Way back in February 2015 (before Jurassic World opened and dinosaurs began roaming the Earth), LEGO hit us up with the surprise announcement that the LEGO Ideas Wall-E set had been approved and would be coming our way in late 2015! Well, it’s over a third of a year later, but we’ve finally gotten our first official looks at the upcoming Disney-Pixar LEGO Wall-E 21303 set… and I have to say, it looks absolutely amazing!! This just may be the most authentic licensed LEGO set ever made!
I imagine that LEGO hadn’t intended for the first images of the Wall-E LEGO set to leak out onto the web from a random overseas retailer site with no fanfare whatsoever, but that’s just what happened, and now the robot is officially out of the bag!
The prototype box for the LEGO Ideas #012 Wall-E set doesn’t explicitly state the number of pieces included in this set, so we’re still going to have to guess as to exactly how many parts this little guy is made out of. We do, however, know that the UK price-point for this set is going to be around €57.99. Based off of that, it can be loosely guesstimated that the set will contain between 450-550 pieces. That’s quite a few pieces for an Ideas set!
The product description for the Wall-E LEGO set states that the toy will feature a flexible head and hands that can open and close, an opening torso compartment and rotating wheels with tread tracks. We can also see from the images that a brick-built plant will be included, and presumably the “Wall” and “E” plates will have the text printed on instead of being stickers (I hope).
At this time there is no official release date set for the Ideas Wall-E 21303 toy, but Smyths Toys in the UK has set a release window of December 1st-December 10th 2015 in the UK. Theoretically, then, we should be seeing the Wall-E set launch worldwide just in time for the holiday shopping season crunch! The suggested age for this set is 12 years and up, though, so don’t go placing an order for this sweet little robot for your toddler just yet!
Now that you’ve seen the 21303 LEGO Wall-E set, what do you think, Pixar fans? Does Wall-E top the previously-released Buzz Lightyear and Emperor Zurg to become the best brick-built Pixar character ever made?
This set looks awesome, nice write-up! (Question: how did Angus MacLane start work on this model in 2005 if the movie wasn’t released until 2008?)
It is my understanding that Angus McLane is one of the designers for the original Wall-E.
Yes he entered at pixar in 97 and worked on all their major movies.
Could I confirm that you picked up the Euro dollar amount, not the British pound amount which is what would normally be listed for a UK site? The symbol “€” is for Euro and this would translate to about $65.30 at today’s exchange rate. The symbol £ is for the British pound and would translate to $90.23! Either way it is too much for a set of this nature for me as I am not a really big Wall-e fan, but the statement of “UK price-point for this set is going to be around €57.99” was a bit confusing. (What I am really hoping is that you inadvertently put a Euro symbol instead of a Dollar symbol and really meant $57.99.) 🙂
Unfortunately, I straight copy and pasted the price, so whatever symbol is there is the correct one for the type of currency that Smyth’s is charging.
Okay, thanks for the clarification. I went to Smyth’s site, selected the “Britain” symbol and found it for £39.99, which translates fairly closely to the Euro amount you list. I then looked at the Brickset database to find out what recently released sets are going for in terms of pounds vs dollars, and based on this, it looks like the Wall-e set will likely be somewhere between $45 to $50, which makes sense given the piece count you give.
A few precisions.
First there is no currency called “euro dollar” as you typed in an earlier comment.
The EU currency is simply called the “Euro”
Then, pricing with Lego is a funny thing. Nowadays we’re to many things having roughly the same price if not all over the world, at least in Europe and North America.
This is not the case for Lego.
I’m not sure of the reasons, but I assume it’s because they’re not produced in the same area; most worldwide products nowadays are built in China, Lego bricks are not. The ones sold in Europe are produced in Europe (Denmark, Czech Republic, and I think another factory opened in another country recently), while Lego sold in North America are produced in Mexico.
Overall pricing tends to follow the same absolute value. That is, if a set is €39,99 in Europe, it will most likely be $39.99, because producing a set in Mexico is cheaper than in the EU (not mentioning sales taxes). The price in British Pound is usually roughly the equivalent to the Euro price (i.e. not £39.99 but rather roughly £28.99).
Usually, the US market is the cheapest for Lego… and the Japan market (where I live) one of the most expensive (although prices have been going down lately).
Of course, sites like Amazon usually don’t ship Lego overseas, you have to buy them to your local Amazon.
Concerning the Wall-E set, while there’s no official information yet, if it actually ends up costing £39.99, it should be in the 50-55 dollar or euro range.
Yes, I realize there is no Euro “dollar”. That was a typo on my part (revised an initial comment and then did not proof read). However, I was basing my pricing estimates on the dollar to pound relationship on recently released sets from Lego. I went to Brickset which lists the Euro, British Pound, and Dollar prices of sets. I did this because currency fluctuates day to day, but the “official” list prices of Legos sets usually stay once released.
So, in looking at recently released sets, the 2015 dollar and euro price “numbers” do seem to be the same (although historically this does not always hold true-I can find even last year some sets where they differed–in the cases I found, the Euro number was larger than the US dollar number). However, if you look at the British Pound price in relation to the Euro and the Dollar, it varies a bit (per what is listed in the Brickset website). For example, the Kwik-E set is $199.99 and €199.99, but £169.99. (199.99 is about 1.176 times 169.99.) However, the Changing Seasons set is $49.99 and €49.99, but £39.99. (49.99 is 1.25 times 39.99), and the SHIELD Helicarrier price euro/dollar number of 349.99 is 1.296 of the £ price number of 269.99. So, some variability when looking at the £ to € (or $) numbers.
So, if you take £39.99 x 1.176 = 47.03, and £39.99 x 1.296 = 51.83, therefore I guess the best that can be said is that it will most likely be “around” $50 or €50.
I believe my above calculations are correct, but I am sure you will tell me if they are not. 🙂
Interestingly both D. Kuhrt and I at one point found this set at Smyths (which is where I found the £39.99 price), but I went today in the site (both the one that lists the Euro amount, as well as the one that lists the British Pound amount) and the product is no longer listed there. Perhaps they jumped the gun and weren’t supposed to list, so retracted.
And, I truly apologize to people who really don’t care about international pricing about this very boring post. 🙂
the pricetag is terrible ..