jdubbs

Promobricks did not. But that doesn't mean the digits weren't swapped elsewhere...

No need to be rude. I was just trying to explain why it maybe hasn’t been published yet, or might take a bit longer to public this year.

Set numbers and prices are already known (to some) through the end of next year. I think the people "in the know" have held off publishing them because early information tends to be less accurate and more subject to change, and no one wants to become the guy who posted incorrect information (see: Clone Accessory Pack). And there is an upside to waiting... until all of the set names are known, posting a list of set numbers/prices just makes it that much easier for trolls to dream up plausible-but-fake set lists, which just cause all sorts of confusion... Last year it took forever for the set numbers to go public, and I think because of it, we didn't see the fakes that were so common in previous years.

That's certainly the publicly stated goal: getting the fansites to promote your product, and rewarding them for doing so (esp. if the rewards lead to more promotion). But there is definitely an ulterior motive at work, which I would say is at least as important to them... it gets those fansites under their control, at least when it comes to publicizing leaks. Yes, the images that get sent to the LAN members the week before a launch do get leaked through back channels, but that's probably a lot more palatable to LEGO than having all the sites in LAN actively promoting every blurry image that leaks in the months leading up to the launch. And those have been quelled pretty successfully versus a few years ago. I think it was more than just him being critical of LEGO. Jang has been critical of LEGO for years — rarely does a review go by where he is not calling them out on price, value, ppp, etc. — but LEGO still seems more than willing to welcome him into the fold (though last I checked he had still declined). I think LEGO just wants people who will be good ambassadors for the brand. (It's in the name, after all). And, whether you love MandR or hate him — and I don't see the point of going down that rabbit hole — it's hard to see his videos as good promotion for LEGO. Honest feedback is one thing, but relentless criticism is another... and as you point out, he is very polarizing... and polarizing isn't often a quality marketing types look for in brand ambassadors.

Dude. Chill.

Guessing you've never heard of Jamie Berard. Lots of MOCs are built using connections that are either overly fragile (large assemblies held on by a single connection point) or stress the bricks in ways that aren't structurally stable. If you have to apply any kind of force to get two parts together, or bend the parts to do so, then you're likely using an illegal connection (or you've built it incorrectly). Beyond the "illegal building techniques": lots of MOCs are only ever built digitally, and can't support their own weight when built in real bricks. And lots of MOCs are built using parts that either don't exist (e.g., aren't available in the color specified in the digital instructions) or haven't been produced in quantity in years or decades... These may not be "illegal" per se, but they are effectively (or financially) "impossible".

The Gunship would have been designed and put into production before the accessory pack, given it came out 4+ months earlier and was a much more complex set in every other way. My guess is that the fig was designed/budgeted for the Gunship and then repurposed for the accessory pack as a way to keep the cost of the accessory pack down. If you look at the accessory packs for other lines (HP, etc.) they generally have just one new print in them, total... they are mostly just kit-bashed figs made from existing parts. But yes, the figure would have been planned for both sets before either launched, and they probably made enough of it in a single production run to use in both sets, without having to produce it twice. And I agree the inclusion of the clone commander fig here will probably hurt sales of the UCS Gunship moving forward, at least a bit. I'm getting whiplash following people's reactions to this set... first they're happy it's a clone army-building set... then they're mad it's not... then they're happy they're getting Rex and Cody... then they're mad they're getting P1 Rex and Cody... then they're mad (or happy, take your pick) they're getting an army-building set again, and/or mad they're not getting Rex and Cody, and/or mad one of the figs isn't an army-building fig, and/or mad it's the same fig as the gunship.... it's impossible to keep up with the umbrage.

The sales volume of a $350 set is probably a fraction of what a $15 set will sell... so, no, this doesn't make sense as a motivation for including it in the accessory pack. If they made enough of that minifig to use in both the UCS Gunship and the clone accessory pack, then they did so deliberately, knowing upfront that he would be included in both. And as BrickBob said, this accessory pack was designed and put into production before the Gunship was even on shelves.

That seems kind of a stretch. The clone being exclusive to the UCS set made it more attractive to potential buyers. if it were selling poorly, LEGO wouldn't want to neuter part of its appeal.

