A Disappointing May 4th Sale from LEGO® in the USA

If you’ve been an AFOL for a while and if you’re a Star Wars™ fan, then you’ve probably been tracking the multi day sale surrounding Star Wars™ day. Typically the sale includes the release on a new UCS set or some other larger Star Wars™ themed set, a gift with purchase set related to the theme, Double VIP points, and discounted sets.

Being in Europe, I check in with with the US sales, but I have to wait until 6 AM my time so I can see the sales start on the east coast of the US. This year I logged in a little after 7 AM on 1 May to check out the sales and let me tell you, I was disappointed in what I saw.

So they had the new A-wing Starfighter™ (#75275-1) for sale and the gift with purchase is #40407-1: Death Star II Battle available for purchases over $75. Additionally, there are a few other new sets available, but I won’t go into those now.

The big disappointment… there are no sale items. No sets are discounted at all. Zero. What!?!?! Why????

How can you call this a sale without anything at a discount?

To top this off, Amazon.com in the US has nine sets which are at least 20% off their retail pricing at the time of this post. Walmart.com has about the same at the time of the post too. Scoring sales in the US has to be done outside of Shop @ Home this weekend. Shop @ Home is only if you want some of the larger sets or the gift with purchase set.

Want to feel worse? Well the sale is on in Europe. Checking out the Lego.de site (Germany’s Shop @ Home page), there are a few deals posted.

#75253-1: LEGO Star Wars™ Boost Droid - 20% off - 159,99€ (~$177)
All of the Action Battle sets are 20% off
#75242-1 and #75250-1 were sold out, but they were both 20% off as well.

Not the greatest list of deals, but at least they had a few items to pick from.

Then onto Smyths Toys in Germany… you can see my post about Smyths here. Here are the sales they list for Star Wars™ sets:
-#75257-1: Millennium Falcon - 144,99€ (15€ off or ~$160 which still works out to the US retail price)
-#75256-1: Kylo Ren’s Shuttle - 96,99€ (23€ off or ~$107 in the US vs. a $129.99 retail price)
-All 3 new helmet sets for 49,99€ (10€ off or ~$55 vs. a $59.99 retail price in the US)
-75255-1: Yoda - 84,99€ (15€ off or ~$94 vs a $99.99 retail price in the US)
-#75253-1: LEGO Star Wars™ Boost Droid - 130,90€ (~69€ off or ~$145 vs a $199.99 retail price in the US)

There are a few more sets available for sale as well, but I won’t list them. Looks like Smyths might be a good place to hit the Star Wars™ sales in Germany.

So why is this? Has LEGO reduced their Star Wars™ inventory so they don’t need to run sales as often? Has competition in the US been removed and the big retailers just fall in line with LEGO to rake in profits? Are we seeing a COVID-19 impact? Are sales so good in the US that LEGO doesn’t need to discount? I’d appreciate hearing some insight from LEGO on the reasoning behind the sale and pricing.

Does anyone have any insight they can share here?

Any different views on this? Is it really a great sale and I’m just missing it?

Out of Stock in the USA

Update to this Post Here

I think people have been building with bricks to pass the time during quarantine. Specifically, AFOLs with some money to spend.. A quick scan of the Shop @ Home website for the US shows a lot of sets “out of stock” across the board. I haven’t seen any reports from the LEGO Company about supply chain disruptions or changes to factory output. I assume there are a number of factors contributing to include physical distancing in factories, challenges in shipping and crossing borders, processing at distribution centers, and shipping to consumers. Has anyone seen any details? Or maybe just sales are higher than normal with people stuck at home looking for fun things to do?

Usually there is buying towards the end of life for a set by re-sellers on Bricklink or EBay (I am guilty here), but I don’t think that is the case here. The number of sets out of stock or back ordered are a bit high in my opinion.

From an initial scan this week, the Creator Expert line lists 19 sets total with only one known to be fully retired (#10243-1: Parisian Restaurant). Of the remaining 18, there are six sets shown as out of stock to include the latest modular #10270-1: Book Shop. Additionally, another five are on back order.

