VIDIYO sets officially announced!

Pros, lots of cool minifig parts, printed tiles and discovering how to integrate the beat boxes into builds.
Cons, boxed blind packs so no feeling, everything seems a bit overpriced. £4.99 for a minifig and three tiles seems a big step up from CMFs? I will want some of these, but zero interest in the app.

I want the minifigures, to add to my CMF series collection.
The bandmates are individual and not so expensive...but, wait, the bags are bind!! OMG!! I will have to buy them in Bricklink then!!
And the other ones, more expensive!! What can I dooooo???

Anyone else getting a 404 error from the download link?

Wonder if there’ll be any identifiers like dot codes on the boxes?

@chrisaw said:
"Wonder if there’ll be any identifiers like dot codes on the boxes?"

Wait do minifig bags have identifiers?

Correction
19.99
Ouch ouch

I am not burning my fingers again on a lego app. Sorry:)

When they’re heavily reduced shall pick up a couple to try it out.

I love the unicorn minifig but I can't justify spending that much to obtain it. I'm also a bit worried what the bandmates will go for in the UK. Previous CMFs seem to be €3.99 so if the bandmates are €4.99 it wouldn't seem to bode well.

I see all the obvious comments about blind boxes & pricing.

The characters look interesting, if a little pricey (as CMF is a direct comparison).

It'll be interesting to see how the app interacts with the tiles and minifigs: does it need a specific arrangement, or any MoC? Potential for more than just music bids.

I'm also really interested in how those boxes will interact with regular system parts (beyond the Dots-style decorating). I see potential for some interesting MoCs if the boxes work like true elements.

@LegoSonicBoy said:
"I'm interested to check out those BeatBoxes, though! Really intrigued by those new elements."

That platform thing looks pretty interesting to build mini dioramas.

Another though I had: will they really expand the app to have a "teaching" mode? i.e. could any printed 2x2 be used to teach new sounds? Could I use the elephant tile from 31116 to create elephant sounds? The the possibilities for sound effects, enhanced models & brick films would really open up.

More likely is a closed system, though ??

I think the ones with new animal-head moulds, like the cheetah, the bunny, the unicorn, and the red panda, look the most interesting to me; and they all certainly look like a neat source for interesting new minifigure parts once they start being parted out and sold on Bricklink, though I wouldn't buy them new.

I have no idea if these will sell well or not, so I'll be interested to see whether Lego will report on them as a success or not, at the end of the year.

Though I do think the timing's probably intentional with this theme; it might sell better than it otherwise would while we're still stuck under lockdown, since a fair number of parents are probably looking for some new gimmick to entertain their bored kids for a while. Is it cynical to imagine that's the audience Lego is aiming for with this? xD

The price increase for the blind boxes is confirmed: https://www.lego.com/en-ie/product/bandmates-43101?icmp=LP-SHH-XL-Vidiyo_Hero_XL_Bandmates_43101-TH-VDO-5NU4S6BVZN I’m very disappointed. :/ Then the BeatBoxes are smaller in dimensions than the Friends cubes but twice the price. :S

I am looking forward to seeing how the aqua tiles work with the songs in the app, but I think it’ll be quite a while before I get anything because I find every set to be over priced.

Uh...

The printed tiles = fully stocked record store MOC! The tiles are awesome, the character designs are a lot of fun, but I feel like the beat boxes are a bit too expensive. It's a wait and see for me. If the kiddos want these, I might pick some up. Those tiles though. So tempting.

I love these figures all around, but I'm concerned about the blind-boxing. That seems almost unfriendly to me after the CMF packaging. I'd love the ice cream man, alien, banshee, werewolf, and genie, but unless there's some code or marker that tells what's inside, then it's not worth it to me to try getting them.

is that kid on the Alien DJ box wearing a 501st legion shirt?

Some of the minifigure designs are cool (I might end up purchasing the Candy Mermaid eventually), but paying 20$ just for them and a few pieces just doesn't feel right. On top of that, making the CMFs be in blind boxes was an incredibly stupid move on LEGO's part. How do you expect people to buy your product, when they can't even attempt at guessing what they're buying?
Overall, this line had a lot of potential, the the final product is really disappointing. And there is no way the app gimmick is gonna keep kids interested in buying those figures.

