Halloween season has begun, and this year, it's all about LEGO!
I've tried to figure it out before, but my love for the horror genre must be somewhat innate. I was always deeply enthralled by witches, adored Halloween, and monsters of any kind were my bread and butter. One of the bigger indicators for my belatedly-acknowledged passion came in the form of my LEGO hobby, and my singular focus therein on monster minifigures.
I was attracted to the LEGO brand when I discovered the Power Miners rock monsters. I then collected as much of Space Police III as I could, purely to get the wacky alien criminal minifigures. LEGO Atlantis and its sea creature monster humanoids hooked me in, and a lot of Ninjago villains grabbed me too, though I was never a devotee of Ninjago itself. And during all this, when LEGO started releasing classic spooky minifigures on the shelves of my day, I was right there. This is my overview now for as complete of a history of LEGO-original classic horror as I can give, and represents the filling-in of many long-standing gaps in my collection! I'll be discussing LEGO's horror history in release chronology, not my personal collection order. I want to analyze how their spooky monsters have been produced throughout the years and to see where they started and what LEGO legacy...what LEGOcy...those earliest takes on the monsters left to the future designs. I've been wanting to do this project since last year, and made some of the purchases for it then, but my year-long Living Dead Dolls whirlwind, including my mammoth Living Dead Dolloween 2024, got well in the way of the project happening. Had I done this last year, there'd have been less material for the series!
While LEGO's monster figure assortments have long derived loosely from the archetypal "monster mash" group which is itself derived from the classic Universal Studios monsters, there are three key monsters from that Universal troupe who have never had LEGO equivalents in a horror context, possibly due to their visuals being too specific and too copyrighted for LEGO to imitate with unlicensed horror figures. Those monsters are the Phantom of the Opera, the Bride of Frankenstein, and the Invisible Man. (I guess if LEGO ever had any reason to license the upcoming Warner Bros. film The Bride!, there'd be a way to make a Bride of Frankenstein without licensing through Universal, but that version of the character is set to be quite different and there's not a chance the adults-only movie is going to be licensed by LEGO--we don't even know if it'll do well.)
I'd kill for a proper licensed Universal Monsters LEGO collaboration with minifigures (in full color or greyscale!), but until that day comes, those three characters probably can't be in the LEGO horror sphere. The most LEGO did with licensed Universal horror was one single solitary BrickHeadz figure set (basically LEGO's brick-built equivalent to Funko POP!; ugh) featuring the Frankenstein monster in greyscale.
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| What a waste of a license. |
LEGO have done a blingy gangster Invisible Man archetype outside a horror context with a supervillain named Invizable in the futuristic Ultra Agents spy theme. That character also returned and basically got his second minifigure in the Ninjago universe under the name Mr. Pale, transferring to Ninjago alongside a reworked version of fellow Ultra Agents villain Toxikita, renamed Tox.
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| Ultra Agents Invizable (not my photo). |
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| Ninjago Mr. Pale (also not my photo). |
I might need to get Invizable as an honorary inclusion in my monster collection, or maybe Mr. Pale instead because he's not part of another collection I want to set aside--Invizable might have to stay with my pack of Ultra Agents villains if I get him since Ultra Agents villains are their own collection I care about, though Invizable is the character design I prefer for this man.
The Phantom of the Opera really ought to be fair game for LEGO, though; the original book and the old Universal film are both public domain. I'm shocked such an archetype never made it into the Minifigures theme. I can understand him being harder to put into a set and expect it to sell, but Minifigures is a great opportunity for characters who don't suit a whole set design.
There are other generic monster archetypes LEGO has never made non-licensed designs for, under a horror context. Two are the evil clown and the evil scarecrow.
