How will LEGO Stores handle the new boxed Collectible Minifigures?

The latest series of LEGO Collectible Minifigures is just days away from arriving on shelves everywhere – but how will LEGO Stores handle the new cardboard packaging for 71039 Marvel Series 2?

If you’ve ever made a beeline for a LEGO Store on release day for new Collectible Minifigures series, you’ll likely have encountered the same experience: a station inside the store filled with plastic boxes, divided by specific characters within the new batch of blind-bagged minifigures. A staff member stands behind this counter handing out particular characters to queues of shoppers, many of whom are armed with lists of which minifigures they’re after.

That was made possible by diligent LEGO Store staff members feeling out specific pieces within the foil bags, a tried-and-tested method that many of us have employed in supermarkets and other retailers. But heading to a LEGO Store was always the easiest way to get only the minifigures you really wanted, because the staff had already done the hard bit for you (and in our experience, were pretty much spot on in their guesses).

As has already been well documented by this point, though, that same method won’t be possible with 71039 Marvel Series 2, which swaps out the foil bags for cardboard boxes in the pursuit of sustainability. There are plenty of potential ways to navigate this new form of blind purchasing, but none of them are especially concrete (beyond buying specific minifigures from the aftermarket). So how will LEGO Stores cope with shoppers turning up expecting to grab only Wolverine and Moon Knight on September 1?

One route stores could take is to open (and then perhaps re-seal) boxes to confirm which characters are inside, but that relies on customers being happy to buy a product that isn’t mint. And given the pieces for each minifigure are all just loose inside the box, there’s a risk – however slight – that tiny elements could go missing while figuring out which character is which. That may be a risk LEGO Stores are not willing to take.

Another possible method would be to sell full cases of 71039 Marvel Series 2, which typically guarantees three full sets of characters. As one LEGO Store employee told Brick Fanatics, though, that would rely heavily on stock levels – selling an entire case to one customer prevents up to 35 others from buying a minifigure (there are 36 individual boxes per case). If three fans show up to collectively purchase a case – and guarantee themselves a full set of 12 characters each – it may be a slightly easier sell for LEGO Store employees.

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Or the staff could attempt to deploy one of the techniques currently floating around the community, such as weighing individual boxes to determine their contents. Even this technique isn’t foolproof, though – and the same LEGO Store employee said that their flagship store at least wouldn’t be trying it out. An employee at a different, non-flagship store told us that they’re not attempting any methods of sorting the new Collectible Minifigures, which means they’ll be a true blind purchase at the LEGO Store for the first time in years.

It sounds like the days of heading to a LEGO Store on release day to get your pick of the latest Collectible Minifigures are well and truly behind us – at least where 71039 Marvel Series 2 is concerned. After a couple more series of cardboard boxes, the community (and by extension LEGO Store staff) may come up with better and more foolproof ways of figuring out which character is which. For now, best head back to the current list of potential methods to get a complete set of superhero minifigures…

71039 Marvel Series 2 launches on September 1 (though is already available through certain third-party retailers in the UK and US).

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