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I found this on ebay a few months ago. I never picked one of these up, but this is a pretty rare item and it is very difficult to get hold of.
back in May of 2002, Walmart held a contest at their stores called the Walmart Jedi Training Academy Clone Building event.
Inside of each box was the following.
- 150 complete Lego Clonetrooper minifigures of the original variety from 2002. You can see this here.
- 150 Lego blasters for the Clonetroopers. These are the original 2002 two piece blasters as well.
You also get the box which is the important part. The box had a cutout on the top for the kids to reach in and grap the clone troopers out and start building. The cutout was shaped like a Clonetrooper helmet!
Children reached into the box and grabbed parts of minifigures and then attempted to build as many as possible in 60 seconds.
Due to the nature of the contest, a few negative things happened to these sets which makes a complete set in good condition difficult to come by.
- Stores let children reach into the box and children were not nice to the box
- Stored sometimes gave the minifigures out as prizes to the children so not all of the kits still had all 150 Clonetroopers.
Here is a picture from someone trying to sell one of these kits complete back in 2003.
From the article above, here are some more details of the contest…
“This was part of an official Hasbro/LEGO/Frito Lay Star Wars promotional event, held at Wal Mart stores in mid May of 2002 (on the 18th I believe). The event was called the “Jedi Training Academy”, and had little game stations to test your Jedi Skills. I was able to get the entire Wal Mart promotional kit, this is just a portion of it. The big part is a 5 foot tall, three sided “building” with electronics, where you use electronic lightsabers and hit lights on enemies as they blink.
This piece is from the LEGO Clone Building section. You were supposed to reach into the box and build as many Clone minifigs as possible in 60 seconds.
A complete set consists of 150 clonetroopers, but they are few and far between. I had to purchase a second set to build one complete set. Some stores lost pieces, some gave them away. Each store was under very strong orders by LEGO to immediately destroy all of the pieces following the event;”
Here are two other photos that I found on this Facebook group. They were posed by user Nick Coco and if you have one for sale, it looks like he might be a buyer. I am not sure what I would do with three or four of these.
Lego Star Wars and Minifigures Collectors group
Here are a few more from that same facebook group by user Nick Coco
