The best Christmas gift ever!

I'm a very blessed guy.  I've got a wonderful family who loves me and they showed me this in part by the number of gifts I got for Christmas.  However one gift really stood of the bunch...a homemade gift from my 2 year old daughter (with help from my beautiful wife).  Take a look:

A homemade "snow globe" featuring a Lego Minifigure!  A few weeks before Christmas my wife was looking around in my room and asking me if she could have various small toys she was looking at.  I said no to just about everything she asked about, but I figured she wouldn't be asking if she didn't have something up her sleeve.  Thanks to the Lego Minifigures being blind packaged I had an extra Indian so I let her take it.  Several weeks passed and I forgot all about it...until Christmas morning with my daughter gave me a brown paper bag she had decorated herself.  I reached inside and pulled out this awesome creation!  Shake it up and you'll see specks of gold glitter float around in the water.

Thank you so much to my daughter and wife for the very thoughtful and well made gift.  I was the highlight of the Christmas gift giving season.

LEGO Minifigure Collection Series 4

Finally!  All I need now is the wolf man from this series and I'll have all of the classic Universal monsters!  This is a great figure.  Check out one of my earlier posts for a cheat sheet if you want to find this figure.

LEGO Mini Figure Collection cheat sheets

If you are like me and you only want a few of the figures from the various Mini
Figure Collections then you were probably let down when series 3 came out without those bar codes that identified which figure was inside the packaging.  While searching the 'net today I found a cheat sheet for both series 3 and series 4.  Gone are the bar codes - replaced w/ raised bumps.  Just flip over the package and look for the very small raised bumps across the bottom of the package.  They can be hard to see, but they are there!

Series 3:

Series 4:

LEGO Minifigure Collection Series 3

On a quick trip to Walmart the other day to pick up a few supplies for work I noticed on one the island displays in the toy department was a large gravity feeder type display full of the new series 3 LEGO Minifigure Collection packs.

I had read online that the 2 previous series had been found at Walmart stores, but this is my first sighting of them.  I was pinched for time (and money) so I just grabbed one pack and headed to the checkout lane.

I know that there are lists of the barcodes online that help you figure out which figure is in the pack, but I haven't bothered with searching out that information thus far.  So for now let's open the pack and see which minifigure is inside.

Just like in past releases you can see a few of the figures from the series on the front.  The green bug eyed alien really stands out - so does the indian. 

Each pack contains a folded up poster checklist.  A quick scan of the list and I really want the mummy and the baseball player.  Having vacationed in Hawaii the hula girl is also a neat figure.  I'm also loving the beard accessory on the fisherman.

I ended up with the female snowboarder.  OK, not a bad figure.  Good design of the figure's uniform.  Love the big goggles on the helmet.  The snowboard accessory is very nice.  The board itself is a shade of navy blue and with the light blue and purple snowflakes it goes well with the minifigure.  You can attach the snowboard to the included stand if you so wish to display your snowboarder in action.

At $3 bucks a pop and being blind packaged these can be a fun purchase.  I may grab a few more of these if I head back to that particular Walmart as I know in the past the inventory can be gobbled up fairly quickly by rabbid fans.  If anyone reading this already has the mummy, baseball player or the fisherman and you want to trade for this snowboarder let me know.

LEGO Mini Figure Collection Series 1

The idea of blind packaging exclusive LEGO mini figures and selling them a $1.99 a pop is sheer genius! When I first saw some blurry pics of the figures on-line I just new I had to own a few. Then they were released without a lot of hoop-la and I had no idea they were sitting down at my local Toys R Us store - only being bought up by people to re-sell them on eBay for outrageous prices. Here's a look at 2 of the figures that I frustratingly paid $5 each for.

The figures come packaged in small foil bags that show several of the different figures possibly in the bag. It didn't take long however for someone to figure out that the non-UPC bar code on the back of the packaging can be used (with the proper info) what figure was inside. Boo, what fun is there in cheating?!

Each pack contains a catalog of sorts depicting all 16 figures in series 1. Now let's take a look at the first figure....THE ZOMBIE!!

First off let me say how hard it's been for me not to buy several of this figure. I love zombie movies (esp. George A. Romero's flicks) so when I first heard there would be an actual LEGO zombie figure I freaked. This is so awesome, though the inclusion of the chicken leg accessory is a little weird. We all know zombie's don't eat chicken...they eat flesh! Yup, no zombie's yelling "braaaaains" here. I also love the little black stands included. I don't think I knew about those going in so that was a nice little surprise when I opened the bag.

The facial design and the clothes are spot on. I love it. Now I don't have to take the head & hands from my Castle goblin figures and to make zombie townsfolk. I only have one at the moment and with the high prices it's made it easier to resist buying multiples, but I know I'll probably end up w/ multiples at some point in the near future.

The other figure I picked up is the nurse. While I love the Castle/Kingdom themes I grew up with the Town/City theme. I don't own many medical sets anymore so I chose to pick up the nurse over the cheerleader. It was a hard choice, but I feel I made the right one. The nurse comes with a brown pony tail hair piece, nurse outfit, a chart and 2 syringes. Excellent. On second look perhaps she is a EMT and not a nurse. Whatever the case may be it's a great mini figure with great accessories. Now if only those older medical sets weren't so dang expensive!

I believe my next purchases will include the masked wrestler and the cheerleader. Stay tuned for more!