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LEGO Star Wars 2021 Set Discussion - READ FIRST POST!!!

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17 minutes ago, MSY-MSP said:

After doing a decent amount of research, instead of my day job, I think I have some answers on the various licenses that are out there for the Star Wars franchise and most likely for Marvel as well.

Hasbro has the license to make playsets and action figures up to 12" in height (i.e. 1/6 scale).  Hot Toys and Sideshow have the license to make their figures through a sublicense from Hasbro for their 1/6 figures (starting in 2004).  The 1/4 scale figures are direct licensed from Disney/Lucasfilm as best I can tell.  This is based on the agreement that Hasbro and Disney signed in 2013 right after the purchase of Lucasfilm.  It seems that in the 2020 agreement, Hasbro only got the exclusivity for figures from 2" to 12".  This leaves the door open for Lego to release figure only sets, and they have done that for Marvel already.  

I don't buy any argument that says Lego isn't releasing figure only sets, because they hate the fans, and want us all to buy really expensive sets to get specific figures.  From a business perspective this doesn't make sense.  The profit margin on a small minifigure sold for $4.99 is way higher than the profit margin on a larger set.  A minifigure costs probably at most $1.50 for Lego to make.  Giving a 333% markup for a CMF.  For lets say the light cruiser, which costs $159 comes with 5 minifigures (plus grogu) and 1336 pieces plus an instruction book, stickers, and cardboard packaging, the breakdown is as follows.  5 minifigures at $1.50 each, for a total of $7.50, take away 30 pieces for the minfigures leaves us with 1306 pieces, which i will round down to 1300 pieces.  I will assume that on average a average Lego part costs $0.04 to make (smaller ones are less bigger ones are much more), the total cost of the parts in this set is $52.  For the packaging and printing I am going to allocate $1.50 for.  Putting this all together and the set costs about $61.00 for Lego to produce.  Which results in a 260% markup on the set as a whole.  While there may be more gross profit from the set vs the CMF, the economies of scale will make the CMF a bigger profit source than a set.  You are going to sell way more CMF's than sets.  For example. assuming a set of 12 CMF's (and assuming no duplicate buys) costs Lego $18.00 to make and returns to the supply chain almost $60 and generates a profit of $42 over the cost to make.  A complete box of 36 CMF's costs $54 and returns to the supply chain $179 generates a profit of $125 over the cost to make. and if it were 31 figures (the closest to the cost of the cruiser without going over) would cost $ 46.50 to make and return $154.69 to the supply chain and generate a profit of $108.19.  in contrast the cruiser costs $61.00 to make returns $159 to the supply chain and generates $98 in profit of the cost to make.  So it nets less profit over the minifigure and also will have much lower sales volumes.  So from a business perspective if Lego could sell a CMF series (and they know it would sell like hotcakes) for the Star Wars line, they would.   

Woah. That's... amazing. That math is... well, let's just say I've never seen anything like this about LEGO.

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6 hours ago, THELEGOBATMAN said:

Well, it turns out Boba Fett's Palace is the 100€ set (75326).

But what if it's really just a new version of Slave I, which Disney has now decided to retitle Boba Fett's Palace? :sarcasm_smug:

Dang, I don't know why, but I felt like LEGO would do a smaller set to tie in with the show, and in which we could get Boba and Fennec more cheaply. The Palace could be cool and worth it no doubt, but I was hoping for something at the 30$/€ price range.

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On 9/23/2021 at 12:53 AM, BacktoBricks said:

From what I've heard, there had to be a build element to their product if they were going to sell it. Hence why 20th anniversary Obi-Wan poly could be sold because it had a buildable stand, but other individual figure polybags have been GWPs.

At that point they should just sell figures people want with buildable stands or a smaller build as example jedi masters and their seats, even army building stuff like clones for 4$-5$. 

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7 hours ago, benderisgreat said:

Honestly I wouldn't take Lego designer at their word. Corporate code and yada-yada. Considering the way they treated fans lately I would expect them to lie on this topic just cause. Let's face it minifigures sell sets, if they released SW CMF they would potentially lose on set sales. If if that's not the reason, they just don't want to sell us Sw Cmf.

