Pre-order - why some themes and not others?

[Lucarex]

Wasn't sure where to ask this (mods feel free to move as appropriate) but wondered if anyone can shed light on this TLG practice? Not something I've paid attention to before.

I'm not talking about VIP pre-order a few weeks early but much further ahead. For example, both the SW Mandalorian Razor Crest and Mando/Child Brickheadz were available to pre-order last month, with shipping dates into August and September respectively.

How common is this? Any other examples? Is it specific to certain licensed themes/sets only?

Edited April 15, 2020 by Lucarex
typos

[2lazeetomakeaname]

The short answer is:

LEGO knows those sets will sell a ton, so they want people to be able to reserve one

 

[Lucarex]

Thanks, I get the principle but this far out? Almost 6 months...

Any other examples of “hot cake” sets that were available so much in advance?

[2lazeetomakeaname]

1 hour ago, Lucarex said:

Thanks, I get the principle but this far out? Almost 6 months...

Any other examples of “hot cake” sets that were available so much in advance?

I guess the Mario starter pack? Pre-orders are fairly new to LEGO I think.

 

[deraven]

6 hours ago, Lucarex said:

Thanks, I get the principle but this far out? Almost 6 months...

Part of that decision may simply be to take advantage of the market.  There was such a craze for The Mandalorian that making the sets available to order now would also capitalize on more people who are fans of the show but maybe not regular Lego buyers, and by the time those were ready to actually ship who knows what the status of another season would be (production of everything is uncertain with the pandemic, etc.) or where the consumer awareness and demand might be 5 or 6 months from now whereas other sets (and different themes) wouldn't see that kind of variance (nor enough demand overall to make a pre-order offering worth it).

[Huigberts Builds]

I think it's mostly so Lego could make a guess of how well a theme or set will do and how much they'll need to produce of it. I think it's a fairly new concept with toys, as I see it happen more and more often the last few years.

In the past (if I'm not mistaken) they let the retailers pick how much of new set they wanted after they've been shown at toy fairs or from a catalogue, so that the retailers could hand pick how many they wanted from each item, based on how much they thought they would sell (smaller stores usually picked more of the small sets, as they were saver to sell, while bigger stores could afford to pick more of the big ones). And after that Lego could make I better guess of how many to produce in total.

Now with the age of online shopping, the retailer as middle man is starting to fade, so it only makes sense for Lego to bring the choice directly to the consumer. Of course lego is a huge company with years of experience so with most sets they largely know what will sell and what won't, so pre orders won't be necessary. But with some that have an incredibly high demand, higher than average, it would give a clearer image of what to expect if just let the consumer pre order them in advance. The Mario and Mandalorian sets in this case.