Over the past year or so, most (all?) LEGO Stores have switched from offering pick-a-brick wall offerings in a plastic cup to offering them using a cardboard box. Ostensibly, this is an environmentally friendly initiative, but I also imagine that the LEGO Company will save a fair bit of money using cardboard boxes over plastic cups as well!
A few months ago, I went to a LEGO Store and filled up one of the new boxes with pieces. I'm not someone who has the patience or will to sit there and stack pieces together before putting them in the box. Instead, I simply dump what looks interesting into my box until it's full and then call it a day. Thus, in my experience the box and the cup hold roughly the same amount of stuff, though I think my method does get more pieces in the plastic cups overall.
For this particular store visit, I was able to restock my supply of 2x2 tiles, 1x4 tiles (in white), and grab a bunch of white lamp posts as well as some small, green leaves (those pieces are always needed by me it seems). I filled out the box with a few ball joint pieces, some candelabras and candle pieces along with some trans-yellow minifigure heads and some solid yellow 1x1 cylinder pieces. After that, I still had a bit more room so I threw in some pearl gold trophies and some tan 1x3 rounded slope pieces as well as a small handful of trans-light blue snowflake bits for use in a future Winter Village build of mine!
Overall, I don't think the Pick-a-Brick wall is necessarily the best value for the money but there is something intrinsically fun about picking out a bunch of pieces and immediately being able to go home with them. Of course, that "perk" is definitely nullified if you are anything like me and when you get home you set the box of pieces down and then promptly ignore it for the next several months as other things in life take priority!
On the bright side, with the winter months approaching I need to start thinking about this year's LEGO Christmas Village set-up. I'm quite certain those blue snowflakes will be useful (as will the green leaves) from my latest purchase. I'll probably also find a way to incorporate at least one or two of the candelabras into the interior of a custom building! Finally, I can never have enough tiles - and those white tiles in particular go fast whenever I build Winter Village stuff! Hopefully, in a month or two I'll be back here to show off some custom builds and perhaps you'll even see some of the above pieces spread throughout my build(s).
Can't wait to see this year's Winter Village! I don't think I've ever purchased anything from the Pick A Brick bins. Although I do want to make some stand for my Star Wars ships, so maybe I'll check it out the next time I'm hanging out at the mall.
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