Contrary to what the gunship haters believe the designers don’t have anything against fans and they’re not actively out to mistreat any of us. It’s not the designer’s fault that some people are blowing their comments completely out of proportion. They have no reason to lie to us, they know how much we want minifigures we’ve been asking for a CMF for like a decade now. If they could do it they would’ve done it by now.

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1 hour ago, MSY-MSP said:

After doing a decent amount of research, instead of my day job, I think I have some answers on the various licenses that are out there for the Star Wars franchise and most likely for Marvel as well.

 Hasbro has the license to make playsets and action figures up to 12" in height (i.e. 1/6 scale).  Hot Toys and Sideshow have the license to make their figures through a sublicense from Hasbro for their 1/6 figures (starting in 2004).  The 1/4 scale figures are direct licensed from Disney/Lucasfilm as best I can tell.  This is based on the agreement that Hasbro and Disney signed in 2013 right after the purchase of Lucasfilm.  It seems that in the 2020 agreement, Hasbro only got the exclusivity for figures from 2" to 12".  This leaves the door open for Lego to release figure only sets, and they have done that for Marvel already.  

 I don't buy any argument that says Lego isn't releasing figure only sets, because they hate the fans, and want us all to buy really expensive sets to get specific figures.  From a business perspective this doesn't make sense.  The profit margin on a small minifigure sold for $4.99 is way higher than the profit margin on a larger set.  A minifigure costs probably at most $1.50 for Lego to make.  Giving a 333% markup for a CMF.  For lets say the light cruiser, which costs $159 comes with 5 minifigures (plus grogu) and 1336 pieces plus an instruction book, stickers, and cardboard packaging, the breakdown is as follows.  5 minifigures at $1.50 each, for a total of $7.50, take away 30 pieces for the minfigures leaves us with 1306 pieces, which i will round down to 1300 pieces.  I will assume that on average a average Lego part costs $0.04 to make (smaller ones are less bigger ones are much more), the total cost of the parts in this set is $52.  For the packaging and printing I am going to allocate $1.50 for.  Putting this all together and the set costs about $61.00 for Lego to produce.  Which results in a 260% markup on the set as a whole.  While there may be more gross profit from the set vs the CMF, the economies of scale will make the CMF a bigger profit source than a set.  You are going to sell way more CMF's than sets.  For example. assuming a set of 12 CMF's (and assuming no duplicate buys) costs Lego $18.00 to make and returns to the supply chain almost $60 and generates a profit of $42 over the cost to make.  A complete box of 36 CMF's costs $54 and returns to the supply chain $179 generates a profit of $125 over the cost to make. and if it were 31 figures (the closest to the cost of the cruiser without going over) would cost $ 46.50 to make and return $154.69 to the supply chain and generate a profit of $108.19.  in contrast the cruiser costs $61.00 to make returns $159 to the supply chain and generates $98 in profit of the cost to make.  So it nets less profit over the minifigure and also will have much lower sales volumes.  So from a business perspective if Lego could sell a CMF series (and they know it would sell like hotcakes) for the Star Wars line, they would.   

This is great work and all your math checks out but you have taken the most expensive set at 159.99 and compared it to a potential CMF at 4.99, however, your argument makes so much sense I thought I'd pose a question. 


Let's apply the same logic to the Obi-Wan figure from last year that was sold individually. According to the math and the contract, Lego can sell the fig (which they did) and make a sh*t ton of money on it cause it has an excellent profit margin (Less than 15 pieces sold at 5 dollars per bag). So from a business perspective why would we have not already seen a Lego SW polybag minifig line unless Lego didn't want to make the figs available this way. Remember the argument that its breach of contract is mute since it has the extra 5-6 pieces that make it a building toy and the argument that it wouldn't sell well is also gone cause @MSY-MSP proved you wouldn't need as many sales to make absurd amounts of profit.

