LEGO Collectable Minifigures Series 3 discussion

[Oky]

That's kinda what they're doing with NinjaGo now; you know what you get, but you have to cash out about ten bucks for single minifig (along with a spinning top and some trading cards).

[Mr. Elijah Timms]

Thanks for the great new detailed pics, Jargon!

For those that haven't seen it yet, the baseball team's name is the "CLUTCHERS." Personally, I'd love to know the backstory behind that moniker...

EDIT: Looks like we've found another easter egg... the race car driver's name is on his belt. Who is N. Groves, anyway? Mysteries abound....

Edited November 20, 2010 by Mr. Elijah Timms

[Tyrant]

Just in case, I meant to say "see through". Seriously, it is clear that for some reason they themselves need to know the figure inside the bag. But as long as there is a method that allows them to know it, people will find the method as well. They should just give up, really. Make every fig equally likely, with no blind package and they could even charge 0.5 extra for that, most people would prefer it.

I can't figure out why they even need a system. WotC seems to manage just fine with their random miniatures. The cases almost* never have duplicates in the rare/very rare slots and the uncommons and commons go like clock work. All of this while there is no outward sign (beyond any physical differences such as weight which are impossible to eliminate) of what is actually in the package. I know they have considerably more experience with this, but I see no reason why TLG can't come up with a system. Having said that, I cherry pick miniature boosters based on weight (you can feel the difference with your hands, it can be quite pronounced) and until TLG removes the ability to tell what is in these packages I will continue to use their system.

[Drakon]

By the way, where did people get the idea that the rapper was a "street punk?" In America, at least, "punk" is a very different subculture from the one portrayed here. Due to the microphone and the boombox, I would peg this guy as a freestyle rapper, though he could more broadly fit into the hip-hop culture, perhaps even thug culture. But definitely not punk.

That was me, and I live in WA. It was 2am when I originally wrote that and it was all I could think of.

[The Green Brick Giant]

Just in case, I meant to say "see through". Seriously, it is clear that for some reason they themselves need to know the figure inside the bag. But as long as there is a method that allows them to know it, people will find the method as well. They should just give up, really. Make every fig equally likely, with no blind package and they could even charge 0.5 extra for that, most people would prefer it.

Then they might as well charge $4 and make them an Impulse set.

What they really should do is have nothing at all. You can get a box of 55 Apes and 5 fisherman. This is a kids toy and there is nothing about "collecting" them if an adult can buy everythnig they want or 12 boxes of them.

This way buying a box isn't an opinion and buying only a few per box is.

That's kinda what they're doing with NinjaGo now; you know what you get, but you have to cash out about ten bucks for single minifig (along with a spinning top and some trading cards).

I don't think those prices will stay of long. I give it a 1-3 months before LEGo lowers the price to $6 each. LEGO said the Ben 10 sets would be $18 before they were released and I think saw their mistake and made them $15.

[greenskull139]

A dot system!?!?!?!! Really that just made even more obvious to which are in each . Sad lego, sad.

[SpiderSpaceman]

Thanks for the great new detailed pics, Jargon!

For those that haven't seen it yet, the baseball team's name is the "CLUTCHERS." Personally, I'd love to know the backstory behind that moniker...

EDIT: Looks like we've found another easter egg... the race car driver's name is on his belt. Who is N. Groves, anyway? Mysteries abound....

well I'm personally more curious about the "_______ motors" on the driver's suit. (couldn't make it out - ____fford? trying to remember the names of the k/christiansens... )

also, do you really need a backstory for 'clutch'?

[prateek]

well I'm personally more curious about the "_______ motors" on the driver's suit. (couldn't make it out - ____fford? trying to remember the names of the k/christiansens... )

also, do you really need a backstory for 'clutch'?

It looks like Stafford.

[Tyrant]

What they really should do is have nothing at all. You can get a box of 55 Apes and 5 fisherman.

How does that help anyone other than TLG? I really want to know. If I want all 16, under your system my only two options are blind purchasing (across multiple boxes because who knows if there is even 1 complete set in any particular box) or waiting for someone else to do that and charge an insane amount of money for the whole set. Other comapanies get along just fine by having the probable contents of a case be well known. Truely, abolutely random 9at the case level) only helps the seller (or sellers if we factor in resellers) and screws everyone else.

This is a kids toy and there is nothing about "collecting" them if an adult can buy everythnig they want or 12 boxes of them.

The former part and the latter part of that statement have no connection. Something can be "rare" (or "collectible") and still be easier for some to get than others. The one thing has nothing to do with the other. As for the usual "but it's just a kid's toy", no it isn't. It's a product sold by a business to kids and adults with the purpose of making a profit. These make money. Kids buy them and adults buy them. Do they not want my money? If you asked them I am sure they would want to keep getting my money, hence they will continue to make decisions that take that fact into account. How many kids do you think bought the $400 Death Star set or $500 Millenium Falcon set? They're just kids toys, afterall.