I love the look of these! I don’t care anything about the app but I’m swooning over the figures and the printed tiles. Love the beatbox shape as well. I get the pricing complaints but part of the pricing is for the music component. Hoping to be able to purchase the boxed set of band mates then sell the extras as a set.

Easy pass, especially given that ridiculous $20 price point for those boxes. The blind bag price is ok, but I'm not a big fan of them making it impossible to feel a figure you want. I understand why, but in some ways it could actually produce more waste if you keep trying to buy the product to get one specific figure. Thankfully none catch my interest, but that packaging will likely make its way to future minifigure series.

Fairly sure I used to be in a band with that punk pirate guy

TWENTY DOLLARS!? Yikes!
By the time you’ve forked over money for a group, you’d be nearing the 100$ territory! That was a terrible idea! I get the idea behind the cases is so you can take them with you for music vids where ever you go, but whose going to be carrying that box around all the time? Much less multiples!

I hope they didn’t lock too much of the music video maker behind having to buy these tiles. Maybe you could do what they had with Nexo Knights and just scan a picture for the desired effect. That would make the pill a little easier to swallow.

As for the figures, I like them! They’re colorful and have some fun theming to them. My personal favorites are the werewolf and red panda. I could also see that Alien and the robots being useful in a space MOC.

@ARSLOCK said:
"worried that these boxed CMF, hopefully they do not do this for every CMF series going forward. Being able to ID the figure you are buying is very important to me!"

I'll be honest I am incredibly surprised all CMFs are not boxed, after all they are blind bags. Just about every other blind bag I sell are impossible to feel. LOL are the worst offender - some of these are £25+ for a chance of doubling them up

@icey said:
"Second most expensive Mermaid I'll buy.. "

I think we are in the same boat in regards to the mermaid.

Will buy some of the figures for sure!

Always nice to see a new theme coming to shelves!

So the BeatBox containers are extremely reminiscent of the iPod shuffle boxes, especially the 4th-generation one (of which I own and continue to wear the device as a fashion accessory and backup music player). However the BeatBox model renders are just slightly deceptive as the sides of the trans-clear component are not actually clear but frosted and translucent, which is a little annoying but not a dealbreaker I guess.

On closer inspection none of the new elements interest me (the minifigures never did) and I may end up skipping this theme as I did with Hidden Side. Still, for all the glaring shortcomings that I've heard about this theme, I'm glad it exists.

So basically another minifigure series...

@thebookworm said:
"A) see very little Lego for an expensive price and B) just more ways to encourage my child to be on their phone."

That DOES seem to be what you are actually getting in terms of Lego though. ;)

@CCC said:
"I thought some of the tiles might be interesting, but on closer inspection, it really is only a few for me. And none of the figures. No doubt someone will publish a list of the tiles, so kids can still play the app just like what happened with the Nexo Knights tiles.

And the pricing, that's just ridiculous."

I remember the nexo knight tiles. They made collecting the nexo shields kind of pointless for gameplay because you could simply search the name of the nexo power in a browser and scan it with another device.

Yet another theme which won't interest my Boys (5 & 8) at all.

Pesonally and as many others have said, I would just be interested in the printed tiles, but I hardly see any chance to get those for a reasonable price.

@BrickTeller said:
"Estimating the variance (with more Googling and equations) tells me I'd have to buy 51 boxes to have 84% likelihood of getting one complete set. Adding another standard deviation for a 98% likelihood requires buying 65 boxes for $325.

The lesson here is that its time to start swapping. Join a LUG if you haven't already, and trade with some friends. Yeah, you could buy and sell on BrickLink, but why reward TLG and Paypal with a cut?

Unfortunately, the target audience may not have access to the networks we AFOLs do. Which means they'll be reaching out to strangers on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and other platforms... You know, the kind of risky contact Lego was specifically trying to avoid in developing a child-safe social media platform. "

I get your concerns on how kids are supposed to unlock all this, but Craigslist is an odd place to shop for it. Most kids likely would just look on Ebay, Amazon, or maybe even Brinklink.
I've also wanted to join a LUG for a while now, but have no idea where to find one.