Some back ordered Creator Expert sets in the US

Or maybe it is just the big sets? #75192-1: Millennium Falcon™ and #75159-1: Death Star™ are both out of stock from the Star Wars™ line. #75252-1: Imperial Star Destroyer was listed as back ordered earlier this week, but is now back in stock. And this is just a few days before the big May the 4th sale.

Scrolling around some of the larger sets, #75936-1: Jurassic Park: T. rex Rampage shows as back ordered while #71040-1: The Disney Castle shows out of stock. #71044-1: Disney Train and Station shows as fully in stock. #76139-1: 1989 Batmobile™ is also available.

More out of stock large sets:

-#71043-1: Hogwarts Castle
-#75810-1: The Upside Down
-#21318-1: Tree House
-#21322-1: Pirates of Barracuda Bay (possibly related to this being a hot new release)
-#21320-1: Dinosaur Fossils

Meanwhile the Technic world is fully in stock with no problems getting #42083-1: Bugatti Chiron, #42100-1: Liebherr R 9800 Excavator, or the #42110-1: Land Rover Defender.

I fully admit that I’m guilty here as I added to the out of stock numbers by recently buying and building the #10270-1: Bookshop. Have you been a part of the purchases by buying any of the bigger sets?

Happy building!

Pre-Designed Alternate Builds - Rebrickable

One of the great things about building with LEGO is the ability to continually modify your builds to design different things. You can take a pile of bricks and create whatever you want, tear it apart, and repeat. All you have to do is scour the internet to find tons of MOCs (my own creations) and you’ll see that there are lots of people out there who do it.

Some people might be like me… I build sets that I buy. I think they look great as they are and I have no intention of breaking them apart. There may be some great pieces in the build that I could use elsewhere, but I keep the integrity of the set anyways. I like to keep the pieces together so even for the sets I had to take apart, I can re-build them anytime I want to without a need for hunting for the original pieces.

So what if that’s your limitation? I want to keep the pieces together, but maybe I want to try building some other things. Perhaps you aren’t into MOC building and you need some ideas to get you going.

Enter the website “Rebrickable.”

(side note, I am not being paid to endorse this web site. I am merely expressing my own personal opinions on the site)

This web site has a lot of features that I will not go into today, but one of them I found interesting was the alternate build section. Let me back up… I found it easiest to create a free login (there are pay options). After creating the login and logging in, I searched around. Under the tab “MOCs” the second option down is “Alternate Builds.” This section allows you to select from existing sets and to see what other alternate builds people have done.

As an example, I selected #7587701: Mercedes AMG GT3 from the Speed Champions line. If you click on it, it says people have posted 82 different alternate builds using the pieces from the set. Here is a clip from the screen. It pictures the first 12, but you can view all of the alternate builds. From there you can look at them and try and duplicate them. Or you can create your own and add an 83rd alternate option.

Not bad… what about the larger sets? How about #10260-1: Downtown Diner? For this one, there are only four alternate builds posted. Three of them are buildings and one is of the car. Interestingly enough, If you click on the first option, a designer has turned it into an internet cafe. It then gives you the option to buy the instructions for the MOC. The cost for me would be 10 Euros… not sure what the cost in the US will be. I assume $10. The builder gives a detailed preview of some pictures of the MOC as well as some examples of the instructions. You can also see pictures posted by others who purchased the instructions and you can post comments or questions for the MOC builder or others to respond to.

While I haven’t actually purchased any of the instructions, tried to replicate a MOC, or built my own MOC for this site yet, I found this site very intriguing and full of potential. Seems like this site could come in handy right now for people at home bored with COVID-19 quarantine. It’s your chance to explore some of the endless possibilities of LEGO and I just scratched the surface of some of the things you can use this site for.

What are your thoughts? Have you used Rebrickable before? Have you purchased instructions? Have you posted a MOC or instructions there? Let us know what you think.

In the meantime, happy building!