I don't think it's a long con or theory that Lego can make CMFs but won't cause they hate fans but according to the math and what constitutes a building toy (a brick-built stand), they should have already had one. :grin:

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To be honest, a Star Wars CMF series wouldn’t really interest me. We already get tons of sets and the figures sell quite a few of them anyway. Whether they can make one or not, I’m okay without one.

I feel like this debate over whether or not they can make one pops up a lot and it always ends up at the same “who knows?” conclusion.

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1 hour ago, PreVizsla said:

At that point they should just sell figures people want with buildable stands or a smaller build as example jedi masters and their seats, even army building stuff like clones for 4$-5$

Sort of hope this is what the Accessory Packs will be. 2 anticipated figures and 2 remakes of stuff for army building. Possibilities are endless with various "subthemes". 

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2 hours ago, Clone OPatra said:

But what if it's really just a new version of Slave I, which Disney has now decided to retitle Boba Fett's Palace? :sarcasm_smug:

Dang, I don't know why, but I felt like LEGO would do a smaller set to tie in with the show, and in which we could get Boba and Fennec more cheaply. The Palace could be cool and worth it no doubt, but I was hoping for something at the 30$/€ price range.

I agree with this. Was hoping to pick up a new Fett. Don't want to pay $60 for a slave I when I have the UCS, and don't want to spend $100 on a palace I don't want! lol. I was also hoping for a small $30 range set to grab Fett!

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Some input on a few things, in theory I'd love a Star Wars CMF as much as the next person, but it is definitely not the distribution method you would want for any massable troopers. Normal CMF series are short lived and sometimes certain figures can be hard to find, but aside from maybe the early days of CMF with the Spartan we have never seen any CMF wave try to handle the demand that many unique troopers would have. Unique varients of named characters would be on par with Marvel, DC, and HP lines, but troopers would just be a nightmare trying to obtain in person (I believe). Remember the first few months of the 501st pack? What if those months were its whole release window and it was 25$ cheaper?

Blister packs and Battle packs are the best move for troopers. I'd love a CMF that is only named characters or alien races, but they'd never do it without troopers, so catch 22.

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2 hours ago, Prometheus87 said:

Sort of hope this is what the Accessory Packs will be. 2 anticipated figures and 2 remakes of stuff for army building. Possibilities are endless with various "subthemes". 

Accessory packs have so much potential, but if it ends up like marvel 40418 with 2 main characters and 2 army builders it's basically Ki-Adi Mundi battlepack all over which would make them a worst and most expensive way to army build, but it can also be something really cool. I am just not going to put my hopes up with anything LEGO does anymore. 

Quick army building calculation. Squad= 9 troopers led by sergeant, Platoon= 4 squads led by lieutenant (36 troopers+ 4 sergeants+lieutenant) 
15$ accessory pack with 2 army building figures= will cost you 270$ to form a platoon + you need 4 sergeants+lieutenant ( you get around 540 pieces and 18 other figures)
20$ snowtrooper BP= will cost you 180$ to form a platoon with 3 snowtrooper squads and 1 scout trooper squad +you need 4 sergeants+lieutenant (you get around 945 pieces, possibly accurate snowspeeders and e-web blasters)
30$ 501st set which is not a BP= will cost you 270$ to form a platoon with 3x 501st squads and 1 jet trooper squad +you need 4 sergeants+lieutenant (you get 18 battle droids and 2565 pieces)
5$ army building figure with a buildable stand= will cost you 180$ to form a perfect 4 squad platoon that is one type +you need 4 sergeants+lieutenant (you get 432 pieces)

Edited by PreVizsla

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4 hours ago, kidtheboss611 said:

Let's apply the same logic to the Obi-Wan figure from last year that was sold individually. According to the math and the contract, Lego can sell the fig (which they did) and make a sh*t ton of money on it cause it has an excellent profit margin (Less than 15 pieces sold at 5 dollars per bag). So from a business perspective why would we have not already seen a Lego SW polybag minifig line unless Lego didn't want to make the figs available this way. Remember the argument that its breach of contract is mute since it has the extra 5-6 pieces that make it a building toy and the argument that it wouldn't sell well is also gone cause @MSY-MSP proved you wouldn't need as many sales to make absurd amounts of profit.

