Spacing Out: LEGO Minifigures Series 26

Time for another LEGO Minifigures series review! Read my previous one here.

Out of many, many series of Minifigures, including several licenses and two original sets based on costume parties, this is only the second unlicensed series in the theme to be fully genre-focused, after Minifigures Series 14's horror genre. Series 26 is themed on space and science fiction, and also LEGO Space the historical toy franchise. Space is one of LEGO's longest-running genre staples, with many distinct product lines (known as "themes") falling under the umbrella of Space. These have featured many permutations on astronauts, aliens, and sci-fi, and this series is paying tribute to a few prior LEGO Space themes as well as introducing some really fun new concepts. (I'd fully expect the next genre series, whenever that is, to be LEGO Castle-themed.) 

Space characters have been a consistent presence within Minifigures itself, with many of them being their own remakes or homages or tie-ins to existing Space themes. This series, like with the S14 horror characters, is just an aggregate of new characters under that design ethos. Like with the horror series, I'm impressed by this series managing to deliver interesting and new characters after all we've seen before. Series 26 is smaller than Series 14 now that the Minifigures series have shifted from 16 figures to 12 as a standard, but this is still a great group.

Sci-fi is one of my great genre loves, and was one of my absolute favorites as a child. (I'd say my top two childhood genres were fantasy, then sci-fi. Now it's horror, then fantasy.) I was obsessed with tin toy robots and The Jetsons, ingraining a deep affection for the retro kitsch side of sci-fi which I think I'm still partial to. I don't love mega-futurist worldbuilding that requires a textbook, but I do like Star Wars and was a huge fan of the revival up until The Rise of Skywalker disillusioned me by failing to "yes, and?" the previous film and botching the landing of the new trilogy. Space was also what reignited my LEGO hobby a couple of years ago when I got the Galaxy Explorer remake set based on an old release from the Classic Space theme.

(And Super Mario Galaxy, while more space fantasy, was a formative video game for me, and one of my all-time favorites to this day.)

As with Series 25, I opted to get a whole set on the aftermarket. I used to buy the Minifigures at Target, but they just don't seem to sell them at all anymore and the LEGO brand store is more out of the way. And while there are now apps and lists and things that cracked the code on identifying the individual figures despite the blind cardboard packaging, I wanted enough of S26 to go for the whole set, and none of the figures looked bad. I also liked the opportunity to review the whole set.

This particular set was identified and compiled by opening the boxes, so they all came in small plastic bags with the contents of their boxes but not the original packaging. My S25 came in boxes.

It was Series 24 that finally at long last debuted a shade of pink as a series theme color after many shades of blue, yellow, and white were repeated before those dreaded girly colors came out, and now S26 finally debuts purple as a series theme color.

Like with Series 14, the last genre series, the branding has a bit more design than just the solid color and question marks you'd see for a regular series. S14 had a rainy stormy theme on top of the black color, while S26 is purple by way of a galaxy design. 

The back has the usual instructions for the more complicated assemblies in the series.

The S26 minifigure bases have a unique white starry print.

While I could see the figures through the bags, I still fished around without looking to determine a random order.

M:Tron Powerlifter

This is the first nostalgia character in the series, reimagining the M:Tron theme. The M:Tron sets were set apart by more industrious astronauts and frequent use of magnet couplings for play features. 

Set 6956--"Stellar Recon Voyager".

The S26 figure uses a backpack apparatus with a new reinforced cable arm that he can guide with his own arm to lift heavy objects. Not a gimmick from the old sets, but in line with their theming. The minifigure's print is all modernized and more detailed, and he uses a new helmet sculpt also appearing in this year's City Space sets, but the look is directly based on the originals.

Photo of a classic M:Tron astronaut from Brickset.

The backpack piece of this figure is a piece we've seen with two LEGO Technic pin holes, and the arm (a dual-molded single piece) slots into one inserted pin, and a tile printed with a gauge attaches to the other pin. 

One of the pins mid-insertion. This shape of pin has a stud on the end, but a bar can stick into it too.

The minifigure's hand fits under the claw hand, a lot like some Playmobil pieces, and the arm flexes so it can move with the minifigure. The claw has a stud in the middle to hold a brick and tile assembly depicting some form of cargo or power source. The print on the cargo tile is just like some M:Tron prints from the old sets.

