New build-a-minifigure parts for Halloween

@Huw, on the subject of Halloween, I see 5006590 & 5006591 are available on the US lego.com. Do you know if or when they're coming to the UK?

"[H]ead on down to your local brand store as soon as you get a chance!"
Oh, how I wish I had a local Lego store. The nearest one is hours away, and I've only been twice. And the first time, I didn't realize the BAM stands had exclusive pieces, although I knew by the second visit and was able to get a redeco of Toy story 4 Jessie's hat/hair piece with tan hair and an orange toolbox. (I also got what I thought was the brick-torso piece in a new color, but had forgotten about the minifig in 40486, which I already had.)

@Huw, do you know if these will be on the digital BAM or just in stores

I never find these parts like they were never put into the stations.

They look awesome! Want'em all! :-) Thanks for the article!

I recall seeing the sugar skulls on B&P.

Wow we were in the store last week and my youngest daughter built these exact same figures herself. The picture I took of them before we left is almost identical.

Southampton (same local store as Huw) told me on Saturday afternoon they had none in packages/pre-made but bits in the BAM buckets so decided to wait till they have the packages in. Huw must have been in earlier :)

Excited to pick these up! I think they’ll pair nicely with 10273 for display this Halloween

Was at my local store on Saturday and I failed to check the BAM section for new stuff :(

These are cute. I got the first three of those on my trip to the Lego store on Saturday. I had to ask for them though—they had them pre-assembled and the build-a-mini tower had only some (not all) of the new parts. It's a bit of a shame the state the tower was in (all mixed together, hard as heck to fish out the tiny heads among all the torsos and legs). I've seen that some stores are introducing a new type of build-a-mini station. Maybe that might improve things?

The Day of the Dead woman is a stunning figure, and, with a more interesting accessory, could easily slot into a CMF series. I really want to assemble her. I don't know if every female Day of the Dead skeleton is meant to be La Catrina, however. I'd expect based on consistent depictions of her like in the BrickHeadz that she'd be more colorful and have a wide hat. I think this character is just a female celebrant of the holiday.

The witch is disjointed and not great. I've been waiting ages for a modern yellow wacky hag face and we still don't have one. The hat/hair in orange and black is ideal for a classic spooky Halloween witch and I'm glad they're releasing it as a part, but it doesn't suit the rest of the elegant figure design or colors. Maybe if the flask was orange, it'd tie together better and give us a new color. I don’t find the head very compelling either, so the body, head, and hat feel like they're from separate figures.

I really like the bat boy and think he's mostly cohesive, but the head throws me off because of the cleft chin. That lets down the effect because it makes it clear it's not a child's head being used on the figure. Another copy of his torso with standard black arms would probably go great with the witch's hair to construct a more vintage spooky Halloween witch.

The scarecrow is okay. I'm glad to finally see one with the pumpkin mask, and I appreciate the unique head print, but the torso feels generic and he should have goten printed legs. The outfit colors and prints simply don't do the spooky scarecrow concept justice.

Of these, the skeleton woman is the best-designed, but every other figure has good parts to make them worthwhile. I definitely want to seek these out.

@8BrickMario said:
"The Day of the Dead woman is a stunning figure, and, with a more interesting accessory, could easily slot into a CMF series. I really want to assemble her. I don't know if every female Day of the Dead skeleton is meant to be La Catrina, however. I'd expect based on consistent depictions of her like in the BrickHeadz that she'd be more colorful and have a wide hat. I think this character is just a female celebrant of the holiday.

The witch is disjointed and not great. I've been waiting ages for a modern yellow wacky hag face and we still don't have one. The hat/hair in orange and black is ideal for a classic spooky Halloween witch and I'm glad they're releasing it as a part, but it doesn't suit the rest of the elegant figure design or colors. Maybe if the flask was orange, it'd tie together better and give us a new color. I don’t find the head very compelling either, so the body, head, and hat feel like they're from separate figures.

I really like the bat boy and think he's mostly cohesive, but the head throws me off because of the cleft chin. That lets down the effect because it makes it clear it's not a child's head being used on the figure. Another copy of his torso with standard black arms would probably go great with the witch's hair to construct a more vintage spooky Halloween witch.

The scarecrow is okay. I'm glad to finally see one with the pumpkin mask, and I appreciate the unique head print, but the torso feels generic and he should have goten printed legs. The outfit colors and prints simply don't do the spooky scarecrow concept justice.

Of these, the skeleton woman is the best-designed, but every other figure has good parts to make them worthwhile. I definitely want to seek these out."

