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Series 10 CMF
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Comments
If they want to up the count of females, I don't understand why those that could be gender neutral are not made with double sided heads. Eg. the bee woman could just as easily be a bee man with a dual printed head (although that puts the count down slightly here). The headpiece covers up the rear print. Same for all the other similar animal characters like the bunny man.
As an example...
When I look at this back in October, the initial numbers I saw were 9 females out of 166 total minifigs. Now the pictures were not the best at the time, so there were a couple I missed.
The thing which CurvedRoadPlate hit on, and which I think is quite important is how female minifigs are dispersed. If the only female minfig in a line is in the most expensive set, that is an issue. If entire lines continue to have only have one female minfig in it, then is there really improvement?
I do tend to look at individual lines, and the number of sets in a line with female minifigs compared to the total number of sets in a line. To me that incorporates both number and distribution.
At the time I looked, all the new lines had only 0-1 sets with a female minfig(s) per total sets in a line. (Hobbit, TMNT, Star Wars, Ninjago, Super Hero, Chima). City was the exception, I think there were ~3. Now, the pictures were low quality, which impacted my count of Chima at that time. It is very hard for me to consider that as 'major steps forward'. Yes, one can give many arguments as to why sets may or may not have female minifigs and all those were hashed through in my thread last year.
Now this part...
You can see a similar increase in balance between male and female figs in the Chima theme compared to the Ninjago theme. Even with a dismal ratio of 58 male figs to 6 female figs (9.7 males to every female) and a better-but-not-great ratio of 22 unique male figs to 4 unique female figs (5.5 males to every female, not counting figs with just different armor), it's far better than Ninjago, which in its first year boasted 19 unique male figs to one unique female fig, and in its second year upped the number of male figs to 34 while the number of unique female figs remained just one. The ratio of actual female figs in sets to male figs in sets, again not counting polybags, is even worse: 64 male figs to three (identical) female figs in its debut year and 68 male figs to two (identical) female figs in its second year!
Worth noting is that in sets revealed so far, not counting polybags, Chima has fewer minifigures total and fewer characters than last year's Ninjago sets, but the number of female minifigures has tripled and the number of female characters appearing as minifigures has quadrupled. Part of the reason for this shift may be to better cater to the periphery demographic of female fans which resulted from the Ninjago TV show, and which TLG likewise anticipated to result from Legends of Chima.
This, now, is new info for me. WHen I had first looked at the initial images of Chima, it was difficult to see and what I saw was that there were 17 sets (that included the speedorz at the time), and there initially looked like there were 0 female minfigs.
I later found out that there was at least 1 female with Eris. I knew there was one more unique female coming, but I haven't looked in depth at Chima for a while. I didn't know about Crooner or the upcoming fox.
I agree with most of your assessment here, that 4 unique females in a line like Chima, is quite huge. Most Lego lines have at most a token female. Often when there are more females, it is the same one. To have 4 unique females within a line is very unusual. There are a huge number of items in the line, which does drastically lower the overall ratio. At the same time, though, 4 unique females is unusual, and this is really their new flagship boy line.
I also agree with your reasoning. My girls really loved Ninjago the show, and so there was an entire subset audience that Ninjago did not reach because females were not incorporated into the sets besides Mia. I think this is a small nod that way.
So yeah, CMFs haven't seen a huge increase in gender ratio, which is somewhat odd considering I believe those are one of the more popular product lines with girls. But other themes have seen major steps forward in just the past couple years.
I agree that it is odd with the CMFs. I actually think series 10 is odd in general, because It seems to target AFOLs, and not even necessarily boys. I have a 6 year old not at all happy with this upcoming series.
I don't agree with the assessment that we have seen major steps forward. Major steps forwards from my perspective would be more lines like Monster Fighters. Five out of 9 sets have females. There are 3 unique females in the line. That creates a high level of uniqueness, and creates a high ratio. Both of those together, along with several other factors with the sets, makes it very friendly to both genders.
I do agree with much of your analysis on Chima.
The other thing to note, the quote I mentioned from Lego... this was after the meeting SPARK had with them last April, and they were referring to changes they were planning to make. The article was written in September, though. The reality is that by April, many sets for 2013 were already far along in their process, and so I assume few changes in minfigs counts were going to occur. To me the 2014 line will better show what change will or will not happen. The minifig distribution, though, is something I would not expect to be set in stone last April, which is why the recent distribution changes still seems 'odd' to me.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-2013-LEGO-71001-SERIES-10-MINIFIGURES-Complete-Set-16-In-hand-No-Mr-Gold-/230962384295
But yet, I really don't want to fork over a ton of money on S@H or Amazon for sealed boxes at a time. For those really digging for gold, many may dump complete sets online to recoup costs.
Has picture of actual figure and I gotta say, not sure about it now.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LEGO-71001-Minifigur-Serie-10-Mister-Gold-SUPERSELTEN-NR-870-von-5000-/251261252847?pt=DE_AllesfürdKind_Spielzeug_Lego&hash=item3a805674ef
"A special offer coming in May only on shop.LEGO.com – Get a free DK limited-edition LEGO Minifigures poster with the purchase of 5 or more LEGO® Minifigures Series 10!"
http://us.dk.com/static/cs/us/11/features/dklegominifigures/splash.html?CMP=EMC-VIP2013MarchDoublePRUS&HQS=DK_MiniFig_CTA&RRID=22479592&RMID=VIP_2013_03_DoublePoints_PR_US
"Hi, do you sell complete boxes of CMF series 10?"
