What Happens to the Comic Con Stuff?

[JackJonespaw]

When Comic Con is over, what happens to all of the figs? Are they packed away or sold in sets or something?

[Brickity]

My guess is that someone that worked in that gets to keep the things he want?

[prateek]

I'm sure they run their inventory dry before it's over. For example, they ran out of Build a Baggins LotR figure, so some people didn't get to do it.

[sologuy369]

What about the displays/ new reveals.

[Faefrost]

What about the displays/ new reveals.

I can't vouchsafe for Lego, but having worked support for quite a few trade shows such as E3 and CES over the years. Those type things are more often then not tied to the marketing department. if it is unreleased or prototype product, then yeah, that's not getting given out. EVER! The Marketing team owns and is responsible for it, and it will be used for various show displays (being tweaked and cleaned and repaired as needed.) If it turns up missing, someone is in some real big trouble. And in most cases Corporate Management looks on the Marketing Departments level of responsibility as somewhere between a small hyperactive child and a homeless wino. So they tend to really keep a close eye on that sort of thing.

If it is already publicly available released product then what happens to it will depend heavily on its cost. IE "does it cost more to pack this thing up and ship it to the next event vs to just give it to the convention center union thugs as a bribe so we can get the heck out of here a day early, and just pull a fresh piece of product off the shelf for the next show?" So basically stuff that costs more to ship all over then place than it costs to use new will be disposed of on site. Either end of show giveaways, raffles, bribes, trades with other vendors, whatever. Stuff that has a certain degree of value stays with the marketing people, and they have to account for all of it. Stuff that requires a certain degree of specialized attention to make show presentable, (such as say those nice shiny show gleaming Lego sets in display cases) will often be re purposed to other marketing projects (say a static display in the HQ lobby, or sent as a store display for a retail outlet.)

Regardless show product will never ever go back into sellable inventory. Current product is considered "sold internally to the marketing department" when it is transferred to them for the show. Prototype product is considered a "demonstration loan of prototypes" and as I said above someone will be killed if they go missing.

The third type of product is stuff created specifically as marketing promotional materials. Ie Swag. Stuff like the Build a Bilbo, or the exclusive minifigs. That's marketing materials. Marketing owns that and may reasonably distribute it as they see fit. If the swag is exclusive to that show, they will just give it all out to avoid having to ship it home (minus substantial bribes to the behind the scenes technical people that often get dragged along with them because the marketing department typically can't reboot their own computers two out of three times even with written instructions. Sadly I know of what I speak. In Lego's case I assume this means a Master Builder or two and maybe a designer get shipped in along with the Marketing drones to make sure everything gets put together right. Technical staff loves Swag and otherwise hates Marketing drones. So Swag is a good thing for getting things done, if you know what I mean).

Edited July 14, 2012 by Faefrost

[Lyichir]

I'm pretty sure they're just going back to LEGO to be used in future displays. This year at Toy Fair NY, even the sets which had been out for months still had preliminary sets on display. So I figure LEGO would rather re-use a set on display at future events, even if that set changes in the future.

[legomr]

Interesting question. Based on my observations about display model handling at Lego Stores, I would guess that TLG isn't too concerned about the cost of single sets. Basically, whenever a display model isn't needed any more, or space runs out, the display models are dismantled to be sold in grab bags. If they want to display the same model again, they open another box. In fact, when I recently bought grab bags with parts from the Batcave in it, a staff member told me that was in there because the display model had fallen down and disintegrated. Rather than rebuilding it, they put it in grab bags and would rebuild another Batcave from scratch. They told me that they virtually had no space in the warehouse for display models, just for one or two boxes with loose parts (for the grab bags).