I don't think it's a long con or theory that Lego can make CMFs but won't cause they hate fans but according to the math and what constitutes a building toy (a brick-built stand), they should have already had one. :grin:

I do have one idea as to why they haven't done this already, that being that are worried it would devalue their brand. While CMFs can clearly make way more money than a regular set, Lego may worry that putting out too many of them (especially for preexisting series) might result in people only buying the CMFs, effectively eliminating Lego's unique niche in the toy market. While they could make more money doing that, in the long run it might not be a good idea. Additionally, it could have to do with Lego being a privately owned company. I'm not sure how involved the family is in running it but they do still own Lego so there could be some sentimental reasons for not going too far from making building kits. 

I should emphasize that this is all speculation. There very well could be another reason why they haven't done more CMFs, like being worried about over-saturation. While I don't think this is the case, it is also possible that there is some other factor that keeps the profit margins on CMFs way lower than regular sets. In any case, it does seem like it would make sense for Lego to do more CMF series, but for now it seems like they want to keep it fairly minimal.

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13 hours ago, benderisgreat said:

Honestly I wouldn't take Lego designer at their word. Corporate code and yada-yada. Considering the way they treated fans lately I would expect them to lie on this topic just cause. Let's face it minifigures sell sets, if they released SW CMF they would potentially lose on set sales. If if that's not the reason, they just don't want to sell us Sw Cmf.

They already did 2 waves of HP minifigures, DC, now Marvel....and I don't think that it had an impact on HP, DC, Marvel sets sales. It always depends on the minifigure list choice. They could easily prevent product cannibalization by choosing different characters (or variants) for CMF and sets from the actual wave/s.

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7 hours ago, Clone OPatra said:

But what if it's really just a new version of Slave I, which Disney has now decided to retitle Boba Fett's Palace? :sarcasm_smug:

Dang, I don't know why, but I felt like LEGO would do a smaller set to tie in with the show, and in which we could get Boba and Fennec more cheaply. The Palace could be cool and worth it no doubt, but I was hoping for something at the 30$/€ price range.

Yeah, same.

It kinda sucks that the only set for a new series that we're excited for is a 100€ palace... not very one wants to buy a huge playset just to get a representation of this series.

I hope they make more sets based on this series down the line.

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3 hours ago, Archer said:

Some input on a few things, in theory I'd love a Star Wars CMF as much as the next person, but it is definitely not the distribution method you would want for any massable troopers. Normal CMF series are short lived and sometimes certain figures can be hard to find, but aside from maybe the early days of CMF with the Spartan we have never seen any CMF wave try to handle the demand that many unique troopers would have. Unique varients of named characters would be on par with Marvel, DC, and HP lines, but troopers would just be a nightmare trying to obtain in person (I believe). Remember the first few months of the 501st pack? What if those months were its whole release window and it was 25$ cheaper?

Blister packs and Battle packs are the best move for troopers. I'd love a CMF that is only named characters or alien races, but they'd never do it without troopers, so catch 22.

I dont think any rational person is asking for a SW cmf for army building. CMFs are readily available for 3-4 months before supply starts drying up and the next one is released. The most I would want in a CMF would be only one  unique clone or other army figure. The rest would be unique characters or characters in different outfits that we haven't had before e.g. wat tambor, padme, aunt beru, etc

Edited by Bobbtom

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3 hours ago, Archer said:

Some input on a few things, in theory I'd love a Star Wars CMF as much as the next person, but it is definitely not the distribution method you would want for any massable troopers. Normal CMF series are short lived and sometimes certain figures can be hard to find, but aside from maybe the early days of CMF with the Spartan we have never seen any CMF wave try to handle the demand that many unique troopers would have. Unique varients of named characters would be on par with Marvel, DC, and HP lines, but troopers would just be a nightmare trying to obtain in person (I believe). Remember the first few months of the 501st pack? What if those months were its whole release window and it was 25$ cheaper?

