As you could read in this post, the official mascot of LEGO BrickHeadz is a character called Nonnie. Any of us can have him, either by building him ourselves or by buying the 41597: Go Brick Me set. A less well-known fact is that Nonnie also appeared in 2017 in a special edition, and we are unlikely ever to add this unique figure to our collections.
The LEGO Inside Tour is a special annual event. More than two days during which you visit LEGO’s headquarters in Billund, Denmark, take a look at the brick production process, meet the LEGO employees responsible for designing sets and enjoy a whole series of attractions that would make any LEGO fan’s head spin.
The 2017 edition of the LEGO Inside Tour was special for fans of the LEGO BrickHeadz series. Every time, the lucky participants of the event are given various goodies and also receive an exclusive set, produced especially for the Inside Tour and not available anywhere else. In 2017 that set was 4000025: House Tree of Creativity, but on top of that Nonnie appeared in an unusual edition.
I admit that the subject of Nonnie Inside Tour 2017 still holds many mysteries for me. From what I know, one exclusive set always appeared for the Inside Tour, and for that reason I don’t understand how Nonnie also appeared in 2017. It’s possible, of course, and everything suggests that this is exactly what happened, but it’s impossible to find any concrete information about it. I searched the whole Internet for a description of those events, watched every possible piece of material (there isn’t much of it), and not a single direct participant of the LEGO Inside Tour mentions Nonnie.
Even how many of these figures were actually made is in doubt. On the Internet you can find photos of the packaged set, and on the back there is a sticker with the set’s number handwritten in the form ‘x/80’. From this, most news sites conclude that there were only 80 sets in total. The situation is made drastically worse by a rumour that only 35 of them went to Inside Tour participants and the rest were given to LEGO employees.
On the other hand, there were reportedly 5 editions of the Inside Tour in 2017. Each should have had 35 participants, which gives 175 people. Did all of them get the special Nonnie figure? Or maybe there were 80 sets to give away each time, so 400 in total?
All of these assumptions are based on the fragmentary information I managed to find. Even the figure of 5 editions that year is not 100% certain, but it is likely. As far as I know, in other years there were between 4 and 5 editions. Here we have a comment from someone who claims to be one of the participants and says that 1400 people applied and there were as many as 6 editions. I think all doubts on this subject are finally cleared up by this tweet from Mark John Stafford, a set designer at LEGO, in which he writes that, exceptionally, a fifth edition of the Inside Tour was planned for October 2017 to mark the opening of the LEGO House, LEGO’s new home.
The number of participants is also a puzzle, because for example in this video at the 12-second mark there is a photo of all the participants of one of the editions, and there are 39 people in it. I’d expect 35; admittedly some LEGO employees could have been in it, but it’s doubtful there were as many as 4 of them. On the other hand, several sources always repeat the figure of 35 people, so perhaps a different number of participants is just an exception to the rule.
I think it went like this:
2017 really was a special year because of the LEGO House. The first four editions of the Inside Tour took place according to the standard rules, and the last, fifth edition was special and took place in the new building. For this occasion 80 Nonnie Inside Tour 2017 figures were produced, of which 35 went to the participants and the rest to LEGO employees.
Regardless of these calculations, there is not the slightest doubt that the Inside Tour 2017 version of Nonnie is the rarest and hardest to get figure in the whole BrickHeadz series.
All right, so there is this figure, very rare, but we are big fans of the series and would still like to have it in our collection. What kind of cost should we be prepared for? Lars Conrad lifts the veil a little; he’s the only non-anonymous person I’ve heard of who can boast a complete collection of BrickHeadz sets. The jewel in his crown is of course Nonnie figure number 68/80, and on his Instagram, in the comments under this photo, we can read that the amount he paid for his set was 9500 pounds sterling. His copy stands out because it was signed by Marcos Bessa. Somewhere else I read that another figure (without Marcos’s autograph) was sold for 8000 (no currency given). Yes… I suppose it’s time to come to terms with not having Nonnie in your collection and perhaps console yourself with a figure with stickers. And even if we were struck by the crazy idea of spending such a huge sum on 61 LEGO bricks, nobody knows where to find one for sale.
