Let us give you a hand! (or maybe 11,000+?)

For any of you who've been to one of the Lego stores across the nation (or in another country) and have experienced the "Pick-A-Brick wall" and the "Build a Minifig station", I'm sure you were amazed. I know I was the first time I went to the Orlando store, my very first store of Lego I'd ever experienced. I remember vividly how exciting it was, and this wasn't that long ago. I re-found the love of plastic building bricks at the young age of 33.

Now, after almost 5 years of absorbing myself in the plastic goodness that is Lego, and successfully building a large store on BrickLink, I'm branching out and trying to find more people to enjoy the love of building bricks that I have.

One of my all time favorite things has been minifigures (and Star Wars, and Fabuland...but, if we're looking at the toy itself, it's minifigures and parts of minifigs). The Lego store in Orlando has a wall of minifigures that you see behind the main register bay at the front of the store (you can see above). The first time I saw that my mind went wild with all the amazing creations I could make!

If you look at our BrickLink photo (http://www.bricklink.com/feedback.asp?u=BrickAThon), you'll see one of my first creations - an undead army, made from Luke Skywalker torso assemblies (removed the yellow hands and replaced with black or white - some have one, some have another), used both the glow in the dark and regular "evil" skeleton heads, black police hats and black legs. I love this army. There's something amazing about having over 1,000 little army men that all look alike defending your Lego collection!

When I go to the Orlando store I always see with great interest the children busily creating new figures to play with. You get 3 for $10 plus a little carrying case. They come with a torso assembly, a leg assembly, a head and one accessory (hat/hair or a weapon/utensil) per figure. So, for about $3.34 each you get to make your own figure based on the parts they have in stock. That is pretty darn nifty!

The Pick-A-Brick wall is set up a bit differently in that you can pick as many parts as you want off the wall and put them into pre-priced cups or tubs, anything you can fit and get the lid closed on you can have for that price. Nice idea, but not always the best selection. Same problem with the figure parts.

This is where we come in, folks. Do you want to create your own figures but get frustrated with not having enough parts? Never fear, Brick-A-Thon is here!

At last count (about 15 minutes ago), here's what I show our store as having in stock, just for some examples (*these could be new or used, too!):

11,493 hands in 20 different types.

56,589 heads in 156 different types plus another 40 "alternative" heads (i.e. SpongeBob heads, you might find a Dobby head, Martian heads, etc.).

22,964 pieces of headgear in 159 different types - this includes hats, hair, helmets, etc.

27,749 leg assemblies in 74 different types.

12,287 torso's with no arms/hands (just the torso) for you to customize - in 65 different types.

40,631 torso assemblies in over 218 different types - these include the hands and arms.

We also have plenty of arms, minifig utensils and even some footgear for you to choose from. It's quite amazing! We have over 170,000 items in those sections listed above, alone! Just think of all the possibilites for creations!

One of my personal store goals was to create a sort of "minifig pick-a-brick" aspect to our shop. I want you to be able to come in and buy all different types of figure parts to create what YOU want. I try to keep in a good stock and am constantly listing new and used figure items and parts. I also try to keep in a good selection of brand new figures from the new sets and get parts for those as I'm able.

Chris is an integral part of my deciding what we should put into the shop for many reasons, one of which is she does most of the order pulling and sees what people are buying and can tip me off when it appears we're running low on something or are having a "run" on the product. Another thing is that Chris is what I like to call an "ultimate consumer" - she loves a lot of the basics of Lego that the "non-collector" can relate to, being that she's new to Lego, so I get a new viewpoint on the parts that I've lost over the years. It's great to see her reaction to some of the parts that come out, and she just recently ordered a bunch of Indiana Jones parts to build with and to make her own figures out of.

We have a unique store with over 5,000 different lots available and over 550,000 total items (and I'm trying to keep it at this count). There are other well stocked shops out there that I appreciate a great deal, but one of my goals is to be your "one stop shop" for at least 50% of what you need. Not many shops out there can say that for the large collector or builder who needs a lot of different items in all types of different genres.

***Sorry if this post today sounds like an advertisement, but honestly I'm just very excited about where we've gotten this store and I want everyone to know what we're doing and WHY we're doing it! We love our customers, we love our store, we love our LEGO!

Please don't hesitate to stop in and say HI and if you order some figure parts and are making something new out of them please do send us pictures as we'd love to see them and would be happy to post them in future blogs. This goes for your own MOC's made with our parts - we'd love to see it all!

Tracy