Random minifig of the day: sh0130

@PurpleDave said:
"This is the minifig that uncovered the SDCC scandal. Someone posted a photo of a large shopping bag full of these minifigs the day before they started giving them out. FBTB did a multi-part expose on how the entire system was rigged to prevent adults from being able to win. The following year, an entirely new contest format was rolled out, which prevented human meddling."

Is this documented somewhere?

@B_Space_Man said:
" @PurpleDave said:
"This is the minifig that uncovered the SDCC scandal. Someone posted a photo of a large shopping bag full of these minifigs the day before they started giving them out. FBTB did a multi-part expose on how the entire system was rigged to prevent adults from being able to win. The following year, an entirely new contest format was rolled out, which prevented human meddling."

Is this documented somewhere?
"

A simple Google search is all it takes.

Is this the first random Minifigure without a new or used value?

@Rimefang said:
" @B_Space_Man said:
" @PurpleDave said:
"This is the minifig that uncovered the SDCC scandal. Someone posted a photo of a large shopping bag full of these minifigs the day before they started giving them out. FBTB did a multi-part expose on how the entire system was rigged to prevent adults from being able to win. The following year, an entirely new contest format was rolled out, which prevented human meddling."

Is this documented somewhere?
"

A simple Google search is all it takes. "

Try as I might, I was not successful. However I’m not privy to what some of those abbreviations stand for, so my keywords were failing me.

As an exclusive giveaway mini, I’m wondering how many of these were actually produced and what percentage of that the 446 brickset owners would be

@Spacefarer said:
""Oh you want to buy a ComicCon-exclusive figure? How many surplus organs do you have?""

Even if I gave all the organs I have in my body including all bones, skin, muscles etc I would not have enough man!

I honestly thought from just a glance at the picture that this was Chancellor Palpatine, before I took a closer look.

In fairness, he does have the same hairpiece (different colour, but white is still perfectly plausible for Palps) and same torso colour as https://brickset.com/minifigs/sw0418, so I can kinda see why I made that mistake, and a cape wouldn't look out of place in Palpatine's wardrobe either; that, and I have had Star Wars on the brain lately after listening to the movies' DVD bonus features while working on things these last couple of weeks.

Might also say something about the SW character designs being far more engrained in my memory than the MCU ones, too... I guess being invested in a movie series since childhood will kinda do that!

Thing is, this is the only minifig they ever did of The Collector, so if you're a big MCU fan and want figs of every character Lego's done (even if you don't want every variant), you'll pay through the nose to complete that collection. There are two listed on Bricklink as I type this. One is used and costs six hundred dollars. The other is new and would set you back as much as 75419.

@TheOtherMike said:
"Thing is, this is the only minifig they ever did of The Collector, so if you're a big MCU fan and want figs of every character Lego's done (even if you don't want every variant), you'll pay through the nose to complete that collection. There are two listed on Bricklink as I type this. One is used and costs six hundred dollars. The other is new and would set you back as much as 75419."

The thing about the thing is - it's the Collector, and he's kind of a doofus. If he weren't played in the MCU by Benicio del Toro, nobody would really care. In that scenario, you'd have to BE the Collector to even WANT the Collector - and I'm pretty sure he'd only want his own minifigure because he's the embodiment of OCD and FOMO.

Quick Lore: he's the Grandmaster's brother. Jeff Goldblum and Benicio del Toro are brothers in the MCU! Man, I do like that.

@Crux said:
" @TheOtherMike said:
"Thing is, this is the only minifig they ever did of The Collector, so if you're a big MCU fan and want figs of every character Lego's done (even if you don't want every variant), you'll pay through the nose to complete that collection. There are two listed on Bricklink as I type this. One is used and costs six hundred dollars. The other is new and would set you back as much as 75419."

The thing about the thing is - it's the Collector, and he's kind of a doofus. If he weren't played in the MCU by Benicio del Toro, nobody would really care. In that scenario, you'd have to BE the Collector to even WANT the Collector - and I'm pretty sure he'd only want his own minifigure because he's the embodiment of OCD and FOMO.

Quick Lore: he's the Grandmaster's brother. Jeff Goldblum and Benicio del Toro are brothers in the MCU! Man, I do like that."

