What happends with unreleased waves of sets?

[Lego David]

There have been numerous instances of set waves that were pretty much ready for release, but got cancelled at the last moment. Examples of that would be the second wave of Alien Conquest and the final wave of Star Wars buildable figures. Those waves have made it very far into production, and even got leaked images of them, but for some reason or another, they never hit store shelves.

So I was wandering, what happends with set waves that make it passed the production stage, but don't get released? Are they destroyed? Given to designers? Or what exactly? If money was already invested into those waves, but the final product never gets released, what happends with it? 

[The Brick Boss]

Just now, Lego David said:

Examples of that would be the second wave of Alien Conquest and the final wave of Star Wars buildable figures.

I heard that some of the buildings that you could use for your town in the first Lego City My City game were also cancelled sets. Except they never even made it onto the conveyer belt. 

As for your question, I don't really know the answer, but I'd assume that either they trash them or store them in the archives until they see fit to actually release them. 

[Mylenium]

2 hours ago, Lego David said:

So I was wandering, what happends with set waves that make it passed the production stage, but don't get released?

You probably will never get a full answer on that due to LEGO's strict policies. At the end of the day, though, I don't think it's much different than with other products that got recalled or never released - most of it will likely simply be pulped, ground to powder and burned because separating the packages and sorting the pieces would be way too much work. I also have seen photos of some unreleased sets being distributed in some user groups, so there's a chance they get used sensibly, after all, if only as parts sources. Of course there's also this whole mess with journalists, Ambassadors and the like that may get info and pre-release sets, sometimes merely giving the impression of a set being on the roster when info leaks, but never actually being released.

Other than that one could probably make it one's life work to collect all the relevant info like the production numbers on the seals and boxes and tracking when the sets appear in which outlets, how quickly they are sold out, how fast LEGO can re-stock and so on. Sometimes you can see that a set has only been produced three weeks ago, other times half a year. This is again a point that makes me think that LEGO can still hit the brakes on some sets very late in the process even if e.g. press photos have already been released, furthering the impression that sets got scrapped when as a matter of fact none were ever actually produced. If one understood this logic and the internal processes behind it, one could likely make some good predictions about release dates and win some bets.... ;-)

Mylenium

[Evans]

From what I've seen on the rare sets I get at the time of their release (mostly GwP), it's that these  are produced  (packed) something like three monthes in advance. For example, the Dots 30556 polybag I got in March was prooduced on fourth week of 2020 (late January), and  Mini gingerbread house was packed on 36th week of 2019, so in September, when I got it in December. I can't tell for bigger sets and normal retail sets because I buy a few and always on sale, so never at the time of their release. Just look at the production code stamped on the box, or on its seals.04S0 means packaged on 4th week of 2020, or 636S9 means packaged on 6th day of 36th week of 2019. This system is there since the 80's, you can look at the seals of bigger sets like 6385 or some 12V trains and see these numbers.

This means that there may have been anouncements in dealer catalogs half a year ahead of release date, and sets are not yet produced, so leaks and mockups can exists (like for toy fairs, eg: Ninjago snake train, or 7249 crane that was shown as 8 studs wide rather than 12), but no regular set is already produced. They may (or not) have at least produced some instructions booklets and packagings but these have to be trashed. That's why there were P.D.F. instructions on lego customer service website for the unrealeased Lego game Phileas & Pherb in 2012, even if it have never been released. It was en error, good for us to know more about what we missed.

Ten years ago, we had leaks for summer (June) wave in January, now Lego is more strict on what they show, we will see less unrealeased sets that before.

Edited May 2, 2020 by Evans