There are remarkably few photos of this figure on the Internet. And only two sets have been photographed from the back, where the sticker with the set number is. These are numbers 5/80 (anonymous owner) and 68/80 (owned by Lars Conrad).
Update 2023-01-26
Lately I’ve been more active in BrickHeadz-related Facebook groups, and it occurred to me to look there for any historical posts about this figure. That’s how I found two lucky people who own (or owned, since these are old posts) a Nonnie Inside Tour 2017.
The first of them is Thomas White, who on 9 January 2019 posted that set number 5 of 80 had arrived for him, which is the one we had already found on the Internet. His comment suggests that he bought it from someone. In another thread from July 2020, someone asks Thomas whether he still has this figure for sale, and the answer is no. So it’s not clear whether Thomas sold his copy, or perhaps planned to sell it but changed his mind and still has it in his collection.
A small update 2023-10-10: Thomas confirmed on Facebook that he sold his figure 4 years ago for 6 thousand (I don’t know in what currency, probably dollars). In the same thread someone else also mentions that they “recently saw” a Nonnie for sale for 13 thousand.
photo source: FB Fans of LEGO BrickHeadz
The second figure was shown off by Jacen Carpenter, on 5 July 2020 in the previously mentioned thread on Facebook. And here we have two new and interesting details. First, this is how figure number 38/80 turned up. Second, Jacen says he was a participant in the 2017 Inside Tour, so he is the first owner of this set. We can see his figure in this video at 2:10, as well as in several other videos and photos on his Instagram. What is truly unique is this review, where we see not only the figure, but Jacen also shows the instructions, something I haven’t seen anywhere else.
By the way, Jacen seems to be a huge BrickHeadz fan and, as he wrote himself, it all started with that memorable 2017 Inside Tour and Nonnie. That’s when he got hooked 🙂 On his Facebook profile he posts photos of his MOCs every now and then, and his latest posts that I can see as I write these words show that he went to Brickvention in Australia. The figures that were shown there, and that I mentioned on the microblog, are in fact his creations. His Instagram points to this, for one.
Finally, I’ll add that one more BrickHeadz fan, 馮競鋒, spoke up in the Facebook thread and posted a photo with a Nonnie, but somewhere else admitted that it isn’t an original figure.
Update 2023-03-25
Last year I covered the subject of counterfeit LEGO bricks on the site. Today I came across an offer where you can order a whole Nonnie Inside Tour figure. It costs 99 yuan, which at the time of writing is about PLN 62. There’s no point going into the quality of the prints in this particular offer (UV method); for now you simply need to be aware that such offers exist and people use them. Someone might try to take advantage of this and cheat you.
Update 2023-10-08
I’ve just written up on the site a short story of figure number 23/80. It seems quite credible, so it looks like we know of another lucky person who has this figure, along with a complete BrickHeadz series.
In addition, today I talked to someone who goes by the nickname Aurora and is from Australia. She is quite active in one of the BrickHeadz groups on Facebook, and in one of her comments she mentioned that she has a Nonnie figure. I asked her for details and we chatted for a while.
It turns out that Aurora has just the figure, without instructions. As a consequence, she doesn’t know the number of her Nonnie. I asked the obvious question of whether she’s sure it’s authentic, and she replied in great detail. She wrote that she had compared her figure with many from the Internet. What’s more, she had bought lots of versions of printed bricks from many countries, and in her opinion none of them look like the real thing compared with her pieces. So she came to the conclusion that either she has a genuine figure or it’s a superb-quality fake.
Comparison of other bricks
Then she also mentioned that she knows someone who claims that a few months ago he bought an unbuilt, complete Nonnie Inside Tour 2017 set, paying €7000 for it. At the end we commiserated with each other over the fact that the potential prices are astronomical and, on top of that, nobody is selling their copies 🙂
Update 2024-10-27
Today something unprecedented happened. The first Nonnie Inside Tour 2017 figure since I started following the subject (that is, for several years) sold on eBay. The figure’s individual number is 71 and the price reached an astronomical PLN 32,000. I described the whole thing in a separate article.