What is in the mystery box? Lego 4679

[youtoo]

I recently found out about this. I heard long ago that Lego produced some boxes with random and rare pieces that were going out of production... is this box one of these boxes??

Can somebody tell me more about these surprise boxes, what kind of content hold?

Thanks!

[TheKingOfBuilding]

Someone on Flickr has posted some pics of the extra parts he got in a similar "mystery box" here .

[davee123]

I recently found out about this. I heard long ago that Lego produced some boxes with random and rare pieces that were going out of production... is this box one of these boxes??

Pretty much. I don't think it's fair to say that the elements were "going out of production". Some of them never WERE in production to start with! They were referred to by AFOLs as "spring cleaning" sets (even though they came out in the fall). They were packaged sorta like this, although the box on top in this picture looks different-- I think the one pictured below is the 2005 version (or maybe a European one?):

Can somebody tell me more about these surprise boxes, what kind of content hold?

LEGO came out with these in the fall of 2004, packaged in combination with set 4679, and in the USA these were exclusive to Toys R Us. It's important to make the distinction that the actual TUB is a normal LEGO set, but that the "Bonus Box" packaged with it had random parts in it, but did not have an identifying set number. The bonus box had a WIDE mix of parts. Here's a gallery of the 2004 incarnation:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=98635

The parts in the bonus box were distributed quasi-evenly, however. That is to say, if you bought 10 copies of the tub from the same exact store, they would generally have very SIMILAR pieces. But if you bought 10 copies from 10 DIFFERENT stores, you'd get different mixes of things, and they'd be less similar.

One thing that they often had was plain minifig heads in strange colors, like Bright Green and Tan. But they also had annoying things like LEFT-handed corner slopes, but NOT any matching right-handed corner slopes.

The response from AFOLs was incredible-- people bought them up like wildfire in the hopes of getting rare or never-before-produced elements. Toys R Us stores in our area often sold out in the first day or two, thanks to AFOL raids.

Shortly thereafter, LEGO released 4562 (also late 2004), but this time as an exclusive to Walgreens. This set was an actual *set* (not a tub with an attached bonus box). However, the pieces in this set weren't truly random. There were 5 particular types of baggies that COULD come in the set, with each baggie having a fixed inventory. The set itself came with 3 baggies inside (I think?), effectively randomly chosen from the 5 baggie types. Not nearly as cool.

Then, in 2005, LEGO tried again, but differently. They again attached "bonus" boxes to set 4679, but this time the bonus boxes did NOT have a random inventory, they had a fixed inventory:

Response from AFOLs? Meh. People initially started buying them, until they realized that the inventories were fixed, at which point they lost their appeal.

In a recent discussion with Jamie Berard, he said that the "truly random" boxes were a nightmare for LEGO's packing department. They usually verify piece counts using weight, but (obviously) thanks to the random nature, this couldn't be easily done. I don't know the details, but supposedly it was an incredibly messy process that took WAY too much time in order to guarantee that every box had 500 random pieces. From the sounds of it, the attitude at LEGO is "NEVER AGAIN!"

DaveE

Edited July 18, 2011 by davee123

[youtoo]

Thanks DaveE for explaining the "mystery" in great detail.

Pretty much. I don't think it's fair to say that the elements were "going out of production". Some of them never WERE in production to start with! They were referred to by AFOLs as "spring cleaning" sets (even though they came out in the fall). They were packaged sorta like this, although the box on top in this picture looks different-- I think the one pictured below is the 2005 version (or maybe a European one?):

DaveE

[Blondie-Wan]

Ahhh, yes, these are wonderful! I was fortunate enough to get four of these, and I've often thought of doing a quasi-"review" of them for these forums, just to discuss what things were in them. I remember hearing of all kinds of crazy things in them, some quite useful, especially before Pick-A-Brick had as much stuff in it as it does now for example, I remember reading about one person getting twelve of the pizza-printed 2x2 round tiles. There are all kinds of neat things that were in the bonus boxes strapped to the tubs - printed elements, odd pieces, ordinary bricks in rare colors... you name it. These tubs were really something special - there was no telling what would be in the boxes, but there was bound to be something useful that would be hard to get otherwise, and that was in addition to these tubs simply being good deals (in that the price-per-piece ratio was just about the best of any current "set" ever, less than a cent and a half per piece). Of course, most of the overall contents (everything packed in the tub itself) would be extremely basic bricks of the sort you get in any one of those bulk tubs, but even so... man, I wish I could go back and get a bunch more of these.

[jonwil]

I also wish I had obtained more of these.

Sad to hear that these fabulous boxes wont be reappearing but its understandable given the huge amount of work required to verify that every box actually contains 500 pieces.

[Zeya]

Wow, I would have lost all self control over those, but I was in my dark age. I wonder why they wouldn't just market it by weight instead of piece count. I read there was a law in the US saying you had to put the piece count on the packaging, which is why US sets have piece counts, but some other countries don't. Maybe that's why.

This reminds me of the collectible minifigures a little bit, with the randomness aspect.

[brickmack]

Ooh I wish I was getting LEGO during this time, I would have gotten like 5 from each store...

Wow, I would have lost all self control over those, but I was in my dark age. I wonder why they wouldn't just market it by weight instead of piece count. I read there was a law in the US saying you had to put the piece count on the packaging, which is why US sets have piece counts, but some other countries don't. Maybe that's why.

This reminds me of the collectible minifigures a little bit, with the randomness aspect.

Can you provide a link relating to this law? I did a quick Google search but didn't find anything, kinda interested about the specifics/reasoning behind this.

[davee123]

Can you provide a link relating to this law? I did a quick Google search but didn't find anything, kinda interested about the specifics/reasoning behind this.

If you can find any detailed information, I think you'll be the first. LEGO has stated this for many years as being why they mark the element count on North American LEGO boxes. But I've never seen any specific regulations governing packaging that cover this. I'd be interested to see if you could find anything.

DaveE

[brickmack]

I did another (much more extensive) search and I THINK it's covered under the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act in America. I just skimmed over a website with the law written out linked to on the Wikipedia page, but it seems to be the most likely law that I've found. I guess similar laws in Europe and other areas don't cover LEGO for some reason (assuming they exist, I'm not very familiar with non-American laws since I've only lived in the U.S.).

[Zeya]

I did another (much more extensive) search and I THINK it's covered under the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act in America. I just skimmed over a website with the law written out linked to on the Wikipedia page, but it seems to be the most likely law that I've found. I guess similar laws in Europe and other areas don't cover LEGO for some reason (assuming they exist, I'm not very familiar with non-American laws since I've only lived in the U.S.).

I was just regurgitating what I had read on a Lego forum somewhere. I don't have any links or hard evidence regarding the US and piece counts. For all I know it could be a myth. I wouldn't be able (or willing, to be honest) to come up with better information than brickmack has here.