Picture the scene. You've just walked into to the gleaming palace of wood, metal and glass that is an Apple store. All around are shiny examples of cutting edge technology and bleeding edge design (1), laptops, iPhones, iPads and more accessories than you can shake a stick at.
But you walk past all that, as you just want a simple connector cable. Less than ten quid, it's about as cheap an Apple product as you can buy. But you search in vain. So you catch the eye of one of the polo-shirt clad assistants and enquire...
"Hi. I'm looking for for this connector cable please, but I can't seem to find it."
"Ah yes," replies the staff member who may or may not be a genius. "We don't sell them here."
"Err, sorry?"
"We don't sell them. Here." With a sweep of their arm they indicate the shop in case you were in any doubt as to where 'Here' was.
"You mean you're out of stock?" you enquire.
"No. I mean we don't usually sell that item in our shops."
"But it's an Apple product." you protest, "where am I supposed to buy it from, if you don't sell it in Apple stores?"
"Ah," says the assistant with a knowing look. "Other places..."
"Other places? What other places?"
"I really couldn't say," says the operative. "You'll just have to hunt around and maybe you'll get lucky."
With that they're gone, off in search of a customer who wants to buy something expensive.
Sounds ludicrous. But now replace "The Apple Store" with "The Lego Store" and replace "cable" with "Polybag".
Not so crazy, right?
There are many tribes in the Lego collecting world, and one group choose to follow a more challenging path than most. Not for them the pifflingly easy task of 'Just go to a Lego store (or other retailer) and buy a Lego set'. Oh no. For this band of hunter-gatherers, the chase is as great as the prize is small. I speak of none but the Polybag collector.
I've been collecting and building (2) for about 11 years now, and while I don't set out to acquire polybags, they're a kind of 'hazard of the job'. You pick up polys as unexpected GWPs and sometimes, yes, the Lego Store does have them on the shelves, tucked away. And if they interest me, I'll pick a few up. As a result I've ended up with a large plastic crate full which comes in handy for Secret Santa, children's birthdays and so on. But in the grand scheme of things, my collection is pitifully small and consists only of the easiest to find, common or garden polybags.
Yes, you do find a few in Lego stores, but you're more likely to find them elsewhere. For me, it's the local Tesco superstore. I was in there recently and happened to come across a box that looked like it had just been put out. As such, I came away with one each of: 30655 Technic Forklift with Pallet, 30633 Friends Skate Ramp, 30638 City Police Bike Training and 30641 Creator 3-in-1 Panda. I was in the shop again about a week later and there were only a handful left, so clearly they're popular, even if £3.50 for a handful of pieces isn't the greatest price-per-part ratio. And it suggests that unless you're constantly on the lookout, they can come and go before you've even realised it.
But sometimes you'll see mention of a polybag on a Lego fan site - Brickset recently ran a piece on 30652 Doctor Strange's Interdimensional Portal - and nobody has a clue where to find it. Indeed they linked to the 24 polybags so far released in 2023, and while a few were GWPs, some were magazine cover mounts and a few, like the ones I found, had turned up in stores, plenty more seemed to be very hard to find.
Maybe that's the appeal. Maybe polybag collectors like the difficulty in tracking them down, making the final purchase that much more fun. Ok, I get that.
But what's in it for the Lego Group? What's the point of designing, creating, packaging and distributing a product that you're, seemingly, deliberately hiding from your customers? Or at least making it very difficult for them to find?
The Lego Group has form when it comes to making products that it tries to keep out of the hands of those who want it. There are the ultra-limited edition items, such as the minifigs produced for Comic-Con which instantly appear on the after-market at insane prices. There are - or at least were - the region exclusive sets, such as those produced for the Chinese New Year. Fortunately TLG listened to the cries of anguish of those forced to pay over the odds and declared that regional exclusives would be no more, and so now sets like 80111 Lunar New Year Parade are available from Wyoming to Watford. Well, ok, not Watford, because that was closed last year. And not Wyoming, as I've just checked and they don't have a Lego store.
Wisconsin then.
Other throttled-back products include the infamous 'Mr Gold' who appeared as part of Series 10 of the Collectible Minifigures range back in 2013. People who had been collecting and swapping since Series 1 back in 2010 found that a complete collection was suddenly a whole lot more difficult, given that Mr Gold was included in the series, but only 5000 were being produced. Great for the people who found them, but a right pain for those who didn't. Fans were not backward about coming forward with their complaints!
None of which explains why TLG do it though, particularly with polybags. Maybe they're just being playful, maybe they're just being bloody minded. Maybe they want to encourage a 'I'd better buy it while I see it.' mindset in Lego fans to keep those cash registers ticking over?
The Lego Group claim to pay no attention to - and not to intentionally encourage - the after-market. They have a funny way of showing it.
In the USA there seem to be a number of likely spots to find polybags, such as Target, Meijer's and Walmart, while Scheel's and the Lego Discovery Centres also seem rich hunting grounds. Meanwhile, the UK either has very slim pickings, or the polybag collectors are keeping very quiet about where the loot is to be found.
Maybe I need to start looking a bit harder...
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1. Or, depending on your point of view, over-priced nonsense for technology fashion victims.
2. More collecting than building. Need to sort that out.
