LEGO Star Wars 75417 AT-ST Walker review

LEGO Star Wars 75417 AT-ST Walker does a lot of things right for an Ultimate Collector Series set, even when stuck in an imperfect balance.

Not all great Star Wars vehicles can make for great LEGO Star Wars sets, and perhaps nowhere is that more true than in the case of the AT-ST – as exemplified this summer by 2025’s bonus Ultimate Collector Series release, 75417 AT-ST Walker. The AT-ST remains iconic and fun for Star Wars fans and is yet again interesting to put together in LEGO form, but the bump in scale can't overcome challenges inherent to this vehicle.

75417 AT-ST Walker

Release: Aug 1, 2025

Retiring: Dec 31, 2026

Price: £179.99 / $199.99 / €199.99

Pieces: 1,513

Minifigures: 1

We’ve had so many renditions of this chicken walker over the years and deservedly so for its wonderful screen time in Return of the Jedi and, subsequently, in other Star Wars properties and shows. It’s a fun vehicle full of play-and-display potential and so unique in design that it always makes for an interesting model to build out of LEGO.

However… in those many LEGO AT-STs we've had over the years, it can be argued that not one of them has managed to fully nail the unique aspects of the walker’s design in a way that is both definitively true to its proportions and that maintains a stability suitable for hands-on play and display.

This is by no means a criticism of any of the LEGO AT-STs – a good few of them capture the charm and playability of the vehicle just fine, and particularly so at minifigure scale. But when we have a UCS model that offers the opportunity for unrivalled detail, piece count and building techniques at a much larger scale, and it still cannot deliver a correctly-proportioned version of the walker, it does have you scanning through the back catalogue.

And in doing so, you'll notice that – bar those released relatively close to one another – no two LEGO Star Wars AT-STs are quite alike, and none really manage to overcome the unusual proportions and physical imbalances of what we have seen on screens in a galaxy far, far away.

Simply because they are small, brick-built toys that need to survive being played with, or at the very least need to be able to stand up on their own weight without being top-heavy or causing the structure of the legs to break, LEGO AT-STs through the years have always had to compromise their design one way or another. It’s a reality of, well, turning something fictional from on-screen into something real in hand, and it has resulted in this strange history of a LEGO set quite unlike any other.

It means that we have some LEGO AT-STs that are taller, some with bigger heads, others with bigger feet, some with much straighter legs, and even others with walkable ones (who remembers the shuffle of the very first one?). The one consistency in the LEGO AT-ST collection is the inconsistency between them. None are like any other, and not one stands above any other as a truly accurate and iconic LEGO version of the vehicle they are all trying to be.

As said, this reflection is not a slight towards the many iterations of the LEGO AT-ST through the decades, but rather an acknowledgement to the challenges of turning science fiction into physical reality that the design team has always faced, that we make again in reviewing 75417 AT-ST Walker and that you need to be aware of when setting expectations for this latest UCS set, to understand why this is at once both the best, most comprehensive LEGO AT-ST we’ve ever built – and still unable to convincingly enough look like the source material.

A UCS set could and should be where compromises at minifigure scale are removed, but such are the unique design challenges here, the AT-ST as seen in Return of the Jedi is still – 26 years into the history of LEGO Star Wars – too physically and mechanically unreal to accurately portray in LEGO form, even in UCS scale.

It means that what we have in 2025 is a high-cost 75417 AT-ST Walker with proportions pulled out of whack, with a head that is too big, feet that are way too big, and legs that are too thick, to name just three significant issues. The design team even include acknowledgement of the challenges of the physicality of the vehicle in the opening pages of the instructions book, writing that they 'experimented with proportions and tweaked the design to find the optimal centre of gravity'.

That being said and, as mentioned up top, 75417 AT-ST Walker is in many ways as authentic a UCS experience as any other, packing in detail and design across a sizeable piece count and build, to make for a thoroughly engrossing and involved LEGO experience. This AT-ST is fun to put together as you explore in unrivalled detail the many different and highly recognisable facets of the vehicle.

The set may be compromised in final design, but it does a good job of otherwise hiding that fact through its construction process, while for every angle that betrays the mismatched proportions there's another that makes it look pretty great, and very imposing. The ‘face’ of the AT-ST is particularly nicely caught, between the viewing ports and the central and side-mounted weapons.

Importantly too, and with acknowledgement to the first UCS AT-ST from way back in 2006, 75417 has the head facing forwards rather than up, and the legs positioned slightly outwards. The latter change may be for stability as much as anything else, but it does add a level of dynamism to an otherwise static model outside of the swivelling head and moving weapons.

The hatch at the top opens for convenient Wookiee access, whilst the entire top also lifts off to view the now detailed interior complete with seating and controls.

In short, 75417 AT-ST Walker has had wonderful work put into it, as any UCS set does, and ticks a lot of the right boxes that can make this a worthwhile addition to the collection, and at a slightly more accessible price. But it’s not an AT-ST that fully benefits from the UCS treatment purely because it’s an AT-ST and these things are still proving – two-and-a-half decades into LEGO Star Wars – to be a little tricky to get right, even at the levels of perfectionism that an Ultimate Collector Series set can otherwise unlock.

Our honest opinion: 75417 AT-ST Walker is flawed but by no means a failure. It’s the biggest and best LEGO AT-ST yet, and still at the limit of what’s possible with the LEGO medium at this time.

This LEGO set was provided by the LEGO Group for review purposes.

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