LEGO Store "Build a Minifigure"

[jonwil]

Scored some nice BaM from the Dreamworld LEGO store including the hair, torso and printed tile from the newest brick costume, a snake staff, the day-of-the-dead white acoustic guitar from last year, the green "boy scout" type torso with the red tie and a bright light orange hoodie torso with a white symbol on it.

Happy with what I scored.

 

[rebelpilot]

20 hours ago, wadapan said:

Hey everyone!

Hi. It's interesting to see your post. I've been perusing your site the past few days, it's a good resource and back up of all the BAM figures photographed by AG Lego for sale. 

You've catalogued it so extensively that I thought you might be Australian, but I now see you're British. 

A word of caution, AG Lego's BAM figure configuration is usually pretty uniform across their Australian stores but not always so. A good example of this is the teal brick suit. @cacacolito photo is the configuration I got at the time. And the AG Lego configurations do differ sometimes from Europe and North America, although less in recent years. 
 

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There are still a few bits of information that I'm missing, so if anyone reading this has any insights to share, I'd really appreciate it.

I read through a lot of your notations already and there is nothing that stood out to be incorrect. But if you have specific questions please ask. I presume you sourced (or secondary sourced) some of the Dreamzzz accessory swaps and the Puffer Jacket info from the discussion here in the forum.

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I still need to comb over a lot of this thread for anything I might have missed.

There's quite a few of photos in earlier pages of store displays which could be helpful. If memory serves they're from around the Covid period when stores didn't want people sifting through the parts. I also have some photos from the now defunct Brickset forums to reference earlier BAM stuff, I'll sort through it and see if there's anything you might find interesting. 

I bought my first BAM in 2020, basically when we got our first Lego store in my city, and I wanted to go back and see what I had missed. There was very little information to do so, bricklink now has a lot of the parts and/or figures listed but it certainly didn't then.  

edit: This is a post worth revisiting and the subsequent discussion. There's a good flickr page linked if you haven't seen it already. But trying to document some of the earlier BAM when it was more a random assortment of parts can be an exercise in madness. 

Edited Friday at 07:09 AM by rebelpilot

[wadapan]

5 hours ago, Josh06 said:

Hi, I have been trying to figure a lot of these out and have done lots of research as well, I did not know there was even any 2017, the 2018 2019 and 2020 have given me the most problems for sure, I am still confused by some of yours even, one for example is the mermaid with the lobster, it has always been shown with the yellow hair however in your list you show that yellow hair for another quarter ..it's all so confusing with these early ones

2018 was the first year there were exclusive parts. This thread seems to start in 2011, which maybe sounds about right for when BAM was introduced? A lot of the elements from 2017 through to ~2020 seem to be from the Collectible Minifigures series, only afterwards getting replaced with a mix of more generic prints and exclusive pieces.

So, as for that mermaid—New Elementary's image shows it with that cool yellow hair you mention, but I think that was entirely creative license on the part of the person who took the photo. If you have any other sources from before then which show that same combination, that might lend more weight to it being an official configuration? But keep in mind that the inventories given on my website are 100% confirmed to be accurate for those waves, I had an official source for those. So that hairpiece definitely came from a different wave. I chose to associate the dark brown curly hairpiece with the mermaid, because the curls are the closest thing to salt-swept hair, but it could have been any of the three wigs pictured really. The orange one would have more of an Ariel vibe.

4 hours ago, rebelpilot said:

A word of caution, AG Lego's BAM figure configuration is usually pretty uniform across their Australian stores but not always so. A good example of this is the teal brick suit. @cacacolito photo is the configuration I got at the time. And the AG Lego configurations do differ sometimes from Europe and North America, although less in recent years.

There's quite a few of photos in earlier pages of store displays which could be helpful. If memory serves they're from around the Covid period when stores didn't want people sifting through the parts. I also have some photos from the now defunct Brickset forums to reference earlier BAM stuff, I'll sort through it and see if there's anything you might find interesting. 