I really wanted to like this but the prices just seem incredibly high. They should have brought these in at a very tempting price, given them a fair chance, then increased the cost of the second wave. As it is, I don't think we'll see a second wave at all now. If one of my kids wanted a pocket money set and they told me it cost €20, I'd laugh in their face.

Only hope is that they don't start using boxes for CMFs.... If they do, i'll be doing a lot of returning.

I don't think it is a coincidence that series 21 had 12 minifigures, and the first series of these band mates also has 12 minifigures (now in blind boxes).

I would say it's a good bet that the boxes are a part of their initiative to go green with their packaging. I'm guessing for shipping purposes, 12 fits better in a larger box, and we are about to see the collector minifigures series go to blind boxes.

My reasoning behind this thought is that paper blind bags (we already know poly bags are going to paper) would likely not hold up to the usual wear and tear of feeling the content inside the packaging.

Plus Lego is counting on the minifigure collecting addicts to continue to purchasing regardless, and now sales will rise because more duplicate minifigures will be bought in the quest to collect then all.

just like anything from LEGO with app integration, the "beatboxes" are waaaaaaay overpriced. The minifig designs are neat, but since the blind ones are boxes and not bags it'll be harder to collect all of them, so I'll probably just throw the occasional one into shop @ home orders and the like

Wonder if being blind boxes, rather then bags, there will be some kind of Id code/number on the packaging? Going by the CMF's guessing not, but gonna echo the sentiment that boxing them feels like a mistake.

Also, £20 for the big boxed set? Yess for such a small set this feels massively overpriced, but there are alot of large and as far as I can tell, unique molded pieces in them which does offset this a little.

Overall though... despite liking some of the figs I feel like this theme is going to flop. In part due to what seems like a poor musical styles range choice. In other part due to the fact that if kids want to make music, they'll use another app/program to do so that doesn't require them to scan toys to use.

Blind bags are very, very easy to shoplift. I actually just want those beat bits for colorful signage in my Ninjago City. The Minifigs are all adorable too. Not very interested in the music video maker unless I could use my own playlist or Spotify.

I only want the Party Llama.
But I NEED the Party Llama!

If these were $10 I would've bought them all. For $12-15 I would've picked up one or two of my favorites. For $20 though? No way in Karzahni. I'll wait till they're on clearance.

The minifigure series on the other hand is fantastic. So far the only CMF's I've 100% are Series 14 and Mario Series 1, and the only ones I plan on finishing are Series 18 and Mario Series 2. These puppies have just been added to that list.

Back when set 40290 came out I started working on a sort of disco/party room that I filled with as many costumed minifigs as I could find to create a birthday-party display. When this theme was first announced I was looking forward to adding some singers on stage to bring the whole thing together. Looks like for the foreseeable future I'm only going to get 12/18 though!

I think the beat boxes would be more appealing if they had more unique tiles in them. From what I saw in the pictures, there's only two unique tile per box (the ones shown on the box actually), the rest being repeats and identical to the other beat boxes. I expected the tiles in those to be more specific to the genre they were representing, and the blind boxes having more random sounds...

I find the series quite interesting, not so much for the music but definitely for the figs and tiles. Might dive into it, we'll see how easy it gets to have a full set...

As huge fan of dance music such as Marshmello I love the alien, as for the rest... meh

Check your emails as Lego VIP doing a FREE promo seems its invite only for ...

Celebrate the launch of LEGO® VIDIYO™ with a FREE welcome pack when you register for the VIDIYO backstage pass.
With all-new LEGO VIDIYO™, kids can direct, produce and star in their very own music video creations using songs from popular artists -- and share them in a safe, child-friendly social feed, too

Bursting with exciting VIDIYO goodies for kids, these welcome packs include:
2 backstage pass lanyards
2 sticker sheets sets
2 shoelace charm packs (with 4 charms each)
Welcome letter
FREE access code for VIP virtual pass*

URL is https://www.legovidiyobsp.com/en-gb/ and then a referral code that's embedded from the email.

