Yep, the less there is of something the more valuable it is and more people will pay for it. Basic laws of supply and demand. What LEGO SHOULD DO is honour all sales made on the first day and send out the lightsaber to all those orders (1x saber per customer, NOT per set bought as this will put off the online grifters) - what’s the point of buying the set on day 1 unless you get the gwp saber?
You are the only reason I knew about the ROTJ saber to begin with, so thank you so much for all you do. But, yes, I was furious at the quick sellout. I was on a plane to visit family on the 3rd, so I figured I could order on the 4th and still get it, only to see it was sold out... LEGO 100% missed out on my $500 order. Jabba's sail barge is cool and I would have been fine with said order, but now I won't be buying it because I am so irritated I missed out on my favorite lightsaber hilt. It was a great plan, and would have worked... but they blew likely thousands of sales as a result of an extraordinarily low volume of GWP supply... including mine. Good job LEGO. And no, I will not be buying it secondary market because I won't support that. Still unbelievably upset about it. I will relent I am also mad at myself... I wish I was in a position to order the minute it released, but still. Super mad. Sale lost.
What people need to remember is, if they really want these lightsaber builds and didn't get the GWP in time, they can just part the sets out relatively easily. Forking out $120+ just for a box and a simple printed piece is pretty crazy.
Real shame, the lightsaber was the only reason I could see spending that much on Jaba’s sail barge. Honestly the Lightsabers should just be May 4th promos.
@@ondrejm5042. Finished it Friday night and noticed nothing that was super exciting. But the build is absolutely phenomenal (if Yak Face was included I would’ve been all over the walls).
The same thing happened when I bought the LOTR Barad-Dur set for my son…on Day 1 and the Fell Beast sold out. I called Lego and their response was “sorry…”
I was totally sold on buying Barad dur day 1, but they ran out of fell beasts by mid afternoon and it wasn’t worth it to me without it. So, Lego actually lost a sale by doing this lol
It’s FOMO. Drives day 1 sales, builds conversation (even this video) and builds engagement. As you say, they win on the secondary market too. If they tie sets to general purchases, it’s just another GWP, but now they and LAN can say the Barge is so popular the sabers sold out. That will drive first time buyers who think a huge sail barge is cool, and now they’ll be hooked, not even caring a light saber was available or that the figs are sub-par. It is what is.
Throwing in another complaint just for the heck of it. Drove and hour and half to a LEGO store which still had the Lightsaber. HOWEVER they only received 20 Sail Barge sets and won’t get more until Monday or Wednesday. Why not send more?
The people blaming this on scalpers are missing the point that LEGO should have made enough that regular consumers and scalpers would have availability to get the GWP. It's again an error on LEGO's part.
@@PokeMasterRed2099 and that’s totally fair. But this is not a GWP meant for everyone. It’s meant for the collectors buying at release and that’s it. People need to stop being mad for not being able to get everything for cheap
I think they would have sold more sail barges if they had more sabers to sell along with them. I’m sure some went online to buy it and seen the sabers were sold out so they said forget it.
ALSO thanks for all the extra hard work lately from M&R its greatly appreciated to have unbiased videos from someone who doesn't suck lego off and recommend every single set regardless of how they really feel
I have a theory! They did it this way to get people to buy fast. If people don’t feel rushed, maybe they’d just wait so long to buy that’d they’d change their mind all together.😅
I think the worst overall was the fell beast that came with Barad dur. I arrived at the Lego store at 10:20 AM and it was already sold out. 20 min after release and it was sold out... I obviously didn't buy it, since the only reason I'd pay full price for a set, would be a GWP... Within the 5 min that I stood there angry I saw a lot of afols doing the same as I, they picked Barad dur, a Lego employee came and told them the GWP was sold out, they proceeded to leave the Barad dur box... Rinse and repeat... The amount of money they are losing because of that is ridiculous....
Last time i rushed to buy something early from them the website crashed. When i finally placed my order they lost it in transit. They said they can reship my items but i wouldn't get my promo. They said sorry, I said I'll take a refund.
Oddly LEGO intentionally making scarce promo is so on brand. Whoever that came up with that plan is a genius. You would think they would only do it for Star Wars. But they’ve slowly pushed into other themes which makes me wonder if these really expensive sets are even selling well.
This seems to be something that they’re doing more of with large and expensive sets. I didn’t get the LotR Barad-dur set because the GWP with that one sold out on release day as well. So I’d agree with the idea that Lego is trying to make as many people purchase these big sets on day one as possible.
I've watched 100+ of your videos @MandRproductions and this one is easily one of your Top 5. Excellent points and spoken with conviction, kind sincerity and encouragement how LEGO can improve.
Great video and you have excellent points as always. Even with the gwp, the barge was not worth it to me. $100 overpriced and poor decisions with minifigs. I went back and forth, had all day to decide, and ultimately said “nope. Skipping this one for now.”