"Yes, we do."
"Sealed?"
"Yes, oh hold on, wait... errrrrrr... no, they were all opened to eeerrr... verify contents."
"I'll order somewhere else, thanks"
:o)
So, your mileage may vary on whether your Target breaks the street date or not.
http://m.target.com/fiats/dp-204-00-1044
What i am absolutely opposed to is factory backdoor shenanigans, and retailers/staff abusing their position of early access to the inventory to take the figs out of the market - which is clearly happening, with these early ebay listings. I'm sure it's illegal, something to do with public trust, store accountability, sale of goods acts, contracts of sale, or something.
Just about every Mr Gold on ebay so early (before release in almost every country) is almost definitely the result of staff/shop owners giving stock a once-over prior to sale, and denying their customers any possibility of the (already slim) chance. I'm almost sure it's illegal - because it's about maintaining public confidence that advertised promotions can genuinely be obtained as stated. But if shop owners are fiddling the stock, they render the promotion effectively void, and this will prove to be a black eye for TLG.
It's definitely against general policy at least, for employees and trade account holders to meddle with stock. Their profit is meant to be tied to the sale of the goods as permitted by their trade account, not the re-sale value of rarities obtained by manipulating stock.
I hope TLG cancel all trade accounts of stores whom they find linked to ebay sales.
It's so so sad.
Would have been better if TLG had just printed 5000 special voucher-style inserts in random (normal series) fig's bags, for people finding one to redeem in-store/by post for a mr gold. That would have prevented any of the spoiling tactics of the less scrupulous, cos the insert would be undetectable (being identical to the checklist/instruction sheet it replaced)
It would also be impossible to know which store it came from, unless the person who was selling it advertises that info, most would be store employees who sell it on their own eBay account on their own time, not much TLG could or can do about it.
It’s not really much different to store employees getting to the clearance stock first, great for them, not so much for the rest of us.
Well i'm off and get me two (sealed) cases ;)
What will be interesting is what happens to LEGO store employees that do it (I'm sure they will if prices are high enough) and what LEGO do if they find out about it happening in their stores or elsewhere. Presumably it is TLG that could face legal trouble if any employees (even if not LEGO employees) are removing them before release and more importantly if they fail to do anything about it.
It's TLGs promotion and if they willfully know that the consumer can't acquire the advertised product (and never could) then they are open to trouble.
Target: 300
Myer: 67
David Jones: 35
Kmart: 180
Big W: 176
ToysRUs: 30
Coles: 696
ToyWorld ?
Total: 1484+ stores
I know a lot of these stores sell at least 5 boxes but probably more. A conservative figure would be 3000 boxes for Australia but this could be as high as 5000+ in my opinion. This is for a country with just 23 million people. I think 60 thousand boxes worldwide would be a low figure; it’s probably closer to 100 thousand and maybe over.
So at best it’s 1 in 10 boxes most likely closer to 1 in 20, so who at this early stage gets access to those sort of numbers of boxes? I’m guessing that the distribution is a bit sporadic, i.e. they placed a number of figures in one small batch of boxes that potentially got sent to just one store.
Magic Magnus (a German Bricklink store) sold 100 boxes of Series 10 a few days ago on BL in a matter of days. A Polish BL store uploaded similar quantities yesterday or the day before, too.
I really wish LEGO had handled this differently. Either a voucher in random packets, or a promotion to get Mr. Gold if you send in 16 proofs of purchase (anyone remember GI Joe Flag points?), or a gold colored version of a figure that is already in the series so that you can't tell if you are getting the regular or the gold version. This whole thing is just another way to disappoint the kids who will never have a legitimate chance at the figure. Reminds me of the horrible US distribution for Series 1, when most stores got 1-2 cases at most and that was it.
It's most usually when investigating counterfeit products OR when chasing down items that shouldn't be for sale, such as company gifts that were only for internal staff, or items not available yet, but can be done for premium items too, if the company feels they're being filtered out prior to general release. I just think given the likelihood (thanks to the rarity) that there's going to be a lot of pre-sale stockroom foraging if not direct-from-factory theft, that TLG ought to start taking it seriously if they're going to keep heading down this route of 'chase' items to promote sales.
I'm not against the idea of a chase rare in principle, (if i get one, cool, if not, no loss), just if TLG are going to do it then they should make some efforts to ensure the items are reaching the market in the display boxes when they hit the shelves, and to reassure public confidence in their stockists and retailers.
Just my 2 cents. Happy Hunting!
Solution: If TLG had simply replaced the instruction leaflet of 5000 regular Series 10 CMF packets with a 'congratulations, you've found a mr gold ticket' to be redeemed in any Lego brand store (or via S@H), instead of inserting a plainly identifiable rarity (prone to theft before sale), there would have been none of the problems we're seeing, and we'd be able to buy our figs as normal.
What people do with those figs, i couldn't care less about. I certainly have no beef whatsoever with people finding/selling/smashing with a lumphammer/sticking up noses, or whatever with their mr golds (or any fig) should they get one, but what I am concerned with is the high chances (thanks in part to the TLG's choice of extreme rarity coupled with ease of identifying it) that many sellers of these fig might have obtained them via less than correct channels, and be lying to us that we stand any chance at all shopping with them. I don't care how slim the chance, as long as it's genuine.
By all means, Lego retailers, let's take part in an 'Easter Egg' hunt - but not if you're going to eat all the eggs before we start. :oP