I assume the modular bookshop is only temporarily unavailable in the UK? At leat that's what the UK lego site says. I hope so because I haven't got that yet!

@Huw said:
"When things go on back order or temporarily out of stock they disappear from the product feeds: we don't double-check availability manually every day!"

Thanks! That makes a lot of sense indeed. And condisering you probably already own most of the sets I can see there is no need for you to refresh every day :)

"As a bonus, I've also examined every single set containing goats." ROFL, before I even read the rest of the article.
Looks like a target of around 18 months for Ideas, which would make sense with a constant stream in the pipeline, and likewise longer for modular given there's only 1 a year released.

I think some of the availability probably comes down to ability to produce: more special & unique parts is likely to lead to lower availability. If overall demand for LEGO products is high, why tie production lines with parts for a small number of sets? Could also explain the short run on 7189, as we know the goat mould got damaged at some point.

The Parisian Restaurant really is a work of art, so much joy when looking at it. Glad to see how long of a shelf life it had.

On the subject of availability, does anyone know the story behind 10134: Y-wing Attack Starfighter? It might be my memory playing tricks on me, but that set really seemed to disappear quite suddenly, almost at a product recall rate (I'm not suggesting that it was recalled). I bet the facts of the matter are probably quite different from my memory though and the thing was probably available for a year or two.

You should do one of these for all the Lego Movie (1+2), Lego Batman Movie, and Ninjago Movie sets. Idk just an idea.

Does anyone know why the older brown plates broke so easily?

Now I kinda want a Lego goat.

Cool! Thanks for this new analysis. Thanks for spending your time to do it.

You said "arguably the last proper Castle set", so I'm gonna argue! What about 70404, from 2013?

Popped by to mention that my last over the counter purchase of 3x 21104 Curiosity Rover was in Dec 2016. This was from a Department Store here in Australia and my records show I bought 15 of them in 2016. From memory there was a plethora of them about. Thought it may be worth mentioning that although the data is based on Lego online shop listings it obviously cant take into account how many tens of thousands of units were shipped to worldwide retail chains.
Interestingly @AstonVulcan mentions 10134 Y wing being a 'flash in the pan' set in the UK. My records from that far back aren't accurate enough to quantify exact purchase times but I do remember it seeming to hang around for ages on retail shelves here in Australia and I would have picked up at least 2 dozen of these at the time.
I have to wonder if the PERCIEVED short timeframe of availability back then was offset by the massive stock commitment to satisfy international retail partners.
Ahh the good old days... Lego reselling was a lucrative pastime. I'm not involved with that side of the hobby anymore as I'm thoroughly convinced that the consistent out of stock situations were seeing from LEGO.com are due to the MAJORITY of sets being sold at release time to scalpers and flippers. In Australia at least, there are dozens and dozens of individual listings on Ebay and Fbook marketplace within 24hrs of new sets being out of stock at LEGO.com.

Very useful analysis! Definitely gives me an idea of the average shelf life of a new Ideas and Modular set and not miss out!

@ChristopherLauer:
I have all the Winter Village sets except Toy Shop 2, but I haven’t actually built any of them. Which ones am I going to need to get replacement parts for, so I can get them in advance?

@raven_za said:
"While not part of the Creator Expert theme, I'd like to add the following to the above:

70657: NINJAGO City Docks
UK : 02 Jun 18 - 14 Nov 19 : 1 Years, 5 Months, 12 Days
US : 01 Aug 18 - 29 Nov 19 : 1 Years, 3 Months, 28 Days

70620: NINJAGO City
UK : 01 Sep 17 - 24 Dec 19 : 2 Years, 3 Months, 23 Days
US : 01 Sep 17 - 30 Nov 19 : 2 Years, 2 Months, 29 Days

71741: NINJAGO City Gardens
UK : 16 Jan 21 - now
US : 16 Jan 21 - now

80107 : Spring-Lantern-Festival
UK : 01 Jan 21 - 03 Feb 21*
US : 11 Jan 21 - 11 Jan 21*
*: Temporarily out of stock"

Thanks for this info.! I had been checking LEGO.com almost daily and was wondering when I missed 80107. I've got an email alert set now and hoping it will be back in stock soon. Also, I'd like to hereby nominate the LEGO Goat as the GLAOAT (Greatest LEGO Animal Of All Time).

Surprised to see the modular cinema lasted that long. It's generally considered one of the weakest sets in the theme. Maybe it took 4 years to sell the initial production run?