I bought my first BAM in 2020, basically when we got our first Lego store in my city, and I wanted to go back and see what I had missed. There was very little information to do so, bricklink now has a lot of the parts and/or figures listed but it certainly didn't then.  

edit: This is a post worth revisiting and the subsequent discussion. There's a good flickr page linked if you haven't seen it already. But trying to document some of the earlier BAM when it was more a random assortment of parts can be an exercise in madness. 

That Flickr is interesting! The fact that it correctly matches up the banana and trophy for the luchador—something which I hadn't even known about until getting my hands on some of the inventories—lends credence to those images being reliable. But then going back to 2024 Q3, I'm absolutely confident "boy and dog" and "girl in pink with apple" are wrong, because those magenta legs definitely go with the smoothie torso, and the apple also obviously seems to go with the smoothie torso.  2024 Q2 also has obvious errors with the space torsos, as the gold-handed one goes with the armor.

I suspect that until we know exactly what materials LEGO disseminates at the top level regarding these minifigures, then except for waves where LEGO has deliberately distributed the waves to influencers and the like, or where we can rely on secondary sources (like with Ninjago or Dreamzzz) to know what the minifigures are supposed to look like, then there'll just be no way of confirming. AG Lego made the cat/buzzsaw mixup as recently as 2024 Q4. But it does feel like they've become much more consistent in recent years, yeah. I'll make notes about things like Ted E Bear and Block Guy where there seems to be notable ambiguity, and add it in my next update.

Thanks for the help!

[rebelpilot]

17 hours ago, wadapan said:

Thanks for the help!

Well now I feel silly. I started going through pre 2020 parts and figures because I thought a lot of it was absent from your website, then I discovered the "Click here to view the raw inventories for the quarterly waves from 2017-2019."  In my defence I was primarily looking at the pretty pictures and not reading the text

Great job documenting all those parts though, really impressive. Check out this inventory if you haven't already done so, they all look to be there at a glance.

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That Flickr is interesting

I mentioned it because I thought it may be useful to you as a pre 2020 reference. But like you stated, there's some errors.

I'm confident the person poster doing the photography is cataloguing the BAM in accordance to how their local store arranges them (edit: confirmation) but I see several mistakes. Right from the top Z-Blob Wrestler has a black arm where it should be transparent green. For whatever reason, on occasion, kids love to swap hands (and in this case arm) in store, so it could have just been luck of the draw when they picked up that torso. But the doctor has black legs and the child head from the lime green bunny costume, the bunny costume then has the wrong colour legs and the honeybee girl has Izzy's head and on and on it goes. Most of them are right though. 

 

22 hours ago, rebelpilot said:

A good example of this is the teal brick suit.  

Back to my example of the discrepancies with the teal brick suit. I thought to check jaysbrickblog because I was sure his review featured the girl with the two buns hair as opposed to the boy with the sweeping Rex hair. I mention Jay because he would have purchased the figures from AG Lego based on location.

Well it turns out, oddly, he didn't review that release but he did feature the figures as assembled at the Legoland Discovery Centre. I mention this because the Legoland Discovery Centre in Melbourne was at the time owned by Merlin a completely different company from AG Lego. I wonder if the different store types (Lego stores, Legoland stores and Lego certified stores) are a reason for different BAM configurations?

Last I'll hopefully say about the teal brick suit is that the boy with Rex hair is a weird build. The hair is too long to connect right. If the hair and head is connected then the head can't be pushed all the way down on the neck peg and if the head is pushed down on the neck peg then the hair won't attach to the head correctly. In summary, it's wrong and I hate it 

It's a good thing I don't care that much about the suggested builds, I keep a lot of the costumed and themed minifigures like Halloween that way but I'm happy to swap in a part I like better. 

 

 

Edited Saturday at 05:36 AM by rebelpilot

[Black Falcon]

4 hours ago, rebelpilot said:

Well it turns out, oddly, he didn't review that release but he did feature the figures as assembled at the Legoland Discovery Centre. I mention this because the Legoland Discovery Centre in Melbourne was at the time owned by Merlin a completely different company from AG Lego. I wonder if the different store types (Lego stores, Legoland stores and Lego certified stores) are a reason for different BAM configurations?

