The day is upon us and the Leicester Square LEGO Store is finally open to the public! The two-storey, 914 square metre store is the worlds Largest LEGO Brand Retail store in the world, bumping the one in Shanghai out of the top spot. Over 1.7 million LEGO bricks were used to build all the LEGO models that you see on its’ premises including the six-metre high, 200,000 bricks fully functional replica of Big Ben (lights and ticking clock). The opening is everything that you expect one of this importance to be, exclusive sets, huge LEGO models, brand new in-store experience and even LEGO designers gracing the occasion. So here is everything that we have found out thus far on the Leicester Square LEGO Brand Store opening! As some of you may have already known, to obtain the Lester Minifigure you need to spend a minimum of £55 to get a scratch card and see if you win either the minifigure mascot or a Creator Parrot Polybag. What we found out is that there are only 275 Lester Minifigures made and it was because of the rarity of the bowler hat accessory (go figure).
For those of you hoping to get one on eBay, to put it in perspective there are 5,000 Mr. Gold Minifigures in existence versus 275 Lester minifigure. I’ll let you do the math. The number of store exclusive sets are astounding. First up is the LEGO Architecture London (21034) skyline set that is a Leicester Square store exclusive at the moment. It was slated to be released in January with the other LEGO Architecture sets but made an exception for the grand opening. It retails at £44.90 and contains 468pcs. The usual LEGO Brand Retail store (40145) set is free when you spend a minimum £125. Remember the London Bus (40220) that was a gift with purchase promotion some time back? Well, it is now just a purchase item that is retailing at £9.90. The Year of the Rooster (40234) surprisingly made its’ way to the to the store opening too and is on sale for £9.90 too. The first ever “Mosaic Maker” machine was unveiled at the Leicester Square LEGO Brand Store today.
It is essentially a really big photo booth where the printouts come in the form of a LEGO mosaic on a 48×48 baseplate. You will still have to assemble it though but it comes in a nice square box with a set of personalised instructions. The folks at LCC Builders have an excellent video which shows us exactly how this is done. The main attraction has to be the 6 metre tall replica of Big Ben but there are quite a few LEGO builds peppered throughout the premises. A brick built Lester ‘minifigure’ was on hand to welcome the patrons to the newly opened store. There is also a life-sized replica of the iconic London red telephone booth (I would have loved to see a Tardis somewhere). One of my favourites is the re-creation of a cabin of the London Tube complete with a brick-built Beefeater and Shakespeare riding along. There are a couple of other ‘freebies’ that you can pick up while you’re at the Leicester Square store. There is a LEGO passport that is given out (or you can ask for one) which is neat little book that you can collect stamps when visiting other LEGO Brand Stores around the world.
Another is the Annual LEGO Calendar that is given out when you make a purchase at a LEGO Brand Store during the promotion period. It is not available till the 10th of December but you will get a sticker to redeem it then. You can temporarily lift this restriction by proving that you're human:What would you pay for a vintage computer once used by hacker Kevin Mitnick? How about a cell phone that he once spoke on, or a genuine prison I.D. card? On Monday, on-line auction house eBay cancelled an offering of Mitnick's official federal Bureau of Prisons inmate I.D. card, ending a flow of authentic Mitnick merchandise put up by his father on behalf of the legendary hacker, who is himself barred from using computers, and of course accessing the Web, under the terms of his supervised release. The laminated plastic card was carried by Mitnick during his stint at a federal correctional institute in Lompoc, California, where it served both as identification and as a debit card for prison vending machines.
It bears Mitnick's name, mug shot and federal prisoner number. Before eBay cancelled the auction, the standing bid for the card was over $1000. "And it was only up for less than forty-eight hours," says Mitnick. Two other pieces of Mitnick memorabilia have already sold on eBay: Mitnick's "first computer," a circa 1982 TRS-80 Pocket Computer Model PC-2, which went for $510, and a cell phone Mitnick recently gave up in favour of a newer model sold for $355. Of course, both items came with a certificates of authenticity and an autographed "Free Kevin" bumper sticker. In an e-mail message to Mitnick's father, an eBay customer service representative claimed the company stopped the auction under its policy prohibiting sellers convicted of a "violent felony" from profiting from their misdeeds. Mitnick plead guilty to a number of felonies last year in connection with a string of electronic intrusions into software and cell phone companies in the mid-90's, but none of the crimes were violent in any usual sense of the word.
Perhaps realizing this, a later message from a different representative claimed eBay cancelled the auction based on a policy against selling federal I.D. cards. The company also cited a policy that bars any sale of stolen property. In fact, Mitnick's breathless sales pitch ("act now and own a piece of history") included the claim that the hacker had to smuggle the I.D. card out of prison upon his release. "The item, as it was described, was smuggled out of a federal penitentiary," says eBay spokesperson Kevin Purglove. "Therefore, one could question whether or not the one selling it is the rightful owner of the merchandise." Mitnick now says there was no smuggling involved, and admits he included the dramatic line to "make it more exciting." "It's not stolen," says Mitnick. "I'd be insane to sell something that's stolen on eBay." "A lot of times the inmates need the cards when they're released to get on a plane to go home, or to get on a bus," agrees federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Tracy Billingsley.