"With a mini series you can give the story a proper sense of pacing, aproper sense of closure."

It's that time of year again when I can be found sitting in a toy isle feeling up small plastic bags. People expect it more at the toy stores but when I'm in the supermarket sitting on the floor surrounded by packets i get some pretty funny looks. Yes you've guessed it, the latest series of LEGO minifigures (Series 12) have hit the shelves and I've had my eyes on some of them for months, since I first saw  images online and in the LEGO club magazine.

My friend Steve is a big collector of these sought after little chaps and I've helped him with his collection along the way. I'm not a collector myself and the boys are like me, with each new series it's more about new parts, hairstyles, accessories and body parts. I love them, you can spend ages creating an epic building and it can come out looking amazing but sometimes it's the minifigures you use on the build that really make it stand out.

After seeing the images a while ago it was all about the pig for me. The animal ones are always the first to grab my attention, I'm still after the bumble bee from a few series back. What surprised me though is that when I opened up the wizard it was instantly my favourite in the series.

The Goth was also a figure of interest for us, mainly for the hair. Me and the boys like to make minifigures of our friends and the parts on the goth (or Gother as Opeie calls her) will come in very useful. Opeie and Seth were really interested in getting hold of the rockstar too as my friend had given them the girl rock star a few weeks back.

I've written about this over many posts but one of the great things about the minifigure series which I don't think it's written about enough is the educational value of Lego. It's great for honing your children's fine motor skills but the release of historical figures and characters from literature over the minifigure series means that the boys know who these famous characters are long before covering them from an academic point.

Last weekend at Madam Tussauds Opeie ran over to a waxwork and said "daddy I want my picture taken with Shakespeare". I wouldn't have had a clue who that was at 3 and that's all because of LEGO.

The boys got a brief lesson about the three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas and their moto 'one for all, all for one'. Again this was because of LEGO's character choice from series 12.

Today's trip to the shops got me the two other characters we needed for our LEGO collection the Princess for me (I think it's about time our very own princess's minifigure got some royal attire) and for Opeie the lifeguard. Next On my bag feeling mission is to go searching for the gamer for Seth.

I was excited to talk more about the tech side of the Series 12 minifigures but sadly...

With each minifigure purchased there is a code inside for you to redeem online so that you can take your new character into the online LEGO minifigure game. I'm really looking forward to this to be available on either Mac or Tablet as i think it is something that Seth will really be interested in. Each character has special stats and abilities to be used in game. The game can be played for free but you can also pay for extras for your characters to up your game and give you the advantage. You can also pay to become a member giving you access to other extras. It all sounds awesome, hurry up and make it for Mac LEGO.

Its going to be a busy week or so of bag feeling, i love the excitement. Now to start thinking about all the things were going to use these guys on.