Lego Star Wars Book

Lego Star Wars: Vader's Secret Missions /Darth Vaderin Salaisuus

Originally published in 2015, but this Finnish edition is from 2016. Written by Ace Landers /Finnish translation by Antti Hulkkonen.
The book features a short history and other info about the Sith and Darth Vader himself, few quizzes and three short stories named: "The Emperor's New Clones /Keisarin uudet kloonit", "Every Darth Has His Day /Darthilla on huono päivä", and "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Sith? /Kuka pelkää isoa pahaa Sithiä?". The book is 64 pages long. Source.

Bought this book from a bargain bin for the price of 7,90€, I don't remember the original price. I only bought it because I really liked the illustrations. Star Wars characters as Lego minifigures are just too cute. Also, I have no shame in liking some simple reading now and then. It didn't take long to find out why it was in the bargain bin in the first place. Sure, the book is already four years old, but I think the fact that this book has its illustrations mixed up might also be a likely reason for why it's on sale.

The stories "Every Darth Has His Day" and "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Sith?" are the two who have their illustrations wrongly placed. One story takes place in a forest on the planet Kashyyyk and the other story's setting is the ice planet Hoth. So while I'm reading what happened on Kashyyyk the illustrations show what's happening on Hoth. And vice versa. Sort of frustrating to be honest. I was starting to doubt that maybe the text itself was wrongly placed and not the illustrations. So confusing! The names for the two short stories are very generic themselves and don't help much to identify which story is which.

I'm assuming that at least the index page should be correct because the page numbering is right on throughout the book. That would mean that the Kashyyyk story is named "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Sith?" and the Hoth one is "Every Darth Has His Day". Bah, I guess it doesn't really matter. I don't really have anything to say about the stories themselves. It was what I expected, just some silly kids stuff. Mostly harmless. ;D

I'm used to consuming almost all of my Star Wars in English, so reading it in Finnish feels a bit awkward. Some of the language here doesn't really roll off the tongue easily.  What really irks me is the Finnish title of the book which translates back to English as Darth Vader's Secret. Secret? What Secret? The fact that he is Anakin Skywalker? Ooops, spoilers!

I don't know, maybe Darth Vaderin Salaisuus just sounds better than Vaderin Salaiset Tehtävät. Who cares, it's for kids. It doesn't have to make sense.

...my faves! <3

Bonus:

While I was buying the book, I also happened to find these SW stickers. I like that they are illustrated and not just minimized photos. The minimal use of color is also nice. Based on the Rebels Stormtrooper banner on top, these have to be somewhat old too. I think this Stormtrooper helmet was the "logo" they used on their merchandise before the Force Awakens came out in 2015, and they switched to using Kylo Ren's helmet. So that makes these stickers probably 5+ years old. Not that it matters, I just love finding old merch.

Old Lego Star Wars Ads

(In Swedish! Yay!)
I was  going through my memory sticks and found these two pictures saved on one. I think I scanned these together in the same haul as the old MLP ads from this post.

The ads date from the good ol' year of 1999!

(Darnit. I want to see versions with Darth Tyranus and Sidious! No wait! Grievous! Then you get four arms!) Great idea of using the bad guys of the series in the ads. That's the spirit! Everybody likes the dark side!

Lego Star Wars Sith Nightspeeder

A while a go, I couldn't believe my luck when I found this at s flea market. From where I was  standing I could only see the back of the box.  First thing that caught my eye was of course the Lego and Star wars  logos and when I took a closer look, that's when I saw them. Holy sh*t!

 

Lego minifigures of Asajj Ventress and Savage Opress (+ Anakin Skywalker)! I rushed over to the table where it was and picked it up. I rarely find anything Ventress or Opress related merchandise. For a moment, I was in heaven...... until I noticed what was written on the piece of tape "no figs, only spacecraft" (complete)". The disappointment was grave.

After a lot back and forth going about if I would still buy it or not. I decided to take a chance. I was a little skeptical, if the minifigs aren't there how could I be sure the whole speeder would be in there? And what do you know, I was right. During the unboxing you could tell right away that some parts were missing from the bike. "Complete" my ass.

The speeder was partially ready built in the box, but I broke it apart and rebuilt it (fortunately the manual was not missing! ) to get a clearer vision on how many parts it was actually missing. 16 pieces and 10 stickers.

Later, at a different market I found some bags of random Lego that I thought I could use as spare parts for the Nightspeeder. The colors and the blocks didn't perfectly match the ones I needed, but at least a little bit more "complete". No idea to which series the spare parts vehicles belong to, they kinda look like something out of Star Wars universe but I'm not sure. How the heck do you even research this stuff?