**Update: following the writing of this article, the Jungle Air Drop Helicopter set was made available in Canada, It was released on August 1, 2017 for the retail price of $179.99. This actually makes Canada the cheapest place in the world to buy this set. The information in this article will still give you a pretty good idea of the cost of this set around the world, but the calculations are no longer spot on.
Yesterday, I started looking at the cost of LEGO in different countries. Mostly, I am doing this just for fun. It does also give a rough idea of the cost of LEGO from country to country. I am looking specifically at the City Jungle subtheme because it is high on my purchase list at the moment. You can read part one of my series, in which I compared the average price of one Jungle set in different countries, by clicking here.
Today, I am going to look specifically at the set that started this whole blog series: Jungle Air Drop Helicopter (60162). This is supposedly the flagship set of this series. It is the largest, clocking in at 1245 bricks. It is also the most expensive, with an average cost around the world of $210.69 CDN. You get seven Minifigures (a brick-to-Minifigure ratio of 178:1). You also get a crocodile and a tiger, which is the real draw for this set in my opinion. Counting the crocodile and tiger along with the Minifigures gives this set a brick-to-Minifig ratio of 138:1, which is actually really good.
This set is not available for retail in North America, which is a huge disappointment for me. Scouring the various international LEGO shop at home sites shows that the Air Drop Helicopter tends to retail for about the same price as the Ultimate Batmobile from the LEGO Batman Movie theme. If that was really the case here in Canada, this set would probably go for around $160. That would be a cost of $0.13 per brick. If we go with the international average for the set, it costs $0.17 per brick. The later is more inline with the average cost of a brick in the City theme, while the former is closer to the average cost of a brick overall this summer. More than likely, it would cost closer to international average than the Ultimate Batmobile…
Interestingly, as I was looking at this set across different countries, I found that this set costs a different amount in almost every country where you can buy it. In fact, it has a standard deviation of $13.22, which is really high. When the standard deviation is high, it means that the individual prices for this set vary widely from the average of all of the prices together. The Canadian and United States columns are, of course, blank since you cannot get this set in North America. If you are traveling, the best place to buy this set for Canadians is the UK. This goes along with my findings for the average cost of a set yesterday. The worst place to buy this set is New Zealand.
If you are out traveling this summer, here are the countries where you can buy this set in the order of best to worst value (rounded to the nearest dollar):
- The United Kingdom ($184 CDN)
- Germany, Ireland, Austria, Italy ($191 CDN)
- Switzerland ($200 CDN)
- France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands ($206 CDN)
- Czech Republic ($207 CDN)
- Sweden, Poland ($210 CDN)
- Spain ($213 CDN)
- Hungary ($215 CDN)
- Denmark ($217 CDN)
- Portugal ($219 CDN)
- South Korea, Finland ($220 CDN)
- Norway ($224 CDN)
- Australia ($225 CDN)
- New Zealand ($235 CDN)
As always, I would love to hear about how much this set costs in your home country, or your thoughts in general about this topic. Tomorrow, I will have a look at the Jungle Exploration Site (60161).
Until next time,
-T.N.B.
That man-eating plant has me thinking about doing a Little Shop of Horrors MOC.
Ha! What a great idea.
Why wouldn’t it be available here? Some kind of licensing thing, or LEGO just giving the finger to North America?
Good question… the honest answer is that I have no clue. If I was to guess, I would say that some sets fall under the category of “limited availability”… occasionally LEGO puts out a European or North American exclusive. In this case it would be an every country except Canada and the US exclusive. It could also be that they plan a later release date in North America, though I have not heard of one yet. There is another set in this series that will be released in Canada on August 1, but is already available everywhere else. It could also be that it would just be to expensive to sell here and they don’t anticipate it would do well for that reason (that is just speculation on my part though). Usually the really expensive sets have a great per brick value, this one would just be expensive both in overall price tag and per brick.