Lego minifigure
A Lego minifigure, often simply referred to as a Lego figure or a minifig, is a small plastic articulated figurine made of special Lego bricks produced by Danish building toy manufacturer The Lego Group. They were first produced in 1978 and have been a success, with over 4 billion produced worldwide as of 2020. Minifigures are usually found within Lego sets, although they are also sold separately as collectables in blind bags, or can be custom-built on lego.com and in Lego Stores. While some are named as specific characters, either licensed from already existing franchises or of Lego's own creation, many are unnamed and are designed simply to fit within a certain theme. They are highly customizable, and parts from different figures can be mixed and matched, resulting in many combinations.
There are also other types of figures from Lego sets, such as animals, Duplo figures or mini-doll figures. The Lego minifigure is, together with the Lego brick, the company's mascot and one of the most popular toys of all time. Minifigures are collected by both children and adults.
Similar figures, often called "Lego compatible minifigures", are also produced by various other companies, such as Kre-O, Lepin, Cobi, Block Tech, or Mega Bloks.
History
A precursor to the minifigure was released in 1975. These were at the same scale as the current minifigures, but had a different design. They had solid torsos without separate movable arms, solid lower body pieces that were not moveable, and heads without printed features. They had only three types of headpieces, caps, pigtail hair, and cowboy hats, which came in various colors.The first modern minifigures were released in 1978, included in Castle, Space, and Town sets. These were designed by Jens Nygaard Knudsen, who had come up with the idea for having the torsos, legs, and arm pieces interchangeable. As these were made into pieces, the company decided to give them a simple facial expression, rendered as two solid black dots for eyes and a smile painted in solid black, and without any gender or racial components, believing that these factors would be "determined by the child's imagination and play". The arms incorporated clips as "hands" which allowed figures to hold a wide range of different utensils and tools.
In 1989 for the launch of Pirates theme, some minifigures also included hooks for hands, as well as peg legs; this was the first departure from the traditional body parts. Starting with Lego Pirates in 1989 and spreading to Lego Town and Lego Castle in the next few years, minifigures were also produced with different facial expressions such as facial hair, eye patches, feminine makeup, and sunglasses. Most of these early facial additions were still centered around the two eyes and smile, however starting in 1997 with Willa the Witch of the Fright Knights facial expressions became more complex including open mouths and detailed eyes.
Another departure from traditional parts was the use of spring-loaded legs. These legs are joined at the top. These legs were only featured in basketball sets, 2002–2003. Other leg variations include short legs for children or dwarfs, or long legs.
In 2003, the first minifigures with naturalistic skin tones were released, as part of the Lego Basketball theme; these minifigures were also created in the likeness of living people. In April 2004, the Harry Potter theme began to use natural skin tones, and Lego Star Wars followed in June, and by 2005 the use of natural skin tones was expanded to all licensed products; in which figures were created to represent film actors and other living people. Popular examples between 2005 and 2008 include Star Wars, Marvel, Batman, The Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones minifigures.
By 2006, Lego had reportedly produced 4 billion minifigures. There are at least 3,655 different minifigures produced between 1975 and 2010 and the number of new minifigures per year is increasing rapidly. In 2010 more than 300 new minifigures were introduced. Some minifigures repeatedly appear across multiple Lego sets, while others can be rare, often vastly increasing their resale value. In 2019, the number of Lego Star Wars minifigures has surpassed 1000, with the Battlefront II protagonist Iden Versio.
Design and construction
The height of a typical minifigure is. Minifigures generally feature six parts : head, torso, hips, arms, hands, and legs; these six parts allow seven points of articulation: swivel head, swivel arms, swivel wrists, and swivel legs. Minifigures are usually packaged as three separate parts in Lego sets: head, torso and legs. The plastic is acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, a tough material that makes LEGO figures durable.The plastic is melted into specially designed molds that produce the different parts of the minifigure. Some of the molds are also accessories such as weapons or everyday accessories. Heads and torsos nearly always need further decoration, and sometimes the arms and legs as well. This difficult process is why the figures are more expensive than any other Lego products. After being printed, the head is placed on the torso, the legs attached, and the arms are snapped on. The figures are finally bagged and readied for sale.
Use
Minifigure heads are cylindrical, and attach to a long, narrow cylinder molded onto the top of the torso, which allows the head to rotate. This feature also allows items to be attached to the figures over the torso, such as air tanks, jet packs, paper or fabric capes, breastplates or beards. The heads have a stud on top which is the same size as studs on standard Lego bricks which could allow one to be placed on it. The head is the only component of the minifigure which can be used for other applications - blank minifigure heads have often been used in Lego sets to replicate other objects such as lampshades and electrical appliances.Head accessories vary widely, and include hair, helmets and hats. The legs rotate independently to 90 degrees forward, and nearly 45 degrees backward. Minifigures also connect to standard Lego bricks in both a sitting or standing position. The hands of a minifigure resemble the letter C, which allows them to hold many Lego accessories as well as bricks, tiles, and plates. There are hundreds of a vast variety of accessories, including swords, axes, wands, cups, guns, blasters and lightsabers. Additionally, the tops of the hands are the same size as the studs on most Lego bricks, which allows them to be connected. These variations allow minifigures to be customized, keeping with the modular design of Lego elements.
Design variations
While nearly all minifigure heads, torsos, arms, hands and legs are the same size and shape, some sets have included figures that deviate from the standard.Torso
Lego torsos often have black or white squares on the neck joint, this is to help with the automatic printing process when producing minifigures.Minifigures built from special, uniquely molded pieces were first introduced in "Life on Mars". Martians are composed of five tools: two pairs of double arms, a mechanical torso, a conjoined leg piece, and a head. This configuration is also used for many Star Wars droids; standard battle droids follow the same pattern, while super battle droids feature a head fixed to a torso, General Grievous has space for four arms, and IG-88 has a head constructed of other Lego pieces. R2-D2 and other astromech droids are constructed from unique parts, with a separate top, body and legs. The robots of Exo-Force, Mars Mission commander aliens and Bionicle miniatures have a design similar to the Star Wars battle droids, but with separate legs, movable hands, and a head affixed to a small torso. Hagrid, the half-giant character from the Harry Potter series uses a larger minifigure body, with only the head being separable.
Skeletons use the standard minifigure head, but unique torsos, arms, and legs designed to resemble a skeletal structure; although different, these figure parts are still detachable. Skeleton figures and others alike stir up controversy on whether they should be considered a minifigure or just a "figure", due to the lack of standard minifigure parts. Additionally, some minifigures, mostly pirates, sometimes include peg legs and hook hands.
Legs
Shorter legs, without joints at the hip, are sometimes used to create minifigures which are shorter in stature than standard figures. Such pieces were first created for Star Wars sets but have since been used elsewhere. In 2018, a medium-sized pair of legs was introduced, sized between the shorter legs and regular legs. These legs had a joint at the hip to allow individual movement of the legs, and were used to represent younger teenagers, introduced for the rebooted Harry Potter theme.Some minifigures, particularly in Castle and Pirate sets, use large sloped bricks instead of legs, to resemble dresses or skirts. However, these sloped bricks are taller than standard minifigure legs. In 2018, a special skirt piece was released, shorter, more softly curved on the back, and with regular leg pins to connect to the torso, instead of the studs on ordinary bricks.
Skirts have also been produced, either as new molds, or as separate parts made in fabric.
The first skirt mold appeared for the Minnie Mouse and Alice minifigures within the Disney Collectible Minifigures theme. Fabric skirts have appeared in Harry Potter and The Simpsons.
Other legs include smoke legs, mermaid tail legs, snake tail legs and octopus legs.