Review: Minions BrickHeadz

How are the Minion hands constructed? Unique piece?

Honestly, these figures look pretty nice! Though I think the minions could've maybe benefitted from a printed mouth so they don't look quite like they're starting into your soul as much. Still, if you know someone who loves Minions or these movies, it wouldn't be a bad little gift.

I personally am looking forward to the upcoming movie. Even if he's younger, I'm glad to see Gru back. I think the minions are like just about any comic relief character in that they need a straight man to balance out their antics.

Why is it that films which are ready for release are stuck in cinema release h--- for years now? Black Widow is another we want to see badly.

@Rimefang said:
"Love the minions as Brickheads."

Me too. This is what the Brickheadz is all about, love the cartoonish style and Belle looks superb, especially with the big afro.

@DavidBrick said:
" @Huw said:
"I'm excluding the polybag in the total since that won't be available everywhere."

Huw, you run one of the bigger LEGO websites. You might want to check your own website. You reviewed these two Brickhead sets, there are 4 other reviews for minifigure sets. That's six. There are actually 7 sets, 5 minifigure and 2 Brickheads, not including keychains or polybags.

https://brickset.com/sets?query=minions"

Are you referring to the Brick Built Minions set? That came out last year, so while it may technically go with the tag line for this movie, it isn’t released with the others. I suspect that’s what @Huw meant in his set count.

i love Belle's earrings. Very clever.

@PixelTheDragon said:

"Also, delaying movies this much can easily kill any hype for it. I personally couldn’t care less about Black Widow at this point."

Funny enough: I just built 76162 over the weekend. I haven't really been interested in a Black Widow movie since ~2015.
The helicopter was a fun little build, and I usually have a pretty good time at Marvel movies. I'm not sure this one looks as interesting as Black Panther or Captain Marvel did, however.

Very easily could fit a plate 1x2 w/1 knob, and a horn w/shaft 3.2 for Gru's nose.

@ResIpsaLoquitur said:
"Lego's efforts with Minions are the one time I'm going to say, horrifically, that Mega Bloks did it better."

Just going to say that there are some pretty cool Mega Construx sets out there. :-)

@FuddRuckus:
Witches, maybe, but I know two people who would probably fight you to the death over making that claim for clowns. For some reason they think my cute little Pagliaci clown with the orange hair is going to eat them...

@Mr__Thrawn:
Oh, people have been demanding a Black Widow solo film for so long that, after already having shoved her to the side in favor of Marvel’s Captain Marvel, and then killing her permanently, if they dumped BW to streaming, they’d have people rioting outside their gates. And then probably inside their gates.

@PurpleDave said:
" @PubliusMaximum:
Yup, a lot of people were so terrified of getting sick by even looking out a window that they never realized COVID-19 is caused by a virus named SARS-COV-2. Or if they did, they might not have been aware that SARS-COV-1 is an earlier form of the virus which causes SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) is caused by a different virus from the same family, and would have made this look like a walk in the park if it had spread worldwide, as it had a much higher mortality rate.

@Lordmoral:
First, nobody was allowed to go to the movies. Then nobody wanted to risk going to the movies. Then theaters couldn’t seat more than a handful of people per screen. Basically, if you release a major blockbuster that could have easily cleared several hundred million dollars in 2019, you’d be lucky to land a few million under pandemic rules/habits. It just hasn’t been worth putting films out there because you know everything is going to tank. Disney has been shoving everything to either regular D-, or D- with an additional (and quite hefty, unless you’ve got a family of four who plan to watch together) fee just to access the movie. Except New Mutants, because they only released that because they were contractually obligated to, and they happily dumped it right in the middle of the 2020 shutdown when they knew it’d perform abysmally."

But the virus worldwide lockdowns happened in 2020 right a month after a massive earthquake hit the south of the US territory of Puerto Rico.

Brickheadz aren't my cup of tea so I can't really give my thoughts on them but is anyone else annoyed when a character gets a Brickhead but not a Minifigure? Surely I'm not the only one irked by this.

@Lordmoral said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @PubliusMaximum:
Yup, a lot of people were so terrified of getting sick by even looking out a window that they never realized COVID-19 is caused by a virus named SARS-COV-2. Or if they did, they might not have been aware that SARS-COV-1 is an earlier form of the virus which causes SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) is caused by a different virus from the same family, and would have made this look like a walk in the park if it had spread worldwide, as it had a much higher mortality rate.

@Lordmoral:
First, nobody was allowed to go to the movies. Then nobody wanted to risk going to the movies. Then theaters couldn’t seat more than a handful of people per screen. Basically, if you release a major blockbuster that could have easily cleared several hundred million dollars in 2019, you’d be lucky to land a few million under pandemic rules/habits. It just hasn’t been worth putting films out there because you know everything is going to tank. Disney has been shoving everything to either regular D-, or D- with an additional (and quite hefty, unless you’ve got a family of four who plan to watch together) fee just to access the movie. Except New Mutants, because they only released that because they were contractually obligated to, and they happily dumped it right in the middle of the 2020 shutdown when they knew it’d perform abysmally."

But the virus worldwide lockdowns happened in 2020 right a month after a massive earthquake hit the south of the US territory of Puerto Rico."