People were dumping their Cara Dune figures because of the insane run-up on her on BL, etc. after Disney fired the actress who played her. That's just cashing in on an opportunity. Yes, she was listed in a rumored set description for the Light Cruiser, but everyone I talked to at the time was pretty iffy whether she would remain in it... pictures were still a long way off, and there was still plenty of time for LEGO to swap in a different fig (another Dark Trooper, for instance). Anyone with the Light Cruiser description (which was still a rumor at that point) who sold their Cara Dune knew it was entirely possible — even likely — she would never appear in a set again, no matter what that description said. If you're referring to MandR again here, he is the not the only person to be kicked from LAN. And my understanding is that he was kicked for more than just posting leaks. You're comparing apples to oranges here. LAN members aren't posting YouTube videos with copyrighted images; the BrickShow did (at least three times, to get their channel taken down by YouTube). The whole point of LAN, aside from LEGO hopefully getting some free publicity, is to shut leakers up. They offer up free sets for "review" and give them press releases and product images a week early as an incentive, but the constraint is that they cannot post or repost leaked images... which a lot of current/former LAN members were doing rampantly before they joined LAN, making those images much more prominent than when they were just posted on an obscure website or insta account. It's basically velvet handcuffs...

Didn't say anything about MandR. He is hardly the only person to kicked from LAN.

LEGO usually cancels one or two SW sets each year for whatever reason. (There were 4-5 cancelled in 2020, which was uncommon.) When LEGO cancels a set, its set number dies, which is why you see skipped set numbers in Brickset, etc. Those three 2018 sets were not cancelled; they were never real to begin with... 100% fake. The descriptions were full of very obvious wish-list "tells" (which clearly appealed to a lot of people...) The Snoke description was wrong about features, etc. in the eventual Snoke set, and the set numbers turned out to be different sets at different prices, which would never have happened if the sets had been cancelled or postponed.

The guy I believe you're thinking of (Sir Von Lego? Something like that...) wasn't the originator of the rumor, but he was someone well respected and in the know... people were constantly asking him to corroborate rumors, and I do remember he did eventually say "yes this is legit"... which it wasn't. I think he changed jobs or moved or something which either cut off his access to info or made it so that he could no longer share what he knew. No idea why he was wrong on that rumor... he might have just said "yes" to get people off his back, or he might not have been paying attention... maybe he got confused about what he was being asked to confirm... people did tend to swarm him with questions every time he surfaced. My gut tells me he was fairly legit before that.

I don't believe anyone who works at LEGO actually sells information or images... mostly because I really doubt anyone would pay for it. Workers in China have been known to smuggle minifigs out of factories and then sell them in local stores or put them on the Chinese equivalent of eBay... but these have largely been rooted out by LEGO and/or the Chinese government. Pretty much any image you see in the week before a set is officially revealed came from a LAN member. They typically get images 1 week in advance (a few get them earlier, for very large sets especially) and a few members in particular were known for widely distributing these images... at least, when they were still in LAN. Toy Fair was another source of information, before COVID. I would add YouTubers to your list of attention-seekers. I would not conflate the game of telephone that goes on, with outright lies. Those are two separate things... there have been, for years now, people who get their jollies passing around fake set lists and watching people on EB, FB, Discord, etc. get more and more worked up by them. Usually, these are easy to spot... I won't go into all the "tells" because that just teaches these people how to create better fakes. But these tend to take on a life of their own... for instance: three sets we were supposedly getting a few years ago... Snoke's Throneroom, Resitance Shuttle, and the V-19 Torrent. This rumor was 100% made up (Snoke's Throneroom was correct of course, but an incredibly easy guess), but people would not let it go, mostly because they wanted it to be true (even today, someone will inevitably pop up insisting that it was true.) But separate and apart from that, there is a feedback loop that happens among the "leakers" where one person posts a rumor, someone else repeats it which gets interpreted as confirmation, and so on. Most often, when you see the same rumor appear multiple times simultaneously or in quick succession, that's just Insta Guy 1 repeating what Insta Guy 2 said (or they're both hearing the rumor from the same source), rather than two Insta Guys getting corroborating info from two separate sources. You're being kind of cynical here. This is more a matter of semantics.... there are now three types of products that anyone can reasonably describe as a "battle pack"... the accessory packs, battle packs, and the $30 sets like the 501st. So, it turns out the Luke/Darktroopers set is more like the latter... that's not someone "making up a story"... it's someone using terms people are familiar with to describe an upcoming set. I'm not about to hold someone's feet to the fire because a battle pack turned out to be an accessory pack, or whatever. And I suggest you not either. Again, kinda cynical. Fact is that a very blurry box shot leaked from a Toy Fair catalog, and people made an assumption that the blurry orange peanut at the bottom of the box was Cody (which was logical given he is in the scene the set was based on) when in fact it wasn't. Honest mistake... one that I'm fairly sure anyone here would have made as well... This isn't "lying," it's mistakenly identifying a figure. But yes, people are still screaming about it... This was mostly just people speculating... why that figure wasn't in a set he reasonably should have been, and trying to make sense of that omission by saying "maybe he's in this other upcoming set instead." To my knowledge no "leakers" actually stated this as fact, or even rumor... at least, none that I find remotely credible.

