March has passed and there was some pretty interesting LEGO news for the month, especially towards the end of the month.
The LEGO Group Ranked Second as Most Regarded Company in 2017 – The Reputation Institute released their annual RepTrak 100 survey and The LEGO Group was ranked second as the most regarded company in the world.
The LEGO Movie Sequel to be a Space Action Musical? – During the Shanlian on Batman podcast, Chris McKay stated that The LEGO Movie Sequel is going to be a “big musical and space action movie.”
The LEGO Group 2016 Annual Results – LEGO released their annual results for 2016 and it was reported that the company had the highest revenue in their history.
LEGO Brand Stores to Start Carrying Store Exclusive Sets – My source has told me that LEGO Brand Stores will start carrying every set from a particular theme and the there will no longer be any store exclusive set.
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales The Silent Mary (71042) Review – I did my review of the newest set for the upcoming and it is now available at LEGO Stores and on Shop@Home.
LEGO Dimensions Coming to an End? – There was a report by Bricks to Life that LEGO Dimensions is at the end of its life and will be cancelled.
The LEGO Ninjago Movie D2C Ninjago City Set Coming? – My source has told be that there will be a Direct-to-Consumer set for The LEGO Ninjago Movie.
LEGO Collectible Minifigures Series 18 Rumored to be Costume Party Theme – There’s a rumor on Eurobricks that the Series 18 LEGO Collectible Minifigures will be themed around costumes.
LEGO Star Wars UCS Snowspeeder (75144) Officially Announced – LEGO announced the next LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector’s Series set with the Snowspeeder (75144) which will be coming out on April 29 for LEGO VIP early access and May 4 for the general public.
LEGO Star Wars R2-D2 (30611) to be May the 4th Promo Polybag – My source has told me that the LEGO Star Wars R2-D2 (30611) will be the May the 4th promotional polybag which was confirmed on the May 2017 Store Calendar.
LEGO Ideas Apollo 11 Saturn-V Rocket Officially Revealed – LEGO released a first look at the upcoming LEGO Ideas Apollo 11 Saturn-V Rocket which will be coming out in June.
LEGO DC Super Heroes Wonder Woman Warrior Battle Revealed – The set will have 286 pieces and will be available on May 1 with a reported price of $29.99.
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Word is that the shared exclusives bit is on a very limited basis at the moment. For now, all they got was Arkham and I believe the Scarecrow set from TLBM. The Penguin car and any shared exclusives from other themes are reportedly still MIA at actual LEGO Stores.
The reason this happened in the first place was that the LEGO Stores always got full stock on non-exclusives, and a mere fraction of that on the shared exclusives. Those tended to sell out very fast, especially if people were buying up large quantities to resell or to part out and sell (technically something they’re supposed to try to prevent, but that edict has very few teeth). So people would go there to buy a copy for their kid, find none to be had (possibly on multiple trips), and Consumer Affairs would get an earful. So they tried excising them from the stores, limiting sales to S@H…and Consumer Affairs got an earful. So now they’re testing the waters again on stocking them to LEGO Stores, and it _may_ lead to all shared exclusives being available in store again. Or it may not. Time will tell.
I was just super confused because I wasn’t even aware that store exclusives were a thing, so I just thought that sets like that Penguin car were simply out of stock. The lack of awareness could easily be hurting sales because I don’t shop at Target for any reason, and can just go to an actual Lego store 15 minutes from my house if I want Lego. And since the Lego website doesn’t indicate when a set is store exclusive, there was no reason to believe it shouldn’t be in stock (I prefer buying in person for a variety of reasons).
The paper catalog does actual clue you in to when a set is a shared exclusive. From TLBM, the Arkham, Scarecrow, and Penguin sets are all flagged as “HARD TO FIND” and “BUY @ SHOP.LEGO.COM” The former generally means one of two things. It’s either a D2C item (and will often be numbered in the 10xxx range), or it’s a shared exclusive with Toys R Us, Target, or Walmart in the US market (and possibly Canada). The latter flag clinches that they’re shared exclusives right now, because anything that’s a D2C exclusive was never pulled from the physical stores.
One of the other clues to watch out for is NYTF coverage. If a set doesn’t appear there, but gets released with a batch of sets that did, chances are pretty good that they’re just not wasting display space on something that’s locked in for a single store chain to purchase when they’re going to have purchasing agents from dozens and perhaps even hundreds of different stores come through. For the shared exclusives, they probably pull that specific set out only when a representative of that store is making the rounds.