wadapan

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

Haha, no worries! 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!

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. 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!

Hey everyone! I've finally finished updating my BAM website, which shows the parts for every minifigure from 2017-now, and official (or near-official) configurations from 2020-now. (There are a few errors in the official photography, but I've done my best to document them.) You can use it for quick, reliable reference while you're in-store. 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 still need to comb over a lot of this thread for anything I might have missed. Hey lego_bam! I've found your photographs to be very helpful in the past. Jsyk, though, I do think 40 minifigures is standard? For 2024 Q1, you have eight minifigures photographed, when only the usual seven were actually released; the eighth seems to just use a different combination of the same parts. So I think that's where the discrepancy is coming from!