This is a cool idea, but I get the idea it would be prohibitively expensive to buy enough of these display frames to display a significant number of minifigures. Plus, unlike the non-buildable display cases, these are probably more difficult to travel with, won't keep your figs from getting dusty, and may not have space for certain accessories. These display frames can't be hung on a wall, meaning that they'll invariably take up valuable desk/shelf space. They also don't seem to have an attachment points side-to-side, meaning that once your displays get to a certain height they're very liable to tumble-- and unlike the non-buildable display cases, might not survive a great fall in one piece. You could arrange the display frames like a wall made out of 2x2 bricks, of course, but I don't think that has the same advantage display-wise as a gridlike layout.

Overall, this is a nice idea I'm sure some people would like, but for me it just seems like it would be an inefficient alternative to a real display case. I haven't had any huge desire to display my minifigure collection anyway, but if I did want to do so I don't think I'd be likely to settle for this.

  On 5/29/2012 at 10:42 PM, TheLegoDr said:

I was actually talking about these. The official one looks nice, but only holds 15 instead of 16 which is really silly on TLG's part.

Oh, silly me, I forgot about that major design flaw of that case. After giving it some thought, I guess the ones you were talking about are the best solution for displaying minifigs, but alas I can't find any of them either. My TRU still has the red one and a couple of the small ones, but it seems these are the last ones.

  On 5/31/2012 at 9:56 AM, Blondie-Wan said:

Where are you getting the info that it's preassembled - do you just mean the portion of it we see through the package window? If that's it, I suspect it's just that small portion of the set that comes pre-assembled, and the rest of it is in the usual bags of bricks floating around in the box.

It reminds me of some old-style packages, when certain elements in a set would be showcased by showing them in little form-fitted depressions in a clear plastic tray over the rest of the contents. Sometimes those would include preassembled minifigures and perhaps other submodels, but the parts weren't glued. I'd guess this is like those.

Yes, I was talking about the one in the window. I don't know what the rest of it looks like, which is why I asked. And back in the day when regular large sets came with such windows, the parts weren't assembled.

If anyone is planning to get these but is worried about dust, you could just get some trans-clear 1x6x5 panels from PAB or bricklink (possibly along with some white 1x6 bricks to fill the complete height of one display module), but it's still annoying that you have to get these separately.

  On 5/31/2012 at 7:08 PM, Oky said:

Yes, I was talking about the one in the window. I don't know what the rest of it looks like, which is why I asked. And back in the day when regular large sets came with such windows, the parts weren't assembled.

Minifigure parts often were, and a few much older train sets came with whole train cars assembled, as seen here and here. Of course those are unusual cases, but do show there's some precedent for such things.

Anyway, I guess we'll know soon enough whether these parts are glued. I'm guessing not, but I await confirmation.

The elements are not glued. I picked up one of these earlier this week.