Love watching Ryan wave the lightsaber around for the majority of this rant, reminds me of a master composer directing an orchestra, except instead of making music he’s spinning well warranted criticisms
Lego is really good at the FOMO game. Any GWP that they have usually sells out really quickly, especially with Star Wars sets. This drives the serious collectors (and scalpers) to the website at Midnight. If there wasn't something worth buying in a limited edition, most people would wait until the morning to order. I wanted the lightsaber, not to sell, but to build and put it next to the other lightsaber from the UCS AT-AT release...so I was on the website at midnight. If I wasn't interested in the GWP, I would have gone to bed a lot earlier and ordered the set in the morning or waited until release day to go to the Lego Store. I'm surprised that more people seem to be upset with this rather than being upset about not tying the Desert Skiff to the UCS Set. In my opinion, they should have given customers a discount code to bundle the Skiff with the Sail Barge rather than tying a lightsaber to a somewhat unrelated set. Also, I am not someone that will go pay inflated prices on the secondary market. I have the Cantina, but I bought it after the Yoda's lightsaber GWP. I'm fine with that. If I missed out, I am not going to reward a scalper who buys up everything to hold the consumer hostage into paying higher prices. The lightsaber is a "free " set or at least not worth more than $25, so I am not going to pay someone on Ebay $200 for the right to own one...but to each their own.
I would buy the lightsabers as sets 100%, but I’m 22 years old I cannot afford to be buying all these cool $400+ sets. It would be nice if we could get new figures and characters in cheaper sets, but Lego puts all the new and exclusive figures in these really expensive sets. I miss the days where I could get new characters and themes without having to spend so much money
I’ve always wanted a ucs jabbas sail barge anyway so the purchase wasn’t an issue for me (plus i used £340 worth of insiders discounts that i had saved up). I plan on selling this lightsaber as i don’t own the other two and imo, you’re best off just building them from parts sourced from bricklink and get yourself a custom sticker for the plaque.
That's why I was on the Lego web site right at midnight to order the Sail Barge. I didn't even trust my local Lego store to have them later that morning.
Yeah I decided to part out the lightsaber on Bricks and Pieces for $35 through LEGO’s website. 144/145 parts are available except the printed plaque which is perfectly fine for me. Happy I didn’t have to spend $500 lol
I can confirm that stores will receive more gwp's than initial quantities received. We had the P1 gwp for about a month after the release, but mostly just until the 2nd shipment of stock.
I understand everything you said and agree. For me, losing sleep was worth grabbing the set of the rip. It did help that there were 3 gwp. I truly thought the other gwp would run out first.
A lot of stores will still have the promo available for their next batch or 2 of sail barges. My local store for example got 40 lightsabers, but only 12 barges for day one. They said 6 more barges were coming Monday, and then a few more later the next week, etc. Basically, that means the store will at least have the promo available until they sell 40 barges. And if that takes a week or so to get 40 in, then the promo could be available at some stores for a couple weeks. Check your stores. Ask how many promos they have. If they have promos but no barges, ask when they will get more of those and be at the store early to get one when they come in.
It's weird that scarcity is created from the manufacturer from day 1. Usually these things are created over time, as items age, and gets harder to find them in the secondary market.
Lego should include the lightsaber in the box of the set for the initial 10k. That way, it could have a special outer box showing the set and the included loghtsaber. It would mean everyone who ordered in the initial wave would be guaranreed to get the loghtsaber but would also mean people might buy the set at launch and then keep that one for investment and buy a second one to build. Its good for the people buying them and good for lego as they make more money. The only downside would be acalpers buying them all up at launch, but they can still do that now if they wanted.
I definitely bought this in the first couple of hours as I knew the GWP would sell out. If you want it you have to buy like Ryan said without the first 18 hours of release. Same goes for Bricklink designer program. It is a crazy physiological game that you buy a product on release day because the simple gift but that’s business. I waited on the Mos Eisley cantina to buy it on sale later and then the next year Lego raised the price from $350 to $400. The sale never happened so not only did I miss out on Yodas light saber but I got the cantina”on sale” from Amazon for $350 which was the original price.
Lego loves screwing over their customers. Whether its in pricing for sets, lack of minifigures, messing up important details of characters, or simply not making enough supply to have an artificial scarcity. I wish there was another solid option/competitor to choose from. I'd love to stick it to them!
I will say, I was at my local LEGO Store on the 4th and they had at least a dozen of the lightsaber behind the counter - there were actually more of those than the Brite Bomber Brickheads left (which makes sense, I saw 3 Battle Buses be bought while I was there, and I got mine that day as well)
That all seems very, very stressful! 😂 I'm so glad I don't care about the lightsabers, I just like the minifigure sets. I can let everyone else fight over the lightsabers😅
It's not about Lego wanting to make money, its about how they decide to do it. Make your money, just don't be sleazy about it. Under producing to creste FOMO is sleazy.
I've never bought a UCS set and I really want this sail barge. I was justifying buying it bc of the GWP, but I wasn't able to snag one in time. Super bummed but still thinking about pulling the trigger
We got 2 gifts in Australia, the light sabre & Falcon Xmas Diorama, the sabre sold out within hours but the diorama was still available for a couple of days.