That’s really awful, but I’m not sure what it has to do with delays of movies

@Lordmoral:
Yeah, Puerto Rico has been epically dumped upon in the last few years. Hurricane Maria in 2017, then in the waning days of 2019 it looks like you've had a string of strong earthquakes that's lasted over four months, and lesser earthquakes that have continued for nearly a year after that, most of which occurred during the middle of the pandemic. Frankly, I don't even remember hearing about the earthquakes, though part of that may be just that nearly everyone was in a blind panic about their own safety by mid-March.

Like @Mr__Thrawn, I'm not sure how that would impact movie releases. The vast majority of Hollywood films live and die on the North American box office. One notable exception is James Bond, which traditionally does better in the rest of the world (but that's all Eon Productions does, so they absolutely have to make a big profit off this one or it could spell trouble for the company). After the US, China is the next most important box office...for blockbuster films that can actually be released there (they have a restriction on the number of non-Chinese films, plus restrictions on the content of said films, so not everything gets past the gates). Europe is next, broken down by individual country. Nobody outside of studio accounting pays much attention to box office results in South America, Africa, or Asia (outside of China and Japan), and Puerto Rico is almost certainly rolled into the US domestic gross. I'm not sure I've ever heard box office numbers for just Puerto Rico (nor have I heard US box office broken down by individual state), but Hurricane Katrina devastated a significant chunk of the gulf coast, and made not a difference in when movies got released. California wildfires destroyed entire communities, and the release schedule went forward. There's so much of the US that any single natural disaster isn't going to shut down the entire country unless the volcano under Yellowstone _really_ lets go (the last eruption of that mega-volcano left evidence ranging from Canada to Mexico, and covered about 2/3 of the contiguous US).

This pandemic, though, got the entire world to stay home and bolt the doors. According to what I've read, social-distancing and quarantining have been so effective that the authorities who monitor influenza and determine which strains to protect against with the flu vaccines are at a complete loss, because there's barely any data to work with. Flu infection rates are only 1-2% of what they were the previous flu season, so they have no idea what strains are likely to hit hardest next season. Hollywood just can't function in that sort of environment. For one thing, they never knew when an entire state would mandate that all movie theaters close their doors. If they committed to releasing a movie, and sunk a ton of money into running ads, only to have half the US ban theater operations, that right there would guarantee the movie lost money. The flip side is they can't just sit on everything forever, as they have bills and payroll, and the financing of any new productions that are going ahead in spite of the pandemic. That's why Disney has been charging $30 a pop on top of their streaming fee to let people watch some of their films. They aren't getting much revenue from the parks, either, so they've gone from raking in billions to barely being able to afford to keep the lights on.

As people get vaccinated, and COVID is basically (hopefully) downgraded into Flu-2 (since it's not likely to simply go away), things will get back to normal, and big movies will be a regular thing again. Probably. The thing that's really up in the air is whether there will be any operational theater chains left when the dust settles. Streaming just isn't going to foot the bill for movies that cost nine figures to produce.

With the film not due out for over a year, surely these will have gone onto clearance and retired beforehand....

I like Minions and Brickheadz but I can't get excited with characters I hardly recognise.
That said, I will still be getting them though.

@BrizzaIsBack said:
"With the film not due out for over a year, surely these will have gone onto clearance and retired beforehand...."

Maybe the Kung Fu Minions, but I think the iconography of the classic Minions are recognizable and evergreen enough that they’ll sell well enough.

@Mr__Thrawn:
Kids, especially young ones, can be fickle creatures. Their hearts’ greatest desire can change five times during a single commercial break. There’s a world of difference between enjoying a Minions movie if it happens to be playing and pestering mom and dad to buy Minions merch _right_now_. If you’re not actively marketing your own product, someone else certainly is.

@TomKazutara said:
" @Mr__Thrawn said:
" @TomKazutara said:
"So Lego still produce chrome elements ?
Why aren't there more chrome pieces for the 18+ sets ?
even Bluebrixx has now chrome packs "

The ring is the only chrome part still in production"

yes, but why ?"

My understanding of the rarity of chrome pieces is the fact that for any piece you want in chrome, you need Yet Another Mo[u]ld to make an ever so slightly smaller piece to allow for the thickness of the chroming process.

@gev:
Yeah, the chrome guy process adds at least three layers: an adhesive undercoat, the layer of metal that produces the chrome effect, and a clear topcoat that protects the fragile metal layer that’s only one molecule thick. If you want a different color, that either needs to be mixed into the topcoat, or added as yet another layer. And the reason why The One Ring may be the only current exception is that the mold was only ever designed for a chromed part. They either have to keep chroming the parts or cut a new mold.

@PurpleDave said:
"chroming"

...but Apple misinterpreted it as "chrome guy".

The "usual blue dungarees" printed tile for Stuart is available from Bricks & Pieces for anyone wishing to put Bob and Kevin in matching outfits.

@FuddRuckus:
Are they? Cool. I just bought one of each set, but I was looking at having to buy a second copy of the Kung Fu Minions to build Stuart, and three more copies of the regular Minions to build Kevin, Bob, and Dave (the only named Minion to appear in all four films that have been released so far).