Brickosaurus

Who knows? Probably to fool gropers as an odd accessory. Could easily be mistaken for the waitress's sundae.

Given that we're still relatively new at the Minifig collecting, we thought there was something unique about them--in a good way. And we did tell an employee--after we bought them and as I stated, opened the remaining packages in front of them so as not to come off as the perpetrators of this crime--and by alerting them to the problem it's likely all stores in the area are now aware of the problem--as Microjow pointed out their similar problem which is very near where I am, I called my store today and talked to an employee I deal with frequently to tell him of the localized problem. So yes, I still feel like you were chastising us for being naive. If anything, we helped both the store and any future purchases from what was left in the set from disappointing others. Plus they'll be reviewing their security tapes to identify the original culprit and keep an eye out for them in the future.

EXACTLY. That's what bugs me the most--it's not like this wave has anything ultra-rare, and they're going to be in abundance everywhere (some stores in my area haven't even filled their displays that they've set up in advance). HA! I'm in Burbank actually. I'd be willing to bet given our relatively close locations it may very well be the same person who pulled this. I myself recognized some of the pieces matching ones from my Avengers set. I warned my store they'd likely pull this again--fortunately they get a lot of collectors in, some of which pull stunts all the time and deny returns on them. One told me a story how recently someone brought back a new Star Wars speeder bike collector set and replaced it with one from 1994 when they had those steroid-infused "Power of the Force" abominations. Naturally the guy returning it denied knowing, but the clerk knew better.

Chalk it up to curiosity--there was no harm done (at least to our pocketbook, since we got a refund). If anything we did a favor to some poor shmoe who may have just bought them randomly or as some tiny extra for a present--we saved them from embarrassment and anger. Anyways, I see that this board seems focused on the gender issue of LEGO, but I'd really appreciate anyone else's thoughts (other than chastising me for buying out of curiosity) about this incident and if anyone else has seen this happen.

Hi, new to the boards, mostly due to a scenario I wonder if any of you have encountered: My girlfriend and I started collecting back on Series 9 and we added a few town sets--namely the theater and the firehouse sets--to compliment the figures. Today though we ran into a situation we didn't even think was possible. We headed to our local Toys R Us to give it a second go to find some characters in this wave, only to discover there was maybe eight left. My girlfriend started trying to identify the packages, when she realized there were some very strange shapes--ones that didn't match any accessories in the package. Big, oddly shaped, a mix of different things we couldn't identify. Curious that maybe she'd found something unusual, she bought six packages, and naturally as excited as she is to find out which figures ended up correct, we started to open them up in the car after leaving the store. The very first package ended up confusing the heck out of us, because this and a few others we opened up ended up looking like this: Someone had returned about ten packs, which we discerned was they somehow opened the packages carefully, kept the figures, replaced them with junk pieces and perfectly re-sealed the bags back up to get their money back. Arguably one of the biggest jerkwad moves I've seen in a very, very long time in any collector community. So I ask: has anyone encountered this problem? Is this rampant? Isolated? All I know is I'd love to get my hands on the guy (or girl) that pulled this. Fortunately for us our store is quite familiar with Lego collectors and were amazed themselves when we showed them (we left one or two of the re-sealed closed to ensure we had extra proof we weren't the ones that pulled a fast one). She also got a full refund. Still, for all the hullabaloo about Series 10 and Mr. Gold, we never once ever ran into this problem--rather the only one was that stores were sold out at times of them. I find it mindbogglingly baffling why someone would go to all this trouble over $30 in figures, none of which have the resale value of Mr. Gold. Thoughts?