The End of an Era

It was nearly five years ago that Lego released building sets tied in with Star Wars: Episode III. As a gag gift, my wife bought me a Lego Jedi starfighter. This had the unfortunate side effect of starting a binge of Star Wars Lego set collecting. This habit became prohibitively expensive with the beginning of Star Wars: The Clone Wars since Lego began releasing a large number of sets tied in with the animated series. It wasn't unusual for me to be borrowing against the next month's allowance to buy Legos, leaving nothing for CDs, books, etc. (See this post for an explanation on our allowance system.)

This year, which marks the fifth anniversary of Episode III, will see a number of Revenge of the Sith "rebuilds". Rebuilds are Lego sets depicting a vehicle or scene that was released a few years ago but incorporating several improvements. I own rebuilds of Episode I and Episode II sets that were originally released before I started collecting Legos. The rebuilds are almost inevitably better than the originals, that's why I bought the rebuilds of the Y-Wing and Vader's TIE fighter, despite already owning the original sets. Since I own every Episode III set released thus far, all of this year's rebuilds are of sets I already own.

Unfortunately, this year's Episode III rebuilds made me realize that Lego will never stop making them. I would feel compelled to re-buy each set for a few cosmetic improvements or better figures. And as long as there is a Star Wars TV show on the air, there will always be new sets that I would feel the need to own. I therefore made a very difficult decision; I would end my days of actively collecting Star Wars Legos with two final sets given to me for Christmas: the Tantive IV and the Endor Battle.

I've already felt the impact of this decision. Although I still check out the latest releases, I no longer feel obligated to buy them. I'm also accumulating allowance money faster than I'm spending it; a situation I haven't been in for at least the past five years.

I still love Legos, but I'm going to have to accept life as a recovering Legoholic.