Egmont: LEGO Star Wars: Official Annual 2018

In the UK the tradition of the Christmas annual, a collection of stories and articles taken from a periodical, became a popular fashionable present – particularly at the height of the season of gift giving – in the early 19th century. While annuals continued to gain popularity in the later half of the same century it was the advent of modern super hero comics that carried them across the Atlantic in the 1980s, and since then the global print industry has ensured that they are becoming internationally common place.

The first official Star Wars annual to be published came out in 1978 was a compilation of Marvel’s six part adaptation of Star Wars, which had come out earlier that year. Without going to far into the history of the Star Wars annual (more of which can be read in Mark Newbold’s superlative article at starwars.com), the tradition has continued for nearly 40 years.

The story of the LEGO Star Wars: Official Annual is much newer however, with this year’s being the third – and our second review of a LEGO Star Wars annual – to date. And much like the previous edition, the 2018 version looks to contain the same offerings:

“The LEGO Star Wars Annual 2018 is filled with all your favourite Star Wars characters in entertaining comic strip stories, games, puzzles and more! It’s perfect for 7-10 year olds, who will love completing the activities and reliving key moments in the Star Wars films. They will also love building the fantastic LEGO Star Wars minifigure that’s set into the front cover.”

One immediately obvious difference is that there is only one minifig cover mounted blister – and a pretty generic Imperial Gunner (sw0529) at that. Whereas last year’s annual gave us both Ezra Bridger and Chopper minifigs, though I suppose we can count ourselves lucky tha twe didn’t get the plain white plates that came with the 2016 annual.

Though it is early Summer – and incongruous to the Christmas season – where Son of LEGOscum resides the weather is in the throes of climate change and chose to be slightly Wintery on the day he got stuck into the LEGO Star Wars: Official Annual 2018.

I think because I am nine this book is supposed to be fun for me. I quite liked it but the puzzles are kiddy. I’m glad there was some Freelanders stuff inside, and the comic was funny. I liked the story about Kylo Ren the most though. I’m going to do the Jabba the Hutt colouring in during the school holidays for a Cub Scout badge. My dad let me have the minifig because he’s got so manyin his collection. The games were simple and didn’t take me long but the virus maze was fun. The book is very cheap so that’s good too.

The RRP for this book is a low £7.99 which makes it good value for a combined collectible, activity book and minifig. Each of these alone don’t warrant the spend but there are some extremely good deals on this book at the moment.