‘I wanted a blank slate’: Why LEGO Star Wars Jango Fett’s Starship designer didn’t look at 2015 Slave I

The designer of LEGO Star Wars 75409 Jango Fett’s Starship purposefully avoided the set’s 2015 predecessor while working on the UCS build.

75409 Jango Fett’s Starship returns to an earlier version of the same ship as 2015’s 75060 Slave I, while it was piloted by Jango Fett, rather than Boba. While the basic inspiration remains similar, LEGO Senior Designer Jackson Hughes who worked on the 2025 set didn’t want the sets to feel too similar.

“I wanted a blank slate,” explained Jackson. “Of course, I spent a lot of time admiring the 2015 version. I’ve never owned it or built it, but when I started building this one, I wanted to provide a from-scratch building experience, a completely new design.”

Indeed, aside from the obvious colour changes, there are roughly 1,000 extra pieces in 75409 Jango Fett’s Starship when compared to 75060 Slave I, highlighting the depth of changes both inside and out. Jackson decided to avoid looking at the 2015 UCS set so that he could come wholly fresh to the process.

“When I designed the skeleton and approached how to make the shapes, I chose not to look at the 2015 one,” he explained. “I wanted a fresh approach.”

For LEGO Star Wars fans who might already own 75060 Slave I, that means there’ll still be plenty new to discover, both in building and displaying the set. The extra pieces make for a more detailed build, with Jackson deciding to use a variety of smaller pieces, rather than fewer larger ones.

“A lot of [the piece count] goes into the detail of the interior, and especially the build of what we’ve been calling the egg-shaped hull section of the ship,” Jackson explained. “It looks like there are bigger elements on the outside here, but the original model had some really big elements. There were some quarter circle sloped pieces that are around 10 by 10 studs, whereas 75409 Jango Fett’s Starship uses more medium-sized elements.

“There are also a lot more smaller elements going into the structure of the interior. That’s where fans will find [the extra pieces] the most, in the absence of some of those larger elements being replaced.”

That’s not to say everything has been switched up between 75060 Slave I and 75409 Jango Fett’s Starship, however. After all, if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.

“Once I had gotten far enough that I knew how I wanted to design it, I went and scoured the building instructions to see if that one was doing anything better,” the designer added. “In the end, 75409 Jango Fett’s Starship is designed pretty much entirely from scratch, except for the nose section. That’s built pretty similarly to the 2015 one. Hans [Burkhard Schlömer], who designed 75060 Slave I did it about as well as it can be done. There was no reason to fix it, as it wasn’t broken.”

75409 Jango Fett’s Starship will be available to buy, perfect nose and all, for £259.99 in the UK, $299.99 in the US, and €299.99 in Europe from May for LEGO Insiders and from May 4 for everyone else. Check out our in-depth review here.

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