This way buying a box isn't an opinion and buying only a few per box is.

That is about as far from what will happen as possible. If they are truly random (at the case level), being able to sell specific figures on the secondary market becomes a very valuable business. To fuel their stores, resellers will buy all of these they can find. All of the figures become rare at that point, the "must haves" become that much more a hot property. Sure, some figures will be worth less than others, but most will sell. Why would I spend all kinds of money trying to get one figure when I can buy one for the cost of 2 or 3? The harder it is to get something (that is desired by people willing to spend real money on it) the more valuable it will be. The reality is that people (myself included, in the interest of full disclosure) buy some of these things with the intent to resell them. I do it with these figures, I do it with regular LEGO sets, I even do it with Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures (and formerly Star Wars Miniatures). I do this with most of my hobbies where it can be done. Truly random cases could be a dream come true for resellers with deeper pockets than mine.

This is also ignoring the psychological aspect. Right now, we know that there is at the bare minimum 1 complete set (I don't know if it's 2 or 3, I don't have the breakdown right in front of me) in each case. We also have case breakdowns. Thus, we know what is actually a (relatively) rare figure and what isn't. If it's totally random, that will never happen. We will have a few people bragging about their cases of Elves (or Spartans, or whatever) while most who get those will either not post about them or start selling them. On top of that, we will have a mountain of claims of cases with no Elves and nothing but "junk". There will be no way to counter these claims with reason. In fact, the claims may be truthful and Elves really are produced at a rate half that of every other figure. We would never know. That will just feed the fear cycle that drives prices. This helps resellers and potentially paralyzes the average consumer because they don't even have a minimum idea of what they could be buying (beyond "a figure"). They can see a full case and not even have the reasonable belief that there is at least 1 of every figure in there and that I have at least some reasonable chance of obtaining whatever I am after.

The only decent way to something like this is to either have set case contents (though the individual packages should be as alike as possible to make it more difficult to cherry pick) or to have them be visible packaging so you know what you are buying. The former of those two works for CCGs and CMGs just fine. The latter of those two only works if every entry is a "must buy". WotC have tried a hybrid approach with Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures. You could see one of the figures in the box and the rest were random. It didn't really work because all 8 of the visibles in each series weren't equally desired (for RPG or Skirmish). Now they have gone back to blind packaging with being able to relatively know what is in each case. The key with blind packaging is doing as much as possible to make sure people can't know what is in any particular box (again, while being able to know that any one case has fairly consistant contents so they have arough idea of what their odds are). With one of their DDM sets, somehow WotC allowed one particular box (each set at the time had three different pieces of artwork for the boxes for each set) type to not have rare figures in it. Guess which one sat on the shelves forever?

[Delta 38]

he looks so cool! And Is that first hair printing?!

Wow. I've never seen hair printing before and hadn't noticed it on the minifigs up until now.

Oh, and in case anyone's confused, the system's actually comprised of raised bumps so it might be a bit harder to know exactly what you're looking for. The image first shown (also on the front page) shows the bumps after they've been marked. It was a nice try on Lego's part, but it's still not going to help keep confidentiality.

Although I would prefer see-through bags, they might be worse. Last week I managed to get a Spartan from what appeared to be a looted box, and it's possible that whoever last bought from it forgot to take it.

[BrickArtist]

1 of my two Spartans was from luck, i got a little tired of the randomness after only buying 16 of these and four being ring-masters. I actually think the spartan is the easiest one to feel, i mean seriously a long pole with rubber at the end? I dont have a problem with the dots/barcodes, but I think that people with 300 spartans bought first hand are a little selfish, and almost greedy.

[XimenaPaulina]

It's great to see close-up shots of the minifigs, I must say the details are just amazing - elf ears, flower on Hula girl's hair, hair on Indian chief headdress. This series might actually get me back at collecting these minifigs.

[giggitygoo]

Series 4 news

Translated from http://www.superspeelgoed.nl/lego-8804-lego-minifiguren-serie-p-9233.html

"A series of 16 totally new mini figures. Each figure is in an opaque bag, so you can not really tell what Minifigure you get. And each character has its own accessories, standard and collector booklet. The collection is inspired by movies, sports, history and everyday life, and includes: The Monster, Surfing Girl, Sailor, Kimono Girl, Punk, Viking, speed skater, hockey player, skateboarder, Man in safety suit, musketeer, Werewolf, Artist, Mad Professor , Soccer and Garden Gnome."

