LEGO Collectable Minifigures Series 3 discussion

[fred67]

Got some more at the LEGO Store this morning and just got the chance to go through them... the dots are indeed different. For those saying they absolutely have no dots, you need just the right lighting condition... some are definitely very difficult to see, and you certainly wouldn't notice them at a glance.

In the U.S., the older packs with the code "138B0" match the dots that have been published. The newer ones with "544B0" not only don't match, but sometimes conflict with the published dot patterns.

It doesn't really bother me, though, because for series three feeling them has been pretty much 100% for the ones I've opened. I am trying to save a complete unopened set, and verified what I felt with the dot patterns up until now. Of the ones I've opened for me and the kids, I've been 100% (even when we just started out and knew we'd be opening them, I wanted to see if I could tell what they were first).

I know it's been said, and people have their different techniques, but the feel method should be 100%, IMO, for at least these:

• Elf - shield and bow are absolutely unique.
  
• Fisherman - you feel the pole, which has the bump on one end and the reel on the other; the fish can be difficult, but the clincher is that you can feel the string.
  
• Samurai - I have trouble with the armor, but the sword is absolutely unique - feel for the hilt.
  
• Baseball Player - again, the bat is absolutely unique. Its' fatter than the rods that come with the alien and blacktron guy, and you can feel the indent for the grip on one end.
  
• Snowboarder - pretty obvious, make sure you're not feeling the stand. When I was at the store with other people telling them you could feel most of them, they all kept saying they got the snowboarder because of the stands they all come with. Feel for the curve.
  
• Tennis Player - damn tennis player (got four in my first order from S@H); the racket is absolutely unique.
  
• Tribal Chieftain - Spear... should be clearly distinguishable from the fishing rod, no big bumps (reel on the fishing rod) and flexible spear tip. The headdress puts any doubts to rest.
  

A tiny bit more "iffy:"

• Alien and Blacktron space guy - these come with with the small rods ("lightsabers"), if you feel that part then you know you definitely have one of these two. If you can feel the visor or helmet, it's the blacktron guy; if you can feel the alien head, then... it's the alien! I was not able to feel for the peg leg; and helmets can be hard - the visor or the alien head are give-aways for me.
  
• Ape - I know, the ape should be easy, right? Just feel for the banana - but it can sometimes be easy to confuse with a helmet visor. Shouldn't be too hard, though... give the crescent shaped objects a good feel.
  
• Rapper and Hula - both have maraca/microphone shape objects. Obviously Hula has two, but sometimes it's hard to get all the parts. The hula has big hair, though, completely distinct from the rapper, and the rapper has the boombox - rectangular with a handle.
  
• Sumo - the sumo can be mistaken for a rapper or hula if you're not paying that much attention. The little statue can feel like a maraca or mic. He has unique hair, though, and if you feel hard enough, you can feel the shape of the statue (in that it's not perfectly round) and the bottom of the statue is flat.
  
• Mummy - the scorpion should make finding the mummy a piece of cake; unfortunately, sometimes it's hard to tell through the package that it's not just big hair or something else. Still, this should pretty much be 100%.
  
• Race Car Driver and Aviator - feel for the backpack; otherwise be careful because they both have helmets (although somewhat different) and visors on their helmets; the different is either hair (driver) or backpack. These are the most frustrating for me.
  

[Stiel]

Fred67's list is pretty spot-on, I'll just add a few remarks:

- elf: the bow is easy, but the shield is not (for me at least)

- pilot & samurai: each has a rectangular-shaped item (backpack & armor, respectively), but the backpack has a neck bracket, too

- alien is the only figure that has no regular head

[the-bricking-builder]

In holland they don't have the dots :'( so just feeling the content. My girlfriend got 5 of them for me, twice the racer, the mummy, the baseball guy, the tennis girl.

strange

in my local toy shop in holland they have dots and it works

[fred67]

- elf: the bow is easy, but the shield is not (for me at least)

Yup... with the baseplate and the little "poster" insert, it can be hard to tell... the bow is definitely what makes it 100%.

[Lizardking]

hm, strange indeed. my box and bags have the number: 533B0 (not 538B0!)

[Henri]

I had the same experience in Holland, no dots at all....