LEGO Brick Based Home School (for Kindergarten-ish)

While many people are dealing with the challenge of home schooling during the pandemic, it’s somewhat of business as normal in my home. My non-Lego Spouse (NLS) started home schooling my oldest kiddo (now age 6) back in September for Kindergarten. We go to a local school for specials (art, gym, and music), but the rest happens here in our home. My NLS has done some amazing work adapting to my kiddo and how she learns and it seems to be going well. I was initially worried I would come home from work and both would be in tears, but so far so good. The biggest challenge the pandemic has brought is no access to libraries to get books. We rely on libraries for material to use and not having it has forced my NLS to find reading materials online.

Last week was supposed to be the spring break for the local school kids and my NLS decided to have home school spirit week to spice things up since we were still in session. We took a trip to Vienna right before the pandemic kicked in and borders closed so that was our spring break. My NLS had pajama day, dress up fancy day, inside-out and backwards day, and a few other fun ones. Anyways I was challenged to host a day of my own and there’s no better way to teach than with my favorite plastic bricks! Here’s what I used as a lesson plan. Feel free to steal any of the material you want if you have a kiddo around the age of mine learning some of the same material.

Definitely post some of your own ideas in the comments or you can email them to me at store@bricksforbricks.com. Thanks!

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DECORATIONS

I would have loved to have a huge scene of bricks covering everything, but I didn’t have a ton of time the night before to decorate. I took a few large bags from the brand store and then set up some sets around the school area as my decorations. As the teacher, I wore a brick themed outfit and proudly sported my Brickset t-shirt.

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CHARACTER QUALITY

Each week starts with a different character quality and it gets discussed every day at the start of the school day. Sometimes there are books related to the quality or video clips. Other times it is just a discussion about how someone we know has shown one of those traits. My NLS uses the wall (shown below) to display the one for the week and keeps the previous ones up nearby.

I decided to use a video from the LEGO® Company titled “The LEGO® Story.” It’s a clip from 2012 that discusses the history of the company through the present day. It’s about 15 minutes long and I stopped it every 5 minutes or so to review what we saw and to relate some of the character qualities we observed. Resiliency came up as the company was able to survive two factory fires and continue to flourish despite losing everything twice. You could argue that the company made the founders sound pretty amazing in terms of how they did everything, but in the end I think it got the point across.

One quick note… around the 10:10 mark, one of the characters says a word that depending on how you’re raising your kid could shock them. You might want to preview it first just in case you are concerned. I don’t know if my kiddo knows that word and I didn’t want to find out just yet so I skipped over that part.

MATH

Next up was Math. We’re learning subtraction. I didn’t do so well preparing for this lesson, but the goal was to use bricks to help solve the problems. I built bricks in two layers and the goal was to figure out how many studs were showing on the bottom layer and then subtract the number showing on the top layer. If it was too challenging, she could just count the studs remaining that could be seen.

I failed in that my kiddo knew a bunch and didn’t need the bricks for some of the problems. Also I messed up on a few of the brick examples that I made (Dad can’t count).

On the plus side, having a 1x8 and a 1x6 brick made determining the bottom was 14 much easier so that part helped. It also helped to have the top made of smaller bricks (1x1 and 1x2) to help add them up quickly.

I probably should have tweaked it a little bit, but in the end, she got all of them right and my NLS didn’t give me any dirty looks while I was “teaching.”

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Brain Break #1

My NLS has found that breaking up activities and moving around has definitely helped to get through the day versus powering through lessons. So I had to find fun things to do with bricks that would involve moving around and breaking up the lessons. Easy!

Brain Break #1 was a 2 minute build challenge and I was the challenger. The game was to see who can build the tallest tower that doesn’t fall down before the timer goes off.

I thought she would just start stacking, but she took her time selecting pieces and putting them on. After 2 minutes I was the winner. After 3 minutes, my 2-year old knocked my tower over and my 6-year old realized she could find bricks already stacked in the pile to get the tower much taller. I think if we were to repeat the challenge, it would be much different. Definitely a good break though.

