jdubbs

I don't know that it was one person's fault. Nor did I say that. I said it only takes one person to make a mistake. No matter how many people LEGO employs, no matter how many people there are in an approval workflow... one person is all it takes.

If you identified those assumptions as assumptions upfront, instead of presenting them as facts and then back-tracking later, perhaps people wouldn't take issue with your posts.

Please stop making assumptions and passing them off as facts. I don’t work for LEGO either, but even I have seen multiple versions of multiple catalogs throughout almost every year. There are catalogs that include licensed IP sets, and catalogs that don’t. Catalogs with generic gray boxes, catalogs with placeholder images, and catalogs with final product shots. Catalogs for big retailers, catalogs for small retailers, and catalogs for consumers. Catalogs for this country, and catalogs for that country. Summer catalogs that include the fall sets, and summer catalogs that don’t. The list goes on. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that somehow, catalog variant A got published instead of catalog variant B. It didn’t take 20,000 LEGO employees to approve this. It took 1 employee… to push button A instead of button B. it was a mistake. They happen. People here are complaining because LEGO didn’t announce anything “new” when they said beforehand that they would. But the fact is, they did… they announced three sets that, barring leaks, we would have never seen prior to this event. If you want complain about something, maybe you should be complaining that LEGO’s big reveal got spoiled… by a leak… something everyone here craves and consumes like catnip. How different would the narrative be the morning after LEGO CON, if those leaks had never happened? You’d all be falling over each other to gush about the Light Cruiser, and Fennec’s dual-molded helmet, and so on. But instead, it’s a lot of griping that the “new” things that got leaked two weeks ago no longer feel new, and now you want something newer. Cry me a river.

I get that some of you are disappointed that this set or that set didn't debut at LEGO CON, and that perhaps the content was a bit scattershot and surface-level, but I think it's worth pointing out that this was the first event of its kind that LEGO has undertaken, and they did so in the shadow of a global pandemic which (in the EU, at least) is still very much a concern. I am inclined to believe that if LEGO had been putting this event together in a COVID-free world, it would likely be longer, with proper panel discussions and interviews, segments geared to each of the major lines/themes, audience participation, building challenges, etc. There is clearly much more that LEGO could do in the right circumstances. If you would like to see a more robust LEGO CON in the future, you might try phrasing your feedback as ideas of how LEGO could improve and expand upon what they did this year, rather than griping about how horrible you thought this first attempt was, or how much it "missed the mark" or whatever. If all LEGO reads about the days after this event is how much people hated it, they're not very likely to invest more in it the next go-round (if they even attempt another go-round). But tell them you love the idea but want to see more out of it, and perhaps they will give you what you want a year from now.

@Mandalorianknight I dunno, but it's almost like people here don't read the preceding posts before they reply. Especially the posts from the mods that say, as explicitly as humanly possible, "drop it", "move on", "stop trying to get the last word".

1. The Razor Crest had to be temporarily renamed in certain markets due to a trademark issue in the EU, which was subsequently resolved. 2. Most of those sets have awkward or redundant names for SEO purposes... they load up the product names with common search terms to make them rank higher or get grouped together in search results. I know most of you, in your infinite wisdom and years of experience running multi-billion dollar companies, think LEGO (or Disney, take your pick) is run by complete idiots. But sometimes, ocassionally, there is a rhyme and reason to what they do.

If you don't actually own the set (and have a defective, missing, or broken part), that's a great way to get yourself banned from the LEGO Store forever.

You bought close to $1000 worth of parts for $210, all in one place? I'd say you either got the deal of the century... or you're going to find those aren't real LEGO parts you bought.

Do you mean, overstate?

No offense but, how many times are people going to ask this exact same question? The information comes out when it comes out. It could be the day LEGO announces it, or it could leak tomorrow. No one here can predict when that will be -- what happened last year, or the year before that, isn't a reliable indicator of what will happen this year, especially if there are indeed three D2Cs rather than the usual two.

