LCU movies bundled with LEGO Dimensions minifigures

[Blondie-Wan]

I was just in a local Walmart and noticed new packages I hadn’t seen before for Blu-rays of The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie. They were each in boxes like those used with many of the LEGO video releases that include polybags and such, sporting banners across the top saying “3 BONUS FIGURINES” next to a photo of the same Wyldstyle, Batman, and Gandalf minifigures included with the LEGO Dimensions Starter Packs; Wyldstyle even has her Dimensions-exclusive tracker.

I don’t know how long these have been around, but I think they’re new, as I believe I’d have noticed them earlier if they’d been around a good while. They look like they could be Walmart exclusives, but I didn’t see anything that definitively establishes that. At any rate, they’re kind of interesting in a number of ways:

1) Ouch.   I knew LD hadn’t performed to expectations, but this is the first time I’ve seen something that smelled this obviously like they were just dumping excess parts inventory after overproducing stuff for the game.

2) Assuming these bundles are indeed new and haven’t been sitting around on shelves for several months or a year or whatever without anyone noticing, it makes one wonder just how many more of the Starter Packs they’d anticipated selling, and over what timeframe. We know they’d planned for at least three years of waves of releases, and of course they’d want to keep the SPs available if they wanted to recruit new players in the later years of the game, even if the older packs were no longer available. As it is, LEGO still has stock of the Wii U, XBox 360, and PS4 Starter Packs and is still selling them on Shop at Home, even though all the add-on packs are now gone nearly everywhere. I would have thought they’d just continue to produce the SPs at a rate sufficient to meet demand over the life of the game, but could they instead have just made tons of the necessary components up front, enough to meet all the anticipated need for years, so that they wouldn’t have production lines continuing to turn out the SP minifigures for years on end? If so, what about the other game-specific parts - is there a big stockpile in some LEGO warehouse somewhere of 12x24 plates with 6x6 hole and two corner cutouts in Dark Stone? If so, could we expect to eventually see those portal plates turn up in Pick-a-Brick?

3) It may be just a promotional freebie (and one intended principally more to get rid of unwanted inventory rather than actually actively promote something), but even so, I think this technically still constitutes a new LEGO product release utilizing characters from The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings. The license yet lives! 

I still don’t yet have The LEGO Batman Movie on Blu-ray yet, so I very nearly picked up this bundle, but didn’t just yet; I kind of want to get 3D release of the movie even though I’m not able to watch 3D yet, and having three different versions of the LD Starter Pack (for Wii U, PS3, and PS4), not to mention various other sets, I already have all the copies I need of these minifigures / characters, and then some. But still...

[legonerd54321]

I've had them at my local Walmart for the past month, I had no idea people are just now seeing them! They were with the LEGO-ified covers of famous WB movies

[Blondie-Wan]

43 minutes ago, legonerd54321 said:

I've had them at my local Walmart for the past month, I had no idea people are just now seeing them! They were with the LEGO-ified covers of famous WB movies

Wait, what? LEGO-ified covers of famous WB movies? What’s this about?

If you mean to tell me I can now get a Blu-ray of, say, Casablanca or Citizen Kane with LEGO cover art, I am going to be beside myself...

[legonerd54321]

1 hour ago, Blondie-Wan said:

Wait, what? LEGO-ified covers of famous WB movies? What’s this about?

If you mean to tell me I can now get a Blu-ray of, say, Casablanca or Citizen Kane with LEGO cover art, I am going to be beside myself...

There was Beetlejuice, Scooby Doo, Harry Potter,  and other LEGO obtained IPs within the rack. I'll go there tonight and see if it's still there

[Vindicare]

9 hours ago, Blondie-Wan said:

Wait, what? LEGO-ified covers of famous WB movies? What’s this about?

If you mean to tell me I can now get a Blu-ray of, say, Casablanca or Citizen Kane with LEGO cover art, I am going to be beside myself...

I didn’t know about these either...and I just saw a video on YouTube showing them off. They’re so much cooler than you’re picturing. I rarely buy movies, but damn. They’re awesome. 

[Blondie-Wan]

I found the Beetlejuice and The Goonies ones on eBay, so now I know. They have stickers on them advertising free admissions to The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, which would indicate to me that these were out before the movie was released if legonerd54321 hadn’t already told me they’d been out a while, but I’d completely overlooked them.

