UCS - Unidentified Collector Series
Posted by CapnRex101,
Huw's informative article about set numbers reveals various interesting patterns, particularly where set numbering remains consistent across multiple years within certain themes.
Anomalies within set numbering may therefore divulge adjustments in the release schedule, including an intriguing example from the Star Wars theme. Recent additions to the Ultimate Collector Series are numbered in accordance with the complete product selection, revealing three sets released between 2016 and 2018 which possess seemingly incongruous numbers.
Following these anomalous numbers indicates that another Ultimate Collector Series model might have been cancelled or delayed and I believe its identity is deserving of consideration.
75098 Assault on Hoth was released during April 2016, almost three hundred days after its animated arrival on LEGO.com. Such unprecedented scheduling clearly suggests that the release was delayed and the set number verifies this, belonging among 2015 sets such as 75097 Star Wars Advent Calendar and 75099 Rey's Speeder. The release was presumably delayed to maintain focus upon Star Wars: The Force Awakens which dominated the second half of 2015.
Of course, keeping 75098 Assault on Hoth for 2016 meant delaying another product that was seemingly intended for that release slot. The set number for 75144 Snowspeeder confirms its identity as 75144 belongs within the 2016 range, alongside 75145 Eclipse Fighter, rather than during 2017 when the set actually became available.
The continuing pattern concludes with 75181 Y-wing Starfighter that was released during May 2018, despite its set number belonging among products from 2017. We can ascertain that the Ultimate Collector Series sets released during September 2016 and 2017 were unaffected by any scheduling changes because their set numbers, 75159 Death Star and 75192 Millennium Falcon, remain consistent within their respective years.
Logical numbering returned during 2019, when 75244 Tantive IV was released. 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City avoided disruption following the scheduling changes too, indicating that whatever was originally intended for release during May 2018 was either cancelled or delayed to provide space for 75181 Y-wing Starfighter.
Other exceptions to consistent set numbering exist, without necessarily betraying changes to the release schedule. For example, 75230 Porg became available during October 2018 but its set number belongs among those from 2019. I doubt this is because the product was advanced but instead because it was developed after the other 2018 sets, hence no appropriate numbers remained available.
Nevertheless, I think we can ascertain that the three aforementioned Ultimate Collector Series sets were delayed. Their set numbers are definitely an indication but the instruction manual for 75098 Assault on Hoth also contains reference to 75054 AT-AT having been released the year before this set, confirming its intended release during 2015. After this, the delay of subsequent Ultimate Collector Series sets was inevitable.
What was cancelled or delayed during May 2018?
Ultimate Collector Series sets are sometimes released to mark anniversaries or complement other products, enabling accurate speculation before their announcement. 2018 provides no such clues, unfortunately. Then would have marked the tenth anniversary of Star Wars: The Clone Wars but I doubt that LEGO would have acknowledged this with an Ultimate Collector Series model.
Furthermore, looking through set numbers during 2018 reveals no gaps within the Star Wars theme. Every number between 75193 Millennium Falcon Microfighter and 75222 Betrayal at Cloud City is occupied, unlike in both previous years when gaps remained for each delayed Ultimate Collector Series set. This probably relates to LEGO anticipating that 75181 Y-wing Starfighter would be moved, rather than because nothing was intended for release.
Despite lacking clues, I think we can make some assumptions regarding this mysterious set. Assuming that 75098 Assault on Hoth was previously intended for release during September, each Ultimate Collector Series set released during May has cost $199.99 since 2015. On that basis, it seems likely that the cancelled or delayed set would also have cost $199.99.
Additionally, large-scale representations of prominent vehicles from the Original Trilogy have occupied these release slots. The famous RZ-1 A-wing Interceptor therefore seems the most probable candidate, two years before 75275 A-wing Starfighter became available. This would mean that Hans Burkhard Schlömer designed three sequential direct-to-consumer sets within the original schedule which would be unusual but not impossible. After all, these sets are often designed long before their release, as with 75290 Mos Eisley Cantina.
We know that LEGO Star Wars designers develop numerous proposals for Ultimate Collector Series sets, enabling comparatively simple rescheduling when enough time is available. This was evidently not possible during 2016 or 2017, hence those set numbers remains unaltered. Inevitably, that may also suggest that whatever was intended for release during 2018 has not been announced yet.
However, I cannot think of anything that would realistically receive priority above the A-wing. For that reason, it seems likely that this model seized the vacant release slot during May 2020, since the 2019 slot was needed for 75244 Tantive IV which was more suitable to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of LEGO Star Wars and complement 75252 Imperial Star Destroyer.
