December GWP revealed

It does look like a good little set, but I'll take my chances and wait til Christmas in July like I did last year to spread the Lego budget out a bit. I like that Lego themed ribbon. If that were a real Dots bracelet , it would be fun for Christmas.

Hopefully the Bristol store opens and this is available there, can’t be doing with these back orders on the larger sets

Any chance of a double VIP points week or weekend in December, to double-up with this promotion? That would make me spend the € 150 to get this set.

@CCC said:
"The most interesting thing for me on there is the 4-wide DOTS style bracelet or ribbon. Shame it isn't real."
Funny you mention that — I own 41902 and 41912 and have been wearing either one on each wrist, or both on one wrist to great effect. I also purchased 41913 and will be wearing two of the bracelets together with the former so I'll have two on each wrist. They're also releasing 2-packs of 1-wide bracelets next year.

Not terribly interested but I find it awesome.

Looking at the store calendar, is it not best waiting till 14th December to get all three promos in store?

Assuming it will be similar in other territories of course?

Isn't the '4 wide' dots braclet the gift wrap ribbon in the other promo?

That's cute, but I don't really agree with the green base

@Michael40Plus Perhaps, but you're also depending on them all being in stock at that time.

@BrickRandom said:
"Any chance of a double VIP points week or weekend in December, to double-up with this promotion? That would make me spend the € 150 to get this set."

If I remember correctly, they ran a double points weekend sometime in December the past few years, here in the US, at least. Keep your fingers crossed!

It will be interesting to see if the UK Stores double up on this and black friday promo as stores have been closed. If they do a £150 purchase could kop both this and Charles Dickens. Last lockdown my local store was giving train away with other promos so fingers crossed..

@Mister_Jonny said:
" @Michael40Plus Perhaps, but you're also depending on them all being in stock at that time. "

I'm also hoping that UK stores are open as well.

That said, regards to stock, Legoland UK were still selling last years 40338 christmas tree gwp in July this year.

So how long can I expect to wait for items purchased on Saturday morning - at five past midnight - to be shipped to the UK? My order is still showing as ‘in the warehouse’.

Unfortunately, in order to actually purchase sets for holiday gifts, I expected to do so before Black Friday. No high - quality set seems to be in stock afterwards.

@ChocolateFrog said:
"So how long can I expect to wait for items purchased on Saturday morning - at five past midnight - to be shipped to the UK? My order is still showing as ‘in the warehouse’."

My order, also placed at 5 past midnight on Saturday, arrived on Monday morning. A 2nd order, placed on Sunday evening, is still 'in the warehouse'.

The idea of the skaters spinning around while rotating around the fountain is well done and should intrigue younger kids. TLG seem to have created some new 6 and 12 tooth gears which you can use as plates, so should be useful in other builds, e.g. Mario, and hopefully we will see more of them but at the moment this is the only set that contains them unless someone knows otherwise.

@ambr said:
"The idea of the skaters spinning around while rotating around the fountain is well done and should intrigue younger kids. TLG seem to have created some new 6 and 12 tooth gears which you can use as plates, so should be useful in other builds, e.g. Mario, and hopefully we will see more of them but at the moment this is the only set that contains them unless someone knows otherwise."

Relatively new but they've been around for nearly two years https://brickset.com/parts/category-System?query=gear%20wheel

It's a shame the thresholds are so high. Most years in Nov/Dec I have bought sets that I may not have bought otherwise, encouraged on by the great GWPs. But this year the threshold is so high that I'm just not willing to do it.

Thanks for sharing the store calendar!

@beatlefan1966 said:
"I agree that having two promos so close together is a little disappointing. I live in Florida in the United States and the one promotion of a Christmas tree is a GWP in store only. Hello!!!!! Florida right now has a positivity rate of newly tested people for COVID of 25%. LEGO wanting people to shop in store during a pandemic is irresponsible. I shop at the Disney World LEGO store and I have not been there for eight months. Busiest LEGO store in the world. Staying alive is more important to me. I'll just order online. "

Nobody should be going there, it's too crowded.

Must have for me...
Can't wait to add this to 40107.

Hate the new thresholds, probably won't be getting the two winter promos for the first time ever. Dickens will suffice.

I’ve been waiting on this. Wasn’t interested in the Dickens one so I held off for this one. Still I agree with others who say $150 is steep for this set

@legoboyUK:
The official piece count is 304. Dickens was 333 with the same threshold. The tree costs $4 if you buy it at retail, with a $40 buy if you want it for free. MSRP is listed as $19.99 on this set, which is five times that of the tree, so by that logic the minimum for this should be $200.