Blister packs and Battle packs are the best move for troopers. I'd love a CMF that is only named characters or alien races, but they'd never do it without troopers, so catch 22.

Definitely agree a CMF series isn't the place for army building. Unfortunately blister packs aren't an ideal distribution method either due to them being Lego store exclusives. Either you wind up with another 501st Battle Pack situation where they're constantly sold out (usually by scalpers looking to resell them at triple the price) or Lego limits how many copies people can buy which defeats the purpose of army building.

Regular battle packs available at all retailers is really the only method for army building that's fair on everybody.

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Do you guys think the remaining unknown sets will have hoth rebel troopers? Or maybe they'll show up in the minifigure packs. Are we gearing up for another snowspeeder? 

Before any leaks I had (admittedly unrealistic) expectations for this wave that we'd at least get more sets from the newer shows. Every episode of The Bad Batch I thought to myself: "Ah man, that'd be such a cool set", maybe the battle packs for the winter wave will be plain P2 clones. Surely we'll get a bunch of stuff from tBoBF and The Mandalorian. They waited a year and a half to do a Maul vs Ahsoka set, maybe they'll go back and do more season 7 sets and we'll get new supercammandos. It's the 20th anniversary of AotC maybe they'll do something for that, new bounty hunter chase? Hailfire droid? Anything from Geonosis? They could literally boost the sales of a microfighter tenfold by putting in some sort of special class trooper like a death trooper or an incinerator trooper and fans would go crazy. 

Now I'm just hoping Lego actually gives some incentive to buy the new sets by giving customers the ability to get vehicles and troops from both factions of a major battle, and I don't know if even that'll turn out. 

And I know we're getting Boba's palace but in terms of battle packs, I don't think it's really set in for people just how crazy Lego's maneuvering is with this new snowtrooper battle pack and the accessory packs. They didn't put out a new battle pack for 2021, and then gave everyone relief that they would return, hiked the price to $20USD and only made one instead of two. Now we have these accessory packs that'll be the same price battle packs used to be with realistically only 3 figures and likely undesirable ones. 

This wave could've been even better than the summer wave and it's looking like another disappointment.

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7 hours ago, Bobbtom said:

I dont think any rational person is asking for a SW cmf for army building. CMFs are readily available for 3-4 months before supply starts drying up and the next one is released. The most I would want in a CMF would be only one  unique clone or other army figure. The rest would be unique characters or characters in different outfits that we haven't had before e.g. wat tambor, padme, aunt beru, etc

But you are assuming Star Wars fans will be rational :sweet:. Your examples are exactly what a CMF should consist of, but many would be up in arms if their favorite clone stormtrooper variant wasn't in the CMF line, or appeared to have no chance of being in it. No one is asking for chitari or outriders in the Marvel CMF, many would expect clones in the a Star Wars CMF.

Edited by Archer

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16 hours ago, kidtheboss611 said:

This is great work and all your math checks out but you have taken the most expensive set at 159.99 and compared it to a potential CMF at 4.99, however, your argument makes so much sense I thought I'd pose a question. 


Let's apply the same logic to the Obi-Wan figure from last year that was sold individually. According to the math and the contract, Lego can sell the fig (which they did) and make a sh*t ton of money on it cause it has an excellent profit margin (Less than 15 pieces sold at 5 dollars per bag). So from a business perspective why would we have not already seen a Lego SW polybag minifig line unless Lego didn't want to make the figs available this way. Remember the argument that its breach of contract is mute since it has the extra 5-6 pieces that make it a building toy and the argument that it wouldn't sell well is also gone cause @MSY-MSP proved you wouldn't need as many sales to make absurd amounts of profit.

