Perhaps the most contentious Star Wars subtheme – due to its loose definition and flexible application of criteria – the Ultimate Collector Series has been causing consternation amongst LEGO Star Wars fans for decades, and the debate has been reignited with the recent arrival of 75308 R2-D2 in time for this year’s May The 4th Be With You retailapalooza.
Like an episode of The Muppets, the will it/won’t it UCS status has played out like the will they/won’t they Kermit and Miss Piggy romance, and the debate has raged between fans and LEGO for so long it’s become an entrenched part of the culture of LEGO Star Wars collecting.
But new members of the community might not be up to speed and may unwittingly wade into the middle of an argument – and come out a bit worse for wear. So, what’s all the fuss about?
On the LEGO side of the coin the constantly changing product standard on the side of LEGO, and on the other it’s an expectation that sets will conform to a definition that the LEGO community adopted when the first UCS sets arrived in 2000. And it doesn’t help that most people who gravitate towards LEGO are highly motivated categorizers!
It’s worth pointing out that LEGO only officially (and publically) applied a definition to the Ultimate Collector Series once, and that was to try and dispel confusion between the UCS and Master Builder Series line when 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City was released in 2018.
LEGO® Ultimate Collector Series sets are detailed, unique and challenging models meant for display. A collector’s display card is included with each set.
Source: LEGO
This simple and seemingly throw-away line justified all those collectors who applied the advanced build/meant for display/data plaque criteria, a standard that had been accepted by the bulk of the LEGO Star Wars community since 2000 when 7181 TIE Interceptor and 7191 X-Wing Fighter arrived on the scene with “Ultimate Collector Series” bannered across the top of the box.
These sets – termed Direct To Consumer (aka D2C) – were exclusively sold through LEGO.com and the few brand stores that existed over 20 years ago, and like many large sets that followed were hard to find and retired earlier than most sets that were available at general retail. It’s worth noting that countries that didn’t (or still don’t) have an online of real-world LEGO retail footprint get these sets as retailer exclusives and that after a period of time – typically six months – they (whether they be available as LEGO D2C or retailer exclusives) are released to general retail.
While the possibility of including sets that have initially been sold as D2C exclusives through LEGO, the existence of a number of sets that were clearly not advanced builds or meant for display (10123 Cloud City, 10131 TIE Collection, 10144 Sandcrawler, 10178 Motorized Walking AT-AT, 10188 Death Star and 10195 Republic Dropship with AT-OT Walker) has meant that it was never considered a requirement – though some of the aforementioned sets have been incorrectly labeled as UCS from time to time.
Cracks in the three-point identification system began to show in 2001 when 10018 Darth Maul and 10019 Rebel Blockade Runner were released. While the original iteration of the Tantive IV ticked all the boxes, the bust of the newest Sith Lord in the Star Wars saga didn’t have the required data plaque.
Further adding to the complexity of what the definition of a UCS set was the product numbering system. At the time most sets had four digits but the D2C sets had five.
Everything settled down in 2002 however, and 10026 Special Edition Naboo Starfighter and 10030 Imperial Star Destroyer fulfilled the growing list of requirements that had started with advanced build/meant for display/data plaque and now included direct-to-consumer exclusive and a five digit set identifier.
Everything was fine until 2002 when LEGO released 7194 Yoda; they not only reverted to four digits but didn’t include a data plaque and fans began to wonder just what was going on. What followed was even more unsettling for collectors – all the UCS sets between 2003 and 2016 adopted the standard packaging design that the regular LEGO Star Wars sets used… and then in 2006, with the arrival of 10179 Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon, had minifigures included in them. But they all had the five-digit set number, thankfully.
At this point, the accepted standard was adult build/meant for display/might have a data plaque/have a five digit number instead of four/could have minifigures and the community settled down for a period.
The situation was further mired in 2011 when LEGO offered up a free poster that celebrated “over 10 years of ultimate LEGO Star Wars sets” and pictured all of the D2C sets. The use of “ultimate” in the poster’s title and the inclusion of so many advanced builds – many of which had been officially branded as UCS – caused fans to assume that this was an open acknowledgment of those that filled the Ultimate Collector Series subtheme. (It wasn’t until nearly 10 years later that the realization that the poster depicted those sets that had been exclusive to LEGO dawned on the community.)
The following year things got back on track with the release of 10225 R2-D2, which came with a free poster that clearly announced the set as an addition to the Ultimate Collector Series line, and everything stayed copasetic (with the odd bump in the road that was 10236 Ewok Village (2013) and 75059 Sandcrawler (2014) because the didn’t have data plaques) until 2016.
