Cheating (?)

I seem to have been caught up in the collectible minifigure madness that’s sweeping the LEGO world right now. For any LEGO fans out there who have been sleeping for the past few months, LEGO have so far released 2 series of 16 different minifigs a couple of months apart. They come in little sealed foil packets so in theory you don’t know which minifig you’re buying, although it soon became apparent that you could identify which minifig was which via the barcodes on the packets, and folks put together crib sheets so you could dig through the boxes of minifigs and identify the specific one you wanted rather than trusting to luck. Retailers clearly underestimated the demand for these minifigs and there was a mad scramble to buy the few that appeared on the shelves. People would often go into shops such as WHSmiths and buy whole boxes of 60 figures to guarantee getting a few full sets of minifigs. I think we did OK in the U.K. – they seemed to be relatively easy to find here – but in other countries such as the U.S. a lot of people were left disappointed.

Collectible Minifigures Series 1

For series 1 I played by the rules, initially buying a couple of handfuls of foil bags and excitedly opening them. My folly became evident when my initial purchase of 20 bags only yielded about 9 different figures out of 16, including 5 Crash Test Dummies. I have nothing against Crash Test Dummies - hell, I think they do an important job under difficult circumstances - but what am I going to do with 5 of them ? So then I resorted to the crib sheet and thanks to an understanding wife who agreed to look through the minifig boxes in WHSmiths on a couple of occasions, my series I collection was complete.

Then series 2 came out. I was determined to avoid ending up with tons of duplicates this time. I realised that a number of enterprising Ebay sellers were buying whole boxes of figures, using the barcodes to identify whole sets of 16 figures, and selling them at a premium. So I paid a premium and got a full set. Still cheaper than taking pot luck, and much quicker than going to the shops and sifting through boxes of minifigs with a list of barcodes.

Collectible Minifigures Series 2

So is using barcode scanners, or even buying full sets on Ebay, cheating ? Part of me thinks so, but I tried the old fashioned approach and ended up with half a set and tons of duplicates. If I'd still been at school I could have done swapsies with my mates and made a full set. But I'm not at school anymore, and none of my friends even know what a minifig is, so what's a LEGO obsessive to do ?


And man, do I love the Zombie !

Thanks as ever to Brickset for the images. Bye !