Love the alien and robot! But I can’t justify €40 for 2 minifigs and some tiles.....

@hjxbf said:
" @fakespacesquid said:
" @hjxbf said:
"By the way, how long before one guy or community collects all the tiles, scan them and publish then for free download and print? And how long before TLG lawyers come at them with everything they got, for being so rude as to destroy their cash cow...?
In fact, que them to request deletion of this comment in 3....2....1....
"

Except plenty of people did that with Nexo Knights, and nothing happened. Maybe a little less tinfoil next time"

Except those sets were reasonably priced and actually contained lots of real bricks, which was what people actually paid for back then... And the amount of unique Shields were a fraction of what we are seeing now."

The shield/tile packs contained less bricks than these boxes. And none of that changes the fact that people did exactly what you suggested and there was no reaction from Lego at all. Also, I hardly think anyone would call this a "cash cow." This is an experiment, I don't think anyone at Lego is expecting a massive ROI from this line

I thought the Disney books and Harry Potter books where over priced..... at least the Disney ones you got roughly 4 micro figures in each one and big clam shell book and 120-130 some odd peices. Also had a lot of play value and each one looked very different once opened. My daughter really enjoyed those. However $20 for 70 pieces and one person is nuts. These are going the way of brick sketches. Which I thought was a great idea to compliment the big art ones quickly / quietly where changed from $20 to $17 price then BF were a few more $ off.

Really these should be in line with the little friends box’s. Maybe $12.50 each. $20 though. If you bought everyone at $20 would be very expensive Create your own art with 4500 pieces for $130 is a great deal in comparison. Ok rant over

I just want the Werewolf and Red Panda.

If there's a blind box, then you'll have a clear (?) bag inside. That way you end up with *unopened* figure for exchange.

As to tiles. As I see it you'll have to have them phisically for app to work - it scans the scene with tiles in real time. So either you have one, or you print it. Printing is a bit of a hassle. Buying is easier.
Life will show what solutions kids come up with.

I can see myself Bricklinking some parts in the future.

I thought the BeatBits would be musical elements. Seems like the music is the one thing you can't change. Then again, it is called Vidiyo...

@monty_bricks said:
"I like the wacky minifigures and printed tiles, but putting the bandmates in blind *boxes* is an incredibly annoying move.

It looks like the bespoke cases have pushed the set prices up a fair bit as well. "

Agree, it's annoying.

Wow, it seems as though our family is in a minority of one. We enjoy buying the blind packs and opening them together. We all guess which CMF/Mario character/etc. it's going to be, and then we enjoy the surprise. Duplicates are generally desirable so that the kids don't have to argue over anything, and we often complete our collections with relatively inexpensive Bricklink orders. Much like the Hidden Side sets we own, we'll probably only use the Vidiyo app once or twice, but my kids are going to LOVE those minifigures. We're in.

Honestly, I love (most of) the minifigures in this range--the candy mermaid and the ice cream guy in particular are my favorites. I showed pictures of the line to my kids (three girls, ages 6, 5, and 3) and they were really into the bright colors and the fun designs (Unicorn DJ and Bunny Dancer were immediate favorites).

But all of that being said, $20 is a lot for one of those little pods. I could see myself buying 1 or 2 of them for my kids, but this isn't the kind of line that we will complete. I can't say I'm a big fan of the augmented realty feature either; I'll be curious to see if it catches on with kids.

On the whole, I love the originality of this product, but I'm afraid that due to the pricing and the choice to use blind boxes, this will go the way of LEGO Dimensions (another LEGO experiment that I loved, but proved to be a difficult sell).

Really love this minifig series, will have to try my luck

I was hoping for maybe a building set or two. Oh, well, I might pick up a couple of blind bags for the taste of it.

Yeah sure there are a few nice figures, but i don’t feel this at all. The figs have way too many details to reuse them, and stupid grins and tongues and stuff.
Also i expected some actual builds from the cubes, bad lego. Bad.