What do you think the delayed or cancelled Ultimate Collector Series set from May 2018 might have been? Let us know in the comments.
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29 comments on this article
You don't think they would have done a Clone Wars 10th anniversary UCS set, but they are doing the Clone Gunship. I think they were going to do the Gunship for 2018, but didn't for some reason. Then they decided to poll us early this year, the Gunship won, and so we're getting one.
It wouldn't surprise me if it were the Cantina as the designer has said that it's been mostly complete for a few years now (I believe 4 so 2016-2017 ish). Assuming a release in 2018 that means it started design work in 2016 - 2017 which fits perfectly with a Cantina being released.
This further lines up with 75205 the smaller 2018 Cantina. This could easily could have been a tie in set with the Greedo pod again appearing in the 2020 version. And if the set had released at this time the Greedo pod in the MBS one would likely have been a Lukes Landspeeder.
Or, another thought, some of the remnants of that set became the 75205 set as they didn't know if or when the large one would be able to be released and they had the mold for Greedo they didn't want to be retired from not being in production.
Or maybe... They just plain screwed up the numbering, and there is no "missing" UCS set!
They are doing the Gunship since, as far as I remember, it won a poll among other potential vehicles for the UCS line. It isn't a commemoration of the Clone Wars series.
I can't think of a possible cancelled set. UCS A-Wing being released earlier seems like a most possible theory indeed.
Or maybe it was a cancelled UCS TIE Bomber or Bounty Hunter Pursuit...
Interesting dilema.
There is no 2018 UCS set that got delayed or cancelled. Wild goose chase. The delay of 75098 may have caused a few others to be delayed, but at some point they'd eventually run out of existing sets to delay and just not develop one or spend more time developing some future ones. There's no number gap because no numbers were assigned at that point when the delay of 75098 caused the delay of others.
@PDelahanty:
That was my thought as well. At any given point, they only have future releases plotted out so far in advance. Throw a wrench in the gears, and there's only so much havok it can cause before they run out of planned releases that need to be shifted around. You see the same thing with movies (especially right now). Tentpole release dates have been announced several years in advance, to stake out specific weekends (and scare away the competition). As movies get delayed and take dates that were previously marked for other releases, those releases get moved back to other announced dates, until eventually they hit a wide open schedule and there's nothing left to bump. If the schedule had been allowed to continue without interruption, sure, those weekends would have eventually seen movies assigned to them that now won't be, but you can only disrupt plans so far as plans have actually been made. This pandemic may have scuttled most of my plans for the current year, but it likely won't impact my plans for 2025 because I haven't thought that far ahead yet. And I will never know how the pandemic may have affected the plans I will eventually make, because they will all be made in a post-pandemic world.
If these UCS sets have been sitting around for years before being released, they might not even be guaranteed a release slot at all. They ran that poll to see which of three UCS sets would be produced, and the prevailing theory was that all three models were already designed. That means two of them might never get assigned set numbers.
It was probably an AT-AT, then of course LEGO cancelled it!
Yeah, I doubt there’s a “missing” UCS set at all. They simply caught up to what they had planned and no longer needed to keep delaying sets from their “original” planned release date.
@PDelahanty - Something will have been planned for release during May 2018 and been moved or cancelled to accommodate 75181 Y-wing Starfighter. As mentioned in the article, the set number had obviously not been assigned but I can assure you that these things are planned far in advance, although they are adaptable with sufficient warning of changes.
I should also clarify that 'cancelled' in this context means removed from the schedule for an extended period. Most subjects which could realistically become Ultimate Collector Series or Master Builder Series sets have already been designed. Sketch models certainly exist for the three sets which appeared in the poll earlier this year, for example.
@CapnRex101:
You said that Attack on Hoth was originally slated for a 2015 release. I'm assuming that was meant for the September slot, since 300 days only goes back to June 2015. The last UCS set you can identify that was bumped from its spot on the schedule was the Y-Wing, which released May 2018. If Hoth was being bumped from its original release, do you think they'd wait a year or more to shuffle sets around on the schedule, or would they have sat down at a table, pushed Hoth to 2016, the Snowspeeder to 2017, and the Y-Wing to 2018 in one shot? That's a nearly three-year adjustment that could be made in a matter of seconds. Would they have planned out the 2018 UCS sets as early as mid-2015? How many years in advance is "years in advance"? At some point you run out of things that can be bumped or cancelled. Two results of this are that any schedule changes you make at this point stop having a trickle-down effect because the next slot on the schedule is still open, and there's no gap left in the set number sequence because the numbers haven't been assigned yet and can just fill in around the final shuffled set.
