A Canadian Traveler’s Guide to Buying LEGO – Part V

The Jungle Halftrack Mission is the cheapest way to get your hands on one of the new LEGO big cats. In this set, you get a melanistic leopard, also known as a black panther. In reality, black panthers can be leopards or jaguars that exhibit melanism (a rare gene mutation that causes excess production of melanin, the pigment responsible for black colouration.) So, the panther is not actually a species, but a colour variant that occurs in two different species of large cats. The reason that I have deemed this LEGO version to be a leopard and not a jaguar is because the cat in the Jungle Exploration Site is a leopard based on its spot pattern. The Air Drop Helicopter also comes with a tiger. The tiger and leopard both occur in Asia. Black leopards are also more common in Asia than in Africa, leading me to believe that these sets are meant to venture into the Asian wilderness. Jaguars occur primarily in South and Central America, with some smaller pockets in the southern portions of North America. I could go on for hours about big cats… So, let’s get back to the LEGO! If you are just joining me today, you can use the following links to catch the earlier installments of my series on the international cost of LEGO Jungle Exploration sets:

• Part I: the average cost of a Jungle Exploration set around the world
• Part II: the cost of the Air Drop Helicopter set around the world
• Part III: the cost of the Jungle Exploration Site around the world
• Part IV: the cost of the Mobile Lab around the world

In Canada, this set will cost you $44.99. It comes with 378 bricks. This means that each brick will cost you $0.12. This is actually a really good value for a set, and even better when you consider that this is a City theme set. The average cost of a brick in the Summer 2017 Canadian LEGO catalogue was $0.14, the average cost of a brick in the City theme was $0.19. So, it is below average in both cases. On the international scene, the average cost of this set is $47.21, with a standard deviation of $4.34. So, this set is fairly consistently priced around the world as compared to the previous sets that I have reviewed from this theme. The average price of a brick in this set remains pretty low the world over.

In this set, you also get two Minifigures and the melanistic leopard. The brick-to-Minifigure ratio without the leopard is 189:1. If you include the leopard, it goes down to 126:1. Counting the leopard, the ratio is really good. It is alright even without the leopard, but not as good as in the previous sets I have reviewed. That is often the trade-off; you get a great per brick cost, but a worse brick-to-Minifig ratio. As I mentioned earlier, this set is the cheapest way to get a big cat, so overall it is a pretty good deal.

If you are travelling, your cheapest option for getting this set as a souvenir is once again in the UK. Despite the complaints in recent months that BREXIT caused LEGO prices in the UK to rise, they are still coming out on top in terms of the cheapest LEGO worldwide. In this case, you are only saving $3.00 though, which is not that much compared to here at home. The worst place to buy this set is New Zealand, followed very closely by Norway. In those countries, this set costs about $11.00 more than it does in Canada. The bar graph below shows the average price of this set around the world. Unlike my previous installments in this series, South Korea has been left out because this set is not available there.

The countries in which you can buy this set, in order from best value for the Canadian dollar to the worst, are (these numbers are rounded to the nearest dollar):

1. UK ($42 CAD)
2. Australia, Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Italy, Austria ($44 CAD)
3. Canada, Czech Republic ($45 CAD)
4. Poland ($46 CAD)
5. Switzerland ($47 CAD)
6. Hungary ($48 CAD)
7. Denmark ($49 CAD)
8. Finland ($51 CAD)
9. Sweden, USA ($52 CAD)
10. New Zealand, Norway ($56 CAD)

It is interesting to see the huge discrepancy between Australia and New Zealand when it comes to the cost of this set. I would have expected those two countries to be similarly priced given their proximity. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below.

Until next time,

-T.N.B.