Regarding clowns, LEGO has done many figures of the Joker from DC Comics, and Buggy the Clown from One Piece is an antagonist, but neither's minifigures are LEGO IP or horror characters. The sci-fi castle fantasy theme Nexo Knights featured a monstrously warped jester as its antagonist for its first two waves. Krazi from Ninjago was a skeleton with clown makeup and a jester hat, but it's not a horror theme and the clown elements are too minimal for me. Two clowns were also possessed and transformed by ghosts and keep their clown noses in LEGO's Hidden Side theme, but the ghosts in the theme are otherwise fairly uniform and I don't personally count the theme's possessed transformations as complete characters or figure designs since the possession ghost parts just swap out for the regular unpossessed pieces. As it stands, in my book, LEGO has never done a full evil-circus-clown original character in a direct horror context.
As for scarecrows, LEGO has done several takes on Batman's foe the Scarecrow, and most of those minifigures of Jonathan Crane (the name of the scientist who became the Scarecrow) very easily pass for a generic Halloween scarecrow monster, but they're licensed designs. (And between Warner Bros. staff, DC Comics, and The LEGO Group, I'm not sure who the LEGO Batman Movie character designs can be most credited to, so even the Scarecrow from that theme probably doesn't count more as a LEGO original.) LEGO gave parts for a pumpkin-masked scarecrow during a seasonal Build-a-Minifigure assortment at LEGO brand stores, but the scarecrow face under the pumpkin mask is perfectly friendly and that scarecrow's design is a little less fleshed out than a minifigure from a set or Minifigures series would be. I believe only the head was an exclusive print. They also did a friendly scarecrow as a Series 11 Minifigure, and while I love him to death and built the Build-a-Minifigure head into a female counterpart for him, he's not scary or even spooky.
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| Left--Series 11 Scarecrow, minus pitchfork. Right, female scarecrow pieced together using the Halloween 2022 Build-a-Minifigure head. |
LEGO also hasn't made minifigures of creepy haunted-toy characters like dolls or teddy bears (though there have been spooky bears as minifigure accessories), nor explicitly-identified demons. The latter makes sense because it might be too controversial for one of the biggest toy brands in the world, though I respect that LEGO have barely kept behind that line sometimes. They've alluded to Halloween devils without making a full actual Halloween devil minifigures (we'll see two cases coming up), and they've also done things like this...
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| LEGO Nexo Knights' first faction of monster villains consisted of mostly red-skinned, often horned and burning beings summoned by a sentient book of dark magic and they were called "lava monsters"...sure. |
This post series is not a comprehensive collection of spooky LEGO. I'm focusing on minifigures with sporadic attention to set designs, and this isn't a comprehensive discussion of all spooky figures LEGO has made. I don't know if it ever could be, because the boundaries of what qualifies or not may be different from person to person, but I think it'll hit the biggest points. What you can expect me to cover here are:
- Classic minifigures from main System sets (so things like the delightful Belville witch or DUPLO are excluded).
- Non-licensed in-house LEGO IP. Licensed horror minifigures have their own appeal and I've collected several, but they don't speak quite as much to a timeline of design evolution and comparison by virtue of not being whole-cloth designs...and I badly need to restrict the scope of this project. I could talk about licensed LEGO horror at any point of the year if I feel motivated to dig into and spotlight that avenue, but LEGO's original designs typically demand a Halloween festivity to talk about them! I make a big exception for LEGO Scooby-Doo. With that licensed collaboration being a full LEGO horror play theme, with very Halloweeny aesthetics, Scooby-Doo strikes me as a significant step in LEGO'S horror history in a way other smaller-scale or adult-collector-geared horror licenses didn't.
- Sufficiently individual figures, not troop members that all look alike, and close fits in Halloween horror. I want distinctive characters that either are directly made for this tone or easily pop into it, so things like the faction of cyborg vampires in Nexo Knights or the faction of ghosts from Ninjago don't qualify. To be sure, the zombies in this project are fairly similar as a mass, but they supersede this rule by actually coming directly from horror. I'm not extending the project invitation to a whole unified troop of monster characters who don't even go here.
- Major batches of LEGO monster "drops", if you will, where they released a whole "generation" of monsters, or even just a handful of monster designs that are distinct from a previous run of monsters
- Classic horror or Halloweeny figures throughout the brand which fit the other criteria.
All in all, who I discuss here relies a lot on my personal discretion to organize this more than a scholarly structure, but the most important things to LEGO horror will all be here.