There are a few figs that I thought I might pick up, but since Lego has decided to go with the random box route I guess they'll be bricklinked so I get what I want instead of spending way too much on random boxes.

The LEGO VIP email I received this morning, focusing primarily on this new theme, had the subject "Motors, sensors, and music: Your weekly LEGO® newsletter" and talks about VIDIYO with a button 'Power Up' to see more, and also mentions Mindstorms, Boost and Technic.
So I assumed this was about adding some new sound module to the Powered Up component line.
The reality of it is just underwhelming with a touch of feeling cheated...

The "set" may be $20 but the text to describe it on the LEGO product page feels like a $300 set's ;-)

The figures look great. And the tiles! Awesome. The price...no thanks.

I may pick up ONE blind box just to check it out. The price is consistent for the figures considering that is how the CMF are anway. Doesn't mean it is a palatable price though. And no way of feeling...

Hopefully enough people will avoid these and the price plummets (unfortunately that means they won't do it again in the future). OR enough people buy these and sell them in the aftermarket for not much upcharge... I wonder which is more likely.

If they were easier to get, I may have to collect them all. As it stands, I won't collect any of them. I needed to save money this year anyway.

Chrisaw said: "Extra Dots are great though. Affordable, and you can mostly see what you’re getting?"

The Extra Dots are nice enough, it's just that I was a little on the fence about it to begin with (didn't have any immediate plans for them, feel I have to cut down my Lego purchases in general, simply forgetting to look for them in the store), so figuring out the random ones was just the grain that tipped the scales the other way.

These are expensive for sure but remember that the money you pay has to go to developing the app AND to paying for all those music rights.
There are a few good bits in here (I do like the look of that anchor shaped guitar and that tambourine is really neat) but with the price and the inability to know what I am getting, I will probably pass and maybe snag the good bits on Bricklink at some point or something.

@PurpleDave said:
" @IndominusBaz :
The first two waves had dual barcodes. One was the UPC that was shared by every minifig in the same wave, and the other was a barcode with no printed numbers that was unique to each character. It didn't take long before people figured it out, published lists of which barcodes went with which minifig, and even figured out how to use phones to scan the barcodes and just tell you what minifig was inside."

Or you could do what I did and just learn the barcodes.

WHS sales assistant: The new LEGO people are in [referring to S2]
Me: Great! Can I see a fresh box?
Him: Sure, but you won’t be able to tell them apart. They’re blind packaged. [Hands me box of CMFs]
Me: That’s OK. They have this barcode on the back that tells you what they are.
Him: You have an app to read the barcodes?
Me: No, I just use my eyes.
Him: You can read barcodes? With your eyes?
Me: Yup. [Proceeds to go through the packets, selecting the ones I want.] I’ll take these, please.
Him [looking at me like I’m Dustin Hofmann’s character from ‘Rain Man’. Sincerely but surprised]: Hope you found the ones you were looking for.

When later series had the bumps, LEGO did eventually try to confound that by having different configurations depending on the batch. However, the bumps did still save time by narrowing down possibilities, after which you could then feel the packets from among the contenders.

@ThisAndThat said:
"If there's a blind box, then you'll have a clear (?) bag inside. That way you end up with *unopened* figure for exchange."
Most blind boxes for other collectables have black or grey bags.

@axeleng said:
"It was the same with the "Extra Dots" sets, I was planning to buy these but the few random tiles there was enough to turn me off."
At least they had a clear window do you could see what you were getting.

Might get a few of these for the parts, and some of the Tiles look cool and couple of great musical instruments included with each fig..

One thing I am gonna do is create my own werewolf Captain America like in the comics if I get that particular pack!

I'm curious about the transparent parts. In the announcement article the transparent parts look transparent yet in the review that came later the larger part appears to be less so.

I can see a lot of MOCs being made from the new parts, though. I'll be looking for them at a sale price.

