LEGO Collectible Minifigure blind boxes are a disaster
LEGO 71039 Marvel Series 2 has sparked chaos in shops around the world, as the latest range of Collectible Minifigures makes the long-promised switch from foil bags to cardboard boxes.
In a turn of events that has shocked literally nobody, the build-up to and first few days of LEGO 71039 Marvel Series 2 has seen widespread ripping into minifigure packaging, with fans and collectors determined to secure the minifigures they want. It’s a result that’s not especially surprising – and finding ways to navigate this new packaging was something that LEGO stores themselves were preparing for (even if the top location for opening boxes in stores appears to be third-party retailers).
Brick Fanatics‘ Matthew sees this as a problem that’s been building for a while, with the whole idea of blind packaging slowly creating this issue over the years. Of course, you shouldn’t go into stores and steal minifigures out of the boxes (as has happened in some cases) but the idea of not being able to buy the product you want from a brand that, whatever age you are, is centred around collecting very specific sets, elements, and minifigures, is understandably unpopular among fans.
Matthew has some more thoughts, feelings, and a dash of frustration to share – but, more importantly, Brick Fanatics wants to hear from you. We’re collecting as much data about the blind boxes as possible, so please do let us know your experiences once you’ve watched the video.
If you want to brave the unknown, 71039 Marvel Series 2 is available to buy for £3.49 / $4.99 / €3.99 per minifigure both online and in physical LEGO stores, as well as a wealth of other third-party retailers.
Support the work that Brick Fanatics does by buying your LEGO sets using our affiliate links. Thank you!
Author Profile
- I write about all the very best fandoms – and that means LEGO, of course. Spending so much time looking at and talking about LEGO sets is dangerous for my bank balance, but the LEGO shelves are thriving. You win some, you lose some.
Latest entries
25 Years of LEGO Star Wars29/04/2024From buckets to busts: 25 years of LEGO Star Wars gimmicks- Best Deal29/04/2024Rare discount on retiring LEGO Star Wars UCS AT-AT at Disney Store
- August 2024 sets29/04/2024Biggest LEGO Sonic summer 2024 set gets a rumoured description
- August 2024 sets29/04/2024LEGO NINJAGO summer 2024 rumours suggest new elements on the way
It is possible to make sturdy yet biodegradable bags for the minifigures, so people will still be able to search for the figures they want by feeling for telltale shapes.
Having the figures boxed in the new style can only work if they are no longer a random selection. Mystery packaging is great for art toys and other collectables marketed toward an adult audience. Everything I’m hearing is children are well over mystery toys and would rather just get the one they want and not have to deal with the frustrations of spending all their pocket money on three of the same thing.
I don’t think LEGO has made any mistakes here, this is purely on the “fans” and “collectors”. LEGO is taking all the necessary steps to fulfill their promise to help save the environment and they have done so much for that, from making some elements from plants to changing out their plastic bags for paper ones and they have to be commended for that. It’s entirely on the people going after them. The whole point of blind bags – be it in a literal bag or in this case a box – is for it to be a surprise as to what you get inside. Is it annoying when you end up with duplicates instead of a complete collection? Of course it is. Does that warrant purposely damaging products and ruining other fans and customers experiences? Absolutely not. Because they’re not getting their way, they feel the need to ruin the experience for others. So what if you get a duplicate? If you’re that dedicated, buy another one. But don’t damage them or even steal them because you’re in a strop over not getting the latest Hawkeye minifigure.
It’s the kids who are tearing open the boxes. Adults have the money and patience to tolerate duplicates. Kids, not so much.
Brought two and they were the same
Support the cardboard over plastic. Just think more shops should open and see the figures if ppl want that.
Well said swj. I came here to say the same thing. these people really need to get over themselves, going mental over children’s toys… (and yes, I collect them as well but I don’t have a misplaced sense of entitlement)
listen to yourself…the point of the series is 12 to COLLECT. You then mention the only point of COLLECTors cards/trading cards are by definition designed to be traded so you COLLECT what you want with other COLLECTORS. This is the WHOLE POINT of not knowing what you get. You aren’t collecting cars or houses or clothes, so this instance isn’t valid lol. You’re actually making yourself look more and more entitled, and it honestly looks like you’d throw a strop if(and when, obviously) you don’t get your own way! I wonder if you’ve actually ever bought trading cards, or sticker books?! Do you play the lottery? Do you not know your outcome there or do you expect to win every time? I’d pay £2 every time if I knew I was guaranteed over what I’d paid for. Stop moaning, stop being entitled. There are worse things in the world to be outraged about!
