Photos hit the Internet yesterday of a new Lego set, 75025 Jedi Defender-class Cruiser from The Old Republic. The set, which contains 927 pieces, will include four minifigures, including three that are new; Sith Warrior, Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular and a Sith Trooper.
Price will probably be around $100. There doesn’t seem to be a release date yet but look for it later in the year.
Announced back on February 16th, the Lego Red Five X-Wing Starfighter (10240) will finally be available for sale starting Tomorrow. The Lego exclusive will be available in stores and on Shop@Home for $199.99.
While the build fits into the UCS family of sets, ringing in with 1559 pieces, it will include one minifigure of R2-D2. The X-Wing will include a stand with information plaque and features opening wings and cockpit.
There will be a lot of stores holding events tomorrow in celebration of May the 4th Be With You. We’ve pointed out a couple, including Lego, Hasbro, Her Universe and Sideshow but there are a lot more.
StarWars.com posted a May the 4th Microsite with details on quite a few events around the country along with other ways to celebrate; including movie marathons and even recipes for Star Wars themed Mocktails.
Also, be sure to head over to Roqoo Depot’s May the 4th roundup which is pretty comprehensive.
If all of the Star Wars events aren’t enough, don’t forget that Saturday is also Free Comic Book Day which includes a Star Wars comic from Dark Horse. To find your local comic book store, check out the Comic Shop Locator Service.
Lego has posted a sneak peek at their May the 4th promotions for this year and it includes free shipping on all Star Wars purchases from Shop@Home over $49, a free Han Solo Hoth minifigure with a purchase of $75 or more and a free Star Wars poster with all purchases.
There should also be some sales but other than a rumored sale on the 10227 B-Wing Starfighter, we don’t have any additional information on that yet.
Lego’s upcoming TV show, “The Yoda Chronicles,” is getting a big push this year and to help publicize it, Toys-R-Us stores will be running a May the 4th promotion where participants can build an exclusive mini Jek-14 Stealth Starfighter.
The promo will run from 12 – 2PM on Saturday, May 4th. Check out the promo banner from the Dickson City, PA Toys-R-Us store.
Photo and report courtesy Joe Kersavage
Back in September, Cartoon Network aired Star Wars Lego: The Empire Strikes Out, their most recent animated special. In just over a week, on March 26th, that special will be out on DVD. The set includes an exclusive Lego Darth Vader with medal minifigure. The set will retail for about $15 but is available for pre-order from Amazon, at the time of this post, for $9.99.
We read a few reports online that some Walmart stores had issued a price rollback on several Star Wars sets and, after checking locally, can confirm this. The discounts range from about $3 to about $24 on the higher priced offerings. Here’s what showed up on rollback at the local store, original retail in parentheses:
The savings on the Malevolence and Jabba’s Palace are quite significant but we’d recommend picking up the two Old Republic ships or Pre Vizsla’s Fighter as they’re the type of sets that can fly under the radar, suddenly disappear and leave you searching eBay for a deal.
Keep an eye on your Walmart stores, they’re receiving cardboard displays of polybagged Lego sets. Yesterday we spotted several boxes at our local store, with six different sets. They’re all in the $3 to $4 range but priced slightly different.
The boxes were in the toy section by the main Lego aisle at pir store but we’ve read that some stores may be putting these near their Easter holiday decorations and candy aisles.
Mattel has been the number one toy manufacturer for years, with Hasbro (a sometimes distant) second. But according to BMO Capitol’s Gerrick Johnson, by way of Richard Gottlieb’s Global Toy News, things are shaking up at the top.
According to Johnson’s analysis, Lego did $4.137 billion in sales in 2012 to Hasbro’s $4.08 billing, beating them by about $53 million and making them the number 2 company. What’s interesting is that when net income is tallied up, Lego actually beats both Mattel and Hasbro by about $215 million and $656 million respectively, making it number 1.
It’s not hard to see Hasbro taking a big hit last year, even if their Star Wars line is just one aspect of their business, we all know how badly it fared. Missteps with the G.I. Joe movie being postponed, Kre-O seemingly doing poorly enough that it’s now a Toys-R-Us exclusive, and even The Avengers line, which sold quickly initially, had trouble finding its way to retail when it came to the later waves.
It’s been our stance that Lego is probably the best overall toy line on the market today and it would seem others agree. We spent more on Lego in 2012 than the previous three or four years combined. The Collectible Minifigure line sucked us in but we stayed for Star Wars, City, Harry Potter and the new Galaxy Squad lines. And maybe some Dino mixed in! Ninjago has seemingly been a hot seller for Lego and the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit sets have been getting a lot of buzz. The new Friends line has also taken off. Having both Marvel and DC in their superheroes line, at a time when both companies have successful movie franchises, doesn’t hurt.
Lego have been increasing sales for nearly a decade and if they continue, could they permanently surpass Hasbro? With heavy hitting Marvel movies coming for the foreseeable future, and new Star Wars films on the horizon, Hasbro is well positioned to do great things, but they definitely need to change up their formula, because even huge hits like the Avengers and the Transformers movies, don’t seem to have been getting it done.
It seems that Lego held back a reveal from Toy Fair. Yesterday, on Gizmodo, Lego announced a new Ultimate Collector Series (UCS) Red Five X-Wing Starfighter (10240). It should have a price tag of around $200 and a part count of 1559. It’s scheduled for a May release.
If you head over to the Gizmodo website, they have some additional pictures of the assembled set as well as a video of the designer going over the features of the ship.
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