I don't think it's a long con or theory that Lego can make CMFs but won't cause they hate fans but according to the math and what constitutes a building toy (a brick-built stand), they should have already had one. :grin:

To answer your question, or at least pose an attempt at it, here are a few thoughts on what I think about the Obi-Wan polybag.  I think that polybag was an attempt to test the waters by Lego to see just how far they could push "building set" language before Hasbro stepped in and said you cannot do that.  That is why this was an exclusive to the stores.  If Hasbro raised a big stink about it, it would be very easy to pull the product while the lawyers dealt with the issues.  Also as the Hasbro/Disney contract was renewed in early 2020 it is also possible that Lego knew what the new terms were going to be, (i.e. that minifigure size action figures were not going to be covered by the new contract), as the contract negotiations between Disney and Hasbro likely started in late 2018 or early 2019.  And knowing this decided to go ahead and release a set that pushed the boundaries of the license as a one off.  Another reason they may have done it this way was they didn't have a set to put the Obi-Wan figure in (Basically they had more figures than sets) and this was the way to get it out.  I also think Lego prefers doing the standard CMF style figures that these super small sets.

Testing the boundaries of a license is a somewhat common occurrence in business.  I work in Patent Law and we see it a lot.  Companies will try to get as close to a patent as they can without infringing it.  They do it in calculated ways so that if they do infringe or the other party thinks they infringe the damage is as limited as possible.  It is a calculated risk.  How far can I push before the other party pushes back.  

 

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2 hours ago, Archer said:

But you are assuming Star Wars fans will be rational :sweet:. Your examples are exactly what a CMF should consist of, but many would be up in arms if their favorite clone stormtrooper variant wasn't in the CMF line, or appeared to have no chance of being in it. No one is asking for chitari or outriders in the Marvel CMF, many would expect clones in the a Star Wars CMF.

I think many would expect only clones in a Star Wars CMF :head_back:

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17 hours ago, Clone OPatra said:

Dang, I don't know why, but I felt like LEGO would do a smaller set to tie in with the show, and in which we could get Boba and Fennec more cheaply. The Palace could be cool and worth it no doubt, but I was hoping for something at the 30$/€ price range.

 

10 hours ago, THELEGOBATMAN said:

It kinda sucks that the only set for a new series that we're excited for is a 100€ palace... not very one wants to buy a huge playset just to get a representation of this series.

Agreed, I had hopes the $30 one was something like the Mandalorian Forge, a scene of the palace with Boba, Fennec and a third figure. The Palace might be a great set, but it is definitely an expensive one.

Edited by PRbrickbuilder

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10 hours ago, roboticserpent said:

Do you guys think the remaining unknown sets will have hoth rebel troopers? Or maybe they'll show up in the minifigure packs. Are we gearing up for another snowspeeder? 

Logically it would make sense that we'll get some Hoth rebel troops, but with Lego you never know. I think it's more likely than not that we'll get another set that comes with one or two of them, but if we're only getting one battle pack then I doubt we'll get too many of them in the wave. Another snowspeeder seems unlikely since we got a 4+ one in 2020 and a normal one the year before that, but I could see us getting another Hoth set in the same vein as 7749 Echo Base. 

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6 hours ago, Archer said:

But you are assuming Star Wars fans will be rational :sweet:. Your examples are exactly what a CMF should consist of, but many would be up in arms if their favorite clone stormtrooper variant wasn't in the CMF line, or appeared to have no chance of being in it. No one is asking for chitari or outriders in the Marvel CMF, many would expect clones in the a Star Wars CMF.

No doubt some will, but since even the youtubers dont expect clones only in a CMF this is unlikely to be a popular opinion. Regardless this isn't a reason not to do a SW cmf if people are worried about that

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I have a feeling that these Minifigure Accessory Sets are just going to include named characters or at least less massable characters. Like instead of getting battle packs like the ones with the Bounty Hunters or Ki-Adi Mundi and Barriss Offee; we’ll get accessory sets for things like that. Now that they’re bringing back battle packs after such a hiatus, I don’t think they want these Minifigure Accessory Sets competing with them, even if they are Lego Store Exclusives.

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1 hour ago, Fuppylodders said:

Why so much discussion about yes or no?! Just do it or not.

 

Do or do not. There is no try. 

“Why so much discussion…” 

That’s…why I’m here.

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