Of course, at the BAM stations you can mix and match parts as you like. You could make a scarecrow just like that one but with printed legs that might or might not match. If you don’t like the catrina’s handbag, you could always give her a saxophone or a laptop. And so on.

@Blondie_Wan said:

"Of course, at the BAM stations you can mix and match parts as you like. You could make a scarecrow just like that one but with printed legs that might or might not match. If you don’t like the catrina’s handbag, you could always give her a saxophone or a laptop. And so on."

I'm aware. I'm just reviewing the recommended designs for them because this is what LEGO suggested for their completed looks. I fully intend to see if there are options at the BAM station that better suit them and ultimately will be using my home collection of parts to make them into the versions I want. But this is what we're given as options for complete minifigures, and I think that's open to critique.

@sjr60 said:
" @Huw, on the subject of Halloween, I see 5006590 & 5006591 are available on the US lego.com. Do you know if or when they're coming to the UK?"
Answering my own question, now also available in the UK!

Does anyone know if old BAM parts are kept in stores until they're used up, or if they're removed and replaced? I'd hate for these exclusive parts to be made rarer because employees just throw them away.

I wish I had a local store nearby to find some of these BAM pieces. Some of the figures look fun!

I love BAM exclusive parts so much. The Day of the Dead figure looks incredible and it's wonderful to see those vampire bat pieces recolored!

@Huw said:
" @myth said:
"These look excellent, I’ll make sure to pick them up. But is there a way to record them in Brickset database? :-)"

Only if they are recorded as minifigures at BrickLink. Some are, but not all: https://brickset.com/minifigs/category-LEGO-Brand/subcategory-LEGO-Brand-Store-Build-A-Minifigure"

Wow, that’s excellent! I thought you said at some point that none of them are in the database because they weren’t cataloged in the data file you import. I don’t get all of them but I have some from your list I need to add to my collection. Another great reason I use Brickset!

I was able to pick up these figures on Saturday as well as a few others. Still need to find the sailor torso. I had to visit two different stores because the first one only had the Witch, Scarecrow & Bat Boy as well as a few other accessories like the bulldog & bunny. Was glad the parts were in the BAM towers so I could mix and match the parts I wanted.

My local store had a couple additional figures to go along with those that they had this past weekend. I'm a sucker for Halloween so I picked them up.

https://imgur.com/39rObx4

I'd love to see a Día de los Muertos Seasonal Lego set based on the holiday. They do the Chinese New Years sets for China's market, so I think the same type of thing in Mexican markets would be popular, and definitely popular internationally as well. I'd buy one for sure!

I picked up the Witch, Bat Boy and Scarecrow on 1 September at the LEGO store at the Westfield Shepherd's Bush. Was there for the S23 CMFs and the Halloween BAMs took me by surprise. I didn't see La Catrina but would have got her in preference to the Scarecrow as I already have that Jack-O'-Lantern head, the best part of that minifig.

@sjr60:
Years ago I had to order one of the skulls from someone in Europe, because it wasn’t available in the US, and the deco was scratched when it arrived. Good to know I can buy a pristine copy now.

@TheOtherMike:
I don’t remember ever seeing a brick-costume torso in primary blue at BAM. They did have teal for a while, but judging by how few are listed for sale on BL, blue is probably still exclusive to the baby shoe.

@darthmar:
When the pandemic eased up enough that they could allow people inside, my local store started prebuilding _ALL_ of the BAM 3-packs. If you wanted anything different, they kept all of the loose parts in the space between checkout and PAB, which was roped off, and an employee had to pull bespoke BAM requests and any PAB purchase. As things eased up further, they still kept making these seasonal exclusives as 3-packs that you could just buy. If your store is operating in a similar manner, they may not have any of those parts stocked to the bins, or in small enough quantities that the stock on the floor runs out fairly quickly. It’s common enough knowledge that desirable BAM-exclusive parts exist, so they get targeted by resellers, and not dumping them into the bins helps keep them available to casual buyers…if they know to ask.

@AustinPowers:
I can’t be sure about any of the other parts, but the chameleon (unless the print changed) was first available back when the teal brick-costume torso hit BAM, because I remember a member of my LUG pointedly buying one of each because they were the same color. The pig has also been available through BAM before, but I did finally make a point of grabbing one in that color on Saturday. I had a few of the fleshie pigs, but I wanted a bright pink one for DC’s League of Super Pets, and knowing it was available through BAM, there was no way I was paying secondary market rate.

