Set Review - #71026: DC Super Heroes - Collectible Minifigures

This series was released on 1 January 2020 yet I’m releasing a review in late July 2020? Why the lag?

The retail price was too steep for me at $4.99 per bag. No thank you!

As the series nears retirement (I assume), the sales have started. I picked some up from Amazon.com with a limit of three for $2.99 and a limit of 27 for $3.44. I also found some locally for $3.45. If you’ve held off, not is the time to start looking for sales. Avoid paying the full price. If you paid full price, wait for the price to drop for future Collectible Minifigure series so you can avoid shelling out $5 each.

The series contains 16 minifigures. The packaging is still the larger bags versus the original smaller bags. Additionally, some of the minifigures have parts that come in a separate plastic bag. For a company striving for sustainability, this doesn’t make sense to me…

Before I go further, I will fully admit that I am not a Super Heroes fan whether they be DC or Marvel. I am not into comic books, I rarely collect the LEGO sets, and I have only seen a few of the super hero related movies that have been released… well ever. So my review will focus on the minifigures themselves versus how well they depict specific characters or who the character exactly is in what theme.

Of note for this series, each minifigure comes with a 1x2 black jumper plate and the poseable clear piece to put your minifigure in different positions while on display.


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Metamorpho is definitely a multicolored figure with orange right hand, reddish/purple left hand, clear left leg, and brownish right leg. I’m sure someone creative can figure out how to reuse these parts. The giant hand has a space to clip it onto the minifig hand so it is a standard minifig arm just holding that piece. Not much else going for this minifig.

Green Lantern comes with the lantern and a clear holder to hold a green 1x1 circle tile. The lantern is quite large as compared to the minifigure, but I guess it has to be in order to fit into the LEGO world.


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Bat-Mite comes with a 2x3 tile of a comic book. he has a small cape and mask too. The interesting thing about this figure is it comes with the poseable piece, but since he has the small legs, they don’t bend so it limits his poses.

Huntress is next. She comes with a crossbow and black cape. The mask is printed on her face and the face has 2 expressions (mouth opened and mouth closed). She also has a utility belt and the package came with 2 so you can use the second one elsewhere. I like the darker purple color.


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Mister Miracle has two capes along with a large gray chain and the set comes with 2 handcuffs. Of the purchases I made, this one seemed the be the rarest one from my limited subset. I only got one of these in multiple orders.

Star Girl comes with an interesting translucent orange sparkly piece mounted on a gold colored staff. She has 2 facial expressions as well (mouth opened or closed. Her utility belt is printed on the outfit versus separate. Not sure how LEGO decides what to print versus how to outfit a minifig. Anyone?


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We’ve seen a lot of both of these so did we have to include them again? Joker has a giant pink beehive (I know, it is not really) and then a 1x2 joker playing card tile. Batman comes with a long rope and a batarang in blue. I would have rather seen some other figures than these again, but as a non-fan of DC Super Heroes it doesn’t matter what I think.


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Bumblebee comes with a set of wings and two yellow lightning bolt type things to hold. She has 2 facial expressions (mean and smiling). I don’t recall seeing a hair piece like that before either. I like this minifigure!

Flash has a fun hat and then this bolts coming out the back as he runs along. Nothing super exciting about this character as presented.


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More repeats we’ve seen before although I’m sure a big fan will correct me and say we have not seen this exact Superman or Wonder Woman in these specific forms. Superman comes with a copy of the Daily Planet which I think is new. Wonder Woman has her lasso which has appeared before.


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Cyborg has an interesting helmet and oddly printed head. I wonder if this costs more to build pieces that aren’t used elsewhere? He comes with a small purple chain.

To quote “The Big Bang Theory…”

“Aquaman sucks!”

I don’t know what he should look like, but the giant oddly green fish along with the Fabio hair and slightly unshaven face makes him look somewhat ridiculous. The left arm doesn’t do anything to save him. Sorry LEGO.