I eventually realized I made a mistake--the black plate with the warning stripes goes under the backpack, not on the heavy block.

This is one of two figures hurt by recent color discontinuations, since a key color in M:Tron's palette alongside red, black, and white was translucent neon yellow-green, which has been phased out. Either somehow some older shades wouldn't work with the new translucent plastic formula, or else they were cut to keep the LEGO palette from bloating in the face of new color introductions...but infuriatingly, solid yellow-green and solid reddish-orange debuted after the staple translucent versions left! 

M:Tron astronauts had visors in the translucent yellow-green color, and while this helmet could wear that visor easily because it has the clip bumps for one, you'd have to source it yourself from an older set. I don't have a copy myself. To compromise for this color loss, the Powerlifter has a lime heads-up-display visor printed over his head for one of his faces.

I have no particular attachment to M:Tron, so this is probably one of my least favorites in the series just for lack of personal appeal, but it's still a pretty well-done minifigure.

Blacktron Mutant

This figure is a nostalgia piece based on the villainous Blacktron faction of Classic Space astronauts, who debuted shortly after the original Classic Space theme. Blacktron I featured astonauts in all-black suits with black vehicles that had translucent red and yellow accents and a logo of three yellow triangles pointed down, like the Triforce inverted. Blacktron II was a second wave of the theme which changed the look of the Blacktron villains to have black-and-white suits with lime green B logos and neon yellow-green translucent visors. This look is what the Mutant is based on. 

Set 6988--"Alpha Centauri Outpost".

Photo of a Blacktron II astronaut from Brickset.

Blacktron has gotten several homages and references throughout the years of LEGO releases. The theme never developed things too far, nor were opposing characters within the sets. It was up to you to bring in their rivals, implictly the original Classic Space characters and then the Space Police. People just knew Blacktron were the bad guys and that was about it. What more do you need, really?

Here, we see a modernized Blacktron II guy who has mutated down the left side of his body, making him look half-alien! Was it genetic experiments by alien captors? Willing modification gone wrong? Or just cosmic radiation from a hostile planet?

The lime green mutations match the Blacktron look pretty well, so they're no threat to his standing in the organization, and the figure uses creature limbs with a unique asymmetry. He's my first figure with the two-arms-in-one sculpt, which works like any other arm, just with two hands, and he's the only figure to have just one of this arm or the animal-leg sculpt. Because the standard leg and creature leg have different ranges of articulation, he cannot sit fully forward. The creature leg bends more backward.

If you wanted to de-mutate this figure to build a complete modernized Blacktron II astronaut, you'd have to sacrifice the leg printing because there isn't a leg out there right now that would match the left one exactly. The Classic Space helmet has been re-issued in black recently through its modern re-sculpt, even though the correct visor color for this faction isn't available anymore. I think the respirator might have been a clever way to avoid addressing that issue, and it's a clever solution the M:Tron Powerlifter couldn't use.

His hair is the mohawk sculpt modeled on Mr. T's B.A. Baracus for LEGO Dimensions.

This is what the Mutant's full face looks like. His mutated eye is subtly larger.

He has two black blasters which could be built on with their three stud connection points. Deciding which of his three hands to put them in is up to you!

Blacktron has actually been referenced multiple times with Space-themed entries in the Minifigures line.

Series 3 Space Villain, Series 11 Evil Mech, Series 19 Galactic Bounty Hunter, Blacktron Mutant.

None of the previous characters were explicitly from the same classic Blacktron canon like the Mutant is implied to be, but all bore Blacktron logos suggesting an allegiance or alliance. The Bounty Hunter's colors and logo are purely Blacktron I, modernized. The Space Villain mixes the black suit and translucent yellow of Blacktron I with the Blacktron II logo, and the Evil Mech uses the logo and black suiting of Blacktron I with Blacktron II's lime colors. That makes for two fully factional Blacktrons (the Bounty Hunter is fully I while the Mutant is fully II) and two mixes, and the representation is fully evened out!

The Evil Mech is based on the anime-robot-suit Series 9 Minifigure the Battle Mech, so whatever is piloting the Evil Mech is unclear, but the Galactic Bounty Hunter is an alien with a very humanoid look uncommon for LEGO original alien designs.