I say keep the blind bags purely out of spite to anger you lol, but also to encourage friends at school to get together in various Lego clubs and trade and collect their mini figures. Not for entitled adults to moan about. If you want the whole set, EVERYONE is in the same boat. You just have to pay, or trade with others, until you get what ones you want. Not every child wants or has the desire for an army of mini figures like most AFOLs seem to have!! Bring it back to the joy of PLAYING not sitting in a cage and looking all gleamy eyed at something you haven’t touched in it’s cabinet because it might get dust on and devalue it ffs.
Even in trading card games it is more commonplace to buy single cards from 3rd party retailers rather than opening packs yourself, because it’s practically impossbile to collect all the cards you need by opening packs of random cards.
When we used to like a figure/series I would go to the shop and feel out every character we wanted, sometimes buying the entire series. This used to be so fun and challenging, gives you more time to enjoy the figure before you put it on your shelf! You “found” it! If I can’t do this now, I’ll maybe buy three packs and leave it with that. I don’t want to spent money on figures that I don’t like, and I don’t want them double?? If Lego wants to miss out on us spending loads of money for all the individual figures, their decision.
Support cardboard boxes, some stores can pre-open them if ppl want, but the fun is not knowing what you’ll get. Admit I did feel couple of bags for ones with big shaped costumes or whatever, but that’s part of the fun
It does feel a bit like it’s entitlement from people who were able to get exactly what they wanted from the poly blind bags. (it was always fun running into those guys spending 20 minutes feeling bags when I just wanted to grab a bag or two…).
With this Marvel series I visited my local Lego store on release day, chatted with other guys in the queue, bought 8 blind boxes, and traded with the others so we all ended up with the minifigs we wanted.
I know not everyone has access to a Lego store, but I’ve never found it difficult to find other collectors locally to trade with. that’s what people should be doing rather than wrecking boxes/displays, or stealing.
If you don’t agree with the blind bag product as it is, then don’t buy them. boycott the product. Just stop ruining it for the rest of us.
For me personally: I’m not a collector, sometimes I see a minifigure that I love, and I’ll buy it. If I can’t see what I’m getting, I won’t buy it.
So far, my experience with getting the minifigure I want second hand, has been that they are twice the price. That makes no sense to do.
So I’ve stopped seeing if there are minifigures that I like, I’ve stopped buying minifigures.
I’ve seen the new series twice at local Target stores. One time, I bought two and got two of the same figure. The other time, I found two open boxes in a toy aisle with pieces missing from each. This isn’t a great start. However, I’m not against the blind box in principle. There’s a certain small amount of fun in the discovery, and for a relatively cheap thing that I can ultimately find something to do with, that works for me. But theft and tearing into unpurchased boxes looks like a problem.
Entitled adults complaining over children’s toys.
They’re blind boxes. You’re not supposed to know what you’re buying, that’s the whole point.
Is it like gambling? No, you still get a physical product at the end, so legally it’s not.
Is it shady marketing designed to pray on people’s desires? Yes, of course it is. But that’s the crap system we decided to make for each other to live in.
so you’re saying that you used to buy them for gifts and didn’t care about what mini figure it was, so that’s a reason for you to call everyone retarded who is buying them for themselves and cared about what they got? from reading your comment I just think that you didn’t care what minifigure you were handing as a present.
On the bottom of the box is a mini qr looking thing with a code on my son and I chose 4 that had different codes on and found that we got 4 different figures so we kept note of the codes for when we go back to the shop again
Maybe it’s time Lego took a leaf from some of the other blind box toys (mini cars for example) out there and place a number/code on the boxes. This means they’re not spelling it out what’s inside but it lets the collectors know not to pick up 2 of the same number/code. Also means people will share the numbers/codes online so others know what’s inside the boxes so they can try to find the ones they are looking for.
