The BrickHeadz series is perfect for collecting. Another unique feature is that most BrickHeadz sets have their own numbers. I don’t mean the LEGO set numbers, but the running numbers within the series. Yes, there are exceptions, but let’s skip those. So we have sets numbered from 1, and at the time of writing this article we have already reached number 181, which went to the Jake Sully figure from set 40554 “Jake Sully & his Avatar”.
Everything would be perfect if not for one detail. In the series from 1 to 181 there is one gap, at number 57. That set doesn’t exist and probably never will.
Over its history LEGO has signed a whole lot of different licensing deals, thanks to which we have all kinds of sets based on films, games and other entertainment. They also worked with Toys”R”Us, a global chain of toy stores. The result of this marriage was exclusive Toys”R”Us branded sets available only in that chain’s stores, as well as various gifts or, for example, freebies for purchases of the right size.
Toys”R”Us has its own mascot, a friendly giraffe named Geoffrey. It also got two LEGO sets: 40077 and 40228. In my opinion both are hideous, but in 2018 there was hope for the first LEGO set with a Geoffrey figure that looked really cute. I’m talking about BrickHeadz set number 40316.
You can tell LEGO approached this set without compromise, because it’s the only BrickHeadz set whose form departed so much from the others, and to this day there is no other set like it. And this was 2018, the Pets series was still ahead of us, so this figure was meant to be truly revolutionary. At the same time I think the designers rose to the occasion and the figure looks very cute. It would certainly have been a nice change after the earlier awful giraffe sets from Toys”R”Us.
Unfortunately the Toys”R”Us chain was facing huge financial problems. In the end it declared bankruptcy and pulled out of the markets in the USA, the UK and Australia, but in reality the effects were felt by the chain all over the world. This isn’t the place to describe that story in detail, the curious can find out more from, for example, Wikipedia.
For BrickHeadz fans the most important news is that LEGO didn’t even get to officially announce the new set. In August 2018 a PDF file with the building instructions briefly appeared on lego.com, and that is basically the only trace of this figure. Unfortunately the set had also been assigned BrickHeadz number 57, and so far no set with that number has appeared, so fans of the series have to live with the knowledge that there is a gap in the numbering of their favourite sets.
Rumours and various hopes that the set will be released after all keep coming back. Back in 2018 many people sincerely believed that since the Toys”R”Us chain was officially leaving only some markets and staying in others, the set would be released after all. When that didn’t happen, people started discussing the financial situation of Toys”R”Us and saw hope in it, that they would get back on their feet and someone would finally return to the cancelled set. Several years have passed, though, the Toys”R”Us chain still has problems, and all we can do is wait and hope.
Of course there was also speculation that the sets had already been produced and were just waiting in some warehouse for distribution, but nothing points to that. The instructions we have are the only trace of this set. That is of course a lot, because it means the model was created and approved by the decision makers, but there was no official box render, no announcement, let alone official photos. There is also a mention on Marcos Bessa’s website (he officially leads the BrickHeadz series), where we can read a short note that the set was cancelled. And that’s it, no more official news.
Several times I’ve come across threads on Reddit where people claimed to have the original figure. Bricks can be faked, but it’s much harder to do that with instructions and a box. Nobody has ever even tried to prove that they really own the original set, and I think it’s safe to assume the set never made it into production.
BrickHeadz fans from all over the world found a way to own a set as close to the original as possible. First of all, we have the instructions from LEGO itself, so we know exactly how the whole build of the figure goes. The tricky part is the bricks with printed stars, and here you can go one of two ways. The first is to use a custom brick printing service, for example the one from Brick Print. The second is to use the stickers from the previously mentioned LEGO set number 40228 (that’s what I did). Just remember that for one BrickHeadz Geoffrey figure you need as many as two sticker sheets. What’s more, some of them have to be trimmed by hand (I recommend a scalpel). Finally, please note that many people who go this route pick the wrong stickers for the narrower bricks that fit a single star. You can see this mistake even in the photos and renders I used for this article: the stars used there are smaller than the ones shown in the LEGO instructions. Keep this in mind when you want to build your own model.
Details about the global problems of Toys”R”Us:
As far as I know, the Toys”R”Us bankruptcy was a long and complicated affair, which is why I simplified some things in the article. Even though there are still stores operating under this brand around the world, they aren’t owned by the parent company but by companies that use a licence (or some other legal arrangement that lets them use the name and branding). LEGO worked with the original Toys”R”Us, which went bankrupt, and that’s why there was no chance of the set being released in other countries, as many people had hoped. I never dug deep into this topic because, as a BrickHeadz fan, it isn’t that important to me, but I wanted to describe and explain it at the end of this article. I don’t know whether some company with the rights to use Geoffrey’s image has survived somewhere, whether it has any stores and what its financial condition is, or whether it maintains any partnership with LEGO.