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Handwriting

We tackled handwriting next. I fully admit this is not my strong point as my writing is atrocious. Here’s what we did. My NLS read in a book that younger kiddos have trouble writing a lot and can tire from it easily. So sometimes we will have my kiddo tell us a story. My NLS will write it out and then my kiddo will pick a line or two to write out versus writing the full thing.

To connect this activity to the brick, I built a small scene on my brick table using #80105-1: Chinese New Year Temple Fair and #60234-1: People Pack - Fun Fair (pictured below). Then I made up a story as if I was one of the minifigures at the fair. My kiddo caught on quick and she picked a minifigure to be. She recited about eight sentences or so that I scribbled down. Then she picked a line and my wife wrote it out nicely (so she could actually read it). From there, my kiddo wrote it out on her lined paper and used much neater handwriting than I will ever have.

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BRAIN BREAK #2

After some writing, we needed another break to shake things up again. My second game involved a cup full of minifigures. There were about 14 or so and I arranged them in different positions with their legs, arms, and heads all in different directions. I titled the game “Be a Minifigure” and started the game off with a discussion about what is different between minifigures and real people (no knees, no ankles, no moving elbows, etc.). From there we reached into the cup, pulled out minifigures, and did out best to copy their positions. My NLS took some pictures which I won’t put up because I look too goofy, but it was a lot of fun and there were a lot of laughs. I will include a few pictures of the minifigures we tried to replicate below for your enjoyment. You can try and match the position at home. We tried to do them all standing up, but for some you just had to lay down to match the position.

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HISTORY AND SCIENCE

Our last lesson of the day was history. My NLS has been going through early history with my kiddo this year and about the time of my lesson they were working on ancient Rome. I decided to do an architecture lesson. I found some pictures online of ancient Roman structures which included arches. She had done some talking about aqueducts before so we talked about how arches are stronger and how they are built with a keystone. I also showed some pictures of bridges without arches that were flat with lots of supports. I explained the difference between the two and how one needed a lot of supports and probably didn’t hold as much while the other held more (or at least the ones I showed did… I didn’t show modern bridges made of steel beams).

Anyways to demonstrate, I built some simple bridges out of 2x4 bricks. I tried to build them like the flat bridge with the supports and then a bridge with arches. It wasn’t 100% accurate, but it showed the concept. From there I used some dumb bells to demonstrate the strength (okay so they did this on LEGO Masters US too, but what we did was slightly different). The arch-like bridge was stronger than the straight bridge with the supports. The collapsing was enjoyed too.

We did a quick lesson on how to make the flat bridge stronger to include adding supports and attaching plates to the existing structure to make it stronger.

Overall it was a good lesson and she enjoyed it. A few pictures of our activity are below.

Adding weight to the flat bridge

Flat bridge destroyed

Arches still holding up to weight.

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WRAP UP

In total we spent maybe two to two and a half hours in total for everything. It was a good shake up from the normal lessons and I think my NLS was glad to have a break. As I said, feel free to use any of this material or modify it for your lessons at home.

Happy teaching and building!

Another Celebrity Building with Bricks or Just a Hidden Product Placement?

LEGO sets have popped up on some Late Night TV shows in the US to include Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, and Conan O’Brien during this stay at home period of time. The most recent one was Anna Kendrick on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.” For those of you who missed previous ones, I have a few posts to include one here and here. Also before the pandemic, Jimmy Fallon had a LEGO appearance listed here. You can watch the clip below if you want. You don’t have to go to far until LEGO enters the conversation.

While Ms. Kendrick is way better at acting and singing than I am, I definitely claim to know more about the LEGO world and I’m pretty sure Mr. Fallon was holding back as well. The Death Star as the largest LEGO set ever… really? And the claim that she was building the largest Millennium Falcon set out there? I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure she built #75257-1: Millennium Falcon released 4 October 2019 with 1,351 pieces.

Which leads me to another question. Did she really build the set or is this just product placement? Yet another time LEGO “randomly” appears on Jimmy Fallon… readly? First he’s giving away #75192-1: Millennium Falcon (the UCS version with 7,541 pieces) to David Beckham. Then Anna Kendrick pops out a set. Hmmm? Does LEGO have a product placement deal with The Tonight Show? We may never know.