It’s not exactly a hard solution to implement as Lego will have different production lines for each minifigure, they just need to stamp a number or code on the box.
I’ve just received 4 minifigure boxes direct from lego the boxes were crushed and some parts had fallen out of the boxes. This could easily happen in the supermarket.
I went in to buy some at my local Supermarket – I picked up two – didn’t open them – I must admit I wanted to and walked to the counter
A security guard came over to me and said “Are you going to pay for the ones you damaged” I looked at him surprised and said “I’ve not done that”
He replied with “it’s a store ban if you don’t ” – I hardly go there so I just walked out
To put this in context I was on my lunch break, I work in an office so was business dressed and I’m over 40 years old
So no I won’t be buying Lego minifigures in boxes
In my opinion the best thing the Lego Group should do in regard to the future of minifigure packaging is change the packaging to the same as what they use for the Lego UK magazine polybag paper bags which keeps the feature of blind bags and you can still feel the bag.
Unfortunately you can’t “feel” a paper bag, without breaking it, as LEGO are made with hard pointy pieces of plastic.
My confusion is that, at least for the past 3 years, we have been able to recycle even the minifigure bags here in UK, so I’m very confused why can’t be done worldwide
I am no gambler. Good thing I don’t like any minifigures from this series. By the next release- hopefully lego fixes this up. If they really want to stick to cardboard – perhaps a qr code on the back that you can scan telling you which one it is (for those who don’t care for surprises), but want to know exactly which one it is.
I used to have fun going in to the Lego Store to stand around with a bunch of other AFOLs feeling bags to find the minifigs we wanted. But I have no interest in buying a bunch of random unknown minifigs in boxes when I know third party sellers who will just sell me a complete set for basically the same price as it would cost to buy 12 boxes from Lego.
work in the toys department. I definitely expect all of these to be kept in our locked cabinet lol.
the good thing about the bags is that you can feel the mini figure through it and get an idea of which one you’re getting (and yes we’re 100% happy for you to do that) the boxes you can’t even get a hint. so yeah people are gonna tear them open.
The most ridiculous part of this new packaging is that it isn’t actually reducing waste. Previously, blind bags came in a plastic bag. Now, they come in a cardboard box with a plastic bag inside. Isn’t this more waste than before?
no they don’t there is no bag inside the box
As a kid, I collected trading cards. I never* knew what I was getting in each pack, and it was frustratingly difficult to collect entire sets with these blind purchases but I somehow managed to complete my sets. The randomness and the chase was part of the experience.
I feel like the complaints about the truly blind boxes (instead of the bags that can be hacked) reflect a sense of entitlement (based on the previous, hackable packaging) that ignores the original intent of these minifigure lines to emulate trading cards. Absurd—and self-entitled—that folks are opening boxes in store to cheat the system; and despicable that some folks are just pocketing the minifigures/parts. But also ridiculous that most of the blogs are making it sound like LEGO has lost its mind by using paper packaging…. (Didn’t they already do this with the Vidyo bandmates too? Never saw any of those opened in store…)
*Okay, for sets that included the occasional embossed rare cards, I did do a bit of strategic feeling to ensure I always got one. I considered myself a bit of a cheater though and certainly didn’t feel entitled to those rare cards in every pack.
Trading cards…do I really need to explain this? The word is right there. Trading. Whilst I don’t agree with blind bags of anything, including trading cards, at least the trading aspect is clear. You’re not meant to buy the whole collection. You’re meant to buy a few, then trade your duplicates with your friends and other people with the same hobby. This was built in to the “game”. Whilst you can resell or trade Lego, that is not it’s intention. The sole intention of Lego blind bags was to make you pay, over and over and over until you get the figure you wanted. It is a shameful tactic targeted towards children. Nobody needs multiple of the same figure. If they insist on blind boxes, the character should be stated on the box and the jeopardy should be whether you get that character or an equivilant value of random lego bricks. At least then, if you don’t get the character you’re actually paying for, you at least get useful lego bricks. Ideally though, they’d just let you buy the damn product you wanted. Let’s look at it from a kid’s perspective. Maybe they get £5 a week pocket money. That’s enough for them to buy a blind box minifig. There’s 12 to collect. They’ll release a new set in 4 months. So this kid has 16 weeks to collect 12 unique minifigs. If he’s the luckiest kid on the planet, he’ll have to give lego £41.88 for that honour. Realistically, this kid is gonna be getting the same figure repeatedly and end up with half a collection at best, whilst paying £3.49 each time before the next set of minifigures are released. It’s unaffordable for most kids, it’s psychologically encouraging win/loss behavior patterns in impressionable children that may carry this into their adult lives and it’s just basic nasty profit gouging behaviour on lego’s part. I encourage every child and adult to tear into these packs whenever they see them so other people can see what they are paying their hard earned money for.