@BrickTeller:
Things are probably a bit more complicated than you accounted for. The release mentions 130 Beatbits. Each of the Beatbox sets comes with two exclusives, and each Bandmate comes with one, so that's 24 that you can check off just by buying one of everything. The Bandmates page claims 92 random Beatbits, of which you get two per purchase. Assuming the Bandmates and Beatboxes draw from the same random pool, that only accounts for 116/130 Beatbits. Then there's supposed to be Beatbits packs, which we haven't seen any pricing on. The remaining 14 for the year might be included in those packs.

@Terreneflame:
Brickteller is referring to the pile of Beatbits. Assuming you're saying that a case of Bandmates comes with 24 boxes and gets you two complete sets of minifigs, you'd still only get 48 random Beatbits per case. You'd need to buy two full cases (four sets of minifigs) and get almost no duplicates just to draw _one_ set of Beatbits.

@fakespacesquid:
Just the sheer quantity involved makes it unlikely that most kids will end up with a full set, but that doesn't mean they'll want a pile of duplicates. What they'll probably strive for is to trade away as many duplicates for new tiles as they can get their hands on. And kids have access to a trading network that adults don't: school playgrounds. Given a pool of other kids who buy into this, every school will have a brisk trading network spring up. And if there's nobody to trade with, it'll kill interest pretty quickly.

@cyberclaw16:
Punch tab boxes are a lot easier to shoplift. What I see a lot of times is blind bags that have been torn open to identify the contents until the culprit either gives up, fails to find what they were looking for, or likely steals what they were looking for. Big boxes are sometimes raided, but now that they're spreading the minifigs (and even minifig parts) between multiple bags, the odds of being able to quickly locate a specific minifig before someone catches you seem to have done the trick. But for this? It'll be easy to pop open a Bandmate and identify the minifig inside, and pocket _all_ of the tiles (no need to even identify them first).

Ultimately, though, they'll see sales drop with boxes. People like me don't buy random minifigs. We buy specific minifigs, and we're willing to buy lots of them because we can identify what we're buying. I'm not going to just escalate to buying piles of minifigs just to get the handful I want, and I'm not going to buy as many if I have to go online and pay above MSRP plus shipping on every minifig.

@axeleng:
Oh, it goes back 20 years now to the launch of Bionicle. I understand Throwbots had some sort of random pack, but I never found any evidence of it at the time. Bionicle had the Kanohi packs, Krana packs, Kanohi Nuva packs, and Kraata pods (that last one being where they really took a marketable thing too far, with just an insane number of items to collect). It just took them a bit longer to figure out how to translate that into System sets, and that required figuring out that minifigs are often the main draw for a set. Back when Bionicle was new, they _clearly_ didn't understand this, as almost every HP set had Harry Potter, almost every OT set had Luke, and almost every PT set had Obi-Wan.

@hjxbf:
Loot boxes fall under the definition of online gambling, especially as the point seems to be that you spend a ton of real money to buy a bunch of loot boxes so you can sell the rare stuff for real money. To make these illegal, you'd also have to outlaw baseball cards, which gets a little harder.

@ThisAndThat:
I was thinking that myself, but they made an announcement that suggest they plan to remove all plastic bags from packaging in the future.

@The_scizz said:
"Lots of adults are BIG mad"

I agree. Have we got any opinions from kids? You know, the ones LEGO expects to be playing with these toys?

@fakespacesquid:
There's a third "half" to the dotcode story, though. HP1 was the last to ship in the old packets, followed by Unikitty in an exclusive packet, then TLM2 in the newer packets. I don't know for sure, but I think that's around the time that the dotcodes basically disappeared. I certainly don't see any evidence of them anymore.

And I'm pretty sure it was Bitter Apple spray...

@Zander:
I did that, though. Between S1 and S2, I had 17 of the 32 barcodes memorized. Mostly what it came down to was how many I wanted. I tried to get two of every minifig through S10 (where I quit because I never even got one Mr. Gold), but if I wanted more copies, or if the barcode was really easy to memorize *coughCrashTestDummycough*, I'd end up memorizing the barcode before too long. If I didn't need more than two, there wasn't any point in identifying what it was, so I never picked up those barcodes.