While I'm not really connected to Blacktron either, the Mutant is actually one of my favorites of the series. A sci-fi mutant is a great concept, and I think he could just as easily work in a secret-agent or superhero theme as a mutated scientist antagonist without having to be a half-alien spaceman.

Flying Saucer Costume Fan

This might be one of the most creative characters in the series, and it's a costume I can fully get behind because it's not an animal suit! This is a presumably human guy who's dressed his head as an alien in a flying saucer and his body as the cosmic void! "Flying saucer" is the most precise term for the classic alien vehicle, though it makes for a clunky Minifigure name. "UFO" might not have been used here because it's outdated terminology now, but "UAP" just doesn't invoke the classic saucer at all so "flying saucer" is best.

The minifigure has a bright green head with a normal minifig-human face design to communicate the color is face paint. The UFO collar is a new piece with detailed vents underneath, and I was very surprised to see it was drum-laquered metallic silver rather than pearl silver. That takes it up a notch!

Unfortunately, my copy has a scratch and I expect this could be a common hazard due to the finish.

The dome is formed by the classic LEGO bell jar piece, and its "teeth" (contoured as such to rest over studs in a grid) slot into four holes. 

LEGO only recently began using shoulder pieces as adapters to turn this piece into a helmet, starting with the figures of Mr. Freeze and the Red Hood from the LEGO Batman Movie line. With those, the dome just fit into a ring a little larger than its footprint.

TLBM Mr. Freeze. I loved the movie's designs of the Batman villains.

Mr. Freeze just recently got a new minifigure based on his defining portray in Batman: The Animated Series, which introduces a new smaller dome that attaches to the minifigure head itself, so I'm surprised the UFO Costume Fan didn't benefit from that newer sculpt as well.

2024 Batman: The Animated Series Mr. Freeze.

Maybe they wanted the dome larger for effect and kept to the older piece here.

The Flying Saucer Costume Fan's body is black with a white star print on the torso and legs to make it look like the cosmic sky, and the colors are consciously chosen to blend with the print on the S26 stands and make the character's body even more implicitly incorporeal--like a stage puppeteer wearing a black suit to fade into the background and fall out of the audience's attention.

The back of the suit has a bit more detail--you can see Earth and our sun!

This is such a clever figure design. I just wish the starry print extended to the arms and sides of the legs. Extensive print is common in the Minifigures theme and the limbs feel lacking here.

Spacewalking Astronaut

It makes sense to have a realistic astronaut in the assortment. Plenty of similar minifigures have been made, but this one stands apart by including a propulsion unit based on NASA's bygone Manned Maneuvering Unit, which featured in the film Gravity. 

The unit is built on a new wide backpack piece which has two studs facing forward, 2x3 studs on the back, and bars on the lower edge. The control arms are built with three pieces each and the tiles for the top and the back of the pack, plus the visor, leave this Minifigure with the most parts in the series.

The arms can swing out and controls are printed on the end slopes.

You naturally can't tell while the helmet is on, but this astronaut is female. LEGO has gotten way better with female representation in recent years, with higher proportions of Minifigure series being female characters (and a few now having equal male-to-female ratios) and female minifigures being generally less subject to visual stereotypes. It used to be that multiple female nonhuman figures would have cartoonishly girly traits alongside their male counterparts, but now they're making aliens and monsters who don't immediately read femme. I count figures like this, too, where gender isn't immediately conveyed, as another example of positive growth on that front. 

The print detail is exceptional. Her head is white with a yellow face gap to look cowled, and her print detail is extensive, featuring spacesuit textur, even on the back of her head, and Classic Space logos (the timeless rocket orbiting the planet).

Her helmet sculpt debuted on the S21 Space Police Guy, featuring a ribbed black section at the black. 

Hers and his are the same colors. The sculpt is so similar to the one the M:Tron Powerlifter is wearing, so it's odd both had to exist. It's also not very true to real space helmets in my mind, though the sculpt does stop the gold visor from swiveling up and open, which is good for safety! Both of these similar helmet sculpts are also in use in the 2024 City Space theme.

I prefer outlandish sci-fi to outlandish real science, but this is a really nicely-made figure. 