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Sinestro appears similar to Green Lantern with the over-sized lantern and a yellow 1x1 circle tile. Nothing too exciting here.

Cheetah comes with a green money bag. She has 2 facial expressions… both look mean, but one has an opened mouth. Replace the face and this becomes a fun costumed minifigure.

As a collector of these minifigures, my series is complete, but overall I am not impressed. Come up with something better next time LEGO!

LEGO® Customer Service at its Best

I ordered the new train set on its release date of 1 July 2020. #10277-1: Crocodile Locomotive was packaged up that day at the warehouse. When I placed the order initially, the gift with purchase set #40411-1: Creative Fun was not added to my order. Then when I received the order confirmation message a few minutes later it was listed. In that time I had emailed customer service asking what I missed when I placed the order to get the gift with purchase. Then I quickly sent a note saying I was good to go. About five days later I received an email saying they were sorry for the confusion and that they alerted the web team of the issue I had to make sure it didn’t happen again to others.

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Fourteen days after I placed the order, the set remained in “pre-shipping.” I was getting concerned because that is very unlike LEGO for shipping in the US. I reached out to Customer Service again just to check on the status of my order. I knew it would take around five days for a response to come in and I wasn’t mad about it. I just wanted to make sure it didn’t get misplaced.

Seventeen days after the order was placed, the shipment started moving outside of the warehouse. I was glad to see it was on its way.

Then on 18 July (four days after I sent the message to Customer Service) I received an email from Svetoslav. It said:


“Thanks for getting in touch with us.

I'm sorry we couldn't reply to your email sooner but as you might imagine we've been busier than usual helping fellow LEGO® fans from all over the world!

Looking into your request, I see that your order has already been shipped. I'm sorry for the delay but our colleagues at the warehouse and our delivery partners are taking extra safety measures to make sure your order arrives in the best condition and safest way possible which adds to the usually longer than residential addresses delivery time frame that applies to your shipping address. I hope this doesn't cause you or your LEGO® fan an inconvenience so I've added 1000 VIP points in hopes you'd give us another chance to earn your trust in the future. You can track your order by visiting USPS.com and using tracking number XXXX. I hope everything's alright now but please let us know if not or if you need any further assistance!

If you need anything else or have any further questions, please don't hesitate to get back in touch! :)
Stay safe and have an amazing day!

We want to make sure we're doing a good job for you, so you’ll always find the link to a four-question survey in our emails. Please tell us how we did today:

Please let us know if you need anything else.

Kind regards,

Svetoslav
LEGO® Customer Service”


First off, I wasn’t mad and didn’t lose trust in LEGO. I just wanted to make sure the package didn’t get lost. I get it. We’re’ in the middle of a pandemic and warehouse procedures are probably different. No worries there.

Secondly, 1,000 VIP points!?!?!?! I realize with the new VIP system that’s ~$5 off and then points to the next $5, but wow! That wasn’t required at all. I appreciate the gesture though.

Hats off to the LEGO® Customer Service team! I know they’ve had to adjust to working at home and the volume of requests has gone up, but they’ve gone above and beyond to help customers out when the system isn’t working at 100%. Thank you all and keep up the good work!

Have you had any experiences with LEGO® Customer Service worth noting?

Happy building!

Let's Help Fairy Bricks Bounce Back!

It’s another sad day in the LEGO fan community…

I first saw it on Brickset, but it has been reported in multiple places. The UK-based charity called Fairy Bricks was robbed… again!!!

Back in 2017 people busted into their van and took off with a bunch of sets. Here’s an article about the first terrible occurrence. The picture below is from that event. It’s not like someone left it unlocked or was able to break the lock… they just tore open the door with… I don’t know, a crow bar? Goodness! I enjoy LEGO, but not enough to pry open a van and steal the sets inside.

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The most recent robbery occurred this past weekend. Thieves apparently cut a hole on the side of the building, busted in, loaded up the van, and drove off with the van and sets. WHAT!?!?!?! That is ridiculous! Come on!!!