Umm... the sets that were "speculated" to be cancelled were in fact cancelled. And, we got far fewer System sets than in previous years, which was the impetus for the "doom and gloom". Yes, there were one or two retail exclusives whose identities weren't publicly known in advance, but this is true most years... The one saving grace was the Cantina... but even with it, I doubt there are many who would call 2020 a banner year.

Too much sodium is bad for your heart.

There is a small in-store giveaway and double VIP points on Star Wars sets. Previous years, a handful of older sets also went on sale but I haven't seen anything to indicate that this year.

For Star Wars sets, yes.

Sounds like the remaining 5% was right.

You're painting with a rather broad brush there. And it's not so much a matter of not knowing where to look, as knowing the right people, and treating those people with respect. "Respect" includes not sharing things publicly when asked/told not to. I do not personally agree with MandR's post above, but I will say there's also less and less upside to sharing things here. There is inevitably conflicting information out there, given all the fake lists floating around, so posting "This set is X" just opens you up to a ton of second-guessing ("but so-and-so on Insta said something different 3 months ago and he has an Insta account so clearly I believe him over you..."), and if your info turns out to be even slightly wrong, a half-dozen people will fall over themselves to tell you you're an idiot. Thanks, but... no.

Why, exactly? There are plenty of sets that LEGO could scale to fit the $30 price point.

Okay, fair enough. A quick search shows it was marked "retiring soon"in August, then sold out, then some stock was made available again for VIPs shortly after that. I picked it up that August, and never saw it again in my local stores or online after that...

In the US, it was marked down and shortly thereafter sold out on LEGO's website and stores the summer after it was released... I think it only lasted ~15 months, shorter than even the B-Wing. It reappeared in one or two European countries briefly after that point, so it's possible Bricklink is using that as the official "end date". I don't think Brickset's date is accurate in this case.

Snowspeeder.

Product page for the Probe Droid, on LEGO's website. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the photos.

Observant viewers may spot a little something extra in LEGO's video for the Probe Droid... around the 27 second mark?

Hasbro canceled two Cara Dune figures but left one, which was presumably too far into production (i.e., already manufactured) to stop. LEGO's August/September sets would not go into production until April or May... so still plenty of time to make adjustments, if they so desire.

The problem here is that, while LEGO does a good job releasing a broad array of characters from new/current media, their support for older media (OT, PT, etc.) is pretty lackluster when it comes to minifigs. Looking back over the past 4-5 years of sets, we only get a few truly new characters per year. (This year, Dadonna is the only one so far; last year, the only new characters came in the cantina, a $350 D2C; the year before that, it was Bail Antilles and Zuckuss). Other than that, it's pretty much existing OT/PT characters recycled, with "upgraded" printing or the occasional variation like scorch marks on Ani/Obi. While, yes, there would be lots of mainstream heroes in a CMF, there is also room for more obscure secondary characters and unproduced outfits that would otherwise never see the light of day (unless they somehow show up in Mandalorian or Rogue Squadron or whatever movie/show comes next). And, make no mistake about it... there are a lot of these left to do.

CMF figures are typically much more deluxe than regular minifigures. Dual-molded legs, wrap-around leg printing, arm printing, and/or dual-molded arms are the norm... whereas mainline Star Wars minifigs typically only get front leg printing, and maybe only ⅔ of them at that. Not to mention that CMF figs often come with cloth pieces, new molds and unique (and plentiful) accessories. I have no doubt that LEGO could offer new designs so compelling that many of us would buy even common figures like Farm Boy Luke in multiples. And as for which characters to include, they could follow the Disney model (choose pairs of characters from different movies, representing a cross-section of the SW timeline (Han and Chewie, Anakin and Padme, Snoke and Kylo, etc.), or they could follow the Harry Potter model (limit each series to a particular timeframe, or perhaps in this case movie... an all-ANH series, followed by an all-ESB series... or an all-OT series, followed by an all-PT series, etc.)