Retro Space Heroine 

This minifigure is the only one in S26 that exists as a direct counterpart or "sequel" to a previous one--she's a female match for the S17 Retro Space Hero, an old archetype of the Flash Gordon era where astronauts and superheroes collided in a serial storytelling format.

I took the cape for another figure and couldn't find his head, so a picture of the Space Hero will suffice. 

While I didn't like the Hero enough to keep him intact, I like him a lot more than this figure. There's something inauthentic about her. Women in sci-fi at that time would not have been portrayed like she was, and while that's to say they would have been heavily objectified and LEGO shouldn't pursue that, the Heroine just doesn't reflect a historical archetype in the way the Hero did. There is a way to do a revisionist, fair-minded female Flash Gordon type...but the aesthetic doesn't quite land, either. Her colors don't feel muted or metallic enough. They feel like modern poppy girly colors, not vintage sci-fi, so the homage is weaker here. I think if the helmet was metal-toned like her collar, she'd map to the Hero much better because his helmet and collar match, plus it would increase the metal coloring and rein her overly colorful palette in a bit.

She is still nicely made. I like the goofy touch of her hair coming out of the helmet in a ponytail, and the atom print on her shoulders. 

Her other face is more confident. She has the older retro ray gun mold, not the specific one used by the Hero. That one is probably out of production because it was used only twice. 

Her small plastic skirt does feel appropriate for campy sci-fi girls of the time, though she feels a little incomplete without a cape.

She has a robotic bulldog pet...for some reason. It's cute and fun to have around, but doesn't really make much sense for the character or archetype. With the very girly colors and animal companion, part of me feels like this figure is based on stereotypical roles in a way LEGO typically avoids nowadays. So maybe she's doing her own flavor of uneven sci-fi dynamics. 

Standing LEGO small animals aren't well suited for the minifigure stand because they attach with the most security when both their front and back legs are interacting with studs--something the single row makes impossible without turning the animal and bumping thr minifigure off the stand. And usually, the minifigure has to be off-center or you have to get the animal angled for the animal to attach well, since the minifigure arms or the animal sculpt can prevent the animal from sitting flush to the minifigure. Not every minifigure has suited the stand's row of studs.

This minifigure isn't harmful, but she just feels trite to me. A female counterpart to the Space Hero could have felt more vintage and cool and it feels like we got something too colorful and soft. This feels like a figure designed to appeal to modern young girly girls and that's fine, especially when balanced by different types of female rep in this series, but it doesn't suit the retro space-hero concept when the predecessor was a spot-on homage. She might be my least favorite of the series--not because she's bad, but because she's the least good.

Robot Butler

This one's near and dear to me. I was obsessed with The Jetsons as a kid after my mom introduced me to it, and in particular, I adored the Jetson family's robot maid Rosie. 

Ancient photo of a Rosie bobblehead--apologies for the poor quality of child-me's photography.

My Hanna-Barbera plush toys. My mom really came through finding these for me for Christmas somehow, though only Wilma Flintstone and George, Astro, Jane, and Judy Jetson were high-quality. The others were made to be carnival prizes.

This minifigure feels like a direct entry into the robot-domestic archetype Rosie popularized, and I think it's a good choice to have a masculine figure instead, given the awkwardness in the concept of building a woman to be your servant in particular. Robot servitude is of dubious ethical standing anyway, but when it invokes human gender stereotyping, it's worse. 

Anyway, the Robot Butler is a charming retro robot design with a glass globe around his head and clunky mechanical design features like hinged arms with screws and a wheeled lower body (both a lot like Rosie). 

Under the helmet, the head is light yellow, almost like a lightbulb, though maybe the color choice has to do with the way the green globe tints it.  His face has a square smile that's connected to the eyes in a way similar to the face of the S22 Robot Repair Tech.

The Robot Repair Tech. I've heard this is a female character, stated within some recent game the Minifigures featured in. Can't confirm, but I like it if true!

I like the black grille on the Butler's torso print that forms a bowtie shape. 

The lower body is a new static leg piece with proper torso pegs and a 2x2 footprint. The wheels don't move and the piece is front-to-back symmetrical. 

It looks like the "leg" section could flex and bend if animated. 

The Butler's current household task is cooking, and he's whipping something creamy in a pot with a whisk, using a 1x1 swirl piece in white. The sculpt has been used both for desserts and cartoon poop! 