The aftermath of the devastation is pictured below. The police are involved and investigating.

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If you’re not familiar with Fairy Bricks, they raise funds to buy sets to give to kids in hospitals across Europe. You can visit their site for more details here. They are very active in giving sets during the pandemic as can be seen in the picture below.

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As it has taken me a day to get this post out, the situation has unfolded some. The van has been located. YAY! No sets though. All of the sets stolen did not have the charity’s sticker on them so they weren’t marked. A number of LEGO fan sites have posted the update and a list of the sets stolen. You can see Brickset’s article here. Or you can watch a clip from Beyond the Brick below:

Finally, if you are interested in helping them out through this tough time, consider donating. You can donate directly through their site here. The donations are accepted in British Pound Sterling so be aware that you’ll have to pay the exchange rate when making a donation in US Dollars.

I hope and pray for a swift resolution to this situation so they can get back to giving. Thank you to everyone who had helped already and to the LEGO Group who said they are working to replace the sets. Let’s turn this negative situation into a positive one!

Happy building!

A Peak Inside LEGO®'s Factories

In case you missed it, in late May 2020, LEGO posted a video to YouTube.com showing how they make and assemble minifigures. Specifically, this one follows the series 20 collectible minifigures. It was posted on a number of fan sites and has almost 5 million views at the time of this post so my guess is many have seen it already. If not, you can see it here or below.

A second video was posted on 12 July 2020. This one shows how LEGO DUPLO is made. It has just over 30,000 hits at the time of this post so my guess is most haven’t seen it yet. You can take a look below.

I hope LEGO continues this series of videos as it is interesting to see inside the factories.

What do you want them to show us next?

Happy building!

Expanding the Emerald Night (#10194-1) - Creator Expert Train

The last Creator Expert train was #10233-1: Horizon Express and it went off sale in the US in late 2014. Since then we’ve have a number of CITY trains and trains in other themes, but no Creator Expert-like trains. I’m super excited that #10277-1: Crocodile Locomotive is out although out of stock on LEGO Shop @ Home in the US. For those of you that are mad, don’t worry because at the time of the writing of this post it was also out of stock in Germany. I placed my order on day one (1 July) and I’m waiting for it to ship. It has been in “pre-shipment” status for nine days now which has concerned me. Hopefully it will ship shortly and arrive in one piece.

Before the Horizon Express we had the #10219-1: Maersk Train (available 2011 to 2012 in the US) and then starting on 1 April 2009 and ending on 25 November 2011 in the US we had #10194-1: Emerald Night.

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Pictured above is the steam engine from the set configured for PF (minus the battery box in the tender). I think it is a phenomenal model and ranks up there in my book as one of the best trains LEGO has released. It was totally outside of what they have ever done before and it was a welcome sight along with the sleek color scheme. The design wasn’t quite perfect, but with the help of some smart AFOLs, I was able to modify the engine for better operation. The $99.99 price tag in the US for 1,085 pieces was reasonable and it included one coach shown below.

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The downside to the set is it only includes one coach and that’s it. You could go on Ebay, Bricklink, or on the secondary market elsewhere to get another coach, but that gets pricey. So the benefit of LEGO bricks is the ability to build on your own. After purchasing this set, I did exactly that… or at least tried to.

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I ended up building two additional coaches so I would have three total. The coaches I built look similar, but have a few key differences. You’ll notice the windows are not the same for the main part of the coach and the doors. At the time, the exact ones were too expensive for me on Bricklink. Maybe they are cheaper now, but I’m okay with the different set up. If you look closely, there is a small gap by the window on the door as I couldn’t get that design perfect so it doesn’t look as smooth. Also the door is not very sturdy as it is only held together by one stud on the outer edge of the coach car. It still swings open and shut though.

Additionally, there are two rows of darker brown plates on the original car. The color was not as prevalent at the time I built this so I just used the standard brown color. If I go for an update in the near future, I could easily replicate that.

