Designer Toys 101: What is a Lucky Bag?

If you are new to this column, it is truly meant to be read from the beginning to the most recent.
Please start with the first installment, "What are Designer Toys?"

"So just what the heck is a Lucky Bag?" you might ask. At it's heart, the idea is like that of a retailer selling a "Mystery Bag": taking a decent amount of unwanted or over-stocked merchandise, putting it all in a opaque container (so you can't see the contents) and selling the whole thing — sight unseen — for an extremely discounted rate. But within the Designer Toy community, the concept has evolved to something more special…

Usually released by a single manufacturer or artist, Lucky Bags still do usually contain a certain amount of "regular releases" to fill them out, so that part of the Mystery Bag base remains the same. But the remainder — the true reason to spend real money on these — are the rarities.

In addition to the "regular" items, Lucky Bags can contain: one-off hand-painted custom figures, unpainted test pulls (a casting of the figure done to test either the mold or the color), unproduced colorways (sometimes this happens), brand new sculpts (early release figures), and/or completely exclusive editions of releases. You're usually guaranteed something along these lines, which is why Lucky Bags tend to be pricy… but the contents are rare and satisfy true collectors.

For the casual collector, a Lucky Bag can also be a blessing: even with the bevy of rarities inside, the price is still usually less than it would cost to buy all the contents individually (based on the readily available editions for rarities). So it can be an amazing way to jump start your collection.

Plus, of course, there's the ultimate joy of discovering what you've exactly received. In a sense, it exploits the Blind Box mentality: perhaps you'll pull something outstanding, perhaps you'll pull something that's just good… either way, you usually feel like you've gotten your monies worth.

Next Week: What is a mash-up and what is a kit-bash?

The image used in this week's column features Designer Toys by Super7. Photo by DrilOne.