Anyways, enjoy watching Ms. Kendrick claim to be a LEGO nerd.

The LEGO Company Steps into the COVID-19 Fight

I first saw it on the Brick Fan web site, but it appeared first on LEGO’s Facebook page. LEGO is using some of it’s equipment to build protective visors for medical teams. The video is on the Facebook page as well as on the Brick Fan site here. It’s even made some of the mainstream media like in the USA Today here. While there’s been a lot of different companies stepping up to help during the pandemic, it’s great to see one of my favorite brands get into the action. Thank you LEGO!

No bricks in these containers!

Celebrities Building with LEGO Bricks while Physically Distancing

If you’re reading this in April of 2020, you’re well aware of the COVID-19 pandemic impacting the world. I won’t beat the deceased Thoroughbred talking about it as I’m sure you are sick of the media reports about it, but it has been fun to see how LEGO has popped up through it all.

One side note… my work has been using the term “physically distancing,” We need to stay apart physically so we don’t spread disease, but socially we need to remain connected to get through this together.

From 18 March 2020, there was Conan O’Brien who posted the picture below on Twitter (direct link). It looks like they were building #42110-1: LEGO Technic Land Rover Defender.

And then Daniel Radcliffe was interviewed by Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” and he mentioned building #75936-1: T. Rex Rampage over three days with his girlfriend. Not bad for a guy who has characters who appear in LEGO sets. The clip is below, but you can advance to around the 7.55 mark if you want to hear the LEGO discussion.

That’s it for now. Have you seen any others? Send them to me at store@bricksforbricks.com or post them in the comments and I’ll do another post.

Are you building anything while at home? I’m working on #10270-1: Bookshop. Haven’t finished it yet, but I’ll get a review out when I’m done.

Happy building and stay healthy!

The Best Quarantine Activity - Building with LEGO Bricks

I don’t really follow professional sports anymore, but I enjoy seeing when a big time sports player decides to pick up some bricks. Recently, a player for the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers posted some videos of himself on TikTok. A reporter caught it and it’s making the rounds on the web. I found an article here on yahoo.com. If you scroll down a bit, you’ll find LEGO Speed Champions set #75895-1: Porsche 911 Turbo 3.0 and NBA player temporarily joining the LEGO fan media with a speed build of the set.

Not sure if it’s just a one time deal for self promotion or if we have a fellow AFOL on our hands, but glad to see it. Keep building sir!

40 Years of LEGO Trains

This is not new to the community, but #40370: Steam Train is a gift with purchases of over $99 (in the US) between 1 and 15 March (assuming there is still stock available). LEGO does not send me a free copy for review, but as a big train fan, I bit the bullet and purchased something I was holding back on to get a copy. It’s exciting to have a train released again, but is this a sign of things to come or just a way to get nostalgic AFOLs like me to spend more money?

I will post a review once I get the set, but overall just from seeing the picture I’m a big fan. I like the old school minifigure a lot and look forward to adding it to my collection. The set itself is also cool looking and I can’t wait to build it.

I hope this is a sign of more to come in 2020!

Highlighting a Professional Builder

There are some amazing builders out there, but there are not a lot of them that have their own businesses and teams to build various creations to go on display around the world. Sean Kenney is one of them. He’s a former LEGO Certified Professional who now works on his own. You can check out his site here for more details.

Recently, the team of Beyond the Brick and Zusammengebaut had the opportunity to tour Sean’s studio in Brooklyn, NY. The video is posted below. It’s just under an hour long, but I found it to be interesting. You get to see how Sean tackles having enough bricks on hand to build his massive sculptures, how he stores over one million bricks, how he assembles some of his larger sculptures, and how he goes about shipping some of the creations. Stay tuned to the very end if you dare to see how to go about gluing bricks together.

Beyond the Brick did another interview of Sean at a LEGO convention and highlighted some of his work at the Indianapolis zoo a few years back if you want more information.

Have you been to see any of Sean’s work before in person? Let us know in the comments.

Happy building!