While the Mars Rover had a tragically short run, there are no exclusive pieces/stickers. I pieced mine together from new parts a couple years ago. There are two pricey Technic steering arms ($5-10 each last I checked), but you can make a set with new parts for a fraction of the cost of buying the official set if you just want the build and don't mind not having the instructions/box. I just ran a check on Bricklink and you can get the new parts for around $54-55 ($28 of which is those two expensive parts)...the first check I ran has 4 Bricklink stores needed, so there will be some shipping cost too of course. But just an idea for folks who'd like the to have the build and don't care about the instructions/box.

I did the same with Hayabusa and got some reproduction stickers...and the same for the Shinkai, but in that case, I substituted a white tail fin for the crazy expensive orange one. Those two are not 100% legit, but close, and I love having them in my collection.

I may have missed it in the many discussions, but what is the 92177 and 21313? Just curious...

@Alatariel:
They’ve made some epic goofs gauging interest before. When the UCS MF2 released our late store manager had to plead with corporate to get twelve copies for launch day, for the only store in Michigan. They told him he’d still be sitting in them by the end of the year. At least 20 people were lined up outside the door waiting for the store to open, even though 40% of them knew they’d already missed out. _Used_ copies of 10179 were selling for 3-4x that price, without the added benefit of the VIP Black Card, so I don’t know why they thought everyone would choke on the $800 price tag, especially with Christmas coming two months later.

Before that, the CMF series was blind-bagged so customers wouldn’t know what they were getting (yeah, right...), but they put a second barcode with no printed numbers on the back of S1 and S2 packets so the LEGO Stores could scan those and track which minifigs were selling. Our store got I think 10 cases of S2 for the grand opening, and we’re sold out by noon, so the answer to that question was, “Yes.” At best, they could have used that data to track whether thefts were happening randomly, or if they were targeting specific minifigs. Or, now that I think about it, they could track the accuracy of the case sort as it was headed out the door.

@Farmer_John:
They didn’t really go into detail about why they were doing it (whether it was pressure from retailers or from customers), but they announced a while back that they were going to reissue Ship-in-a-Bottle and the Saturn V rocket. Since both were already retired, they were given new set numbers, and, like @Huw, I’m assuming the inventory remained unchanged. The profit-sharing for Ideas sets was still in effect, though I have no idea if the project submitters got free copies of the updated boxes.

I still haven't forgiven LEGO For how they butchered 21308 Adventure Time. They cut out half the figures of the original submission, kept the suggested price, and expected it to still work? Real shame 'cause now we'll probably never get a set for the Willow Treehouse, then again the Marceline Dimensions pack sold amazingly so who knows.

I had 21104 Curiosity Rover in my cart and then said 'no I'll wait for next month's Gift With Purchase' and of course it was gone by then.

Bricklink'ed pieces for it last year at my wife's request. Part 6571 in black is rare so I ended up buying a small Technic set containing the needed pieces as it was more cost-effective to do that and have the extra pieces from it than just buying two of element 4543367.

I'm loving these lists @Huw. Is there a way to search for most owned and least owned sets in the database?

"The average length of time Ideas sets remain available is 1 year and 2 months."
Good, I still have four months to buy Barracuda Bay. Lol

Still kicking myself for waiting to buy MVR, then going into my grey ages and now it's a $200-300 set! *facedesk* Going to be the most I spent per piece of LEGO in my life when I pick it up...

I'm glad I grabbed a 21104 on Bricklink right after it sold out. 50€ seemed steep at the time (and is honestly a little much purely for the model), but sounds pretty good now. Even parting it out isn't much cheaper.

@sbpyrat said:
"While the Mars Rover had a tragically short run, there are no exclusive pieces/stickers. I pieced mine together from new parts a couple years ago. There are two pricey Technic steering arms ($5-10 each last I checked), but you can make a set with new parts for a fraction of the cost of buying the official set if you just want the build and don't mind not having the instructions/box. I just ran a check on Bricklink and you can get the new parts for around $54-55 ($28 of which is those two expensive parts)...the first check I ran has 4 Bricklink stores needed, so there will be some shipping cost too of course. But just an idea for folks who'd like the to have the build and don't care about the instructions/box.

I did the same with Hayabusa and got some reproduction stickers...and the same for the Shinkai, but in that case, I substituted a white tail fin for the crazy expensive orange one. Those two are not 100% legit, but close, and I love having them in my collection."

I also did a bricklinked Shinkai, however, instead of white I used dark orange for the tail fin. Not very close to bright orange but adds a nice splash of colour.

I may have missed this, but what about 21100 - Shinkai submarine? Wasn't that the first Cuusoo set?

@Huw said:
"^ Identical in all but set number, I believe."

