Since our first LEGO scan, the team at PACK SCAN have come a long way in understanding the process of CT scanning LEGO. However, we thought we would pull this original scan out of our archive to show you where we started.
If you are like us and love LEGO minifigures, then we are sure you will find this interesting! When PACK SCAN was in early ages of development, our co-founders were looking into what booster packs would be ideal to test. Whilst the focus was on cards, one day after being psyched on energy drinks the idea came up; "are there any other boosters we can scan that aren't cards?". Then the idea hit our co-founders like a brick: "mystery Funko Pops"! Then about 15 seconds later, bingo, their thoughts changed to "LEGO minifigures mystery packs". A quick trip to the local LEGO store was organised (the first official PACK SCAN business trip), and a pack of series 26 LEGO minifigures was acquired to undergo CT scanning.
Now there were a few things to consider. As CT scans are essentially density detectors, would different LEGO pieces vary in density? As you can't see colour in a CT scanner, would it be possible to see details such as faces or clothing? And as LEGO is denser than paper / card, would it take much longer than trading cards to scan?
The answers are (a) sometimes, (b) not exactly and (c) not that much longer! But lets see how we came to that conclusion.
So back to the S26 LEGO minifigures pack, what did our team do? Well we put the minifigures pack in the CT scanner, turned it on, and shot x-rays at them for just over an hour. And the result was better than we hoped (and we can do it even better now!). You could see all the components inside the mystery pack, in a scan that only took about 15mins longer than we scan trading card booster packs. But, you could not see ink details on the minifigures (although we have since found this is possible, even on trading cards but we are still developing this breakthrough to make it economical). And in this scan, none of the LEGO parts varied in density, as they were made of the same plastic, but some LEGO pieces can be different in other sets.
From the CT scan we were quickly able to see the unique components to identify the mystery minifigure. There was a Space Helmet, a Cyber Gun and most importantly a Robotic French Bulldog. With these pieces we could easily identify the minifigure as Retro Space Heroine, one of the rarer characters in the set based on total count released. You can see a better photo of her at the bottom of this page.
LEGO mystery packs turn out to be some of the most ideal products to CT scan thanks to the ingenuity of the innovators at the LEGO Group in developing lots of varying pieces. If you would like your LEGO minifigure mystery packs CT scanning be sure to reach out to our team.
