LEGO has cut it awfully close to the wire this year in announcing their San Diego Comic Con 2014 exclusives, but with less than a week to go until the show begins, the SDCC 2014 LEGO exclusive products are finally being revealed! I discussed the SDCC 2014 LEGO Rocket Raccoon Warbird set extensively on my Marvel toys blog yesterday, and today LEGO has spilled the beans about another Comic-Con exclusive: the LEGO The Collector minifigure! (Wait, who…?)

If you walked out of “Thor: The Dark World” as soon as the credits started rolling (and as much as I love the Marvel movies, in this instance I certainly couldn’t blame you), you ended up missing the mid-credits scene first appearance of a character who’s set to return to the Marvel movie world this summer: The Collector.

Basically, “Odin” sends Volstagg and Lady Sif to deliver the Aether and the Tesseract to The Collector for safe keeping. Of course, seeing as how this guy is a “collector” and all, he’s obviously not going to be happy until he catches all the Infinity Gems…

Anyway, The Collector (Benicio del Toro) is one of the weirdest and most over-the-top Marvel villains to appear in the movies yet, and his limited role in the films makes him the perfect choice for a limited San Diego Comic-Con 2014 exclusive LEGO minifigure (or at least, LEGO sure seems to think so).

I was very surprised when there was no LEGO The Collector minifigure included with the three LEGO Guardians of the Galaxy sets, but it turns out that just like Rocket Raccoon’s Warbird, LEGO was holding out to release this small-market item as a convention exclusive.

The Collector will be one of four 2014 SDCC LEGO Minifigures to be given away via the random drawing lottery method which most LEGO fans despised last year (and which, by many accounts, may have been unfairly rigged by LEGO). The other three free LEGO SDCC 2014 Minifigures to be given out have yet to be revealed.

I’ll post an update once we know the identities of the remaining three LEGO minifigure exclusives, and you can ‘Like’ Bricks and Bloks on Facebook to have news and photos sent right to your Facebook Newsfeed!

What do you think of LEGO’s selection of a LEGO Marvel Collector minifigure as one of the LEGO SDCC 2014 exclusives, LEGO fans? Are you okay with LEGO making a character who’s for the most part ancillary as a very limited (and likely very expensive) aftermarket exclusive, or would you have preferred that The Collector LEGO minifigure had gotten a mass market release instead?