It looks like there's a discrepancy in the piece count (at least in BrickLink). Wasn't sure what that was about...

A year and two months is longer than expected, I remember seeing the maze in 2015/2026 or whenever it was released, and it just vanished a short time later. Thanks for nothing Dark Ages!

@jkb said:
"We need more sets with goats! And pigs. And ducks! How about some sheep?"

We need a new farm set, my town needs a farm.

I'm hopeful that with Perseverance due to land in just over a week we'll get a re-release or a new version of Curiousity. Not picking it up at the time (I was just about to come out my Dark Age) is one of my few Lego regrets.

Need more goats! Maybe do something like The Child set - a brick build goat with little goats!

I'm disappointed that Huw's third analysis lacks the usual depth and rigor I have come to expect of his articles. A simple search for "goat" on Brickset reveals four other Lego sets containing goats. Two are from the Fabuland theme and two are Duplo.

@Huw said:
"Yes, pretty much anything can be done by anyone, using queries.

Here are a few I've created, including most owned: https://brickset.com/queries/featured"

Can you make list of sets with animal(s)!

@gsom7 said:
" @Huw said:
"Yes, pretty much anything can be done by anyone, using queries.

Here are a few I've created, including most owned: https://brickset.com/queries/featured"

Can you make list of sets with animal(s)!"

Would love to see a list of all the sets with one or more animals. I guess for this to work, they have to be tagged appropriately first.

Poor Adventure Time. I bought two of the set on clearance at Kohl's. I didn't watch the show prior to that, but now I can say it is one of my favorites. SO many classic lines and characters. It is upsetting that LEGO didn't release more figures in the Dimensions line. I'm thankful for what we got, but I don't know how they could omit PB or Ice King, but were willing to include Lumpy Space Princess...seems weird.

@Huw said:
"^ Identical in all but set number, I believe."
This is the analysis I would like to see. I know at least three sets that were renumbered, but pretty much the exact same set. How often does this happen? I would like to know what the small differences (if any) are. I remember this with the space shuttle set. Mostly the same - but made more robustly - and each has a different set number.

We definitely need more goats in sets

“ Other than 10223 Kingdoms Joust which was released the following year, it was arguably the last proper Castle set.”
Mill Village Raid, released in 2011, was hardly the last proper Castle set (excluding Kingdoms Joust). There was a whole other Castle line in 2014 (unimaginatively that sub-theme of Castle was called Castle). It stunk, but it existed as proper Castle sets.
Of coarse if you go by The LEGO Group official line, the whole of Nexo Knights were Castle sets so we had Castle sets as recently as 2018. You’d find it hard to find a LEGO fan that agreed with them on that one.

Are goats the new sausage?

@HOBBES:
Animal battle pack, huh? So, dog, rooster, maybe use on of those feather/flames for a betta, throw in a cobra and a mongoose...

@MorkMan:
It happens randomly. About 20 years ago, they came out with the Legends theme, which was basically intended to be straight rereleases, but certain molds had been retired and new equivalent parts had to be subbed in. That was intended to be a long-lasting theme, but sales on rereleased sets can flame out very quickly once the vocal demand is sated. Taj Mahal was brought back specifically to put Lepin down (and the only change I'm aware of is they tossed in a brick separator). Old sets often (always?) had different set numbers in North American and Europe, but were technically the same release. 79104 was originally designed so badly that Bricklink catalogs the two versions as different sets, but they both use the same set number. The external tank on 10213 was so fragile they issued a patch kit, and then came up with a third design for the external tank and released it as 10231.

I looked at the set inventories for 21309 and 92176, and they changed _one_ of the 26 dark-bley 2x4 plates to a Technic 2x4 plate, so that was clearly a conscious design change. I just compared the Ship-In-A-Bottle part lists, and the only difference I see is that 92177 comes with the updated red 1x4 plate w/ 2 studs, while early copies of 21313 came with the old version. That was because the part was changed, though, so later copies of that set may have received the updated part as well.

Way back in the day, they were known to reuse set numbers, and later on they may not have seen any issues with rereleasing a set with the old set number. These days, once a set is officially retired, the number retires with it. If they bring it back, it's issued a new set number.

@MrKoshka said:
"Man. I want a LEGO goat. Thank god for Bricklink. Let me see, can’t be that bad...$47??!!!

I’m coming Elizabeth! It’s the big one!!"

I don't have the set but I bought 3 goats on their own at the time. To be Marvel/Norse Mythology's Loki's little buddies. Didn't realize I was so lucky, musta got them for $3 a piece or so