunch of Legends novels in the mid-‘90s (and one in 2000), but none of those are explicitly identified as the inspiration behind 75393 TIE Fighter & X-Wing Mash-up. Instead, this unusual LEGO Star Wars set is based on the upcoming Disney+ animated special Rebuild the Galaxy – although we wouldn’t be surprised to see the showrunners drop a sly nod to the Legends concept within the special itself.
Either way, it’s clearly a perfect fit for a construction toy anchored around the idea of building and rebuilding vehicles. (Just ask all those fans who were doing it on their own in 2020.) And while the initial images of 75393 TIE Fighter & X-Wing Mash-up are a little too low-res to make out many of the details, it does look like the wings of each of its ships will be easy to pop off and swap around at will.
75393 TIE Fighter & X-Wing Mash-up launches August 1 and is expected to retail for €109.99 in Europe. We’ll hopefully see a full reveal from the LEGO Group soon.
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