Alternately, they may have hit the limit of UCS releases that had already been assigned set numbers, even if they had a rough idea of the release order that was supposed to follow. If that's the case, then you missed the obvious conclusion, even though you mentioned the set. 2018 was the 35th anniversary of RotJ, and there was only one starfighter from that movie that had not seen a UCS release by then. 35 years is a minor milestone, but a milestone nonetheless. But even if that's the case, at some point, they would have hit the limit of releases that had been planned out in advance, and no further schedule changes would be necessary. Not over this one series of delays, at least.
@PurpleDave - Direct-to-consumer sets are generally planned several years in advance, albeit not necessarily firmly. I would not be at all surprised if LEGO currently has Ultimate Collector Series sets chosen to approximately 2025, with the flexibility to make substantial changes from perhaps 2022 onwards should the need arise.
You are probably right that 75098 Assault on Hoth, 75144 Snowspeeder and 75181 Y-wing Starfighter were moved together. I think 75244 Tantive IV would already have been planned for 2019 and that release was fixed, leaving something to be completely removed from its slot during May 2018 rather than simply shifting each May set back one year.
Ultimately, one more Star Wars direct-to-consumer set would have been produced by now were it not for the change with 75098 Assault on Hoth. That much is practically certain so I believe it is reasonable to suggest that one set was either delayed or 'cancelled' altogether.
@560heliport said:
"You don't think they would have done a Clone Wars 10th anniversary UCS set, but they are doing the Clone Gunship. I think they were going to do the Gunship for 2018, but didn't for some reason. Then they decided to poll us early this year, the Gunship won, and so we're getting one."
To be honest LEGO seems to almost avoid the clone wars entirely.
With regard to the delay to 75098 Assault on Hoth, I think we can pinpoint that reasonably accurately. The animation was released on the 8th of July 2015 and the set would probably have been released during September. I believe LEGO would require at least one month's notice when delaying any products to cancel the associated marketing campaign.
It is certainly possible that the decision was made before July and that there was an internal miscommunication regarding the animation. However, that seems improbable because the instructions had already been printed with information pertaining to 2015.
On that basis, I would speculate that the decision, or instruction, to delay 75098 Assault on Hoth was made during July.
Yeah...the Hoth set...can we be absolutely sure there wasn’t an internal business decision to change it to a UCS from a MBS somewhere before anyone even knew about it? Hmm...who knows what goes on within the closed doors. Could be anything.
I can tell you that having worked for companies like this that design and produce consumer collectibles/toys, there are things that happen all the time on the back end you’d be stunned at and most of the time they just don’t get told to the consumer. It’s not practical and doesn’t matter in the long run.
The important stuff finds its way out, though.
The article is fantastic though. I wonder if these number analyses can be correlated to how long a product remains on shelf?
@ CapnRex101:
According to my memory one of the interviews (published here?) regarding the recent UCS poll where the Gunship won, the interviewed designer said that they had some prototypes or design work finished for two of the models and nothing for the third choice. I can't check it now but he mentioned the stage of each specific model and I believe it was the Gunship that had nothing and was thrown in as a choice just like that.
But you know, I find it weird that you didn't mention that late 2014 was the only year in recent time without a second SW D2C release. With that I will dive into my own storytime:
UCS Slave 1 was supposed to come out in late 2014 as evidenced by the set number of Sandcrawler going straight to Slave 1, but it was moved to January 2015 because of ???.
2015 now had Slave 1 and TIE so the third UCS set, Hoth, got delayed from late 2015 to May 2016. The animation might have been released because it was already finished and part of the marketing campaign or purely by mistake that wasn't worth correcting.
Now they cancelled the latest UCS Set currently in development which would have come in May 2018, because they are 1 slot short.
Subsequently they move the Snowspeeder and Y-Wing around so they would become May 4th sets as Death Star and Falcon could only come out in autumns due to their enormous price tags.
Now I would have expected that cancelled, latest set to have been a 200€ starship for May 4th 2018 that could easily get rescheduled. But apparently the A-Wing started development in 2018 or 19 according to the Brickset designer interview. So it can't just be a case of a 2018 A-Wing being cancelled in 2016 and rescheduled to 2020 with a new number when it was first conceived later than that.
The lack of 200€ ship set candidates aside of A-Wing doesn't make the mystery easier.