Well apparently there is a certain way those pieces are supposed to be put together, but not every Store seems to follow them and actually figures have been put together in a different way in the same store in different times (might be just another employee did it)

[wadapan]

8 hours ago, rebelpilot said:

Well now I feel silly. I started going through pre 2020 parts and figures because I thought a lot of it was absent from your website, then I discovered the "Click here to view the raw inventories for the quarterly waves from 2017-2019."  In my defence I was primarily looking at the pretty pictures and not reading the text

Haha, no worries!

8 hours ago, rebelpilot said:

Well it turns out, oddly, he didn't review that release but he did feature the figures as assembled at the Legoland Discovery Centre. I mention this because the Legoland Discovery Centre in Melbourne was at the time owned by Merlin a completely different company from AG Lego. I wonder if the different store types (Lego stores, Legoland stores and Lego certified stores) are a reason for different BAM configurations?

Last I'll hopefully say about the teal brick suit is that the boy with Rex hair is a weird build. The hair is too long to connect right. If the hair and head is connected then the head can't be pushed all the way down on the neck peg and if the head is pushed down on the neck peg then the hair won't attach to the head correctly. In summary, it's wrong and I hate it 

The way I see it, there's three possibilities regarding the BAM configurations:

• LEGO disseminates official guidance on the builds to stores, but management might not necessarily do anything with it, or different regions might not receive it at all, as you say.
• LEGO didn't disseminate guidance in the past, but now does.
• LEGO still doesn't disseminate guidance, but greater communication between stores as well as stronger theming of the parts themselves means store employees are quickly able to agree on suggested builds. I think this is unlikely, just because things have been so consistent for the last couple of years.

I had noticed the teal guy's head wasn't pushed all the way down! Definitely supports the idea of that one being incorrect. Have added a note to that effect.

Anyway, I've now trawled this thread and have been able to identify a bunch more of the pieces I didn't have pictures for. Still a lot of more anonymous pieces missing. In particular, I'm very bad at looking up head prints, so haven't attempted to make guesses at those. But in many cases it's like, oh, this lavender torso was newly sighted this month, and there's only a single unaccounted for lavender torso in my inventories, and the timeline matches, so... that must be it! You can view my progress here. Still need to figure out a way of marking the new pieces.

Finally, I've added a brand-new page to the site, consisting of photos from PABfinder of BAM stations in situ during the pandemic. It gives a really nice overview of what stores were doing with the pieces. It's usually pretty obvious when they've just made something up!

[rebelpilot]

14 hours ago, wadapan said:

The way I see it, there's three possibilities regarding the BAM configurations:

• LEGO disseminates official guidance on the builds to stores, but management might not necessarily do anything with it, or different regions might not receive it at all, as you say.
• LEGO didn't disseminate guidance in the past, but now does.
• LEGO still doesn't disseminate guidance, but greater communication between stores as well as stronger theming of the parts themselves means store employees are quickly able to agree on suggested builds. I think this is unlikely, just because things have been so consistent for the last couple of years.

Yes.

Spoiler

*response in jest to multiple options when all of them can be true or viable

 

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I've added a brand-new page to the site, consisting of photos from PABfinder of BAM stations in situ during the pandemic. It gives a really nice overview of what stores were doing with the pieces. It's usually pretty obvious when they've just made something up!

I've not seen those German PABfinder images, they would have been of real interest to me a few years ago but it's quite illuminating comparing them to photos taken from U.S stores for example.

It's become more apparent to me that for each new release stores then were getting (as an example only) bags of 7 torsos, 7 headwear, 7 accessories etc. and as best they could, piece them together thematically. It's easy to get the same or similar result when the BAM parts were medieval, occupation or costume themed but can be fairly disparate when it's a bunch or City parts.

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I'm very bad at looking up head prints, so haven't attempted to make guesses at those.

To clarify, are you having trouble with a bunch of images you're trying to find part numbers to or you have a bunch of part numbers you're trying to match to images?

