LEGO Star Wars Character Encyclopedia: Updated & Expanded Book Review

Way back in 2011, DK released LEGO Star Wars Character Encyclopedia which featured more than 300 minifigures released for the LEGO Star Wars theme and included many facts about the characters. It’s been four years since the book was published and there are a lot more characters that have been introduced into the theme so accordingly, DK has released the new Updated and Expanded version which includes 72 additional pages of new minifigures. As tradition with many DK books, there is also an exclusive minifigure included with the book which is the White Boba Fett that is based on the Ralph McQuarrie prototype Mandalorian armor used in the 1978 screen test.

LEGO Star Wars Character Encyclopedia: Updated & Expanded consists of 288 fully-colored pages and almost everything about the book is overhauled. First off is the new cover design with the title and minifigure window right in the middle instead of in the corner as before.

With the old Character Encyclopedia, the book was broken up into the six movies of the Star Wars saga, the Clone Wars, and the Expanded Universe. Since then Disney has released the Star Wars Rebels animated series and the book is now separated into a continuous timeline starting from Episode I, II, then to the Clone Wars, III, Rebels, IV-VI, and a new category called Legends. This chapter includes all the minifigures that were in the old Expanded Universe chapter who are regarded as non-canon.

Like with the previous version of the Character Encyclopedia, each minifigure is featured on their own page and there are various facts about them. There’s also the Data File box which shows the year they first appeared, first set, the number of sets that particular version of the minifigure has appeared in, number of pieces, and their accessories. The characters are ordered according to the Star Wars property in which they first appeared or featured the most.

A majority of the minifigures’ info was just transferred over to the new book but some existing characters were updated since the last book was released. For example, one of these characters that got updated was Jabba the Hutt so the new book focuses on his new colored mold while also giving information about the original variant in a separate Star Variant box.

The last part of the book is a behind-the-scenes look with some of the designers for the LEGO Star Wars theme. This section touches on how the characters are chosen to become LEGO minifigures for the sets, how the exclusive book minifigures are chosen, an so on. It’s a cool little section but it would’ve been nice to have a few more pages for it.

Minifigure

As mentioned before, the LEGO Star Wars Character Encyclopedia: Updated & Expanded includes the exclusive White Boba Fett minifigure which also has gotten a facelift comprising of a new design all around. The torso and legs has new printing that’s similar to the concept design. The molding of the helmet is the same one as the recent Boba Fett minifigures. He also has the antenna for the helmet and a white jetpack.

Results

Overall, the Updated and Expanded is a welcome change considering there have been so many new minifigures that have been released since the last book. The updated White Boba Fett minifigure is also a great collectible since this will probably be the only time we’ll see this version of him.

The book does give a wealth of information about the minifigures even though a lot of it was just transferred from the previous book. If you don’t have the first version of the Character Encyclopedia, then this really isn’t an issue.

Again the book is now available for purchase from various retailers as well as on Amazon at a fairly lower retail price.

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