@EmoryC:
@CCC:
Are you referring to the online Minifig Factory that’s more about printing a custom torso than grabbing unique-but-otherwise-stock parts? I skimmed through it a while ago and noticed while it has a much smaller selection of parts than the in-store BAM (Minifig Factory in my store just has a separate set of bins that feature all the same parts excluding torsos), it has some basic parts that you can’t always get in-store like a broader range of plain legs. The options for designing your own torso were also different, such as not having the freehand drawing option or localized designs online, but I’m pretty sure there were a few online designs that weren’t available at my store.

@CathyVT:
For these seasonal minifigs, you might try calling a few US-based LEGO Stores and see if you can find one that’s willing to ship them to you (anyone living outside of the US should obviously try stores local to where they live, if there are any).

@garethsmith72:
They don’t actually ship them to stores premade. It’s the local staff who assemble them in the BAM clamshells so customers can just grab one and take it to checkout. For them it’s just a matter of grabbing handfuls of the relevant parts from the shipping cases, vs customers having to paw through the bins looking for something that might not even be there (or that they might not recognize as new if they see it).

@Lyichir:
If it’s a tall cylinder, that’s for Minifig Factory. My store has a complete range of bins in each vertical stack (with either four or six stacks on the tower), excluding the torsos because they have to load blank white ones into the printer. I can’t remember if they separate accessories and hairs/hats, or if those get blended like on the BAM tower. I do remember being told Minifig Factory was replacing BAM, but that turned out to be false. They still maintain both towers at my store because BAM needs the torsos, and most customers would grab a full minifig in addition to getting their custom-printed torso and 1x3 brick. They don’t inventory the parts separately, though. You’d still need to hit the actual BAM for torsos, but depending on how busy things are, you might be able to cover the rest fro

These are really nice-looking figs!

I wish LEGO sold these as packs online or at least put the parts up on Pick a Brick. The nearest LEGO Store for me is Charlotte/Concord, NC and that's at least a 3-4 hour drive from my home here in the Southwest Virginia coalfields; and impossible with my current circumstances.

im so sad that i do not have a LEGO store near me, the closest is 10hr 31min by car. ill unfortunately miss out on these beautiful minifigs

@PurpleDave: So at least I still got a rare part. And his legs are unique too, which I had forgotten abou: They're 71029-5's legs, but light blue instead of tan.

i got the bat boy while i was visiting the lego store the other day

@8BrickMario:
In a bit of generous over-fairness, La Catrina’s purse does match her skull! The colors often associated with Halloween in the US are black, orange, green, and purple. This mix of minifigs leans pretty heavily into that color set, plus with redheads who have more orangey hair, green, blue, and purple all balance things out a bit, so I think the witch works fine as is. Actually, I’d give her a green flask, to cover the full color scheme. The bat boy could have a chin dimple, or just be chubby from eating too much candy (easily supported by his deco). The off-center gap in his upper teeth just screams “kid with a missing tooth”.

@goldenguy880:
Old parts stay in both PAB and BAM until sold, or if a store employee either determines they are worn out or picks them up off the floor. They take this to enough of an extreme that I even caught my local store blending several PAB parts into one bin, because they couldn’t put new parts on the wall until there were open bins to put them in, and they had several bins that couldn’t be refilled because those parts were no longer available. I think they still had to get permission from their regional manager before they were allowed to dump all those remainders into a mixed bin.

That isn’t such an issue for old BAM parts, since all BAM parts go into mixed bins by element type, but nobody wants to weed out the obsolete parts. I’ve occasionally found a seasonal element that I knew hadn’t been available for over a year. If a part moves slowly, they just don’t restock it as often. Those parts may sell faster when the seasonal stuff runs out and the next batch hasn’t arrived yet.

@TheOtherMike:
I think they had that entire costume in that shade of blue.

@PurpleDave: I know I remember seeing the hat. I don't recall seeing the torso, but that might have been because I wasn't looking for that kind of torso.

@TheOtherMike:
https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=73662pb01&colorID=105&in=A
Blue pug had a bow tie, not a bandana. But there weren’t any other parts in those colors, so it was pretty easy to tell which parts were the costume, at least. The head…not so much. Though they do have a head that color with the queasy face, if you want everything to match!

@goldenguy880 said:
"Does anyone know if old BAM parts are kept in stores until they're used up, or if they're removed and replaced? I'd hate for these exclusive parts to be made rarer because employees just throw them away."