Whenever there's a new BAM release I'm pretty good at sussing out the old (non-exclusive) parts like reused heads and torsos. If you want some assistance DM me with the specific info you might not be able to message as a new member, just post it here.

Edited yesterday at 03:28 AM by rebelpilot

[yeurc_h]

Thank you very much @wadapan for putting together your BAM pages. 

I have couple of questions/remarks on the 2017-2019 era:

- some minifigure reconstitution are most likely wrong, e.g. in 2019 Q3, 6218310 & 6123705 should be swapped. It is odd to have the panda head in 2019 Q1 as a minifigure accessory.

- how to identified the parts not listed in bricklink or brickset (mostly heads) ? e.g. 6265014 (head), 6255098 (legs) or 6222483 (torso).

- some parts marked as BAM in bricklink are not part of your list: the 2018's Chimpanzee, the 2019's sand blue shirt & the pirate head. Some of them could be hidden in the above unidentified pieces.

- the torsos with no back printing are wrongly referenced, it should be: 973pb3529c01  973pb4046c01 73pb3528c01 973pb3706c01  973pb3379c01 973pb4196c01 973pb3708c01

Best regards, Bertrand

[rebelpilot]

1 hour ago, yeurc_h said:

- some minifigure reconstitution are most likely wrong, e.g. in 2019 Q3, 6218310 & 6123705 should be swapped.

I'm operating under the assumption that each group is the collection of parts released that quarter not an assembly guide. Some do fit thematically but others do not.

 

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.....the 2019's sand blue shirt & the pirate head.

The sand blue mechanic shirt is in Q2 2018 and the pirate head in Q4 2018. Bricklink's BAM inventory is incomplete especially if they're re-released or reused parts, BL is pretty good with the exclusive parts.

 

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the torsos with no back printing are wrongly referenced, it should be: 973pb3529c01  973pb4046c01 73pb3528c01 973pb3706c01  973pb3379c01 973pb4196c01 973pb3708c01

This is addressed. The website states:

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There are reports that BAM prints (i.e. ones based on Collectible Minifigures) can actually vary from the original uses, for instance by missing back printing or other paint applications

I'm not responsible for the website so I don't want to speak for who is but if  the website scrapes Lego's data and Lego doesn't differentiate between the torso printing, then that's on Lego.

 

@wadapan I've DM'ed you.

[bob21115]

@wadapan I believe the missing Mini Skirt for 2021 Q2 334425 / 76778: MEDIUM BLUE MINI SKIRT, NO. 26 
https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=36036pb024&C=0#T=C&C=42

[wadapan]

Hi Bertrand!

10 hours ago, yeurc_h said:

- some minifigure reconstitution are most likely wrong, e.g. in 2019 Q3, 6218310 & 6123705 should be swapped. It is odd to have the panda head in 2019 Q1 as a minifigure accessory.

Although I made a cursory effort to line up obvious pieces that went together, the configurations were otherwise total guesswork, so don't put too much stock in them. I've swapped that pair so at least the genders line up now.

I have access to the official inventories for 2017-2019, and can confirm that the panda head is correct! If you look earlier in this thread, you'll find reports of it from that time. Sometimes extra hats/hairpieces would appear in the accessory slot, or vice versa! That's just how it works. Weird though!

11 hours ago, yeurc_h said:

- how to identified the parts not listed in bricklink or brickset (mostly heads) ? e.g. 6265014 (head), 6255098 (legs) or 6222483 (torso).

- some parts marked as BAM in bricklink are not part of your list: the 2018's Chimpanzee, the 2019's sand blue shirt & the pirate head. Some of them could be hidden in the above unidentified pieces.

Again, I have access to the official inventories, so that's how all the pieces were identified. Unfortunately, for those without images, I wasn't able to match up the description in LEGO's inventories with online part listings—though I'm sure the pieces are documented on BrickLink and the like, it's just that the official names aren't associated with them. The mechanic shirt and pirate head have both been matched up already, but the Chimpanzee is a very curious one! If you refer to these inventories, there is no piece in 2017-2018 that remotely matches that description. There are several possibilities:

• The piece was BAM exclusive, and I'm missing at least one wave of parts from 2018
• The piece was BAM exclusive, and BrickLink has miscategorised it as coming from 2018, when really it was released earlier
• The piece wasn't BAM exclusive, and BrickLink has somehow miscategorised it as being so
• The official inventories are incorrect (vanishingly unlikely)

Without more information on this piece, it's impossible for me to say, but let me know if you have any leads!