My best guesses are either that it is the Cantina but the original cantina would have been more of a playset for kids and 100€ cheaper which explains the elongated developement. Maybe the bad reception to the Hoth set made Lego reconsider the level of detail necessary for those figure playset style sets. But it seems the designer said something implying the set ha been close to its completed form since 2016.
Or they wanted to push something from the Sequels which they now deem not relevant or profitable enough. I am not saying that as a sequel hater (even though I am) but there is simply nothing really left from the OT aside of ground vehicles that could fit that slot and Lego seems vehemently opposed to designing walkers this decade. The prequels are deemed poison since Obi-Wans JSF was such a spectacular failure (permanent 30% discount). TCW and EU are out of the question for the obvious reason of not enough popularity with the average person. So I think it most likely that Lego had the same terrible idea that Hasbro had, to release a giant premium vehicle but base it on the Sequels instead of something people had greater connection to to warrant a 200€ purchase. Hasbro made the First Order TIE, I think Lego would have done a Resistance X-Wing since they are at least sensible enough to choose the hero ship first.
@LegoRobo :
There's really only four iconic exterior elements to the Echo Base installation, which are the hanger door, the Trench of Doom (seriously guys with rifles shooting at giant armored walkers?), the power generator, and the ion cannon. The former two have been represented multiple times each. The latter two had not. However, they're also not elements that really lend themselves to standalone playsets. I suspect someone realized they'd left a gaping hole in the Hoth collection, but that the only way to fill it was to try to pull off a Zen set (make me one with everything).
Here's another issue that puts part of this article in question. 2015 _had_ two UCS sets. It had 75060 Slave I which released in January, and 75095 TIE Fighter which released in May. Prior to 2016, there was no fixed May/September release schedule. 2014 only had the Sandcrawler (May). 2013 had the second X-Wing (May) and the Ewok Village (September), except the Ewok Village has no UCS branding on the box, and no mention of being part of the UCS lineup on the product page. Brickset includes it with the UCS line, but Bricklink removed it (along with the first Death Star playset). Hoth and the second Death Star playset probably would have been bumped, too, but they both have the UCS bug on their boxes. 2010 got really screwy with two UCS releases right on top of each other, including the Imperial Shuttle in early September, and Obi-Wan's Starfighter in late October. 2009 had _nothing_. So, it's possible that Assault on Hoth was not originally intended to be released under the UCS line, but ended up that way just because of how big it got. It was also right after Hoth came out that they spun off the playsets into the Master Builder series, with Betrayal at Cloud City (true, that was two years later, but it was the next large-scale playset after Hoth). If Hoth actually was a last-minute addition to the UCS theme, maybe they decided to bump it because they didn't want to release three UCS sets in the same year.
@CapnRex101 :
How far out in advance do they assign set numbers? From what I've heard, set numbers are only assigned a price point most of the time, and it's up to the design team to figure out what to fill that price point with. So, a set number could be assigned a value of $50, which could turn into an X-Wing, an AT-ST, or a Droid Gunship. Some releases are specifically planned, like Advent Calendars and UCS/MB sets, of course, but the bulk of the SW theme may well have a maximum three year lead time from generating price points and set numbers, to releasing product through the supply chain. And again, 2018 was the 35th anniversary of Ep6. If the A-Wing did indeed get bumped, it could have been planned for that milestone, it may not have had a set number assigned to it yet, and it might have been shifted in the release schedule along with the other three affected sets. But they released the A-Wing in 2020, the 40th anniversary of Ep5. September seems to belong to Master Builder now, so the big question is if they'll release an Ep5 UCS set next year. If the Gunship is the May 2021 UCS set, it's worth noting that the other two options it was pitted against were from Ep5. One of those could be your missing UCS set.
I don't think the A-Wing was planned to be released earlier because it has molds that were developed after 2018. I don't mean just the specialized roof piece - take a look at the set inventory
I hypothesize it was the elusive UCS Naboo Royal Starship that got cancelled. Why? Because then a prototype should've been made around 2015/2016 but the silver color (131) was discontinued in 2016 and it would've required too many recolored parts anyways even with cool silver (298).
@blogzilly:
No. Not really. There's a sales threshold where it's profitable to keep the set in production if you're meeting it, or it's not profitable to do so if you're below that. We've seen Modulars come out one per year, like clockwork. We've seen two Modulars get retired during the same year, while other years had none retire. Winter Village is another one that's screwy, as they started out running each set for three holiday seasons, then dropped down to two, and now the 2018 WV set is selling alongside the 2019 and 2020 releases.