They sound so awesome

[vexorian]

Then they might as well charge $4 and make them an Impulse set.

This would actually be great. They could add bricks to match the figs. A whole theme made of impulse sets that are very varied, would be cool.

What they really should do is have nothing at all. You can get a box of 55 Apes and 5 fisherman. This is a kids toy and there is nothing about "collecting" them if an adult can buy everythnig they want or 12 boxes of them.

This way buying a box isn't an opinion and buying only a few per box is.

You know, the only way for this suggestion to make sense would be to make everything truly random keeping the proportions. Buying a box will still be a huge advantage. If you want to somehow penalize buying a whole box by making each have biases towards a single different fig, well, this will pretty much screw all the children that go to only one score and benefit the AFOLS that have more money. They will just need to buy 5 boxes instead of one.

I don't get why should we care or worry that much about children. Once again, I got to say that children are happy enough because they don't have to work for the money used to buy their minifigures. Oh, and once they get the minifigures, what will happen? They will put them in a bin full of mixed pieces including megablox. Then leave them at the mercy of their 3 years old brother. Only to end up giving them away 5 years later when they enter their dark age.

Speaking about the children. They are probably the ones that enjoy the randomization the least. They couldn't figure the tricks like the barcodes or the dots. And most of these guys will just cry in disappointment if they get a tennis player instead of the gorilla they wanted.

Edited November 20, 2010 by vexorian

[The Green Brick Giant]

Well obviously I was using an example, there should mathematically be more than 2 types of minifigures in a box.

I'm sick of explaining myself 100 times here. I just want LEGO to make everythnig random and no one know what they are getting. I don't care if we need to the Japanese egg thing.

[Tyrant]

Well obviously I was using an example, there should mathematically be more than 2 types of minifigures in a box.

And mathematically there probably would be. Even totally random, the odds of their only being one type of figure in the entire case is probably astronomical. However, the odds of there not being at least one complete set (especially once you factor in uneven production runs for each figure) have gone from 0 (what we have now) to "considerably more". I think that is a terrible idea.

I'm sick of explaining myself 100 times here. I just want LEGO to make everythnig random and no one know what they are getting. I don't care if we need to the Japanese egg thing.

I don't believe it's that you arenn't explaining yourself. I get what you are wanting. I just think it's a really bad idea. No one at the lower levels (kids, you and me, anyone else who doesn't have tons of money to throw at these types of things) benefits with truly random. Maybe with not knowing what we are getting (but knowing that in any given case we at least have a chance of getting the figure we want because at least one of the figures in the case is said figure) helps to equalize things, but truly random just needlesly screws everyone on the bottom.

Having said that, even unknowable contents does nothing to help "the little guy" (I know you didn't use that term, but that's where I normally see this line of thought going). If I go in and buy half of the figures in the case, randomly, whatever I bought can now not be purchased by whoever comes after me. If, by random chance, I got all of the choice figures (as in, every copy of those figures in the case), I have killed any chance of a future customer getting them from that case the same as if I had read their barcodes and cherry picked them. The difference here is that if the next customer also knows about the barcodes then they can tell what is left is not what they want so they move on instead of throwing away money. if that is not where you are going with this, then sorry for bringing it up. I have seen the anti cherry picker argument for years with the Collectible Miniatures Games and no one can give me a satisfactory counter argument to that scenario. No one is guaranteed anything and people with more money (and/or time) are always going to be more likely to get what they want.

[Darth Jar Jar]

What they really should do is have nothing at all. You can get a box of 55 Apes and 5 fisherman. This is a kids toy and there is nothing about "collecting" them if an adult can buy everythnig they want or 12 boxes of them.

How is that going to help anyone the prices on the wanted figs would soar high and what rock have you been sitting under for so long thats why theres card games called pokemon cards yugioh etc go gos crazy bones is similar to the minifigures and when I was living in new zealand everyone wanted too collect the whole eighty off them I dont see your point at all about kids not collecting them.

Edited November 20, 2010 by Darth Jar Jar

[Peppermint_M]

How is that going to help anyone the prices on the wanted figs would soar high and what rock have you been sitting under for so long thats why theres card games called pokemon cards yugioh etc go gos crazy bones is similar to the minifigures and when I was living in new zealand everyone wanted too collect the whole eighty off them I dont see your point at all about kids not collecting them.

I think what he means is that kids can't collect if the adults "in the know" can go in and collect exactly what they want en masse, harvesting multiples of one figure.

[Tribolego]

Wow. I've never seen hair printing before and hadn't noticed it on the minifigs up until now.