Finally, at the time I built this, the 1x2 brick with a Technic pin hole in the middle in brown was very expensive to purchase (for me). It has reappeared multiple times since then so buying it now shouldn’t be an issue. I have 1x1 tan plates and could easily match the original coach.

The only other problem I have is the light gray plates on the roof has discolored with age. I either need to follow some of the methods online to restore them or replace them. Not a huge deal, but it would help the train to look a lot better.

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And it wouldn’t be a complete train without a caboose. I built up a simple caboose design using the same color scheme with some of the same troubles as the coaches in terms of color matching. Additionally, you can tell the windows don’t exactly line up and the slight gap causes them to bow in a bit.

I wonder how it would look using the dark green on the Emerald Night versus the tan and brown of the coaches?

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The picture above is how the whole set looks with the additional coaches and caboose. Despite the flaws in design that I have pointed out, I think the train looks much better with multiple coaches and a caboose. In the future, I may look to modify the coaches and caboose. Should I add other cars? A mail car? A sleeping car? A dining car?

Have you tried to build your own coaches or made any modifications to this set? What are they? Let me know in the comments or email me at store@bricksforbricks.com.

Happy building!

My First Convention Brick

Production was delayed a bit, but I finally received the 1x8 Brickworld Virtual Con brick that I ordered from the May 2020 Brickworld Virtual. Brickworld held another Virtual Con on 27 June 2020 that I was unable to attend, but it looked like there were some interesting events.

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The next Brickworld Virtual isn’t until 31 October 2020. If you want more details or information, go check them out on the web.

Happy building!

20 Years of Bricklink

The famous secondary LEGO marketplace turned 20 years old on 19 June. Bricklink has been posting some special web content to highlight the occasion. If you go here, you can see all of the content for the 20 days. They have gone through history, first members, stories about using the site from users, and a post from an Admin as of the writing of this post. If you want to see more stories or if you want to post your own story, you can go here. There are a lot of great stories about people finally being able to recreate old sets or piecing together lost sets.

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My Bricklink story… I joined Bricklink on 31 July 2009 according to my profile. Has it been that long? I found out about the site and had also downloaded Lego Digital Designer (LDD). I started building some MOCs and needed the parts for them. My MOCs are pretty awful and I quickly learned that I was not a good builder… despite that, I’ll post some pictures of my work which was made possible from bricks purchased on Bricklink.

First off was the diesel engine shown below. I really wanted to capture the stripe going across and was very proud of myself that I figured out how to make the stripe angle up. Otherwise, the engine is a bit too long and is very fragile with no real good place to pick it up. Thank goodness for 9v motors and rails though.

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Moving on… I built a small train display and it looks pretty scary. I bought #4561-1: Railway Express off of a teenager locally through a site in the place I was living in. He sold all of his LEGO for $115 to buy an iPod. I got a full up 9v train and motor along with some Harry Potter and Star Wars sets. I got the better deal as I’ll bet he doesn’t use his iPod anymore. Anyways if you look at the bottom left, you’ll see my MOC of #4561-1 rebuilt into a “better” train. The engine is pretty awful, but I like the double decker car. Someday I will modify it, but for now it looks good. I later built a second car with a few orders from Bricklink. There are a few other less impressive builds in the picture as well. However, I’m glad to still have #4558-1: Metroliner and #4547-1: Railroad Club Car.

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There are a few more MOCs that I sourced through Bricklink, but I am too embarrassed to show them as they are just plain awful. Thankfully three things happened… one is that I discovered modular buildings and that I didn’t need to try and design something awful, when LEGO would produce something incredible. Two was that around that time some amazing trains came out to include #10194-1: Emerald Night (Bricklink helped me build some extra cars and a caboose… sorry no pics of those), #10219-1: Maersk Train, and #10233-1: Horizon Express. Finally, three is I became a Dad and the amount of time I could spend bricking decreased substantially.

