Idea for Collectible Minifigures -- Hey TLG...

bluelion3

I had an idea for the next Collectible Minifigure series. I hope someone at TLG is reading the Brickset forum!
What if certain minifigures in the series had an extra piece (torso, head, etc), and you had to collect a bunch of minifigures to collect all the pieces. The pieces would all then go together to make a special minifigure that you can't buy separately. So, if you had the complete series of 16 figs you would actually be able to build 17 figures.
Alternately, the minifigures could be designed so that there would be an extra minifigure that could be built using pieces from other minifigures. Obviously, you can mix and match pieces to make a random-looking minifigure, but in this scenario, the extra minifigure would be a coherent looking fig. For example, you could take the plaid shirt from the woodcutter fig and a hairpiece from another and a bearded head and put them together to make a George Lucas minifigure (just an example). I got the idea while watching the Padawan Menace with my son for the 10th time...
For the people who already have Series 5 minifigures, let's see the best minifig you can put together using pieces from series 5 only, and no two pieces from the same set! I'm anxiously awaiting my series 5 figures from the Toys R Us pre-order...

rocao

TLG did this with 4488 - 4491 and 4484 - 4487 Star Wars Mini Building sets where each collection had extra pieces that together built a Y-Wing and Tie Bomber, respectively.

I don't know if they did a post-mortem on this strategy, but I can think of some reasons why they might not continue the practice:

1) it probably created only a minimal additional desire to collect the whole series. That is to say, buyers with a collector's mentality would probably get the whole series anyway.

2) it could be seen as confusing to the building of the main model

3) it adds to the cost of each set, and if 1 and 2 are true, it does so with little justification

macmon

I would like LEGO to do a set of minifigs with all super heroes, but most likely that would be more than the regular price and will undermine the buying of whole sets.
Another option is a Series with purely female minifigs or a theme minifigs.

princedraven

^^^ Creating a new minifig from just Series 5 parts is actually not that easy.
They are pretty specific parts that makes it really pretty tough. I couldn't really come up with anything, unless you count a short green legged snowboarding lizard woman with a pink boom box....

Yellowcastle

I remember when they did this with Star Wars. I'm still miffed that I have only one YWing engine... :o)

collect_that

I actually think this would be a good idea. it would be a good reward for buying/trading figs as its getting a bit of a chore now once the novelty of a new series has worn off.

yys4u

Yea its a good idea, I don't know if I read the original post correctly, but it should be 5 completely new pieces in each box, so there's the possibility of getting 1 super rare minifigure per box, and you would have to find the 5 packets with that extra piece. I imagine it would be super frustrating and impossible to complete, not to mention the second hand market would sell that fig for a lot.

It reminds me of the old castle sets where each set came with a different Chrome piece, so if you collected them all you could build a guy with chrome chest, helmet, shield, and sword

allyburns

How about asking fans for suggestions for series 6?

I'd like to see a Scotsman with kilt, shield and spear, or bagpipes.

What would you like to see in series 6?

princedraven

British Bobby

kylejohnson11

@allyburns a different baseball player or an american football player :)

andhe

^Judging by the hockey players outfit, I'd say an American football player isn't fair off. Lose the skates and give him the tribal chief's head and you're pretty much there!

I'm a sucker for lego animals and I'm loving the new monkey/chimp/primate mould and want about a million of them, so maybe a bird-watcher with new bird mould or snake charmer with coiled snake?

jwsmart

@allyburns - Series 5 is released, which mean series 6 is already in production, and series 7 is likely fully designed already. The characters for series 8 were already "locked in" as of the March 1st issue of BrickJournal. I would recon that if LEGO decided tomorrow to use one of the ideas in this thread - the earliest we would see it is late 2012...

Really, anything with new moulds, or new colors makes me happy.
I'd love to see them release the new style helmet in Red, Yellow and Blue, now that we've got the trans-clear visors. Thanks Alien Conquest team!

@andhe - Agreed. A bird that isn't a parrot/crow/owl would be great. More colors of fish, please.

collect_that

An Old fashioned Diver with the big helmet would be cool, I also like the British bobby idea!

bluelion3

@yys4u - I was thinking there would be enough spare parts to get the extra fig in each set of 16, not in each box. For example, if it we were talking about series 5, the legs would be in the eskimo set, the torso would be in the graduate set, the head would be in the dwarf set, the headpiece would be in the cleopatra set, and the accessory would be in the snowboarder set. So, if you got a full box, you could have three extra figs.
I wasn't aware that they did this with the Star Wars mini vehicles (dark ages for me), so, yeah, maybe it isn't workable... I was thinking as a buyer instead of from the perspective of TLG. Fun for collectibility, but maybe not profitable enough. They would probably just turn around and offer the special fig in a brick-built calendar or keychain or something later. ;)

prof1515

Figures aren't distributed equally in a case. Do you really want to end up with 5 legs and 3 heads of a figure?

bluelion3

For the example, I picked figures that come three to a box in series 5 (or at least meant to).

andhe

An Evel Knievel style dardevil figure. Star-spangled jumpsuit and crash helmet. Add the hair from the series 6 mechanic and... "thankyou very much, Memphis".

Kotton

HA! Series 7 has just that! A Scottsman AND a Evel style Daredevil!!!