I'm not going to touch the rest of this conversation with a ten foot pole, but I think this comment is worth responding to... some folks here seem to think as you do, that these accessory packs cannot live side-by-side with traditional battle packs. This is just not the case, as we all know by now, having seen the January snow trooper battle pack. I think maybe instead of seeing these as a replacement for BPs, or as spoiling chances of getting X, Y, or Z figures down the line, think of them as additive, which is surely how LEGO conceived them. One does not preclude the other. We are now getting minifig-centric sets at three different price points and shapes/sizes... these $15 accessory packs, the $20 traditional battle packs, and $30 super-battle packs (501st, Luke v. Dark Troopers, perhaps more to come). Those are filling three distinct needs... named/unique characters in one type of set (for those who welcomed figs like Ki-Adi Mundi but didn't want to end up with a dozen of him), massable characters in another, and in the last: small-to-mid-sized builds that wouldn't otherwise warrant a set on their own, packed with more figs than we usually get at this price point (within the SW line, anyway). This seems like an "everybody wins" situation, not the reverse. It bears repeating... have a little faith that LEGO is listening and that you'll get some (admittedly, not all) of the things you want, with a little patience.

I think it comes down to basic desirability. C-3PO is supposed to be shiny and metallic, so a chrome mining makes a lot of sense from a display perspective. A chrome Vader, on the other hand, is little more than a novelty item. Sure, if Vader had been limited to 1,000 rather than 10,000, the price for it would be through the roof no matter what it looked like... but all else being equal, there are plenty of people out there with a dozen C-3POs displayed in various scenes, who would love to swap them all out for a more movie-accurate chrome version of the figure... the same cannot be said of a chrome Vader.

They are $15 and just like the accessory packs for HP, Ninjago, etc. Though HP includes 4 figs and a small build, whereas these (and I believe others.... maybe the Batman pack?) have just 3 figs and the build.

Well. Some people are complaining because unlike the System sets, the UCS/D2C/MBS sets are heavily skewed to the OT. Which is a valid point, but perhaps one that will improve for PT fans if the Gunship sells well enough. And then some people are complaining because while the overall numbers of PT vs. OT System sets are comparable, over the more recent (say, 5-10) years, it's more heavily skewed to OT sets... which is hard on anyone who wasn't collecting back when the PT sets were prevalent. Which is also a valid point. But then, I suspect a few people are complaining just to complain... and here, the real test will come if/when we ever see a solid wave of PT sets. If people are still complaining then, well, we'll know whether they'll ever be satisfied, or just want to complain for the sake of complaining.

I dunno... I think more people would object to calling the CW Venator (with its creepy CW-eyed Palpatine fig) a PT set, than would object to calling the RO AT-ST an OT set. Especially since several of the RO and Solo sets were recognizable OT vehicles, just with RO/Solo characters... Also, a lot of the CW's unique designs were pretty "out there"... farther out there than the RO/Solo/Rebels designs went... if anything I think people would say CW should stay its own thing.

If you're going to include CW with PT then I think it's only fair to include Solo, RO, Rebels, and Mando with the OT. Yes, Solo is midway between the PT and OT, but the aesthetic is definitely OT, and it is Empire, which is how a lot of people define OT. Mando likewise could be OT or ST but being closer chronologically to the OT and using the same Stormtroopers, TIEs, etc., it seems much more OT than ST. That gets you to 158 OT sets, on par with the PT.

With the exception of the UCS sets, which are obviously heavily tilted to the OT, that's actually not as out-of-whack as I might have expected. Lumping in the TV series and anthology movies with their respective trilogies, seems you would get 156 PT-era (incl. CW and BB), 158 OT-era (incl. Solo, Rebels, RO, and Mando), and 44 ST-era System sets.

