In the article titled “Where did BrickHeadz come from?” I described the history of BrickHeadz in detail and mentioned the official launch on 11 March 2017 (a Saturday). I decided to describe this special day a bit more broadly and present the material I managed to gather on the subject.
I’ll start with what I don’t know. I don’t know why this date and place were chosen for the launch. I don’t know whether other LEGO themes had similar events, had none at all or, quite the opposite, were launched with much more pomp. That’s why I can’t judge this event, so I’ll focus on describing what I managed to find about it.
Only Marcos Bessa was at the launch itself. The event took place at the LEGO Certified Store (Bricks World) in Ngee Ann City. In the photos it looks more like a small LEGO shop, which suggests it wasn’t a big event. From the information I found, the most loyal fans queued that day from 5:30 in the morning. Before the event Marcos himself wrote these few words:
I’m incredibly humbled and honoured to be a part of this amazing launch event of LEGO BrickHeadz. I really look forward to the meet-and-greet session and can’t wait to share with you the inspiration behind the BrickHeadz series. More importantly, it would be my greatest pleasure to be able to share my passion of building with LEGO bricks with you.
So in short, “it’ll be fun, I’m excited, see you there” 🙂
A day later, on 12 March 2017 (a Sunday), thirty people who had bought the BrickHeadz figure bundle on Saturday and had also been drawn in a lottery took part in a workshop run by Marcos. You can find some photos of this event online. The brickfinder.net portal described the course of the workshop quite thoroughly here. I won’t review that material here: Marcos talked about many LEGO-related things and left BrickHeadz until the end, but nothing came up that we didn’t already know in 2022 (the year this article was published).
Fans who decided on launch day to buy the whole set of 12 BrickHeadz figures or the 4 figures from the Batman world (or other sets from other themes, but I won’t describe that) received a card with Marcos’s autograph on that occasion. I’d love to have one in my collection someday. I found the photos below in a sale listing at this link.
As a bit of trivia, Marcos refused to sign the BrickHeadz boxes themselves. The explanation was that a whole team stands behind BrickHeadz, not just him personally, and it would be wrong to put his signature on other people’s work. Hence the idea of the commemorative cards.
Those who decided to order and pay for all twelve sets before launch day got one more gift: a display stand for the figures designed by Nicholas Foo. The stand was made of 311 pieces. It wasn’t overly charming, but the figures looked nice on it and it didn’t distract from what matters most. The photos you can see below come from an article on brickfinder.net.
The stand was given for the first 350 orders, but there were supposed to be 500 stands in total. I haven’t found any information anywhere on whether the remaining 150 stands were ever (and when) given away or sold, and on what occasion.
Besides the large stands there were also small ones, in different colours, on different dates and in different quantities. They were only available in Singapore. Here are the details:
11 to 12 March 2017: 1000 sets of two stands for the LEGO Batman figures (black and yellow)
18 to 19 March 2017: 1000 sets of two stands for the Beauty and the Beast figures (blue and yellow)
25 to 26 March 2017: 2000 sets of two stands for the LEGO Marvel figures (blue and red)
1 to 2 April 2017: 1000 sets of two stands for the Pirates of the Caribbean figures (dark red and dark blue)
The material I found about the launch is mainly thanks to the courtesy of the brickfinder.net portal. All the photos in this article come from them. You’ll also find more photos on their Flickr profile: start with this photo and “swipe” to the right. On the right you also have a short video in which Marcos tells the story of BrickHeadz, which you can read about in detail here.
Of course, that day was only the official launch, while BrickHeadz had already been available on the market earlier, and I don’t mean Comic-Con 2016. From my information, the figures were available in the USA and Europe from mid-February 2017 as a VIP pre-sale. They officially reached shops and lego.com on 1 March 2017. The figures of Captain Jack Sparrow (41593) and Captain Armando Salazar (41594) were available to VIPs from 17 March and went on official sale on 1 April.