The pot is deep enough to hold the whip easily, though it is loose in there. It doesn't connect.

There's something very amusing about building a robot to do a task the normal human way!

Here he is with the Rosie I have now--this is a really nice beanbag plush of her I got last year, which I would have killed to have as a child. It's the most on-model 3D merch I've seen of her and I had to have her the second I saw her at an unusual shop recommended to me. My former self demanded her.

The Robot Butler fits well with other retro-robot Minifigures too, though he's still clearly his own aesthetic.

S1 Robot (modified to have two robot arms and tooth plates put under feet), Robot Butler, S6 Clockwork Robot, and S11 Lady Robot (see what I meant about stereotypically girly nonhumans? She has makeup and boob dials!)

The Butler isn't quite retro-LEGO in feel though. For one, old LEGO robots didn't look like this. For two, his globe is translucent bright green and not translucent neon yellow-green, and the latter might have looked better and felt more classic if that were possible. Otherwise, translucent medium green (bottle-green) would be LEGO-retro. And lastly, the teal and pink and gold colors are newer than old Space sets...so he's not really trying to evoke them at all. I might like the figure even more with one of the existing colorless clear copies of the head globe, but I think he works really well. He's extremely charming.

Nurse Android

If you're pedantic (I often am), a female humanoid robot should be called a gynoid, but it's very rare for anybody to make the distinction and it's one I'm not bothered by. While "android" is etymologically not a gender-neutral word, people have been using it pretty neutrally for a while. 

This minifigure tackles modern humanoid sci-fi robots by presenting a sleek blue and white medical android. Her arms are translucent, and her print features lots of plating as well as a medical Star of Life. She has a futuristic bob cut (the color might be be new for this piece) and has a nice smile and blue eyes.

On her arms and back, she has the same symbol the Robot Butler did, and there's a silver plug socket under her wig, likely to charge up that battery meter.

The red, blue, and white work well together.

Here's both of my futuristic blue robot ladies--the Nurse with one of my Elle Eedees.

The Nurse has a bottle for taking care of a Spacebaby--the official term for a minifigure infant in the mold of a Classic Space astronaut--monochromatic suit and airtanks, visorless helmet, and torso printed with the iconic logo. The presence of the baby could create the impression that she's a nanny, but she's clearly a medical robot and so the kid would be her patient. If she were a nanny, then we get into that sticky territory of building a machine to recreate misogynist gender roles, and that just doesn't seem to be her concept. 

The Spacebaby is in the infant-minifigure template that debuted a few years ago. The body is one static piece that mounts on one stud and the head is separate. 

The neck peg is the shape of a standard LEGO bar. The first bareheaded babies had heads with no neck section at the bottom, but that was replaced by a new piece that has a more typical minifigure neck ridge.

Ever since The LEGO Movie featured Benny, a Classic Space minifigure with some aging and wear (mimicked in his physical toy appearances), Classic Space astronauts were back on the menu. 

A blue Classic Space astronaut minifigure, upon whom Benny is directly based. 

Classic Space was the original Space theme, and the title is a retronym--it's Classic Space because it spawned the Space umbrella of LEGO, but at the time, it was just Space. This theme featured friendly simple astronauts in helmets and air tanks, color-coordinated, in exploring vehicles.

Classic Space set 497--"Galaxy Explorer".

Classic Space was the childhood IP of a generation and is hugely significant to LEGO history.

After Benny and his "Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP!" set paid homage in the first LEGO Movie and its toys, Classic Space was even more back when fully faithful reproductions of the old figures arrived with the set "Benny's Space Squad", producing a pristine modern version of the original helmet sculpt with a thicker chin strap. (Benny's physical helmet was designed to look fractured to reflect a common problem with the old figures depicted more realistically in the movies, and after the original helmet went out of production, Classic Space homages were done with a newer motorcycle helmet which wasn't the same.) 

"Benny's Space Squad".

This tiny affordable set was a huge nostalgia move. Not only did this set feature faithful reproductions of white and yellow Classic Space astronauts, but LEGO introduced a new trick--releasing Classic Space astronauts in entirely new colors inaccurate to the original theme or the color palette of the time. First was Lenny, the astronaut in pink, and an orange astronaut was featured in a book release. Then came the Galaxy Explorer remake a couple of years ago. No new colors, but nicely remaking the older set and bringing back the red Classic Space suit. 