The Lego Store Berlin near KaDeWe still has parts that were added to BaM in 2013. I got there just the right day in May this year and could fill 3 boxes that were a best-of from all the years of BaM until now. They have to recycle discontinued sets after some time if they don't sell but BaM parts only get recycled once people sneeze on them or drop them to the floor I recall. Popular things like animals basically disappear overnight or you just ask for specific parts from the workers if you can't find them so they get them from the back. It seems at least that one Store refills its BaM parts in a staggered way so they have everything in stock for a longer period of time. The Mall of Berlin store is a bit worse because instead of putting the new parts in the bins they have pre-build the new figures that Lego intends and keeps them behind the counter, so you would have to ask for everything that's not ancient or unpopular and generic.

I like the parts Lego offers with BaM towers but Lego Stores are too rare which excludes most of the customer base. Even living close to one and going there more often than is reasonable for it being a toy shop providing nothing that I would want to buy except these parts, the truly rare stuff like animals remain unseen legends to this day. I have seen pigs but they have been in many sets by now and are not as special as the different color cats and dog breeds.

Lego should offer more parts and regularly restock the online BaM page. It bothers me to no end that the cat and dog that I wanted to get from there were sold out once I finally had a reason to shop on Lego.com. It seems to me that they never add parts to that page, only remove.

I know the majority of Lego fans consider resellers as scum, but Bricklink is a good service since it offers an option that Lego.com fails to provide.

@saltytbone said:
"I know the majority of Lego fans consider resellers as scum, but Bricklink is a good service since it offers an option that Lego.com fails to provide.

"

There is a fine line between reselling and scalping. Clearing out a store of a rare or retired product to sell at inflated prices later is scalping. (See older SDCC limited-edition collectible mini-figures or early / army building CMF's for examples on that!) Most sellers on Bricklink are NOT scalpers and do the community a huge service.

I personally buy most of my Lego parts thru Bricklink, and have only used the old Bricks & Pieces twice due to them being new and rare parts. Sadly, that feature is gone now... (RIP)

Isn't Bricklink actually TLG now? As in they bought it?

Been looking for an excuse to hit the lego store lately.

@emQ said:
"Isn't Bricklink actually TLG now? As in they bought it?"

Yes that's true. As far as I can see the only changes have been the removal of some custom items like chromed pieces (I think because electroplating changes the clutch of pieces) and some changes to part naming. BrickLink still uses its own colour names. Other people may have seen more changes though

@AddictedToStyrene:
They forced a switch to onsite PayPal because being part of TLG means they are required to collect sales tax in the US. They mumbled something about “what Dan would have wanted” before delisting Brickarms (which Dan had personally added). Custom chromed parts were banned as well because they’re modified and TLG can’t guarantee quality/safety, but frankly, I think Chromebricks did a better job than TLG. I’ve ordered authentic chrome parts off Bricklink, and when they arrived, I found about half of the 1x2 tiles had _zero_ clutch because they never chrome the interior despite cutting the mold to factor in an interior chrome layer. Chromebricks used standard parts, and only chromed the tops, so interior clutch was never affected. Additionally, I was once able to request some trans-clear 1x1 round plates, which I mounted by the stud to make some headlights that look like actual chrome and glass.

What they didn’t do, that I’m aware of, is recode the website from the ground up (a much needed security upgrade, considering the existing code was hacked into a coma on two separate occasions, with no indication that they ever figured out how someone got in, or how to prevent them from shutting down the site for a third time). They haven’t imposed any staff changes either, last I checked, nor have they forced the existing staff to start implementing changes that regular buyers and sellers have been requesting for years.

@CathyVT said:
"BAM is such a bummer for those of us who are nowhere near a store... We're forced to deal with scalpers on eBay."

LEGO does it to generate traffic to the stores, and it works as its one of the few reasons why I go to the store in the first place are the unique BaM only parts. There are also those members in the Forum section of Brickset that may be able to also help other members out, if asked, about trying to get a set for them as well.
It looks like LegoLand Florida has the three figures (Minus the La Catrina though sadly) available in their online store for $12.99

@CathyVT said:
"BAM is such a bummer for those of us who are nowhere near a store... We're forced to deal with scalpers on eBay."

I always get these from the legoland store website. I usually check all 3 in the US.

https://shop-florida.legoland.com/collections/limited-time-only

I’m having trouble to identify the witch’s head. Help needed. Thanks in advance.

I just bought a pack of 3 of them from LEGOLAND Florida (missing dia de los muertos minifig) and the vampire kid came with a spider accessory - don't see that included here.

@RJARR said:
"I’m having trouble to identify the witch’s head. Help needed. Thanks in advance."

It's part 3626cpb1275
https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=3626cpb1275T=C&C=3