One of the greatest special effects accomplishments in Star Wars: A New Hope was the final Death Star run. For the shooting, sectional pieces of the Death Star were created to be shot from above, creating the stunning images of the space station’s bumpy, menacing exterior as the heroes closed in.

The idea that the Empire, or the First Order, can keep churning out Death Star after Death Star gets a little harder to swallow when you watch this CG timelapse by Benjamin and Isaac Botkin, which shows just how incredibly complex it is to build a moon, or planet-sized space station.

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's weekly roundup of the coolest toys around! We’ve got a very cool Star Wars way to get kids to code, the best Supergirl merchandise yet, an excellent Transformers figure, and more. Come take a look!

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's weekly roundup of all the awesome new toys rapidly sucking the money out of our wallets this week. We’ve got a Thor: Ragnarok figure worthy of Cate Blanchett’s glory, an extravagant as hell Frozen sleigh, a tricked-out Batmobile, and a very fancy phaser. Take a look!

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's new weekly series gathering the latest and shiniest pop culture toys and merchandise around. This week: a very fancy take on Peter Parker’s low-rent Spider-Man: Homecoming look, a giant Optimus Prime, and a fully armed and operational battle teapot. Let’s take a look!

Every family reunion is full of awkward discussions, especially if your reunion consists of your twin sister, who you kissed on more than one occasion, and your dad, who cut off your hand. Unless you have a killer potato salad recipe, this amazing custom cornhole game is your best bet for having a good time.

You don’t need to send a team of rogue warriors to steal the plans for this amazing edible Death Star, made with curved gingerbread pieces, in order to destroy it. All you need is a house full of college students home for the holidays who’ve been living off instant ramen for months.

Rogue One is hitting theaters, and with its release, we now have an “official” answer to how Princess Leia received the plans to the Death Star in A New Hope. In years past, however, when the old Expanded Universe flourished, there was another explanation... and it’s more complex and ludicrous than you could possibly…

Okay so it’s not blowing up a planet yet, but it is very, very pretty.

Now that Disney owns Lucasfilm and everything Star Wars, the company’s theme parks are slowly becoming giant advertisements for the upcoming films. Which is totally cool with us if it means awesome publicity stunts like turning Epcot’s giant spherical Spaceship Earth into the Death Star—complete with a working…

Looks like we don’t need to see Rogue One anymore, because we already knows how it ends.

Thanks to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the Death Star is en vogue again, which also means there’s no shortage of Death Star merchandise flooding the market. And despite it being a super weapon capable of extinguishing billions of lives with one blast, this Death Star lamp might make it easier to drift off to sleep at…

But really? If you’ve got the time, lack of willpower when it comes to buying shiny things, space to house a giant plastic sphere, and the money, you actually might want to build it anyway.

Lego’s Star Wars constructions kits are legendary. Even though the company has dozens of cool kits based on popular movies, there’s still nothing like seeing your favorite Star Wars characters miniaturized and given the proper Lego treatment.

This wonderful photo series comparing the size of things by Kevin Wisbith is a really fun way to earn some brain wrinkles, because it gives you a better sense of the true size of random buildings, ships, machines, and other objects. You get to see things like the Death Star hover over Florida in space, a B-2 bomber…

Spin Master has been doing some wonderful things when it comes to Star Wars toys, including a giant BB-8 that does almost everything the movie version did. But if space battles are more your thing, the company is releasing two new Air Hogs sets that let you recreate the space battles from the movies.

The ultimate power in the Star Wars universe can also be the ultimate power on your kitchen counter now that the Death Star has been turned into a two-slice toaster with settings for light, dark, burnt, and Alderaan’d.

To help celebrate his three-millionth subscriber, YouTuber Colin Furze, the creator of the thermite cannon and questionably-safe hoverbike, has successfully topped all of his inventions to date by building his own miniature Death Star covered in 58 boxes of fireworks all wired together for one magnificent 20 second…

For much of its modern history, science fiction has had a particular fascination with engineering, with authors and artists imagining fantastic, massive structures in the depths of space. Here are 10 of them, from incredibly large to unbelievably massive.