The ex-director of LEGO Insiders has commented on and explained the lack of Star Wars minifigure-specific gifts-with-purchase in recent years.
Whether through May the 4th or another regular LEGO Star Wars event, the range of LEGO Star Wars gifts-with-purchase used to include exclusive minifigures as enticing polybags available with qualifying purchases. In recent years, this idea has seemingly been abandoned in favour of builds, occasionally with exclusive minifigures where appropriate.
This includes 40531 Lars Family Homestead Kitchen with the unique Aunt Beru minifigure, but the days of 5002123 Darth Revan and 5002947 Admiral Yularen are still missed by the LEGO Star Wars community. Speaking on the A Couple of Brickheads podcast recently, the ex-head of loyalty and the VIP program has commented on the lack of minifigures, offering a few explanations as to why they have stopped in recent times.
"We all love minifigures, it's not that we need to keep it into a set – a lot of the time it's just that there are things you can't do," commented Jason Whiting. "You might have a licensing agreement or stuff like that and that license covers building sets, so minifigures aren't building sets. Minifigures are figures so if your license doesn't cover them that's not something you can do."
This aligns with previous rumours that the LEGO Group's contractual agreement for Star Wars does not include figures, which standalone minifigure sets would fall under, but they can still be included in something considered to be a building set. That would explain recent gifts such as 40531 Lars Family Homestead Kitchen, with a new minifigure but in a much larger model.
"There is probably a myriad of reasons why something doesn't happen – it could be a licensing issue, a manufacturing issue or that you only have room on the assembly line for a set that you're selling and we can't pull that set off the line to do a single gift-with-purchase
"Things have gotten a lot stricter over the years now that everything to do with pieces has come to be made in-house and having that tight control means you also have less flexibility. You only have a factory that can produce so many things."
Whiting's comments suggest that you may not want to hold out much hope for polybag minifigures similar to Admiral Yularen, Darth Revan or even the classic-style Obi-Wan Kenobi again anytime soon. Instead, the likes of
We'll have to see what comes for May the 4th this year with rumours already starting to swirl for a massive Jango Fett build. Take all LEGO rumours with caution and in the meantime, click here to learn more about the reasoning behind the LEGO VIP rebranding from the ex-director.
Support the work that Brick Fanatics does by buying your LEGO sets using our affiliate links. Thanks!
Comments
Be the first to comment!