I decided to start a store in 2014 as Bricks for Bricks kicked off. I tried some in person sales and that didn’t work out well (see here). In October 2016 I started Bricks for Bricks on Bricklink and did quite well. You can read about some of our giving campaigns here. That ended in May of 2018 when I transitioned with my non-brick job to Germany. I hope to return to selling on Bricklink when I return to living in the USA.

Happy birthday Bricklink! And happy building!

Brick Production in Mexico and COVID Impacts

As the global pandemic continues, I hope you are all doing well and staying healthy. I have seen many fans of the brick find new time to build due to lock-down requirements. That has included increased orders of sets from LEGO® and limited supply due to the factory in Mexico shutting down. LEGO® has tried to keep up with demand by shipping products from Europe and Asia, but there are still a lot of sets out of stock/on back order status at LEGO® Shop @ Home. A mid-May 2020 status update is posted here. With July coming up soon, I was curious as to where things were at in Mexico with the plant that supplies North America.

First off, a quick background on LEGO® and Mexico. According to lego.com, production began in Mexico in 2006. After a failed partnership attempt, production was in-sourced and a factory was stood up in Monterrey, Mexico. That’s about a 140 mile drive from the US border with Texas.

I wasn’t able to find the exact date things shut down in Mexico, but it appears to be in the April 2020 time frame. If you have knowledge of when it was, let me know. This generated a lot of pressure from US businesses and the US government as many companies rely on parts and production that takes place in Mexico. As of 1 June 2020, Mexico allowed aerospace, defense, construction, and mining related industries to re-open. This was along with the companies related to food production, health care, and other essential companies.

So where does the LEGO® factory sit on that list? I’m not sure, but as much as I’m looking forward to picking up some sets that have been out of stock, I want the workers to be safe. I am willing to wait and I encourage you to do the same.

In the meantime, happy building… stay safe and healthy!

What's on the Front of Your LEGO® Set?

I recently reviewed #60233-1: Donut Shop Opening and I commented that the box did not include the set name when I originally posted the review. I found that to be quite odd as the name of the set is always on the front.

Fast forward a few weeks and I received a shipment from Amazon.com in the US which included #75957-1: The Knight Bus. The box came with a sticker on the left side with the usual information I always see on sets. If you look at the second picture I posted, you can see what it normally looks like. It took me a bit to put it together, but the one on the left was not produced in LEGO’s North America factory. Apparently US sets have all of the information while sets in Europe do not have the name and piece count. Like the #60233-1: Donut Shop Opening set I purchased from Smyth’s in Germany, the set I received from Amazon.com was made elsewhere (Europe or Asia), a sticker was added to meet the US rules, and it was sold at Amazon.com. That must be how LEGO is trying to fix its supply chain with the Mexico factory shut down due to COVID-19.

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I have a few sets here that I purchased at Smyth’s in Germany. I wanted to do a check to see if they all were like that. First off, some architecture Skyline sets…

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For comparison, here are two versions below. The North America versions have the piece count and let you know that it is a building toy. Which if you’ve seen the first LEGO® Movie, you know that it is not a toy. It is “actually a highly sophisticated inter-locking brick system.”

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Here’s #75276-1: StormtrooperTM Helmet purchased from Smyth’s in Germany. In looking it up, the North America version has the piece count and the abbreviation in Spanish. Then it says it is a “Building Set” in English, French, and Spanish.

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One last one… this one was also purchased from Smyth’s in Germany and it is #10254-1: Winter Village Train. It looks very similar to the North America packaging per what I could see on Brickset.com. The North America version says “Ages/edades” above the 12+. This set picture has pieces abbreviated in English, German, Spanish, and… I’m not sure what “db” is. Anyone? The North America version just says “pcs/pzs.

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So there you go… If you’re in the US, pay attention to any new sets you get to see what the packaging is like. Your set may have traveled a lot farther than you’d think. I haven’t done a deep dive of the instructions or any of the other markings. Has anyone else noticed any differences?

Happy building!