I found series 3 yesterday at Intertoys in Holland, and sure they had the dots.

Hard to see sometimes, but after 1 hour of looking and feeling I got my set complete plus a few extra figures we wanted to have twice.

Looking forward to series 4 and the cheat codes for those ! Saves me a lot of money.

I spent 40 euro on series 3, while I am still waiting on 13 different ones of series 1 and 2 which cost me much more than that.

enjoy the dot-codes, they do match with the cheat-sheet.

Henri

[escortmad79]

Ones I picked up from a local Argos are 142B0, some of the dots matched up & others didn't. Gave up trying to match codes after a while & tried feeling the bags & then grabbed a few extra. The race car drivers have what appears to be a burnt strip along the bottom seal between the bottom part & the part with the figure in, similar to what was described for the gorilla suit guy

[Dunjohn]

My local Smyths (Galway, Ireland) also got batch 142B0. I had a hard time even finding the dots in the shop so I just picked up twenty packs for €50.

Once I went home, though, and really started studying them, I eventually got used to finding the dots and they all matched the cheat sheet. It really can be difficult, though. This takes far more mental training than the barcodes. It's the first series that I think feeling is the way to go.

If people aren't seeing the dots or the patterns aren't matching, persevere - they have to be there.

Also, apologies to all the local kids, but I got both fishermen. And an entire tennis doubles match. I got 9/16. Not great.

I took the entire right-most column in the box, plus four from the back of the middle column, so that's where the fishermen and tennis players are, if anybody wants to speed up their searching.

Edited January 16, 2011 by Dunjohn

[Mr. Elijah Timms]

For those of you still in the hunt in the US, I was at Target on Friday and noticed that in the seasonal aisle, amidst all of the Valentine's Day candy, was a bin for Lego Minifigures Series 3. List price was $2.99. None in stock, of course.

[Redjack Ryan]

It seems that the newest run of Series 3 figures showing up in the US have a different dot pattern for the Elves. Here is the dot pattern, darkened with pen for visibility purposes:

[Gregorovich]

I picked up my first two series 3 figs (hula dancer and tennis player) today. I got them in Argos, because in my store they stick a label on the back saying which figure's inside. They only had one box, whereas WHSmith had six (yes, six!) full boxes of them, at £1.99 each. Although I've got my two favourite figures from this series, I'll probably get some more.

[Solitary Dark]

Walked into Argos today in Woking (Lion Retail Park, not town centre) and found four open boxes just sitting on the counters untouched.

There was a mix of packets with dots and others that had nothing that I could find at all.

Found a Fisherman and an elf through touch, actually much easier than the dots, and some characters were actually obvious from the dots (The box I went through had at least 5 tennis players in)

Didnt find a single Samurai or Snowboarder, but only had time to go through one box.

Son got a mummy though so he was happy!

[Dazmundo]

I picked up my first two series 3 figs (hula dancer and tennis player) today. I got them in Argos, because in my store they stick a label on the back saying which figure's inside. They only had one box, whereas WHSmith had six (yes, six!) full boxes of them, at £1.99 each. Although I've got my two favourite figures from this series, I'll probably get some more.

Which branch or Argos is this???

D

[MinifigFreak2010]

I just joined up. I'm beginning to read through the topics and it looks like some people quickly caught onto the cheap plastic.

After not being able to get my hands on any of the series 1 or 2 figures due to issues tracking them down, I finally managed to get my hands on a few packs from series 3 when picking up some PAB items on lego.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I opened the packs. I went to open all three and pour the pieces onto the table(each in their own pile) and I reliezed something looked really wrong. When I was assembling them, I noted difficulty getting the torso and legs to hook up together and it took more then one attempt b/c I was trying to be gentle. After I assembled them and began looking at them, I saw the plastic looked odd.

I pulled out three more figures to compare to see if it was my imagination. I compared the series 3 figures I got with a farmer(Just removed from a MISB package), a lego man(the man from lego advent 2010. hadn't been used in play yet), and a construction worker I had a minimum of a few months, probably longer.

I easily saw that the series 3 were the worst ones. I never could figure out why until a few hours ago. I went to the brickipedia to look at a close up image of a lego creator set and when i went to type it in into the search, the collectibles page showed as a past search result. When I went to it and began reading(for fun) I discovered, to my horror, that the series minifigures are made of a cheaper material.