@Michael40Plus:
I can go to Target right now and buy the in-store tree GWP from Black Friday and the in-store train GWP from December for $8 plus tax. They're not a huge incentive for me. However, the skating rink could easily be sold out by the 14th, so I would advise that you carefully consider how badly you want to triple-dip on GWPs. You could end up just getting the train and way more giftwrap than you'd need to give it away.

@meesajarjar72:
Last year the holiday GWPs were the rotating Christmas Tree and the mini Gingerbread House. The former was 392pcs with a $120 buy, and they blew through their stock so fast that one of the other guys in my LUG asked if he could buy one off me (it didn't help that they also had the red brick available at $200, so anyone going after that got the tree as a bonus). The Gingerbread House was 499pcs (most of them very small) with only a $99 buy (or a $100 buy if you picked it up in July). I don't recall either of these ever being sold at retail, so I'm not sure what sets you're referring to.

So, the bad news is the piece counts dropped and the threshold went up. They've had reduced production for sure, and a lot of people believe they had increased demand. These GWPs eat up production capacity, and they know people will be buying Christmas presents anyways. They may have set the bar higher to reduce the number of these that they have to prepare to give away. Oddly, MSRP on 40337, 40338, and 40416 is $19.99, while 40410 is $22.99.

@beatlefan1966 said:
"I agree that having two promos so close together is a little disappointing. I live in Florida in the United States and the one promotion of a Christmas tree is a GWP in store only. Hello!!!!! Florida right now has a positivity rate of newly tested people for COVID of 25%. LEGO wanting people to shop in store during a pandemic is irresponsible. I shop at the Disney World LEGO store and I have not been there for eight months. Busiest LEGO store in the world. Staying alive is more important to me. I'll just order online. "

Don't forget the workers. I hope the folks working at my local store are alright, but I heard there getting a financial gift from the Christiansen family so I guess that makes up for it? Anyways, this is a pretty nice GWP and something I can get online.

@PurpleDave (or anyone else)

Would you know what the MSRP was for the following GWP sets:?

40292
40293
40254
40223
40138
40106
40107
40082
40083
3300014
3300002
3300020

Thanks!

So... which one of them has to go backwards?

I do not like this trend of GWP being 150 USD or more now. I always prided myself on collecting holiday GWP sets, but now I'm thinking I no long need to. If I get one because LEGO really had a set I had to buy at retail at the same time, so be it, but I'm not going to go out of my way to buy 150 USD in product for such a tiny set.

@lemish34 said:
"I see LEGO as a major positive force for good in the world."
Are you serious? If so, you have really fallen for their marketing. In that case, kudos to TLG for being able to manipulate people so effectively.
I see them as just another toy manufacturer that is in no way better than any of the others, and in some respects even worse.
But believe what you wish. I certainly see them very differently than you. And apparently I am not the only one.

@CCC said:
" @lemish34 said:
"What is WRONG with a large segment of the AFOL community?!?!
"

I guess partly it is because LEGO have changed from what they used to do. For example, back in 2012 they did set 3300014 with a £50 threshold. It was only about 100 parts, but had four minifigures and a horse as a freebie on a just £50 threshold spend.

Those days are long gone.

"

This ice skating rink has 304 pieces. Given that it's triple the pieces, it makes 100% perfect sense that the price point has tripled. Unless you think that more pieces should keep the same low threshold? That doesn't quite make sense to me. It seems like no days are long gone and it's just your perspective that's changed.

@smarchitelli:
40292 - $19.99 for 301pcs
40293 - $14.99 for 251pcs
40254 - $9.99 for 230pcs
40223 - no MSRP listed
40138 - no page found
40106 - no page found
40107 - no page found
40082 - no page found
40083 - no page found
3300014 - no page found
3300002 - no page found
3300020 - no page found

All I'm doing is running a Yahoo search on "LEGO" and the set number. Where I have zero success in searching for GWP set numbers on the LEGO website, I can locate them this way. It's usually the first legitimate return, right below all the sponsored results. You can't just change the URL, either, since it includes the set name along with the set number. Now, if you're paying attention, GWPs from 2011-2015 don't even show up on their website (at least not that I can find with this method), while the 2016 GWP does have a page but there's no price listed. From 2017 on, they've been adding the MSRP to the page. This is actually an important number, as when you are rung up they add the set at full price and then discount it to $0.00. They need this to be a real value, in case someone manages to bypass the GWP restrictions and tries to buy it outright, or if you buy the minimum required to qualify for the GWP and then return everything but the GWP. I think they set the MSRP on poster GWPs to a few pennies at most.

