Fast forward to early 2024, and the first images of 75379 R2-D2 debuted online... to a similarly pessimistic audience. “They could have made so many other droids,” one fan wrote on reddit. “This will be the third UCS style R2 and there was the old Technic one, and two different MINDSTORMS/BOOST versions that were almost the same size.” A few comments praised the idea of a cheaper, smaller Artoo, but this was hardly a set that was considered essential by the wider community.
So it went on for a few months, and while there was a lot of R2-D2 related activity in LEGO Star Wars Facebook groups and other corners of the internet, most of the chatter seemed to be about Darth Malak (look at my new Darth Malak minifigure, how much is Darth Malak worth, will anyone buy my copy of R2-D2 without Darth Malak, etc.). And then the first images of 75398 C-3PO surfaced via a LEGO Certified Store.
The 25th Anniversary set promised to bring us our first system-guided build of C-3PO in a larger scale, but the real question on everyone’s lips was whether it would be a scale that matched 75379 R2-D2, as that would potentially be a game-changer. It wasn’t long before more images started appearing online, and one of them inevitably confirmed that these two sets were indeed designed specifically to be displayed together.
Suddenly, 75379 R2-D2 made perfect sense, and indeed, LEGO Star Wars Senior Model Designer César Soares confirmed to Brick Fanatics that the two sets were always meant to hit shelves as counterparts. "When we were developing the smaller R2-D2, we were also developing C-3PO at the same time to be in scale with R2-D2," he said. "You can't have one without the other."
The community didn’t disagree. “I would never have bought just the R2 but now I’m determined to get both and have them as decoration in the living room,” one Redditor wrote, while another added, “I didn’t think I had a reason to buy the 2024 R2 but now I do.” That one image of both R2-D2 and C-3PO together seemed to change many opinions from ‘don’t want either’ to ‘want both.’
This clearly isn't the first time that the LEGO Group has created sets that are intended to be displayed together, and it's far from the first time we've seen that happen under the LEGO Star Wars banner. But this may be one of the few times (at least in recent history) that the company has managed to retroactively improve the reputation of a set by releasing a different set a few months later.
The end result is that 75379 R2-D2 has gone from being a set that was easy to ignore, or perhaps just buy for its Darth Malak minifigure, to one of the must-haves of 2024. That is, in the sense that if you’re going to buy C-3PO – and reviews (ours included!) suggest that you should, as it has a lot to offer as a set – you really need to get Artoo. You can’t have one without the other.