It is not a good thing to open up the box in retail store to discover what figure is inside, but i don’t blame them. I bought four packs or boxes to find out all four of them are the same character… How unlucky is that…
Drop the price a few dollars and I’ll happily take the chance on the cardboard box. Keep the price upwards of $5.00 with no risk mitigation and it’s secondary market for me.
We aren’t even bothering with this set. Half the enjoyment was trying to feel the pieces in the bag and the satisfaction that you’re guess was correct. There have been lots of minifigures that I’ve bought more than once because I want multiples of the elements inside, such as Series 19’s flamingo lady, purely because I wanted a flock of flamingoes! The bags allow you to choose which multiples you want. it feels like greed to me. if you can’t feel them and want the whole set they think people will just keep paying until they have them, so I’m glad people are opening the boxes. It was a colossal mistake
Same disaster as Game of Thrones blind boxes. I wanted 1 in particular but because they couldn’t help me I didn’t buy and they didn’t make any money which at the end of the day is the overgreedy company wanted. I will do the same with this Lego collection.
I bought 2 and I actually didn’t get bad minifigures but I’m not buying anymore cuz I don’t want doubles or ones I don’t want, and I’m good at feeling and I allays for the ones I want but not any more
totally agree with your thoughts around this being a form of physical gambling to minors that should be banned outright across the sector. its already extremely out of hand to the point where funko pop now state the odds of getting particular figures o the back… how is that anything but gambling is shocking to me.
This should not be very hard for Lego to grasp. Lego prides itself on the ‘experience’. Buying an item without knowing EXACTLY what it is, is a BAD experience. So, Lego is providing BAD experiences. Identify the content and the problem is solved – simple.
isnt that the same as every pack of collectable cards? and plenty of other small toys that are packaged blind in boxes
I’ve had the following thought for a while, but why isn’t this seen as a form of gambling similar to Loot boxes? The whole blind packaging preying on children (in the case of football stickers, playmobil figures etc.) and children and adults (in the case of Lego) is kind of disgusting. This is especially problematic for people with addictive personality traits, or low income families treating a child, only to find they can’t find the toy the child wants. It’s pure greed.
This has become a form of gambling which I would have thought Lego would be against. If they went back to the early series with alternative barcodes to each figure it could have worked. hopefully they see the mistake and revert back to poly bags.
Looks like soo many Lego collectors are retarded.
I’ve been buying minifigures since Series 1. Mostly as a gift for birthday, christmas etc. So I have never checked in the shop which figure I am buying.
The surprise what you get after opening it at home is the point of this series! As others mentioned – it’s same like collector’s cards.
If you need one particular figure, just buy it on Bricklink omg. So sad that people are so mean to pay $1 more and buy figure that they want from reseller and they rather destroy 10 boxes in the shop.
The disappointment and wasted money is not the point of the series. The point of the series is “12 to collect” and “Collectable Minifigure Figures”. Paying repeatedly for the same figure may be fun for you, to most people it’s not. Collector’s Cards, or “trading cards” are by their definition, meant to be swapped with your friends and other collectors to get the remaining cards you don’t already have. You’re not meant to endlessly buy packs of cards to complete your set. If you’re still struggling with why this concept is stupid, apply the same principals to everything else you’ve ever bought. Ridiculous, right? Imagine buying a random car, a random house, random clothes in random sizes and random colours. You didn’t want this pink hyundai? I guess you’ll have to buy another car then. Oops, this time you got a purple mini. Buy another car please. Yes, this is silly to suggest. So are blind bags.