TRU was reportedly responsible for the _long_ duration of the 6212 X-Wing, which sold for _five_years_. Supposedly they pressured TLC to keep an X-Wing in production at all times, because they sold well. So, it lasted until 2011, and a new X-Wing (9493) rolled out in 2012. Another anomaly was 3177 Small Car. It sold for almost 3.5 years, again, reportedly because of pressure from TRU to keep it in production. It was a LEGO car, with a minifig, that you could buy for five bucks. Five bucks will buy you one CMF now. It's worth noting that both of these sets are of a type that usually doesn't stay in production more than one year, so 3.5-5 years is highly irregular. A big D2C set in the $200+ range, however, typically has longer legs. Many people have to plan those purchases out and save up for them, so if they cut them off after a year they'd lose a ton of sales.
@Anonym:
If Slave I was pushed back from 2014, maybe it was because 2015 was the 35th anniversary of Ep5. Wouldn't it be ironic if pushing Slave I back to hit its 35th anniversary caused the A-Wing to miss its own three years later? I did look up a designer interview, where he says that he handed off a finished design six months after putting the first two pieces together on the rough draft. But if they had planned for the A-Wing to be a 2018 release all the way back in 2014/2015, and they knew they'd be pushing it back two years that far in advance, they probably just delayed getting started on it for another two years so they could concentrate on all the stuff they had to design for release in the meantime.
@Sandinista:
How would you tell the difference if a delayed release resulted in an equally delayed start? If you start a design for 2020 in 2018, would you start a design for 2018 in 2016 if you'd already decided 1-2 years earlier that it needed to be pushed back until 2020? Hoth, the Snowspeeder, and the Y-Wing were deep enough into the process at that point that all three had been assigned set numbers that followed them to their eventual release dates. Some stuff may have been on the schedule at that point, without having had any design work done on them, or set numbers assigned to them.
Of course, this is all just conjecture. Without confirmation from the inside, we can't determine a right answer, but you throw spitballs at the wall and see which ones stick. If one doesn't, then you can eliminate an answer that's obviously wrong, and narrow down the options too those that still make sense no matter how much you kick them around.
so unless you can go back in time and attack Lego headquarters Rogue One we may as well be talking about how many dust particles can safely be on top of Jango's slave 1 and not one of the other versions. I think 1.7 billion, prove me wrong.........
Remember we had the rumoured V-19 torrent in 2018 that never happened? This would explain the clone wars celebration
@ALEGOMan said:
"someone has way too much time on their hands, kinda sad tbh"
Investigating this kind of thing is someone's job, actually!
@ALEGOMan:
Maybe you haven’t heard of this thing called a “pandemic”? Everyone has way too much free time on their hands.
@ Brick_Yoda_5555
V-19 was part of a bunch of leaks that never materialized and were definitely always fake, made under the assumption that the unannounced summer sets of that year were not from Solo or Episode 8.
@ holdre007
I think that was a hoax as well simply because Lego wouldn't make so many color changes at all. Maybe they would make it light gray but it still seems unrealistic to expect Prequel UCS sets after this huge focus on the OT.
@ Sandanista
Nothing prevents Lego from simply updating the design with newer parts at some point in between all the time passed. If anything, checking what amount of color changes or new parts are required to produce the set has to be one of the first things checked when a scheduled design is complete but its release date gets changed.
But a designer interview confirmed that it began developement around 2018, so you are correct that it can't have been slated for 2018 unless the designer spoke in technicalities since the original 2018 UCS set IS cancelled which would make the actually produced A-Wing a separate set
@ Purple Dave: I like your idea of movie Anniversary sets having been changed around and cancelled. Maybe UCS Cantina was then planned for an ANH anniversary. There could potentially be multiple cancelled UCS sets since there are always unused set numbers in the SW line, Rex only spotted that the gaps are not in 2018, meaning that by this point the cancellation couldn't have changed the planned releases any further.
My brain hurts
@FunCanuck said:
"so unless you can go back in time and attack Lego headquarters Rogue One we may as well be talking about how many dust particles can safely be on top of Jango's slave 1 and not one of the other versions. I think 1.7 billion, prove me wrong.........
"
I think it's the same answer as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and the answer to life the universe and everything: 42.
Never know might of been the AT-AT that they cannot get right, although maybe something to do with a new hope as it was close to 40th anniversary but they couldn't justify flooding the marketplace with New hope themed UCS at once.
I always wondered why the odd set number seemed to jump.
Maybe we should see what patterns exist in other themes where numbering gaps are present.
Also, many times, some of these set gap numbers are later found in early seller's catalogs which are not always available to the general public.