It was the appearance of 75059 Sandcrawler that heralded another change in the semi-standardized definition of the UCS range: it was the first to get the 75### numbering that the rest of the LEGO Star Wars theme had been moved over to in 2013.
The new definition was now adult build/meant for display/might have a data plaque/could have minifigures.
Adding insult to injury was 75098 Assault on Hoth, a set that was branded an Ultimate Collector Series by wit of it being badged with an Ultimate Collector Series graphic. It – being an agglomeration of a number of existing playsets and vehicles, along with a few minor unique selling points – was largely derided by the LEGO Star Wars collecting community. Further complicating the accepted definition was 75159 Death Star, a re-release of the D2C set that came out in 2008 (and had only been retired for 6 months!).
Curiously, at no point did the Ultimate Collector Series masthead, which had first appeared in 2000 and only showed up on five of the seventeen existing UCS sets, become a factor in categorizing the subtheme. In fact, it didn’t become a staple of the UCS line-up until 2017 when 75192 Millennium Falcon (and all the UCS sets following it to date) sported the banner. Perhaps it was because LEGO couldn’t decide if the line was Ultimate Collector or Collector’s Series, two options they trialed over the years.
Coming out just after 75192 Millennium Falcon, a set that started its own chain reaction within the LEGO collecting community, was the single biggest hiccup in the entire Ultimate Collector Series line – a set that ticked all the prerequisites of being a difficult build, designed for display, a minifigure for show and a data plaque! For all intents and purposes, it looked like the subtheme was firmly – and finally – on the rails.
It wasn’t to be though, because 75187 BB-8 was placed under the new Sculptures subtheme; one that has grown yearly and has been accepted as a teen-friendly UCS line (or as one fan has labeled it the Like Ultimate Collector Series (LUCS) range).
That wasn’t the end of the matter though. The 2018 release of 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City under the guise of the newly anointed Master Builder Series subtheme caused fans to circle the wagons again and for LEGO to finally issue an official definition – one that clearly contradicted the final 75187 BB-8 model.
With much hair-pulling and accusatory social media posts, the LEGO Star Wars community began to accept that the only contunuity in the definition of UCS subtheme (since 2017) was that the sets were still complicated builds that were intended for display, with the third point in the fluid interpretation of what a UCS set is being the application of the Ultimate Collector Series banner. At least for now.
What the impending release of the new Republic Gunship, which LEGO confirmed as an UCS set when they announced the results of the community poll ran through their Ideas platform at the start of 2020, the LEGO Star Wars collecting community is expecting another shift in the definition.
Even more confusion was created when, in 2021, a new, large-scale R2-D2 (75308) was the set du jour on this year’s May 4th. Despite it being an updated facsimile of the one released in 2012, matched the previous sets dimensions exactly, had a data plaque and display stand it was placed under the Sculptures subtheme.
Will the addition of the Republic Gunship, which is expected in September or October, conform to what remains of the definition that the fan community is clinging to, or will LEGO further alter the deal? Only time will tell.
What are your thoughts on the everchanging criteria that both defines the Ultimate Collector Series and divides the LEGO Star Wars community? Do you even care?
When I started comparing past Star Wars sets to see which iteration was the best of each model to purchase, the haphazard application of the UCS label really didn’t help things. Sets like the Tantive IV, various AT-ATs, and now R2-D2 first having the label and then dropping it with a later version at the same scale, I think we need a different system to track which Star Wars sets fit into large/display, medium/play, small/cheap, micro/quick scale categories.
The old UCS system has been broken for a ling time now, but the rest seem to work – Microfighter, 4+, etc are all on the packaging and there’s been no deviation so far.
ucs or master builder or whatever, that’s just marketing, much like saying this shampoo is 2021 consummer’s award or any crap medal/star shaped logo = it aims to sell the thing regardless of it’s intrinsec qualities
. like i don’t judge a book by it’s cover, i don’t categorize a set by the box or fancy title but by how close they are to a studio prop, their scale, presence of playable feature, etc.
That being said, note there is one more lego classification for some years on boxes that sounds more relevant to me (than UCS or other): it’s the targetted age. 18+ sets target AFOL and are designed for display.
Well that was my analysis.
The whole point of the UCS range is that they are more complicated and more accurate builds, and for the most part and with few exceptions, this has held true. Categorising sets by age recommendation doesn’t really work though – my 13 year old son is perfectly capable of building 18+ models.