I am still planning on trying to track down a few series 3 and maybe even series 4, but that's only b/c the figures are to unique to ignore.

[legomaniac83]

I just joined up........I easily saw that the series 3 were the worst ones.

Welcome to Eurobricks! This is the first I've heard of the series 3 with cheap plastic. Maybe if you get the chance, post some pictures. Wouldn't mind seeing them.....

All my Series 3 were fine.

[BeKindRewind]

Has anyone else had this issue?

I ordered 16 figs from Shop@Home for myself and 16 more for my wife. I'm not a big army builder so I was only looking for a few specific figs which I easily found just by feel. I went to return the remaining unopenned bags to my local Lego store and was told by the first two cashiers that customers were not allowed to return Series 3 Minifigs. I finally had to get the manager and show him the return policy on the receipt before they gave me a refund. This is the same thing I did with Series 1 and 2 and they didn't have a problem with it.

[prateek]

Has anyone else had this issue?

I ordered 16 figs from Shop@Home for myself and 16 more for my wife. I'm not a big army builder so I was only looking for a few specific figs which I easily found just by feel. I went to return the remaining unopenned bags to my local Lego store and was told by the first two cashiers that customers were not allowed to return Series 3 Minifigs. I finally had to get the manager and show him the return policy on the receipt before they gave me a refund. This is the same thing I did with Series 1 and 2 and they didn't have a problem with it.

Well, there are a lot of stories of EB members returning minifigs without problem, so you might want to tell your local store about these stories

[Henchmen4Hire]

Lol, if that store's policy is not to accept returns on the item, then you have to respect that. They have the right to refuse service to anyone, I don't understand why customers think they have a right to have everything go their way. xD There has to be a good reason why they didn't want to accept the returns for series 3, you may have screwed that poor LEGO store over :(

Oh yeah, and here's a smiley face to show there's no ill will in this post

Edited January 17, 2011 by DrNightmare

[WhiteFang]

Moved to somewhere special.

[Grrr]

Has anyone else noticed just how badly damaged the polybags and instructions get from everyone feeling them up? It's a pity really.

[estephano (DE)]

Has anyone else noticed just how badly damaged the polybags and instructions get from everyone feeling them up? It's a pity really.

Are you actually keeping all bags and instructions??? Since it's all about the minifis for me to use them for my projects I just keep 5 instructions of each series and the bags go onto the bin right away.

[fred67]

Are you actually keeping all bags and instructions??? Since it's all about the minifis for me to use them for my projects I just keep 5 instructions of each series and the bags go onto the bin right away.

I keep a couple to actually mark off what I got (I know, childish, right?), and a two or three extra. I may make a larger poster out of the smaller ones at some point.

[Dunjohn]

Has anyone else noticed just how badly damaged the polybags and instructions get from everyone feeling them up? It's a pity really.

I was in the shop again today, and yeah, most of the packs were absolutely wrecked. The cashier said there were a few people in this morning with the dots list but they must have been doublechecking by feeling. Still, it'll be helpful if you see a box with wrecked packs so you don't need to waste too much time looking for the valuable ones.

[Dazmundo]

Popped into my local WHSmiths this evening and found 2 boxes of Series 3, one on the cash desk and one behind, the one on the desk looked almost full and the one behind looked untouched.

I had my list so started having an explore, got talking to the assisstant and she joined in too, infact she was better at dot spotting than me! got 5 more so I now have 11/16 with no doubles!

Has anyone else found that there is an extra dot on the Gorilla polybag, similar position to the middle dot on the Elf bag, did confuse me for a while but I didn't have either figure so wasn't too much of a risk

D

[Stiel]

A friend opened a box today; here is what was inside. Make of it what you will.

5 Sumo Guy

5 Mummy

5 Race Car Driver

4 Alien

4 Pilot/Mountaineer

4 Fisherman

4 Samurai

4 Man in Ape Suit

4 Baseball Player

4 Tennis Lady

3 Native American Chief

3 Elf

3 Rapper

3 Snowboard Girl

3 Hawaii Girl

2 Space Terminator