I can only speak for the US, but here, LEGO only marks down UCS/D2C sets when they retire... with very rare exception. Which is typically 18-24 months. Slow sellers have been marked down (and usually retired) more quickly (Snowspeeder, Cloud City), and home runs (Death Star, Falcon) have lasted longer... 36+ months. LEGO has not put the Cantina on sale to date in the US. The A-Wing is retiring soon, 18 months after it debuted, and so it should go on sale this weekend for Black Friday if it's back in stock. I don't believe it went on sale before now... at least not by LEGO. My point was this: if the Gunship gets marked down next May the 4th (9 months after its debut), or even next November, (15 months after its debut), that would not bode well for future PT UCS sets. Conversely, lasting a full 2 years would be a very good indicator that there is sustained AFOL interest in the PT... i.e., at the same level as other larger UCS sets (Falcon, ISD) and surpassing comparably-priced OT sets (Cloud City, which as a playset isn't a great comparison, other than price). Time will tell.

You see things the way you want, as is your right. But Brickset is not the be-all, end-all authority on LEGO Star Wars. What they tag as OT or PT or whatever is just bits of metadata in a third-party database, as flagged by the site's admins. And several of this year's sets tagged OT are tagged other eras as well. I choose to see things a bit more holistically, and frankly, optimistically. Believe it or not, as a (primarily) OT fan, I've been just as dismayed by the selection of sets LEGO has put out over the last 3-4 years as you've probably have been... I don't particularly want another landspeeder, or X-Wing, or whatever. I'd much rather have new builds of new ships/scenes in any era, than rehashes of sets in the OT era. But looking at the sets released in the last ~12 months, I choose to see reason for hope. Yes, there are a lot of OT sets, and several of them are indeed rehashes. But there is a healthy mix of new stuff in there as well... new stuff from the PT/CW (Mandalorian Throne and Fighter), new stuff from the OT (Vader's Chamber, Bespin Duel), new stuff from Mando (Forge, Marauder, Light Cruiser... which is PT adjacent). Maybe it's not the perfect mix of trilogies/eras, maybe there are still holes (RO, Solo getting zero love), but it's a bit better than last year, which to me at least felt like nothing but rehashes. I'm not telling you to love the OT, or pretend that OT sets are really PT. But there were four PT-era sets this year, including the first PT UCS set in over a decade... plus a large Mando set that can easily be adapted to fit the PT. That's not... nothing. And it's more than PT fans were getting throughout the run of the ST. If you are determined to see the world solely through a negative lens, you will see and feel nothing but negativity. I'm not going to get into what is coming next year. But I would again counsel, try to think optimistically.

Or, if you want to count accurately, 6 OT sets 6 Mando sets (including the Advent) 1 ST set 1 PT set 2 CW sets 1 BB set 2 helmets that spanned the OT, PT, ST, CW, Rebels, Mando, and RO 1 statue that spanned the OT, CW, Rebels, RO 1 statue that spanned all media except Solo 3 GWPs which collectively spanned all three trilogies, CW, Rebels, etc. You can choose to see the glass half-empty, or half-full. Maybe have a little faith that you'll see more of what you want in 2022.

LEGO makes sets to support whatever media is current. When the PT was new, they made loads of PT sets. When CW was airing, there were a ton of CW sets. For five years we got almost nothing but ST sets, for better or worse. When there's no new media to support (or no new media that LEGO believes in... see: Rebels, Resistance, early days of Mando) LEGO falls back on what they know sells. And consistently, reliably, that has been the OT. That's not to say that the PT doesn't sell. But maybe, right or wrong, LEGO believes it doesn't sell as well... I think sets like the UCS Gunship will tell us (and LEGO) what the truth of the matter is. If we see it marked down by May the 4th or even next year's Black Friday, that's a sign there's not the 18+ market for PT sets that some people here would have us believe. (If it gets marked down for this week's Black Friday sale, well... that's game over.) Re: the Hoth AT-ST, it's not really the norm. Most of the OT sets are rehashes of the same core vehicles... like most of the PT sets that come out. (I'm also not sure I would say "nobody would ever think they would make this"... it's a variation on an existing build, which they've demonstrated a fondness for doing on many other ships).