Halloween Help
13So, ever since I found the fidget spinners cheap on Meh, I’ve decided to move away from giving out candy to giving out something fun. Last year, I had a bunch of Sea World leftovers, and my wife suggested I work them into a theme/costume
. Last year went so well, that this year I decided to step it up. Admittedly I may be going a tad overboard, but I need some help on the item to giveaway. In short, the theme this year is a Carnival game called 
LEGO Mania. It’s a game I am building that lets the kids press a button and stop a series of flashing lights to win a prize. I’m 3D printing mega LEGGO guys (no misspelling, don’t want any copyright infringement issues) as the “Choice” prize. I’ve got a couple different sizes and styles for Large as well. The “everyone is a winner” prize I am hoping to give away LEGO minifigs. The challenge is finding them for less than $1 each. I try to do about $.25 per kid and am thinking I will need 100-200 minifigs. Anyone in the MEH community know where I might find a bulk of clean, like new minifigs? Don’t need to be special, just something I can give the kids. Attaching some pics of last year and the current build. The lights come today, but I’ve never built addressable LEDs with an Arduino before, so might take me a few passes to get it right. If I can get enough help here, I’ll include a “brought to you by the Meh community” or your handle. Thanks for the help and as usual, if you have any ideas, please let me know. Thanks!
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Genuine Lego minifigs never go for less than a buck, even on clearance. There are non-genuine minifigs galore (one seller at a recent convention said that ignoring paint variations, he had over 400 different figs) but they tend not to be a lot cheaper. (Some very specialized and/or complex ones can be more expensive than the typical real Legos.) I’d suggest seeing if AliExpress has any sellers with deals on minimally-decorated types.
@werehatrack I want to try to stay away from the knock offs. As a LEGO fan, the less of those I see the better. I am trying to bargain with the local LEGO resale store to see if I can offer him advertising for a discount. That’s probably my best bet (or eBay a few). I appreciate the thoughts!
Man, kids must go wild at your house. Glad to see some adults are still kids at heart.
@Star2236 the last two years it was cool to look up and down the street to see all of the light up toys running around. Won’t see that this year, but I think it will be a big hit anyway. We’ll see. My neighbor gives out bourbon for the adults, see he has that demographic covered
@kykazaa @Star2236
Sounds like a pretty cool neighborhood!
My first thought was to go to BrickLink, but it’s very much geared toward buyers who know exactly what they want. I mean, I recently sold FOUR minifigs on that site for $150. It’s for collectors.
On eBay and Etsy I see lots of listings for “bulk minifigs,” but they’re still over a dollar apiece (one Etsy listing is 25 for $50, one eBay listing is 10 for $19, and so on).
Bigger bulk lots of Lego are on both sites, but you’d be rolling the dice on how many minifigs and associated parts were in each lot. Plus, shipping would be insane.
I have heard of people scoring big bins of Lego for free from families whose kids outgrow it. You have a little time before Halloween to join/watch your local Freecycle and Buy Nothing groups on Facebook and watch for these opportunities.
@kostia yeah, trying these. Also, we have a local LEGO reseller and I’m trying to partner with him. He gives me a deal on the minifigs and I include his card in the gift. Win-win for him. We’ll see, I want the game a little further before I go back to him though
Well there’s always something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/100-Pieces-People-Figurines-Architectural/dp/B07WC1G3H5/
Of course, there are still army soldier sets also; you could tell the kids they are hunting witches:
https://www.amazon.com/Military-Figures-Planes-Accessories-Pieces/dp/B0778ZSWY5/
@phendrick this is a good fall back. I may get some cheap “everybody wins price” and change the way the game works. Meaning have more big prizes up top, but difficult to win. We’ll see what I can source
I wanna know how you have ‘SeaWorld leftovers’, and that many of them, to boot!
@PooltoyWolf there is a local site called Bidfta. They buy returns from Home Depot, Walmart, etc. they happened to snag a bunch of them and had sold them there. They are too popular to get good deals now, but 2-3 years ago there were tons of great deals to be had
Unfortunately I don’t have any answers to your questions but I must say that this sounds amazing. I hope you upload video of the prize selector in action!
@RiotDemon absolutely will do. I got the Arduino, lights and the stop button from the Octopi people yesterday. Have a friend that knows the coding well, so just have to figure that piece out and do a lot of painting
Part one is done…now to work on the game. Still sourcing minifigs…
Scale is tough, it’s about 8’ wide and the lights chase around the ring
@kykazaa Holy crap, that’s amazing!
@kykazaa just WOW
@kykazza @tinamarie1974 X2! And hot dogs and poppy corn?! Well done.