I’ve written before how LEGO Shop@Home’s revamped VIP Programs sucks. Well, they’ve taken it to a new low. They are offering VIP members a chance to win a 2012 San Diego Comic Con exclusive Shazam! minifig. By the picture above, it looks like Shazam! comes in a nice acrylic case and it also looks like it’s been graded by some self-important collectibles authority. You can enter up to 15 times and each entry will cost 50 VIP points. That would mean 750 points to maximize your chances. Just to give you a better picture of how much 750 points is, buying a 20th Anniversary Slave I set, $119.99 MSRP, will net you 780 points. 750 points will also get you a $5 off voucher to use at LEGO Shop@Home or in-store (provided you redeem and get the code prior to your online purchase or visit to the store) with some points left over ($5 is 650 points).
So on one hand, you could see it as 15 free entries to the raffle with a purchase of the Slave I set. On another hand, it’s $5 in raffle tickets. But on another hand (yes I live in a world where everyone has three hands), it feels sleazy and dirty. Not something I normally equate with such a family-friendly conscious company as The LEGO Group. They’ve given away their SDCC exclusives before via twitter retweets. So to actually charge something now, even something as abstract as points, it just feels off somehow.
No doubt it’s a nice opportunity to get an extremely rare collectible. I recognize what LEGO is trying to do with their collectibles and exclusives; and also trying to bring some exclusive content to their VIP program. But this Shazam! raffle just doesn’t elevate either in my mind.
If you’re interested, you have until Monday March 2nd to claim your entries.
Besides the three large statues and the retail space, LEGO had a pretty cool booth, leading to large crowds and wait times. Those things aren’t necessarily bad because I’d argue that if you aren’t waiting in line half the day while at Comic Con, you’re not having a good time.
The booth was divided into two sections. The first was a comic book making section. Yes. You can make a comic book. It was a very basic comic where you design your own minifig superhero. After a couple of other personalization options, your story is complete and then you send it to the printer. The printer then prints and binds your book, and then it is handed to you in a plastic bag.
They had a couple of stations going at the same time but the bottle neck was the printer. It chugged along just fine though without any hiccups all weekend. I kinda regret not devoting more time to getting a comic book made. Or even getting a better picture of the final product.
The second section was a two parter. The first part had you create a minifig from a selection of parts at their minifig bar. Then, you had the opportunity to take your minifig and place it in any of the pre-built dioramas and take a photo.
The dioramas were built by a panel of Master Model Builders and other artists including friend-to-the-site and artist Brandon Griffith and Certified Professional Nathan Sawaya. And you know what I really appreciate? I appreciate the fact that LEGO gave the artists credit and gave information to one of their social media accounts.
Coalesce by Brandon Griffith
One of the biggest surprises of the minfig bar were the three Comic Con exclusive minifig torsos you could choose from.
I didn’t really think too much of the dioramas and the minifig bar until I decided to make figs for my three kids. And then I made one for me and the wife. And then after that I looked at the dioramas and it all clicked and made total sense to me.
Avengers Armory by Tristan Cain
It’s hard to describe that moment of clarity of why anyone would want to spend the time to do this, but I got it and totally dug it.
The Rainbow Room by Grant Davis
The dioramas ranged from the abstract to familiar vignettes.
Smile by Nathan Sawaya
Oh, and did I mention that this was all free? The comic book and any minifig you created from the bar were free for the taking. Right? How awesome is that? So many booths selling stuff or showing off stuff they’re going to sell later. It’s quite refreshing to come across something that was free. Everything they offered was focused on YOU the customer. LEGO really knocked it out of the park. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’ll be the first to give LEGO honest criticism but their booth was awesome this year. Between this and the minifig giveaway, they did good!
I’ve been on vacation for the past two weeks and just got back into the swing of things this past Monday. But I’m back to blogging now and wanted to share my experiences at Comic Con starting with the LEGO exclusives. I’ve been chasing Comic Con exclusives for a long time and have been witness to all of LEGO’s different iterations of distribution ever since they got into the exclusives game. And long time readers of this blog will know that I’ve never been a fan and criticized their methods, some years more harshly than others. I’m not one to pull punches either and will always be honest in my opinion with them, their products, and their practices. So, know that when I say they got it right this year, I mean it.
How LEGO Improved Giving Away Exclusive Minifigs
This year, they brought the iPad game back after a 1-year hiatus (last year, they used Comic Con’s exclusives portal to handle distribution) and one of my biggest gripes in years prior was the time they would start that iPad game. It always started at 12:30, sometimes a few minutes earlier but not early enough to make any measurable difference. And that was a bad time because for anyone to have a chance at the game, they’d have to line up first thing in the morning. The line would get so long it would go down the back of the convention hall, run along the marina, and go past the Marriott hotel, even reaching as far as The Cheesecake Factory. Or so I’ve heard. If you found yourself in line anywhere near the Manchester Grand Hyatt, you’d have zero chance. And really, they should send people down there and give them a warning that if they’re that far back in line they probably won’t even have a chance to play the game. That’s just common decency and respecting your fan base.