I'm the same way with palping minifigs. Back in 2019, I went to the local LEGO Store to buy Jack Skellington minifigs. I was sorting through upwards of 60 minifigs a minute because all I had to do was figure out if the little box was in the packet or not, which was really easy to determine. If it was, it got set aside. If it wasn't, I didn't waste time figuring out what it was before it went back in the bin.

They joke about the Punk Pirate but I’ve been to a few pirate metal shows that match that description perfectly

Now that I've seen these... I must buy some. <-- I didn't expect that!

@AddictedToStyrene said:
" @The_scizz said:
"Lots of adults are BIG mad"

I agree. Have we got any opinions from kids? You know, the ones LEGO expects to be playing with these toys?"

I'd imagine quite a few of them will also be rather unhappy when their parents say no to shelling out $20 for one, but that's just a wild guess.

Me all the time: come on, LEGO, I love all your stuff, give me more new things and ideas!
Me, reading news about Vidiyo: cool! new stuff to connect with my kid and very cool new minifigs and tiles!
Me, realizing Vidiyo minifigs come in blind boxes: LEGO, what the heck?!?!?

Seriously, LEGO, not cool. I'm one of your most loyal and kindest fans - never complaining and always defending your creative ideas, your pricing policy, etc, but this is too much. Too much. True fans will always be getting all of your minifigs so why not just give them a chance to collect all of these cool characters? Why go down this "blind box" road? I fail to understand how this could happen.

So...did anyone else notice that they fixed the Keytar print?

@PurpleDave said:
" @IndominusBaz:
The first two waves had dual barcodes. One was the UPC that was shared by every minifig in the same wave, and the other was a barcode with no printed numbers that was unique to each character. It didn't take long before people figured it out, published lists of which barcodes went with which minifig, and even figured out how to use phones to scan the barcodes and just tell you what minifig was inside.

It was a terrible idea from the start. LEGO Brand Retail could scan the second barcode to identify which minifigs were selling, but they were supposed to be blind-bagged so the customer had no idea what they were buying. So, they scrapped that. Then sometime after S3 came out, people started noticing that little bubbles were trapped in the seal at the bottom of the packet. These proved to be somewhat consistent in their placement, so people figured out that they also were unique to each minifig, and started publishing charts that would tell you how to identify the minifigs inside. The problem with this is that while there are fonts for barcodes, there's nothing of the sort for these "dotcodes", so they were basically the result of people eyeballing the distances involved. And The LEGO Company found out people were doing this and sorta retaliated. They'd release a new wave, and during a later production run they would give common pegwarmers secondary dotcodes that were very similar to rare and highly desired minifigs. Their machines could apparently still tell the difference, but when your dotcode cheatsheet is only a rough approximation to begin with, it's useless for telling two similar patterns apart. So a lot of us just gave up on dotcodes and started palping the packets to find unique identifying pieces. The next step is obviously to just do away with packets altogether and use boxes instead.

If you think about it, this is probably inevitable anyways. They've announced that they plan to shift to sustainable/recyclable packaging, and I can't see how polymerized foil packets fits that MO."

I totally forgot the dots! LOL. Barcodes were easy, dots not so much. I must have memorized half the barcodes from S1 and S2. Buy once we were forced to go the bag feel route, I just had to master a new skill. :o)

@AddictedToStyrene said:
" @The_scizz said:
"Lots of adults are BIG mad"

I agree. Have we got any opinions from kids? You know, the ones LEGO expects to be playing with these toys?"
Those same adults are the ones shelling out the money for their kids here. I imagine that our perception on value will thus play a part in whether we encourage our kids to pick up this “theme”...

I can only see like 3 regular pieces in those boxes.

Now we know where the shark figure with a mohawk from set 60290 is from.
They are kind of interesting, some are to weird looking tho.

@nick3c:
That's...yeah. Probably. Now the question is if any of the other 17 characters will show up in any non-Vidiyo sets. Funny thing is, the shark is one of the few minifigs that I actually kinda want from this theme. Still kinda holding out hope for a King Shark bigfig, but this one I might have some plans for.

I'm glad they are covering punk AND pirates, and shark I like very much, but no way I'm getting it at full price or playing lottery with blind boxes :).

