This past Saturday, LEGO Brand Stores held a special event for LEGO Users Group (LUG) members for the start of the May the 4th shopping event. Members of various LUGs around the world were invited to the event at their local LEGO Store and there were some LEGO Star Wars exclusives for the event including an Assault on Hoth art poster as well as the Escape the Space Slug set.
The 161 piece set was obtained by spending $150 on LEGO Star Wars sets and I believe they were limited to 28 per store. The box is similar to the exclusive ones that are sold at various conventions like San Diego Comic Con.
The Escape the Space Slug set is based on the scene in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back where Han Solo and the rest of the crew escaped during the Battle of Hoth and went into hiding on the maw of the exogorth.
This particular set shows a small diorama of the scene after the Millennium Falcon flew out of the space slug’s mouth. This set is actually the first time that LEGO has created the Space Slug so that’s pretty neat.
Although there are no new or rare pieces so if you have the correct parts, you can build your own. My friend Joey, who also went to his LUG event, was nice enough to send over a PDF copy of the instructions for me to share so you can download it here. The file is about 14mb so it’s not as big as I thought. You can also try to get it on eBay but be prepared to spend at least $250 on it as of this post.
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Yes, 28 per store, and any that weren’t claimed by 10am were under strict orders to be returned for destruction.
Is that official? I heard the extras were going to be used for S@H.
My store manager told me the leftovers were actually going back to Disney, not LEGO.
Correct. They had to keep track of which VIPs were invited (by name, VIP number, and email address), who showed up, who purchased enough to get the Space Slug, and any Space Slug set unclaimed had to go back.
In order for someone not invited to get one, the employees would basically have to leave a fraudulent paper trail rather than just look the other way.
One incorrect thing in this article is that it was only for LUG members. Some Lego Stores just handed all the invites over to LUGs, or only invited LUG members, but I have it on excellent authority that was not a requirement and not every store did it (source: me, not currently a LUG member, yet got an invite).
I’m a LUG Ambassador and this is how it went down. All stores gave the LUGs first dibs by having their Ambassador send a list to LEGO of those who were interested. If the LUGs did not fill up all 28 invites, then the stores were allowed to give the rest out first come, first served to their “best customers”. If a LUG exceeded 28 invites, the store was to randomly select 28 from the list.
Again, that’s not how it happened at the stores in my area according to, uh, my personal experiences.
Where is a good place to buy individual pieces to make this set?
BrickLink
Or ebay, Most Bricklink sellers don’t have all the pieces, so you’d have to buy from many stores.