Jabba's Sail Barge was $500us because of the Lightsaber gwp alone. There's no way it competes with Rivendell & Avengers Tower at the same price point. We basically paid $350 for the Barge and $150 for the Lightsaber. Lego got us good there. Thankfully there was 2 more gwps available in addition to Insiders points sooo: $500 Jabba's Sail Barge -$150 Lightsaber -$30 Pumpkin -$25 Insider Points back -$20 Brickheadz = Jabba's Sail Barge for $275us. Buying day 1 was a no brainer for me. Without this the set shouldn't be bought again until retirement with a 30%+ discount, gwp & x2 points stack. Lego is a love/hate relationship.
Actually here in Croatia they have put a price threshold of 250 euros (would be same in dollars) to get the lightsaber so i guess we got lucky :D and there is still more in stock.
The 66 Batmobile that came out last week sold out faster than the lightsaber promos. I checked their website less than 2 hours after the release time and it was already gone.
I saw they were sold out on the gift with purchase lightsaber on opening day and that made it easy for me to not buy the UCS sail barge. Saved $500 and won’t need to buy the skiff set either. Bad call to get max sales LEGO.
You really shouldn't let a $580 purchase hinge upon a small gift. Sounds like you never really wanted it in the first place so I think you dodged a bullet!
They should do a lightsaber as the $200 GWP on May 4th and do a minifigure polybag for the $80 threshold. They’d make more money that way if they produced more of the lightsabers than packaging with a $500+ set that is really too much for most people.
It’s not fair for the rest of us who get off work in the evening and the GWP is sold out within half a day. I refuse to order the barge now until 2x points.
Getting the Sail Barge just to get this is honestly fine with me. I would've eventually got Sail Barge either way. This lightsaber set just made me get it a little quicker.
I like GWPs for UCS sets and in general tbh but the Lightsaber line is such a bizarre choice (same with the Trade Federation Troop Carrier lmao), I feel like that would be free money for Lego as a regular set.
Ironically in the UK the sail barge was on back order as of 4 Oct but the lightsaber was still being given and shipped as a GWP separately for some who ordered the Sail Barge on back order 🤷♂️🤦♂️. Got both of mine waiting on delivery atm 🎉
i kept seeing "release date oct 6th" for the sail barge so i didnt even consider to check if it was released earlier. I only saw a reddit thread on the 4th saying it was sold out and i completely missed out.
My question is why are they always sold as expensive as they are?? If I wanted to I could look up the set inventory, order the pieces, use digital instructions to build it myself for less. So at that point, aren’t you just paying more for the physical box and instructions rather than the set itself???
In the UK the sabre sold out by the evening but shortly after that the barge was back ordered so maybe they got it pretty close to having 1 sabre per barge available
Guess I'll just have to get the pieces individually XD Heck even the plaque can be had by getting that type of piece and then printing (or purchasing if anybody has it) a sticker for it. Crazy how that would still probably be ridiculously cheaper than going through scalpers. I just love this hobby...
Your going through your day and forgetting while contemplating bit was literally myself. Luckily, I remembered and ordered it at work. I saw a fb post not even an hour later complaining it was out of stock, I checked and sure enough.. Gone. Crazy how close it was for me. Plenty of people were doing the same and that 45 minutes was the difference.
If it had a higher threshold like you mentioned I probably would have justified buying Mos Eisley to snag the lightsaber, the barge on the other hand was too overpriced to justify buying just for the saber. And now I'm waiting for a Mos Eisley sale instead. I really wish they'd stop locking GWPs to particular sets and just stick to thresholds, even if it's still tied to a specific theme.
Law of supply & demand. Simple economics. Low supply, high demand jacks up prices & as you pointed out, Lego controls a big part of the aftermarket. They can’t sell it alone/directly for $22, so give away a limited supply & take a cut of the jacked up aftermarket price of $150+. Lego isn’t stupid.
I ordered and mine is on the way. However I spent $44 on bricklink and have 144 pieces on the way to build another. All pieces except for the nameplate. I’ll build one piece for piece and place it in front of the forever unopened box :)
Maybe the low availability has something to do with the licensing you were talking about. If they give away too many lightsabers with sets it crosses some legal threshold or whatever?
Not sure about the U.S. but Lego Stores in the UK are few and far between. For release day of any popular set's many have to travel quite a distance just to get to a store. (which adds travel costs to the total purchase price) I think they limit online GWP's like this in part, to get people "into stores" in the hope they spend more. (and then Lego don't have to pickup the delivery charge either)
Interesting that Lego and Nike have formed a partnership. Maybe we will see situations like the shoe drops instantly selling out on Lego products in the future
They said 3 days of availability. I missed out on day one. Ridiculous. I didn’t bother ordering the set because of it. I will wait for double VIP or a sale.
Lots of companies do it and at the route of it is greed. I’m into New Balance trainers (sneakers) and the really nice exclusive ones always run out before you get a chance to buy them (unless you pre order ages in advance). People bulk buy them too to re sell on eBay.
The sad thing is that the lightsaber could fit on my shelf. I don't buy big sets do to shelf space. I wish the lightsaber was a stand-alone product and available for everyone. But your right, I already looked up on rebrickable what pieces I needed and the instructions to build the saber. Sadly no box though. Great Video ❤t