***

Having shark as a singer and man with a hook as a player is a real burn. Ouch!

@jrbookworm said:
"No metal. I'm sad. "
Absolute mood. This was our chance to get a Drop D Duck, a Screaming Salamandar, or even a BLEGH Vocal Bear. Maybe next time.

Waiting for the sight of N-Pop Girl. She kind of fits in this a bit.

Ok; I think I like these a little more than I should.

I mean; I have no use for the 'video app', but a lot of these characters are cool looking, and some are even 'practical'.

I'm picturing: the one-eyed alien as part of my space crew (I'm thinking part of engineering), Samurapper on a corner somewhere in Ninjago City (rapping, of course), the Cheerleader w/the other ones I've got (TLG dropped the ball, one of those pompoms should have been that blue that's the other half of her hair...), and other stuff w/the other characters (superheroes, more Space stuff,...). Yes, the 'blind box' idea is dumb, but hopefully this will be a 'learning experience' for TLG ('hmm; they like the figures, but not the packaging...')

@Apedemak said:
"Bummer, but just realised, boxes means no feeling for that one figure you particularly need or want, that's definitely not good"

Hopefully not a trend for all new mini figures! Might be part of new eco-friendly lego, cardboard boxes a lot easier to recycle than the traditional mini figure packaging (which we can’t recycle in the U.K).

Let's fuel that furry fandom!

"Well, that just sounds like Collectable Minifigures with extra steps."

I'll definitely try to get ahold of some of those minifigs and printed tiles though!

@PurpleDave said:
"So...did anyone else notice that they fixed the Keytar print?"
Please see post number 5.

And the minifigures are part of Series 1... I guess they are confident of it being successful enough to bring out at least one sequel series, but didn’t the collectible UniKitty characters have Series 1 on their packets too? Hmm...

@Snaz said:
" @Snaz said:
"Twenty bucks for a box, minifig, and some tiles. this is worse than Star Wars pricing

Also, is the alien DABBING? This isn't 2016, Lego"

Also, the only red panda Lego has made and it has molded human hair. And it's in a blind BOX.
" LEGO like making anthro’s and well. People certainly like buying the costume figs, these aren’t much different

So, when Bellatrix Lestrange died, she became a ghost in the Ninjago Cursed Realm.

The robot and alien beatboxes look intriguing - there's some big spaceship window potential there, with accompanying Blacktron-esque colours :D

-$5 CMFs in boxes so now you can't feel for specific minifigs
-$20 for a plastic box and only one minifigure
I gotta say this line feels overpriced.

@mafon2:
I don’t see the big deal. I’m sure he lost his hand to a crocodile, not a shark. That’s how it usually happens with pirates, from what I hear.

Just look like fancier CMF, but far more expensive. Lego is really going downhill year by year...

$20 LOL

@Dash_Justice said:
" @LegoSonicBoy said:
"Fans: Stop selling minifigures in blind bags!
LEGO: Alright, we'll sell them in blind boxes instead!..."
This is likely part of their ongoing sustainability effort, I wouldn't be surprised if the next collectible Minifigures line comes in cardboard boxes.
"

they have plastic inside the cardboard box still... seems mostly scummy move really

The ETDM guy dabbing drives me away

well, ok. Perhaps it's fun..

Blind Boxes ? Lego really ? the lego group is repeating the 1990 history with this move last time they gone close to bankrupt we will see if the pull the trigger earlier this time and start realizing

I made up my mind, buying all of them on day one. It'll be perfect to make a record store / music venue / comicon MOC. They're shiny, the tiles are amazing, the minifigs are vibrant, worth the purchase. I don't care for the app at all, but that line has something going for it that other collectible minifig series didn't have.

@oceanone:
They are so profitable at this point that they can afford to have something fail spectacularly every year. 20 years ago the problem was that they were having several things fail spectacularly at the same time, while the only grand slam they had was Bionicle. SW and HP were both holding their own, but that was a time when many AFOLs were bragging about how they were able to load up shopping carts with product that was discounted so steeply that there wasn't any profit margin left.