10 hours ago, yeurc_h said:

- the torsos with no back printing are wrongly referenced, it should be: 973pb3529c01  973pb4046c01 73pb3528c01 973pb3706c01  973pb3379c01 973pb4196c01 973pb3708c01

9 hours ago, rebelpilot said:

I'm not responsible for the website so I don't want to speak for who is but if  the website scrapes Lego's data and Lego doesn't differentiate between the torso printing, then that's on Lego.

Actually, LEGO does sort of differentiate! The pieces have different ElementIDs to the original versions with prints on the front and the back. They would have been manufactured separately, simply reusing the graphic. Bertrand, thank you for tracking down the single-sided versions of these parts! I've added links to them in the notes for the corresponding waves.

6 hours ago, bob21115 said:

@wadapan I believe the missing Mini Skirt for 2021 Q2 334425 / 76778: MEDIUM BLUE MINI SKIRT, NO. 26 
https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=36036pb024&C=0#T=C&C=42

Yes, that's definitely it! Added to BrickLink in 2021, so the timeline matches up. Thanks!

20 hours ago, rebelpilot said:

To clarify, are you having trouble with a bunch of images you're trying to find part numbers to or you have a bunch of part numbers you're trying to match to images?

Whenever there's a new BAM release I'm pretty good at sussing out the old (non-exclusive) parts like reused heads and torsos. If you want some assistance DM me with the specific info you might not be able to message as a new member, just post it here.

So on the website, you should see that a handful of images don't actually load: that's because I don't have images for them, even though I have the Element ID, Design ID, color, and name of the part. Your speculations are good, but I'm not convinced by a lot of them. A key thing is that new part names are assigned basically sequentially in batches: so if a set has X number of new legs, usually they'll have a series of X sequential names. For instance, the Beatles submarine has legs 1193, 1194 (the pinstripe ones you mention, so they must definitely predate 2017), and 1195. For some of your speculations, the number I'm looking for is way higher than the appropriate range for whatever you've suggested. Still, I've done my best to take the guesses into account so we know what we're working with.

I've considered documenting number ranges for all the CMF waves for head, torsos, and legs, to try and spot gaps in Brickset's records and cross-reference with my gaps. But that seems extremely time-consuming, and my one shot-in-the-dark attempt to identify a particular part that way completely failed, as it didn't fall into a CMF number range. But that would definitely be the correct approach to identify the last few pieces—by identifying parts on either side of them.

A list is as follows:

Heads:

• MINI HEAD NO. 823
• MINI HEAD NO. 1029
• MINI HEAD, NO. 2831
• MINI HEAD, NO. 2833
• MINI HEAD, NO. 2834
• MINI HEAD , NO. 2899
• MINI HEAD, NO. 2900

So, that 2831-2834 range is looking doable! Head, No. 2832 was in the TLM2 CMF series. However, Brickset already accounts for all the other heads in that wave, so 2831, 2833 and 2834 must be from some other source!

Torsos:

• 6222464 / 88585: WHITE MINI UPPER PART NO. 614
• 6222216 / 88585: BLACK MINI UPPER PART NO. 1947
• 6222629 / 88585: MEDIUM AZUR MINI UPPER PART, NO. 2028
• 6222483 / 88585: WHITE MINI UPPER PART, 3814
• 6254591 / 88585: BLACK MINI UPPER PART NO. 4597

Nothing jumping out here.