The 2022 Galaxy Explorer.

I got that set, and then the Space Squad after liking it so much. Classic Space was well before my childhood, but the Galaxy Explorer set still reignited nostalgia for my childhood with LEGO. It felt like it brought back LEGO play for me, and put me on a short kick that led to the Willa's-house build.

LEGO has also played some games of providing novel-colored Classic Space figure parts across multiple sets so you'd have to build a full figure yourself, though the correct helmet sculpt or airtanks colors haven't appeared for every torso color so far. One character you could complete is a purple Classic Space astronaut. The torso (you'd need to swap the arms, something LEGO officially discourages) was present on the Series 22 Alien Creature, while the helmet and airtanks were in the Chinese New Year Parade set. Purple legs and classic minifigure smileys can be sourced pretty easily. I believe green and light grey are still colors that don't have all the parts for a complete astronaut despite the torsos existing. 

So you'd think S26 would be the perfect place to include a new Classic Space astronaut color...but S24 just recently did that, with a brown astronaut. However, that figure debuted a Classic Space head/tanks sculpt for the LEGO infant minifigures and gave us the Spacebaby, so Classic Spacebabies are now on the table for color variations too. 

I should have tried harder to get this figure while it was retail price. The figure was from a series with bags you could feel, too!

The babies have modern-style eye reflections while the Classic Space adults don't, so the babies stand out a bit, but they're cute. This baby matches Lenny exactly, so maybe he's the papa!

White and blue Spacebaby figures without eye reflections, here meant to depict chibi-scale Classic Space astronauts, featured in a promotional gift-with-purchase set, "Micro Rocket Launchpad".

I like this style more in the retro context, and it could work for the figures depicted as babies.

A lot of people will want the Nurse Android for the baby, but I like both. She's a new kind of robot minifigure done well!

Ice Planet Explorer

This is a nostalgia figure based on the Ice Planet 2002 theme. Ice Planet 2002 was set on exactly what you'd expect and featured astronauts in furred spacesuits in white, black, blue, and translucent reddish orange colors.

Set 6983- "Ice Station Odyssey"

I love the way the astronauts' glowing red-orange gear visually conveys an extreme amount of heat necessary for combating the bitter freezes of the planet. It looks toasty warm, but neon and sci-fi at the same time. 

This figure thus suffers from the discontinuation of the translucent red-orange color, and opts for orange instead. It just can't live up to the original Ice Planet colors. 

The figure has a new chunky helmet sculpt with a printed orange visor, and wears blue shoulder armor over a torso with furry trim. The legs have spiked crampons for snow and ice, and the Explorer carries a translucent orange ice chainsaw in keeping with the original theme.

Unnamed set.

Like the Spacewalker, the Ice Planet Explorer's gender is obscured by the helmet and she's female. She comes with a primary-red hairpiece which seems to be a deliberate choice to place her specifically as a 2024 remake of an Ice Planet scientist known as Doctor Kelvin. 

That you, Dr. K?

The original Dr. Kelvin (photo from Brickset).

Here's a better look at the Explorer's prints.

The Explorer comes with a three-piece chainsaw build that gives it a proper separate handle, and this can mount on the studs on her armor.

She comes with a white robotic penguin. It could also be a living penguin in a spacesuit, maybe an Earth companion brought for the expedition who couldn't survive on the ice planet?

The penguin has a stud on its back, so it can carry the saw, too.

This is what the Explorer would look like with authentic coloration. I really wish this was possible for her.

I almost wonder if maybe LEGO should have popped in red and orange separately here to invoke the original blend? Like, keep the blade orange but make the visors red and such. As it is, the switch to just orange severely lacks the visual pop of the classic Ice Planet. She's a cool figure, but she was definitely released at the wrong time. Three or four years earlier and she'd have been made to her full potential.

With some color editing, we can still pretend.

The vehicle is the 2024 LEGO Friends Space Research Rover.

Orion

This is probably the biggest standout concept of the series to me for being so clever and out of the box. It's a depiction of the Greek mythological hunter Orion, but depicted as a figure made of stars to make him a personification of the Orion constellation! As such, this Orion is translucent glittery purple for most of his parts and his shield features a design of the constellation. This counts as a classical mythology minifigure for me, because the Orion constellation was explained through the myths as an honor bestowed by the gods--the story goes that Orion himself was put into the stars to immortalize him forever, while his legend was likely formed as a way to spin a story about the picture the Greeks saw in the sky.

