LEGO Launch The Yoda Chronicles

What The Yoda Chronicles is has been unclear for months, since the title of a new book was uncovered. The mystery surrounding the project has been much like that surrounding the little green fellow himself. With the Toy Fair season underway and the LEGO Star Wars website getting an update, things are starting to make sense.


With Yoda on the packaging for LEGO Star Wars products this year, the campaign for LEGO Star Wars will be based around the wise Jedi Master. The main focus will be a TV series. At the UK Toy Fair it was implied that this was a full TV series, but a recent announcement from Cartoon Network says otherwise.

The Yoda Chronicles:
LEGO Star Wars returns in epic style with THE YODA CHRONICLES, a thrilling, funny and action-packed new LEGO Star Wars story told in three animated TV specials! Set in the “Prequel” Star Wars timeline, THE YODA CHRONICLES stars the one and only Yoda—the Jedi Master who has seen it all, done it all, and taught generations of Jedi Knights—in an all-new adventure. With the help of a fresh class of Padawans, Yoda leads the Jedi in a desperate fight to stop Darth Sidious and his minions from creating a new super-weapon that could crush the Republic and win the war for the forces of Evil.

So according to this announcement a three episode burst, but then this is better than just the one episode specials that have aired previously. It seems that the content for The Yoda Chronicles is to be spread across as many formats as possible, as recently starwars.lego.com have uploaded four “episodes” to the website. Each one is around a minute long, and feature top-notch animation. These seem to be more blatantly about advertising the sets available, as they focus quite specifically on products currently available.

The tie-in book from DK will include an exclusive mini-figure, and covers only 64 pages. The price is currently similar to that of LEGO Star Wars: Character Encyclopaedia, so hopefully with such a low page count this will be reduced. The mini-fig must surely be Yoda in some form, but since he rarely changes his outfit it will be interesting to see how it is exclusive. The book itself will be a picture-laden reference guide about Yoda.

Jek-14’s Stealth Starfighter (75018) is based on a vehicle from the specials, and this seems to be where such a project may well be a wise move for LEGO. With the actual Star Wars sets taken up by vehicles and locations that have been done up to six or seven times before, creating original content to draw upon good increase the longevity of the line and maintain the interest of children and collectors until Episode VII hits. Presumably LEGO are using the one set this year as a test to see whether it will sell in the same numbers as movie-based products.

There will no doubt be more aspects of The Yoda Chronicles that LEGO are currently keeping as secret as the Jedi Master’s home world, but at least now fans know about LEGO making 2013 the year of Yoda.