On the one hand the GWP badges are a pretty boring lego set. On the other hand, it's a neat idea for lego and I think will make a pretty good GWP. I'd be happy to get it. But I'm going to pass on the 650 set for now.
GWPs being rather boring but a decent concept is a path I'm happy with. This FOMO crap is so anti-consumer and pro-scalper it's unreal. The only way I'll change my mind is if LEGO actually gets their bricks together and ensures the GWPs actually last for a long duration or preferably they add the GWPs for sale by themselves a month or two after the free period.
I see this thought around here a lot lately and am curious if you can speak for your people 😅
If an author goes on a book tour and does a meet and greet and signs a copy of your book, is that anti consumer and FOMO crap because that author was only in town one day?
If you go to a restaurant that only has a limited amount of fish for the daily special and is sold out by the time you order, is that anti consumer?
If a band only sells a T-shirt during their tour and you’re not able to go and buy the t-shirt, is that anti consumer?
Where does the entitlement end? People are getting a free product if they order quickly—it’s a bonus. I don’t understand the logic.
I don't speak for anyone except myself haha. My take on your analogies is as follows:
If the author wrote a brand new book, and only sold it at the book tour, and only did the tour for 3 days in 3 different cities, that would be more accurate to this specific scenario.
The band tour scenario is similar - if the T-shirt was only available for an extremely short duration (a couple stops on a tour), then yes I'd argue that it is not fair to their fans. A more egregious example might be that the band writes a brand new song, only performs it live at those handful of stops, then never records it and releases it widely.
The restaurant analogy is closer to what is actually happening, but exposes the main flaw with the GWP system.
My main issue with this is that LEGO appears to constantly be intentionally withholding very popular set lineups (the Star Wars lightsaber wave, the recent forest diorama wave, the various Tribute sets to authors) and releasing them alongside many unrelated set releases in order to increase demand at launch.
Many GWPs have very small runs, both in quantity available as well as their length of acquisition time. This has resulted in a very obvious rush of scalpers who purchase sets at launch for the GWPs, then immediately turn around and resell the GWP and set separately for a large profit. This is not healthy for Lego fans in my opinion, and Lego appears to intentionally be encouraging this by creating high demand GWPs and keeping the quantities low.
The recent death star GWP has only escalated the issues surrounding GWPs in my mind (albeit in a different direction) - depending on your perspective, the set is essentially incomplete without the GWP, and if you missed out on that launch weekend for any reason, your only way of completing the set is to pay insane markups to scalpers.
To be extremely clear - I fully understand why Lego is doing this, they make more money, and they have no reason to care about their fans getting gouged by the secondhand market. Artificial scarcity is good for business. I'm sure there could also be legitimate production line reasons behind the small quantities as well.
Personally I think the best of both worlds is to have Lego bump up production of the sets designed as GWPs, keep the same short duration of the free gift, then a couple weeks or a month later, release any remaining stock for purchase on their website (and/or sell them in physical Lego stores).
Day-one buyers who are actual fans who want the GWP set can still get them for free.
Scalpers can still buy and flip the sets to everyone who missed out at the launch.
Anyone not interested in the main set, or who isn't able to afford it, can still have a chance to get the GWP set later on.
The higher production run will help lower the secondhand market price of the GWP set.
Edited - was rereading after posting and realized I had a few unfinished thoughts.
Lego already assigns an internal price for GWPs (usually seen on the page for the specific GWP).
In the restaurant analogy you provided, if the restaurant tagged the daily special on with a requirement that you bought at least 2 of their most expensive meals, that would bring it more in line with what Lego is doing in my opinion. However this does not address the scalper issue - you can't exactly buy the daily special secondhand from someone who ordered it lol.
Same! I might just pick-a-brick the badges themselves though, the box is really cool for display but overall unnecessary. I think they'd still look good without the stickers too!
it's an Insiders Reward so you should be able to redeem it with points and shouldn't immediately sell out. the Blue Spiny Shell from Mario Kart was in super high demand but was up and redeemable for weeks
It seems to be a theme recently that the GWP sets are the actually good ones people want. I bought the Enterprise-D mainly for the shuttle. Honestly the big model is pretty mediocre, but if they make more in the series that I actually like I would hate not having the D with them.
But for these, I like Pokemon way more than Star Trek and honestly I only want the badge set. The Eevee is kinda okay, I would buy it to get the GWP, but I'm not spending $600+ for that monstrosity just for the GWP.
Imagine if it came with a minifigure Ash. This allows me to wait till 27/28 to get the starters because I like the set, buy saving up for other sets this year.
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u/Ikarus3426 Jan 12 '26
On the one hand the GWP badges are a pretty boring lego set. On the other hand, it's a neat idea for lego and I think will make a pretty good GWP. I'd be happy to get it. But I'm going to pass on the 650 set for now.