LEGO has never made a fully translucent figure, but minifigure arms, hair and legs have been produced in translucent colors for several years now, and heads have been for much longer. I think part of the concern with translucent parts previously would have been that the old formula of translucent plastic LEGO used until very recently was very tight when connected together. It could be unreasonably difficult to separate translucent parts connected to each other, especially translucent bars threaded into translucent 1x1 cones. That could also create undue physical stress and risk the brittler plastic breaking. I imagine it would make the joints sticky and the head hard to turn or remove if the torso was made translucent, though I don't know if those problems still exist with the new plastic used for translucent colors. Regardless, Orion's torso and hip joint are cast in opaque plastic, though I was very surprised to see his silver is metallic like the UFO collar! His hair is non-glittery translucent purple (reusing the new curly hair sculpt previously seen on the S25 Sprinter) and his hands are solid purple since those have never been cast translucent and likely never will. His club is a new sculpt, serving as an alternative to the bulkier spiked caveman club that's been around since the first series of Minifigures.

Here's what he looks like lit up.

I love this figure concept. It's an achievement to get a Greek mythology character into a space series! I just wish the silver face wasn't so difficult to make out. Maybe white print would have been best for the head, and that would have bumped him up for me. As is, his execution doesn't fully flatter the minifigure style because his face is so indistinct.

Alien Tourist

This is a simple little goofy one--a classic alien framed as a vacationer to Earth!

His hat is the small fedora that debuted last series on the Film Noir Detective, done in teal, and he has dual-molded short legs (the unarticulated shortest height) to depict vibrant coral shorts. His torso depicts a yellow Hawaiian vacation shirt over a tee with graphics depicting a love for Earth, and he wears a backpack and holds a camera.

He's very visually similar to the not-so-friendy Series 6 Classic Alien, being the same grey color and having a face print designed to match the custom-sculpted head of the S6 minifigure (which is certainly retired by now, having only been used just the once). He doesn't really feel like a sequel or counterpart so much as a reiteration, though. New context, but same idea, and not really feeling like he's meant to be a pair with the S6 figure.

This guy is cute and a good use of simple sculpts, but he's the least exciting alien in the series and feels more basic than the rest of the cast.

Imposter

So this minifigure....well, he isn't really a minifigure, now is he?

This friendly-looking Certainly Human Fellow has some odd things about him. Isn't that grin a little stiff? And his torso print is thin-lined and flat, and seems outdated both in terms of fashion (it's a bit seventies) and in LEGO printing, as it looks like an older graphic style from the brand's past. That might be deliberate to suggest the Imposter is working on old information from the last contact with human life. You might also catch that he's made entirely of painted metal going off the grey scuffs on his toes and rivets down his body and face...and the antenna on his head. 

The vault-style door on his back puts any doubt about his mechanical nature to rest. He's not really a guy so much as a guy-shaped shell for an extraterrestrial...or a few.

It's those tiny aliens hanging around this "human" who are outright piloting him! The mech's second face shows the faceplate removed to show the pilot.

The hair and antenna are two new pieces, and the aliens are "nanofigure" pieces that first debuted as minifigure trophies and then got adopted for printing to make tiny figures in certain situations. This might be the first time a nanofig has been used to depict a living character within a minifigure-scale context. Usually, they're played as characters only in large collector sets that can't be built at minifigure scale. One of the aliens might have been intended as a spare extra part, but using all three included works easily. 

I love this figure. The concept is so goofy and retro and it looks great. Such a creative premise.

Alien Beetlezoid

This is the last nostalgia figure, though the reference is more oblique and much more recent. This figure is an alien based on the evil insect humanoids from the two-wave 2013 Galaxy Squad theme which featured similar alien minifigures with similar names (Alien Buggoid, Alien Mosquitoid, Mantizoid). 

Set 70202, "Warp Stinger", featuring an Alien Mosquitoid minifigure.

