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I popped over to LEGO’s Bricks and Pieces today and found that they have begun their annual holiday season closure.
Every year, LEGO temporarily shutters the Bricks and Pieces service so they can not only catch up with the demand, but also to deal with any missing parts reported from all the sets that people received over the holiday.
As you can see from the photo above, it’s an offshoot of their customer service website. From there, you can ask for a part that was missing from a set, or was broken. I’ve only done that once when the cockpit for the Slave 1 was seriously scratched before I opened it.
If you’re not familiar with the Bricks and Pieces service, it’s a lot like the Pick a Brick wall, both in your local LEGO Brand Retail store, or on the shop.LEGO.com website. The Bricks and Pieces section offers a much wider variety of parts then the wall or main website, but the price isn’t always as good as either of those options. Be sure to keep an eye out.
The Bricks and Pieces option is the third box and you can browse for parts in either of two ways.
First, you can enter a set number, so for example if you knew the part you needed was in a specific set you could enter 60162 (Jungle Air Drop Helicopter) and the site would list out all the parts found in that set. Scrolling down, you can then find the piece you want like the brown roof found on the taller building (Shown on the left) and add it to your cart. You can then set the quantity you want.
The second option is a bit more difficult. You can search by the design number or element number of a part. Most often this can be found on the brick if you’ve got good eyes, in the back of the instructions or from a site like Bricklink.com or Brickset.com. This method comes in handy when you need to see the range of colors a part might be available in. Not all colors are available all the time so this can be a bit hit or miss if you need something rare, old or odd.
The options of what’s available are pretty far reaching and include a huge variety of speciality minifigure parts (torso, legs, heads, accessories) which is pretty cool if you want to assemble a specialized figure or 80 unique figures. Some of the parts are from licensed figures too, so you might find something cool. The trick is that finding them is tricky.
The site doesn’t have everything, and usually doesn’t have the newer parts. For example, as of a couple of days ago, the lovely purple roller coaster track from Joker’s Manor isn’t in the inventory.
Anyway, I guess it’s off to BrickLink.com for my current needs… at least until February.
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