@SeekerBear:
Neither. And both. Look at the gearing. There's a large "sun" gear with a smaller "planet" gear on each side. Those planet gears are going to rotate in the opposite direction of the sun gear, which means they'll rotate in the same direction as each other. The minifigs have the exact same pose. They're going to look like synchronized skaters if you build it like the picture. If you make the sun gear rotate clockwise, the skaters will skate clockwise around the rink, while spinning counter-clockwise on their left legs (a forward spin). Reverse the direction, and the skaters will circle the rink counter-clockwise while doing a clockwise spin (reverse, on the left leg). If you mount one of the skaters on their left leg and the other on their right, then regardless of which direction you rotate the sun gear, one skater will be swinging the outside leg forward while the other will be swinging it backward. But because they're spinning on one leg, regardless of how you attach the minifigs, and how you rotate them around the rink, they will constantly be switching between forward and backward skating in relation to the rink.

@AustinPowers:
Yes, they make money hand-over-fist, but at a time when people were looking for stay-at-home entertainment, they diverted valuable production to the manufacture of face shields that they give away for free, they donate money to humanitarian causes, they produce products specifically for the education market (including sponsoring FLL), and their core product has been the subject of a lot of study in regards to kids on the autism spectrum. They've avoided potentially lucrative IPs and subject matter because the material was deemed too violent for their brand identity, and by staying a privately owned company they don't have to answer to the profit-over-everything crowd. They're going to great expense to try to find ways to sustainably source their raw materials. Yup, sounds exactly like the companies whose toys were found to have unusually high lead content because they went for the dirt-cheapiest Chinese suppliers to maximize shareholder profits and couldn't even bother to make sure they were importing stuff that wouldn't poison kids.

^read @PurpleDave for some perspective if you skipped that wall of text

Lemish34 - It's very tempting to rephrase your own words into something like this:

"What is WRONG with a small but loud segment of the fan community? There are so many of you with this woeful, mean-spirited attitude - 'how dare you criticize GlobalMegaCorp when they ignores/screws over their customers?'"

This is no way limited to AFOLs, you'll find the same aggressive apologist attitude in most hobby and fan forums (especially videogame ones) - often easily spotted by their use of words like "entitled", "whiners", "smacks of" and/or "privilege". It's one thing that a few will always try to gain the moral high ground with these disagreeable opinions, what really depresses me is how many upvotes they always seems to get.

In this case it boils down to another nice set locked behind the GWP/high minimum spend wall - there are so many people who are far more interested in whimsical sets like this than the 127th police helicopter, and would be more than happy if they could just buy it at retail price. This time it also has been compounded by several attractive GWPs in short succession (meaning many would already have bought their "must-have" and "on the fence" sets) and most of the D2C sets that would push them over the limit being sold out, leaving no option than spending a lot on sets you really don't care about to get a small GWP.

Other issues are that $150-200 is just too much as a spend limit for a GWP (even if it's a nice one), IMO the typical polybag should have a limit of $50, and the larger boxed ones should have a limit of $100 - especially if it's true that Lego's RRPs (and SaH prices) are set to allow for a 20% discount after a few months (a discount we never see in many non-US countries).

Lego tried to defend their new complexified VIP program with the possibility of spending your points on earlier GWPs, but AFAIK few or no GWPs has been available this way - if they have, it must've been on a "blink-and-it's-gone" basis. And finally it's my pet issue about how Lego announces nice GWPs a few days AFTER you've done a major day one purchase, this seems to especially happen with boxed spring/summer GWPs.

Thanks very much @PurpleDave

@PurpleDave - brilliantly put!!
I hope @AustinPowers actually bothers to read your paragraph.

@AustinPowers said:
" @lemish34 said:
"I see LEGO as a major positive force for good in the world."
Are you serious? If so, you have really fallen for their marketing. In that case, kudos to TLG for being able to manipulate people so effectively.
I see them as just another toy manufacturer that is in no way better than any of the others, and in some respects even worse.
But believe what you wish. I certainly see them very differently than you. And apparently I am not the only one. "

Seriously??
Did you read a single word I typed?!
I don’t bother with Lego’s marketing babble - I make my own decisions based on information from excellent sources such as Brickset.com.

Go read @PurpleDave’s excellent comments for some actual real-life perspective and common sense.