JamesBenjamin

In the USA, the polybags usually show up at Target or Walmart at random times of year, sometimes around a holiday (like valentines or easter). Target will put them in the holiday section, walmart has a shelf of baskets in the lego section for them. Outside the USA I can't speak to.

Hello! I rarely stop by and chat, mostly I read here but wanted to let you know that the truck in the base/rocket set is meant to hold the pallet of space rocks held up by the crane in most of the pictures. So the miner goes and mines, loads stuff on the pallet, and then the truck takes it back to base.

Yay!!!

So I ordered Optimus Prime the day this went live and got one GWP, but when they announced the Galaxy Explorer I pre-ordered that and ordered two small in stock sets for my kids and per the email with the tracking # they sent a second GWP in that second order. So while the "rules" may say one per household, it looks like (in the USA at least) they're not enforcing it for two orders placed almost a week apart. (FYI to all for future GWPs)

This is not specifically aimed at you, but i've seen many people say similar things... But look at this from a Lego Store point of view. They want their BAM sections to be for kids to build minifigures, and the price is set up to do that If they let adults come in and by 15 torsos instead of 3 figures with an accessory each (so 5 parts total) then they end up with 15 heads and 15 legs with no torsos. If enough adults do that, the ratio is waaaaay off and kids will have 1000 legs and 50 torsos to choose from.

Umm, everyone's entitled to their own opinion of course, but this new set has the same shape as the old one, so its just as "fighter plane" looking as the old one. Also there are ton of details that are just bigger versions of old lego parts, like the brickbuilt version of this on the back: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3963#T=C

I intended to check in the morning but my 4 year old had a nightmare and after getting her to the potty then back to bed I thought I'd check real quick and DOH! it was only 11:45. Stayed up till midnight and was able to order with no trouble, so I've got mine and we'll see how long the GWP lasts. Hopefully a few days so everyone can get one.

Thanks!

So do we expect this to be revealed at Lego Con this weekend?

For the USA, is it midnight eastern time?

For a normal GWP do they go live at midnight? do they normally sell out before morning? The last one I wanted sold out but I seem to remember it was like a day later when it did.

OH! That makes a lot more sense. I assume if I were around these forums more I would have gotten the joke. Thanks!

Forgive me, but what is the Queen's Castle? I've seen in mentioned a few places but haven't seen it. Rumor of new set?

Honestly its probly more about manufacturing quotas than scalpers. What scalper would buy just a body? For those not in the know, this is how normal factories work: Company wants to make 100,000 of some item. Lets say its a Lego Elephant. And for ease of discussion, THIS elephant is two parts: head and body. Well factories don't actually do quotes by # of items manufactured, they do them by time. So ahead of time Lego sends over their specs and the factory says "judging by scheduling and labor and ingredients availability, we would need 5 days (24 hours each) 4 weeks from now to make approximately 100,000 elephants, BUT because we sell time and not items, the contract says we can produce +/- 10% of that number and you get/have to take them all (this 10% is pretty much an industry standard). So the first 2.5 days everything is going smoothly and they are able to make 109,476 elephant heads. Then there's some sort of problem when they switch to the bodies and they loose 3 hours in set up. So they end up making only 92,398 bodies. Their contract with Lego is fulfilled and they ship off 92,398 complete elephants and 17,078 lonely heads, because both of those numbers are within 10% either up or down of the original number requested (100k). Now Lego has been in this for awhile and they knew that they really only needed 90,000 Elephants to fulfill their order of the "elephant chase" set for this year, and now they have all those extra bodies and heads. Pre-internet, those would go in the trash or get harvested for local projects, or given to charity, held till the next elephant set, or whatever. Now they put them on bricks & pieces instead. Now obviously Lego owns some of their own factories and has a tight grip on the scheduling, and when they do next year's "elephant boat trip" set they can take those extra heads into account when they schedule factory time. But in general, that's why you might end up with a lot more heads than bodies on a service like Bricks & Pieces. Although in this case if the body had a $0 price for awhile it might also just be a glitch on the site.

Those of you who've known of Bricks and pieces longer than me: Will there eventually be a period where I can just order new animals from the site? It seems like all the new (2022 jan) kittens and squirrels are out of stock now. Am I going to have to stalk the site every day or will they eventually just be available for a few months?