‘X’ marks the spot. The further away you were from that, the longer it would take and the less likely you were to have a chance to win.
But back to the starting time. Like I said, having it start at 12:30pm was bad. You’d waste half the day waiting in line and you’ll most likely miss out on getting other exclusives or even attending a panel or two. It didn’t matter to LEGO, they weren’t the ones in line. They’d mosey on up there, set up their iPads and let the line run through.
This year LEGO started processing the line in the morning. The scheduled time was 9:30am but they started as early as, I want to say, 8:15am. This was TONS better because as soon as you were done you’d still have time to get in line to get into the convention hall and have a shot at getting other exclusives. You’d also still have the option of attending a panel or two or attend some other event. It was liberating in a way. I did not find myself questioning my life choices or getting burned to a crisp waiting outside in the sun for hours on end.
Another welcome change was that they tweaked the win-loss ratio of their iPad game. A little birdie told me that it was tweaked to around 80-20 instead of what it was before at about 60-40 or 50/50. While I do like those odds way better, first come first served is still, I think, a better method. Waiting in line for a couple of hours just to lose and walk away with nothing? Still disheartening, but even more so now if you fell into that 20%.
How LEGO Improved Selling Exclusive Retail Sets
This is the second year in a row that Comic Con ran the most popular exclusives through their portal. Registered and confirmed attendees were given a set number of tickets each day, and they can enter any number of raffles with those tickets. Those who were willing to forego everything else to get in line for one in previous years now found themselves with the same chances as every one else trying to make a buck and/or nab an exclusive. That’s the good and bad of it in a nutshell.
Obviously, there are pros and cons to this approach but I’d like to think of it as having more benefits than detriments. mos_eisley still disagrees with me. With this raffle system there’s way less line waiting. If you win, you get a specific time slot to go pick up your set. If you don’t win, it’s one less thing you have to do giving you more time to do something else. And if you completely missed out, you still had a chance to still get them all.
On Sunday, there was a fair amount of leftover sets from people failing to pick up them up on their assigned days. Leading up to Sunday, it was up in the air as to how one could acquire them but I found out that morning that anyone purchasing at least $50 worth of LEGO would have the opportunity to buy one of the leftover sets. I thought that was a great idea, completely fair, and a win-win for everyone. It’s not too much money to put out on top of the cost of the exclusive, you get some more LEGO out of it, and the retail booth (operated by LEGOLAND California) makes some additional money. Win win for everybody.
How LEGO Can Still Improve
First thing I’d do is not bag the exclusive figures. This year, LEGO decided to bag up every single minifig and hand off the bags to winners of their iPad game. This point of this suggestion isn’t so much a quality of life issue for attendees, but for the poor soul(s) who had to sit there, bag up each exclusive, and then arrange them neatly back into a box.
Second thing I’d do is get rid of the retail booth. A friend brought up this point and it’s something I completely agree with. It takes up space that can be dedicated to more of booth activities. LEGO’s booth foot print is divided up between an activities space and the retail space, about a 70-30 split respectively. This year it seemed more crowded than ever on the activities side. They should stop selling sets, and just have a window where people can come by to purchase their exclusive set and that’s it. Maybe a keychain or two, or a small polybag. Everything they sell that isn’t the exclusive can be bought online and shipped for free. I’d be interested to see what kind of sales numbers they pull during the weekend vs. the cost of paying for staff and logistics.
Conclusion
They’ve addressed every major issue I’ve complained about in the past (the late start times and low win-loss ratio). There are a few minor ones that could be improved upon still but this is a start. Before, it felt like making changes to improve the processes moved at a glacial pace. This year, the process felt so polished and went so smoothly, it’s a wonder why it was never implemented like this before. It could be because half of the exclusives, the retail sets, were handled by Comic Con’s exclusives portal. It could also be because there’s a new crew in charge; I didn’t recognize anyone running the distributions or manning the booth as from years past.
Except for that one guy from LEGOLAND that sells multiples of all of the exclusives and throws in extras and extras of all of the minifigs to the guy from Skybound every year. I recognized that guy. He was still there.
I haven’t really posted much on the big Star Trek stuff that’s been going on lately, which I should. Yes, I know, we are a Star Wars site at our roots, but I’ve always had a place for both of the huge franchises. Star Wars has been in a bit of a lull since Solo, failing to do a lot to surprise and thrill much of anyone outside of small groups (a lot of the comics are good, Resistance is not bad… but both are pretty niche).
On the other end of side, Star Trek has been seeing a pretty huge resurgence after years of neglect at the hands of CBS. The launch of Discovery a couple of years ago manages to get tons of people to sign up to CBS All Access for a couple of months to binge them (myself included), but with the announcement of more new series to fill out their service, that suddenly made it seem more worthwhile.
