Here he comes, here comes (Lego) Speed Racer!
Hey everyone! After finally getting to see Speed Racer in theaters (it was incredible), it got me to finally pull the trigger on these lego sets! While I’m still waiting on the stickers for the Speed Racer vs Snake Oiler set, along with the minifigs from that set and the grand prix, I wanted to share what the entire theme looks like! Along with that, I want to share how I got all these sets together on the cheap(er) side.
Since this theme failed horribly and was only on shelves for less than a year, along with the Lego aftermarket being so inflated and miserable right now, these sets are NOT cheap. In fact, they’re incredibly expensive! BUT there is a way to get all these sets together for around 200 bucks total (not counting the minifigs, with them it’s about 300 total). Your best friends are going to be Rebrickable.com and Bricklink.com.
If you search up each of these sets on rebrickable, you’ll be able to see this “alt-builds” section (Pic 2) If you click on say, for example, the Mach 5, it’ll bring you to a page that focuses solely on the Mach 5. You can then hit inventory, and click on the “Add Parts to Bricklink” button. (Pic 3) This will then create a pop-up where, if you don’t already have one, you can create a Bricklink account and add these parts to a wanted list. If you already have a Bricklink account, just sign in and add them to your wanted lists (Pic 4). Rinse and repeat for each set and alt-builds you want. This way, you’re able to pick and choose which builds you want without having to add the whole set to your wanted list if you don’t want it. Just a heads up, Racer X's car appears in two sets, and it is the exact same between those 2 sets. If you want to be a real completionist, go ahead and add that car to your wanted list twice, but if you just want all the cars and builds, you can safely ignore the second Racer X car.
After you’ve added the parts for everything you want, head over to Bricklink and click on your wanted lists. Click on the wanted list that has all the parts you want, and then click the “buy all” button (Pic 5) Again, we’ll use the Mach 5 for an example. Once you’ve clicked that, hit the “auto-select” button (Pic 6), and it’ll pick out the cheapest stores that you can get all the parts from. As we can see, the Mach 5 costs around 9 dollars, without shipping (Pic 7). Bricklink shipping can be expensive, so your best bet is to buy all the parts for everything you want at once, that way you’re only paying shipping for one order and a few stores, instead of a ton of separate orders. If we add all the parts from every set in the theme, we can see it costs around 130, again minus shipping (Pic 8). This will fluctuate from time to time, could be more, could be less, but it’ll usually be around that amount.
The minifigures are going to be expensive (especially the two of Speed Racer himself). The best advice I can give is to add the minifigures you want to a single wanted list, click buy all, then manually go through the listed stores to see which stores have the most of the figures you want at the lowest cost to you.
The stickers for these sets are essential, and since these sets are so old, getting authentic sticker sheets is going to be difficult and pricey. I used brickstickershop.com to get high quality replacement stickers that are close to 1:1 with the originals. Just search up the sets you want stickers for on the site, and then you’re good to go! They ship out of the Netherlands, but shipping is around 8 bucks so it isn’t bad. The only caveat is they do not have stickers for one of the sets, Cruncher Block vs Racer X. For those stickers, you’ll have to resort to Bricklink. Luckily they are the cheapest stickers of the theme, only costing me around 5 bucks. The other 3 sticker sheets I got from Brick Sticker Shop, and it cost me around 25 total and it took around 2 weeks to be delivered.
I know this post was long and maybe went too in-depth on how to get these sets, but I really want all the fans of Speed Racer to be able to get these without sacrificing an arm and a leg. If you choose to get these sets, enjoy! They’re really fun sets! Go Speed Racer Go!