Anyway, has anyone here gotten any of these LCU releases with the LEGO Dimensions Starter Pack minifigures? How long have these been out - the same timeframe as the Warner movies with LEGO art on the sleeves, or longer? Is it just the first two (the only ones I saw yesterday), or is The LEGO Ninjago Movie also available with the minifigures?

Edited April 3, 2019 by Blondie-Wan

[legonerd54321]

3 hours ago, Blondie-Wan said:

I found the Beetlejuice and The Goonies ones on eBay, so now I know. They have stickers on them advertising free admissions to The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, which would indicate to me that these were out before the movie was released if legonerd54321 hadn’t already told me they’d been out a while, but I’d completely overlooked them.

Anyway, has anyone here gotten any of these LCU releases with the LEGO Dimensions Starter Pack minifigures? How long have these been out - the same timeframe as the Warner movies with LEGO art on the sleeves, or longer? Is it just the first two (the only ones I saw yesterday), or is The LEGO Ninjago Movie also available with the minifigures?

The bundle was at the same time as the art sleeves, as both were to promote The LEGO Movie 2. All three movies were sold separately with the bundle of minifigures, or you could have bought a pack of all three movies with the same minifigures. 

[Blondie-Wan]

5 minutes ago, legonerd54321 said:

The bundle was at the same time as the art sleeves, as both were to promote The LEGO Movie 2. All three movies were sold separately with the bundle of minifigures, or you could have bought a pack of all three movies with the same minifigures. 

Thanks for the info. I wish I’d known earlier, but I’ve seen zero mention of this anywhere before now (did I just miss something?).

It appears the art sleeves are on Blu-rays for all the DC and Wizarding World stuff, but only on DVDs for the other movies. Unfortunate; I’ve been wanting to upgrade my old DVDs of Gremlins and The Goonies to Blu-ray for quite some time, and would have loved to have done it with editions with the lenticular LEGO art, but the option apparently isn’t there. Oh, well.

Perhaps I’ll pick up Wonder Woman and/or Batman with the art sleeves, and/or The LEGO Batman Movie and/or The LEGO Ninjago Movie with the minifigures.

[Vindicare]

3 hours ago, Blondie-Wan said:

Thanks for the info. I wish I’d known earlier, but I’ve seen zero mention of this anywhere before now (did I just miss something?).

It appears the art sleeves are on Blu-rays for all the DC and Wizarding World stuff, but only on DVDs for the other movies. Unfortunate; I’ve been wanting to upgrade my old DVDs of Gremlins and The Goonies to Blu-ray for quite some time, and would have loved to have done it with editions with the lenticular LEGO art, but the option apparently isn’t there. Oh, well.

Perhaps I’ll pick up Wonder Woman and/or Batman with the art sleeves, and/or The LEGO Batman Movie and/or The LEGO Ninjago Movie with the minifigures.

If you did, so did I. I also check Brickset a few times a day & I don’t recall anything. My memory is pretty bad, but I doubt I’d forget this. 

[Blondie-Wan]

A short while ago I went back to Walmart and found a few copies left of these movies that included the minifigure bundles, as I’ve been meaning to get the spinoffs for a while anyway and still hadn’t yet. Looking at the packages, I noted that they gave piece counts of 25, and adding up the parts in the photo I came up with 21 - four short:

Wyldstyle: 7 (hair, head, hood, torso, legs, 1x2 click hinge plate for tracker, 1x2 printed tile for tracker)

Batman: 7 (hood, head, cape, torso, legs, 2x Batarangs [2 shown in photo])

Gandalf: 7 (hat, head, beard, cape, torso, legs, 6L bar w/ stop ring for staff)

I bought The LEGO Batman Movie, came home, and opened it. It turns out it has the twenty-one parts I mentioned, plus the original printed LEGO Dimensions toy tag bases for each character, plus a brick separator (orange, of course). The parts bag is printed “1” - it’s literally just the entire first bag from the LEGO Dimensions Starter Pack parts box (the subset 71200 that comes packed inside one of the Starter Packs).

Ouch. But hey, just in case one wants more copies of those figures and accessories, there we go. I honestly think it’s a pretty nice deal for us, even if it suggests the game flopped worse than we thought.

Edited May 9, 2019 by Blondie-Wan