They are not biological brothers though are they? All the Elders Of The Universe just call each other "brother" don't they? The Grandmaster has blue skin and the Collector white.

In any case, Lego needs to do a ROM and the Spaceknights theme.

@BLProductions said:
"Yeah, it was not simply a simple Google search to find primary sources. I don't care what Gemini spits out, you never trust the robot. (Also it literally pulled from @PurpleDave 's comment above, just to further prove its uselessness.) Anywho, here's what I found:

https://brickset.com/article/7210/sdcc-minifig-raffles-were-rigged
https://marveltoynews.com/sdcc-2013-lego-exclusive-minifigures-raffle-rigged/
https://www.fbtb.net/lego-dc-super-heroes/2013/07/29/sdcc-marvel-and-dc-minifigure-giveaways-how-lego-gamed-the-system-part-1/
https://www.fbtb.net/lego-dc-super-heroes/2013/08/01/sdcc-lego-responds-to-the-minifigure-giveaway/

(There are more FBTB articles covering it, you can search that site for them, they all have the same article name.) Interestingly, all these articles date from SDCC 2013, not SDCC 2014, and I think they pertain to a Spiderman minifig, not this one. I haven't been able to find any articles about the 2014 SDCC raffles, and specifically the one for the Collector, being rigged. "

It's the 3-part FBTB article that I was specifically referring to, where they detailed how the raffle was done by a paper ticket draw, but any adult who showed up got a ticket out of the apron. Any family that came through, _one_ kid would get a ticket out of the hand, and the rest of the family would get one out of the apron. Only the hand tickets were winners, so they were purposefully selecting who would win and who wouldn't. TLG denied that they did anything to rig the process, but the problem was they weren't the ones running the process. They handed that job off to LEGOLAND staff.

The Collector was a separate issue, where the people in charge of running the booth were giving these minifigs to people who often weren't even attending SDCC. I've met two people who told me they'd been getting free copies of every SDCC minifig at the point where we talked. The bag full of Collectors were never awarded in the "random" draw at all (the picture was posted the day before they even did the drawings for that minifig). They were either stolen, or they were pulled from stock and given away (possibly involving bribes, considering there were at least 20 in the bag).

Once the right people at TLG found out what was happening, the format going forward through 2019 involved an iPad app. You'd get in line, they'd hold out the iPad to the person at the head of the line, and you'd scan your SDCC badge. It would either inform you that you won (in which case your badge number was burned for the day, and you could not enter the same contest again), or it would say you weren't (in which case you could go back to the end of the line and keep trying your luck until you won or they ran out). Obviously, in 2020, things didn't go as planned, and they had to come up with new ways to give out the minifigs that had been produced, since nobody attended SDCC in person.

The iPad system solved three problems. The draw was now truly random, preventing the ticket shenanigans detailed by FBTB. The iPad now tracked how many minifigs had been given out, so someone would have to answer for any shortages (meaning no more siphoning them off to give away to friends). And because it required you to scan your unique badge ID, it only worked on paying attendee badges (meaning vendors who got early access to the venue were locked out unless they also paid for a regular badge). I don't know if that third problem actually impacted the LEGO booth, but I have previously seen complaints from paying attendees who were first in line to enter the building, only to get to their booth of choice and be informed that whatever rare collectible was already out of stock because the vendors cleaned them out and then put them on sale for exorbitant prices in their own booths before the doors even opened.

@B_Space_Man said:
"Try as I might, I was not successful. However I’m not privy to what some of those abbreviations stand for, so my keywords were failing me. "

I only used two acronyms. The first was SDCC, which should be familiar as San Diego Comic-Con for anyone who has regularly discussed any of these giveaway minifigs. The other is FBTB, which originally stood for From Bricks To Bothans, and was a site that was devoted to SW LEGO collecting. It was also the URL for the site. By the time that triple-article had been posted, the original owner had already moved on and handed the keys over to someone he'd brought on to help manage the site. That second owner grew increasingly less interested in both LEGO and Star Wars, and rather than likewise handing control over to someone new, he just started blogging about random stuff that did interest him, which is why many current AFOLs might not be familiar with the site.

@Brickalili:
I think the early minifigs were limited to runs of 1000, and later ones were bumped up to 2500, but I'm not finding hard numbers for this specific year.