LEGO sets aren’t cheap. Assembling bricks into objects like Death Stars and castles is rewarding and well worth the investment, but in addition to the money, you have to find places to display or store all your creations and supplies. What if you could borrow LEGO sets instead? Pley will let you do just that for a monthly fee – yes, it’s like Netflix but for LEGO. Freaking brilliant.
The system works similar to any online lending service: shipping is free both ways and they have a catalog where you can choose from hundreds of sets and reserve them. Your first LEGO set is free, and then Pley costs $15 a month. Each package from Pley contains the bricks, instructions, and “a few exciting freebies and giveaways.” And in case you’re worried about germs from all the other kids and adults building the sets, Pley cleans and sanitizes the bricks between every use.
Besides the fact that you can save big piles of cash by using a LEGO lending service – that LEGO Death Star pictured above is almost $200 – you can add as many sets as you want to your Pley queue. They call it a Pleylist (see what they did there). You can choose from Star Wars, Batman, and medieval sets among others. There’s no limit on how long you can keep a set either. You can spend all month working on a single project with no pressure to return it. Pley understands that sometimes pieces go missing too, so they won’t charge you for them.
Finally, if you or your kid gets hooked on a set, you can purchase it from Pley at a discounted rate. Yeah, they’re clever.
As someone who likes to assemble LEGO sets as a form of stress relief, I think this system is wonderful. I’m not sure that I’d use it on an ongoing basis but spending $15 once in a while to help maintain my sanity seems worth it.
What do you think about Pley? Let us know in the comments.
HT: The A.V. Club
Big sets were more than I hoped. Still might be good for the nephews.
Beware… it costs more for the larger sets, and they don’t tell you BEFORE you subscribe. Clearly bait-and-switch.
Done it for six months now… biggest pain is that you have to disassemble the kit completely before shipping it back. And I mean… every piece… which can be quite tedious on a 300+ piece set.
The price in the article for the Lego Death star is off by $200. MSRP is $399.99.
Yeah, the $15/$25/$39 price point is terrible. I can BUY a small set every month for $15. I’m holding off on signing up for this until they realize how ridiculously skewed their prices are right now.
No access to the Death Star for $15 a month! It’s still a pretty cool idea, BUT it was much cooler when I thought I could play with any set for $15 a month.
Quote from Pley’s website “three plans based on whether you want to rent small ($15/month), medium ($25/month) or large sets ($39/month). All plans provide members with multiple rentals per month – one set at a time”