They took the first steps last year before the second season with the launch of Short Treks, which tied into the main show. The second season was certainly stronger with the first as well, and introduced some great versions of old characters in Captain Pike, Spock, and Number One. Seeing that they’re all returning in the next batch of Short Trek is exciting, since they weren’t going to be in the mainline show going forward. And then CBS showed off the Picard trailer…
I’ll admit, I was skeptical of the Picard show when they first announced it. I love Patrick Stewart, I love the character of Picard, but there was so much more to mine in the setting and lore. Yet, as more and more details have come out, and the teasers, it was clear that this had all the potential to be something special. At SDCC today, they dropped the first trailer.
Okay, so much to unpack in this, but let me get this out of the way first: THAT’S SEVEN OF NINE! I, like most Trek fans, have mixed feelings about Voyager (it’s better than most think, and as bad as most remember), but her character was great and Jeri Ryan is a fantastic actress. Seeing her, and that there has been some obvious and clear evolution of the character over the years, absolutely thrills me. This went from some background excitement to full hype train for me, and I will have to pick up CBS All Access the moment it comes out.
And LEGO… Star Trek is hot again, and I don’t think anyone has the license for building toys right now. Just sayin’… we know you’ll do competing licenses and lines, we’ve seen it (like Super Heroes). So maybe it’s time for you to go into this and get all of my money…
Today is Saturday, the day the con will be the most crowded. And unlike the previous two days, there is a LEGO-related panel that might be of interest:
New LEGO Content Releases
11:15am – 12:15pm
Room 6A
Go behind the scenes and get a sneak peek of upcoming LEGO animation. Jason Cosler (LEGO producer) and Robert May (LEGO producer) will be sharing exciting new LEGO animated content and hold a Q&A session moderated by Joshua and John Hanlon (Beyond the Brick).
Today is also the last day for the LEGO exclusive minifigure giveaway and today it’s going to be Zebra Batman.
And to complete the DC-centric LEGO exclusives, today is the day you can pick up the retail exclusive, 77903 The Dark Knight of Gotham City, if you are a confirmed winner in the exclusives portal. Be sure to bring your QR code!
Again, not much going on today but, like yesterday, there are the two giveaways/raffles to get through.
The first thing is the instant win minifigure. Barb from the Netflix show Stranger Things is today’s offering. The games starts at 9:30 in the Sails Pavilion so get there early.
The last item to make note of is the retail exclusive. If you won the opportunity to purchase the LEGO Star Wars exclusive set, 77901 Sith Trooper, for today Friday July 19th, bring your QR code to the LEGO booth at your allotted time slot.
Have fun out there, stay hydrated, and wear sunscreen.
There isn’t much in terms of programming that is worth mentioning for LEGO nerds for today Thursday Wednesday July 17th. But there are two major things to remember
The first is the instant win game for the PS4 Spider-Man. The giveaway starts promptly at 9:30, upstairs in the Sails Pavilion.
The second is if you were a lucky winner of the LEGO Marvel retail exclusive, 77902 Captain Marvel and the Asis, today is the day to do your pickups. If you entered the raffle over at the Comic Con Exclusives Portal, go log in and see if you’ve won.
Nintendo posted their San Diego Comic Con plans earlier today. They, as always, have two presences at the show.
First up is their space on the main show floor. It should come as no surprise that they are going to showcase MARVEL ULTIMATE ALLIANCE 3: The Black Order given the venue. The game will actually launch during the show and will be available for purchase/download on July 19th. The title is a Nintendo Switch exclusive.
Their Nintendo Gaming Lounge will once again be at the San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina. There’ll be a selection of upcoming games shown there for your demo-ing pleasure:
Just like Barb in season 1, this minifigure will be hard to find. LEGO Stranger Things Barb is the last reveal for LEGO’s SDCC exclusives. Like the Zebra Batman and PS4 Spider-Man, Stranger Things Barb will be an instant-win giveaway. Line begins as soon as the door opens. So if you’re going to try your luck at nabbing a Barb, plan to miss most of Comic Con accordingly.
This year’s minifig giveaway line up is probably one of the strongest ones ever. I don’t think anyone could have guessed Barb would ever be made into LEGO form. PS4 Spidey is still at the top of my hit list for this year’s SDCC trip, but LEGO Stranger Things Barb comes a close second.
While I want this figure, I kind of don’t want it at the same time because then I’ll feel like I need to get the Stranger Things Upside Down set.
Hopefully, you guys were smart enough to pile a bunch of your ticket entries into Friday and Sunday as those were the two days that designated for the LEGO Star Wars retail exclusive. We didn’t know what that exclusive was but we do now: 77901 Sith Trooper Bust. Out of the three LEGO exclusives, this Sith Trooper Bust is, in my opinion, the best one, followed up by the Captain Marvel LEGO exclusive and then the Batman LEGO exclusive.
I can totally see a whole line of busts and it would do pretty well I’m thinking. Star Wars helmet designs are iconic and translate surprisingly well into brick form. Make Boushh next!