Oh, and in case anyone's confused, the system's actually comprised of raised bumps so it might be a bit harder to know exactly what you're looking for. The image first shown (also on the front page) shows the bumps after they've been marked. It was a nice try on Lego's part, but it's still not going to help keep confidentiality.

Although I would prefer see-through bags, they might be worse. Last week I managed to get a Spartan from what appeared to be a looted box, and it's possible that whoever last bought from it forgot to take it.

http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=bb197pb01

Two-Face had printed hair !

[Aanchir]

well I'm personally more curious about the "_______ motors" on the driver's suit. (couldn't make it out - ____fford? trying to remember the names of the k/christiansens... )

also, do you really need a backstory for 'clutch'?

It looks like Stafford.

Seems to be "Stafford Engines"-- which thankfully, I recognize! "Stafford" in that fancy script appears on many engines in the Agents theme! Consider this sticker sheet. I wonder if the name might be from a certain well-known set designer who worked on the Agents theme (although he didn't work on 8636 Deep Sea Quest). If so, I'm sure he's happy to have his name immortalized on a collectible minifigure!

Also, there's that flaming wrench on his jacket. I feel like I recognize it, but I have no idea where it's from. It doesn't seem to be one of the plentiful logos appearing in Racers sets, as far as I can tell. What a puzzle.

EDIT: Found it! It's the logo for Brick Street Customs in the set 8681 Tuner Garage.

EDIT 2: And the rapper's pants are saggy! Simply glorious!

Edited November 20, 2010 by Aanchir

[The Green Brick Giant]

I think what he means is that kids can't collect if the adults "in the know" can go in and collect exactly what they want en masse, harvesting multiples of one figure.

Bingo.

I have no problem with anyone buying ONE of each minifigure to collect them all.

My problem is that some megablocks goes into the store, opens every box to take 30 Elves or whatever and the kids (and the rest of the adults) get screwed. That isn't right. it's come to the point in which I think LEGO should ONLY sell them on S@H so therefor you get what you get.

[Darth Jar Jar]

Bingo.

I have no problem with anyone buying ONE of each minifigure to collect them all.

My problem is that some megablocks goes into the store, opens every box to take 30 Elves or whatever and the kids (and the rest of the adults) get screwed. That isn't right. it's come to the point in which I think LEGO should ONLY sell them on S@H so therefor you get what you get.

So are you calling me a M***B***

What's wrong with having more than one Spartan/Elve why does everyone act like its a crime to have more than one spartan I don't see anyones point in saying its so bad there's loads on bricklink for under 3 pounds Would everyone think it was so bad if I bought all the traffic cops in the box

[SilentMode]

For the record, I'm going to start a gorilla army (as well as a baseball team, an F1 team, an all-women's tennis club and a hula dance troupe). Apart from completing the collection, you guys can have all the elves you want. But darn those fishermen will be rare (only two per box).

[vexorian]

So are you calling me a M***B***

What's wrong with having more than one Spartan/Elve why does everyone act like its a crime to have more than one spartan I don't see anyones point in saying its so bad there's loads on bricklink for under 3 pounds Would everyone think it was so bad if I bought all the traffic cops in the box

He is calling you another adjective that is translated automatically by the forum software into megabloks which imo is a worse insult :)

[Tyrant]

Bingo.

Except that is not what you have been saying. I have mentioned it a couple of times.

I have no problem with anyone buying ONE of each minifigure to collect them all.

My problem is that some megablocks goes into the store, opens every box to take 30 Elves or whatever and the kids (and the rest of the adults) get screwed. That isn't right. it's come to the point in which I think LEGO should ONLY sell them on S@H so therefor you get what you get.

Wow, did I call this or what. So, what happens when I walk into a store and through random chance get every desirable figure in the case? How is the end result of that any different than if I had cherry picked them? Beyond the obvious of me going right back into the store to buy even more figures so I can get a complete set. Now there is even less for the kids. I'm not the problem. I didn't set up this game or it's rules, but I won't be an idiot and handicap myself if an exploit is available. I have a brain and I don't enjoy people trying to imply that using it to my advantage is a bad thing or somehow wrong. As for quantity, I will buy however many I feel like buying. If there aren't enough to go around, that again isn't my fault or my problem. I didn't decide to under produce them to make them appear to be rare. I work for my money and I will spend it any way I please. Life isn't fair.

Also, only being able to buy them through S@H puts us right back into supe rarity status where people who have enough money to throw at the problem will still get what they want while everyone else is left flipping in the wind. The only two remotely fair systems are first come first serve and only selling these as complete sets (1 of each). Most other ideas will only hurt the people you seem to want to help because anyone with enough money can get around whatever road blocks you throw at them and at the same time you inflate teh secondary value of all of the figures (leading to hoarding to resell).