Airline Promotional Set sub catogory in the database?

KingDave

I don't travel much, but I have several relatives who jet set all over the place and I have been asking them to keep an eye out for airline promotional sets on their travels. I have found one or two of them on the database (under City/Airport), but they don't seem to have a categorization tag that will link them all together. Are there any more that are not on this list;

http://brickset.com/sets/theme-City/subtheme-Airport

Would it be a major headache to add a airline promotional category sets to the database and does anyone else think it would be useful?

My brother is going to Japan in a few weeks so during a google search I found this set which is not even listed on Brickset;

2928-2 Airline Promotional Set ANA limited edition

http://rebrickable.com/sets/2928-2/airline-promotional-set---ana-limited-edition-airport-2008

Could there be more out there in far flung corners of the globe that we don't know about?

Joseph

While it's not exactly what you're looking for, this query should show all airline promotional sets currently in the database.

Cheeka

#4473-1 Police Helicopter is an airline promotional set which I didn't see on either of the lists posted - spotted (and purchased!) on a Thomson flight in October 2013, though the notes on the brickset page confirm it is/was also available on other airlines.

Edit: That link to the set number didn't work for me, so here's the page URL: http://brickset.com/sets/4473-1/Police-Helicopter

Joseph

I stand corrected; there are also several in this bricklist that don't fit my query. I can see now how it'd be confusing to try and track down all of these.

KingDave

@Cheeka

Yeah, that's what a mean. They may give away/sell sets that are not even Airport related that you could easy miss. Maybe an umbrella category of all promotional sets, not just ones sold by airlines. Any set that you can not buy from a retailer, free promo sets as well as airline sets etc. Those Ferrari Shell cars would fall into this category as well. These are the kind of interesting sets that I would like to be able to browse easily on here, the ones that you will just not see in shops and could never know about.

Cheeka

I noticed the set I linked in my previous post only confirmed it was an airline promotional set in the notes, so I constructed a couple of queries - the first searches for sets which contain 'promotional' in the notes, the second looks for sets which contain both 'promotional' and 'airline' or 'airlines' in the notes. I can't say it's got everything covered as I haven't done any cross checks against the other lists, but hopefully they're of some use.

Also, wooo, I just created my first queries! Now to see if I can link the results properly...

http://brickset.com/sets/query-1451
http://brickset.com/sets/query-1452

KingDave

^ nice work. Having just had a look through those lists, could #1202 Single Racers Figure Pack be the most disappointing thing LEGO have ever produced?

Cheeka

Haha, I didn't spot that - wow, a 1 piece set? That's got to be some sort of record.

My personal favourite so far has to be 1997's Santa #2878 , mainly because he appears to have a roof growing out of his chin. That tickled me beyond measure, for some reason.

On a more interesting(?) note - I remember seeing a promotional Maersk set dating back as far as 1980 (I think) on the first query. It's nice that relationship has continued all the way through to today.

Finally - slight fail on query no 1, it doesn't include the Ferrari sets from the recent Shell promotion. I think it just needs an extra tweak...

Edit: the first query now includes sets with an availability of 'promotional', or include 'promotional' in the notes. 900+ results, including the Ferrari sets!

KingDave

Even a lone brick separator is more fun that #1202 set (does it even deserve to be called a set?).

Your point about the Ferrari sets not showing up supports my call for an extra designation of 'promotional' in the database proper. It would then be easier to filter all the promotional sets and search out a set you want or an area of interest within all the promo type sets.

Cheeka

Based on at least one of the recently revived forum discussions, I don't think I dare call anything a set without some sort of degree in philosophy - I hereby rescind my comment in which I referred to a one piece polybag as a set ;)

KingDave

I just noticed that #3300003 LEGO Brand Retail Store does have a Promotional tag (what are they called anyway?) in the database. There seem to only be 3 sets included in this sub-theme which seems strange given the amount of sets that are only ever available through promotions;

http://brickset.com/sets/theme-Miscellaneous/subtheme-Promotional

Is there some way to add this Promotional tag to other sets (the type discussed earlier in this thread)?

Huw

^ Those sets are in the miscellaneous 'theme' i.e. they are sets we don't know where else to put them!

I will tweak the database and make sure that all airline specials are easily listed via a query.

KingDave

Huw said:

^ Those sets are in the miscellaneous 'theme' i.e. they are sets we don't know where else to put them!

I will tweak the database and make sure that all airline specials are easily listed via a query.

That’s great, thanks. I thoughts that giving all none retail sets a Promotional tag would create a very interesting group for people to easily browse sets that are (can be)generally quite rare and hard to get hold of.

Huw

The 'availability' field is used to indicate promotional and other categories of, er, availability. We haven't back-filled the database yet so some older sets will be missing this information, and often the correct one to assign can be open to interpretation.

Huw

I've been through and changed the availability field to 'Promotional (airline)' for all sets that have shown up in a couple of BrickLists and the query above.

http://brickset.com/sets/query-1503
There are 51, but I'm sure it's not complete so if you know of others LMK and I'll add them.