No Beetlezoids appeared in the Galaxy Squad theme, and this figure is made with multiple parts that didn't exist at the time, but it feels like a look at a third wave of sets that never came to be, one where the bugs got a bit more variety beyond red and olive colors and the heroic astronauts fighting them had discovered a different planetary environment. I always like when the Minifigures revive an older theme or create figures designed to pair with a current one. It's like supplementary material that's canon-compatible to the theme! The Beetlezoid in particular feels less like a remake because the LEGO art style hasn't changed noticeably in the past eleven years. This figure is more in line with a late sequel reviving a dormant property, not a reboot or reimagining. 

The Beetlezoid is the only figure here with a really ambiguous gender (unless you count the Spacebaby), and the bug minifigs it references didn't seem gendered either, but the Beetlezoid could be read as female and that would even things out more to five female characters instead of just four. That's not confirmed, though. 

The Beetlezoid has a new head sculpt which is partially injected with opaque dark blue plastic, such that the face is solid while the back is translucent purple, same as Orion minus the glitter. It also has the wings from the S21 Ladybug Girl, printed with sci-fi hexagons, and the Beetlezoid has the creature leg sculpt also seen on half of the Blacktron Mutant (and the S25 Harpy and S15 Faun). It carries a simple clump of alien flora formed by two pieces.

Here's the Beetlezoid with a Galaxy Squad Buggoid. Save for color and a few pink dots, the torso prints are virtually identical! I don't have a complete Mosquitoid anymore because the antennae were separate parts that got lost super easily. I never got the red Buggoid or Mantizoid figures.

The Beetlezoid is harder to view as a villain because its colors are quite peaceful and cosmic and pretty, and its face looks less creepy. The Galaxy Squad bugs all went for a repulsive red/green combo and ugly buggy heads. While the Beetlezoid's wings are distinctly sci-fi in print, you could easily frame it as a mystical, magical, or mythological character. 

Now that I think of it, this color palette may be another way to dodge the discontinued translucents, because translucent yellow-green was a fixture of the original Galaxy Squad. 

The Beetlezoid works particually well in alien foliage from a current LEGO Friends space set--same set as the rover I posed the Ice Planet Explorer with.

I'm really not good with bugs (cicada season is coming to terrorize me personally and I hate it), but the Alien Beetlezoid is cool in my book. The original Galaxy Squad bugs are just (successfully) gross.

Wrapping up

These were the spare parts from this series (not counting the third alien from the Imposter). I was most surprised to see the Blacktron Mutant's mohawk be counted as small enough to get a spare.

Also, two other nostalgia Space figures precede S26 in a way that makes them feel like honorary members--S21's Space Police Guy and Alien. 

The Space Police Guy is a modern remake of the original Space Police astronauts, who opposed Blacktron I. 

Space Police I astronaut photo from Brickset.

The Alien (yes, its name is that simple), meanwhile, forms a reference through sharing a series with the Space Police Guy--it echoes the colorful alien criminals that formed the memorable bad guys of the Space Police III theme.

The SPIII aliens I still have intact beside the S21 Alien.

While the SPIII dynamic of "only humans as the good guy cops against alien crooks" really hasn't aged well, and the riot gear on the Space Police Guy (pictured earlier) was intolerable, I adored SPIII and its villains (collecting the sets was a formative childhood LEGO experience) and appreciated the homages in S21 even if the cop side of it was very uncomfortable. I still want to reclaim the alien SPIII crooks I've lost and get the ones I never had. The police can stay out of it entirely. But anyway, these two S21 figures could easily have been in S26 if it was a larger set. Here's all of the modern nostalgia Space entries I have from the Minifigures theme now. Other figures that don't directly slot into an older theme don't count.

I guess the Galactic Bounty Hunter, being so very Blacktron I, also counts, but the look is too different to feel like a member of the original theme.

This is my top six of the series, in descending left-to-right order. 

Unsurprisingly, it's all alien and robot imagery and all of the green is in the top four! I chose a top six this time (half the series) because I liked them all so much. Orion was such a good concept, but his head print lacked enough pop that he didn't make it into this group.

Is this my new favorite Minifigures series? No. But it's still been a wonderful trip through genre and LEGO history with a lot of love put in. This is a worthwhile collection of sci-fi characters with some real hits and good variety. 

I cannot wait for the inevitable Castle series (Willa remake???). Hopefully that comes sooner than later.