Legs:

• 6016049 / 88584: BLACK MINI LOWER PART 26/199
• 6228368 / 38917: BRIGHT YELLOW MINI LOWER PART, NO. 1240
• 6255037 / 49717: BRICK YELLOW MINI LOWER PART NO. 1655
• 6255055 / 21019: EARTH BLUE MINI LOWER PART NO. 1656
• 6255074 / 49718: DARK STONE GREY MINI LOWER PART, NO. 1657
• 6255075 / 49719: BRIGHT BLUE MINI LOWER PART, NO. 1658
• 6255098 / 49741: BLACK MINI LOWER PART NO. 1661

Again, that 1655-1661 range is looking tantalising! If we found a set with those colors, where the legs are missing from Brickset's inventory, from around 2019, that would probably be it. 1639, 1641, 1644, 1642, 1647, 1648, 1649, and 1652 are all TLM2 parts. So that's where to look, I think?

Thanks for all the help, everyone!

[rebelpilot]

3 hours ago, wadapan said:

... but the Chimpanzee is a very curious one! If you refer to these inventories, there is no piece in 2017-2018 that remotely matches that description. There are several possibilities:

Without more information on this piece, it's impossible for me to say, but let me know if you have any leads!

That's because the chimpanzee is not from 2018. It's categorised in that year on Bricklink but it's an easy mistake to make if a user found Chimpanzees in a BAM station around that time and labelled it such.

The bricklink entry for the chimpanzee with reddish brown face has it added 9 Jan 2016 and this post reports them in store firmly in 2016.

 

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....I don't have images for them, even though I have the Element ID, Design ID, color, and name of the part. Your speculations are good, but I'm not convinced by a lot of them. A key thing is that new part names are assigned basically sequentially in batches: so if a set has X number of new legs, usually they'll have a series of X sequential names. For instance, the Beatles submarine has legs 1193, 1194 (the pinstripe ones you mention, so they must definitely predate 2017), and 1195. For some of your speculations, the number I'm looking for is way higher than the appropriate range for whatever you've suggested. Still, I've done my best to take the guesses into account so we know what we're working with.
 

I now have a better understanding of what you refer to with the number sequences even if I don't know what numbers correspond to what time period with out getting in to the minutiae of it (I'm not asking you to explain it either). 

In reference to Ringo's legs brickset has them as 6175906 / 29841: MINI LOWER PART, NO. 1194, is it possible Lego generated another unique part number for the BAM release? Also I don't really see how the BAM inclusion can predate 2017 when the part was only produced for 21306 for a late 2016 release. From what I understand it wasn't a BAM debut.

Also does the recoloured Hippie head fall out side of the number sequence because it was first released in 2017 in the Toy R Us pack (assuming it wasn't assigned a new part number)? A good indication of this would be the recoloured Hippie torso from Q2 2019, but that is beyond my understanding at this point in time. I single out these two parts because their origins aren't CMF.

I do acknowledge that grouping parts just because they match is a bit of a folly, even if it is a common enough occurrence. Exemplified by the S17 Veterinarian legs in Q3 2018 and torso Q1 2019.

Edited 9 hours ago by rebelpilot

[Josh06]

How do you look up some of these parts? Mostly some of the heads some torsos and some legs. I have tried to put in a lot of the number on bricklink and nothing with show up for a lot of the parts, do these number work on another site? Thanks again so much for all the work you have done

[bob21115]

6 hours ago, Josh06 said:

How do you look up some of these parts? Mostly some of the heads some torsos and some legs. I have tried to put in a lot of the number on bricklink and nothing with show up for a lot of the parts, do these number work on another site? Thanks again so much for all the work you have done

@Josh06  This is how I've used WAPADAN's inventory list  

If the item has an image, I right-click the image and open it in a new tab.  The image name is the Bricklink Item No.  IE 3626pb0775.png.   I will paste 3626pb0775 in the search, and the item will be listed.

I've had 3 issues with this method.

1.  On some hair pieces, nothing is found.  Using Chrome as a browser, I use Google Lens on the image, and the results will list the Bricklink link to the Hair Piece.
2.  It only works if the item has a picture.
3.  It's a lot of work.

I've used this method to create Bricklink Want lists for each quarter release 2017 -2019. 

It looks like Bricklink is working on the ability to share want lists and collections.  Once this is an option, I can share them here.