Note also that whenever I use the word "Minifigures" with a capital "M", I'm referring to the long-running perpetual line of Minifigures series released in blind packs. These characters are often called "CMFs" for "Collectable Minifigures" by fans, but the official LEGO name for the line has always just been "Minifigures". Use of the word with a lowercase "m" just refers to minifigures in general.
I'm not sure how I'll handle updates to this topic as more spooky material inevitably releases in the future. I think I can just do short topic posts going over what's happened and simultaneously fold that discussion back into this series of post with edits when discussing ongoing releases that get new spooky content later. If we get whole new spooky play themes to cover, those can tack onto the end of this blog series as new installments.
For Starters, Let's Talk About Skeletons, I Guess
LEGO skeletons aren't complete enough, nor horror-specific enough, to count for me as horror figures in this history (they're hugely ubiquitous and have been in more adventure themes than you might expect), but the skeleton minifigure is a LEGO icon in its own right and bears discussing. Here's the Platonic ideal of a basic classic minifigure paired with a skeleton done in the current style.
While there have been dozens of variants on skull faces since this skeleton head print, this skull head design is the default for the LEGO skeleton and is still in use, despite its contemporary, the classic LEGO smile, now being retro and outdated and only used for throwback purposes today. (The classic face had a brief resurgence as a stylistic touch for all minifigures in the Modular Buildings series from the Café Corner to the Assembly Square, up until the Downtown Diner set folded and used modern face designs.) This skull design is just iconic by now--the original smile and the original skull are LEGO's two most famous and prolific minifigure head prints. The precise design of the LEGO skull is frequently referenced with skeletal features on other minifigure characters or in minifigure costume patterns, and the skull head itself has gotten printed and cast in some unusual colors, like dark grey on light grey for a stone carving, or translucent red for a lich sorcerer's accessory. The eye sockets are much wider than the minifigure eye and its nasal cavity is amusing because minifigs with visible noses are the minority, yet all LEGO skeletons have them! The basic torso and leg shape of minifigure skeletons has also not changed, with the legs clipping onto hip bars for a forward-back hinge and the head articulation being the same basic rotation as a normal minifigure. The feet still attach to studs, but the legs being clip parts lets them be used outside of the skeleton figure context as architectural flair.
The design has changed with the arms, though. The first LEGO skeletons had tiny ball joints for shoulders and arms which loosely flopped around when clipped into the joint. The hands also had gaps cutting down into the curve of the clip.
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| A ball-joint skeleton with one arm. |
These ball-joint skeleton parts aren't made anymore, but they had a good run. Eventually, they got fully replaced with the current torso that has shoulder bars for clip arms, but the arm sculpts they first used were the robot arms that debuted in the Star Wars theme for battle droids, here colored white. These arms also existed with a horizontal hand clip to change the rotation of the hand, but the hands on all skeleton figures are static (unless they're clothed skeleton characters built on standard minifigure bodies).
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| A skeleton warrior from the Castle Fantasy Era theme, |
This solution was fine, and the arms made the skeletons look extra spindly and creepy, but they didn't match minifigure proportions. The now-eternal Ninjago theme debuted with skeleton baddies as the enemy soldier faction and did a whole lot new--new torsos with a much more angular sculpt and a solid pelvis that could be printed on with waist garments, new legs with blocky black boot feet, and a new arm sculpt.
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| The new parts debuted by the Ninjago skeletons. |
The Ninjago arms are sized and shaped more like you'd expect for the internals of a minifigure arm, and the arms double as LEGO bars that can be clipped onto on either side of the elbow bend. While the angular torso didn't become a total staple, the arms did. There are also arms with clips both turned at the same angle, and the bend is also close to 90 degrees. These can be used to turn the hand clip direction sideways on the skeleton.
With the arms that have two different clip rotations, though, you can reattach their arms on the other clip to animate their poses more than normal minifigures allow.
Skeleton minifigures disassemble more than standard minifigures [are intended to], which is fitting for fragile bones that may be found fallen apart in caves and such.
Most LEGO skeletons are far too plentiful and too generic to count as full-fledged horror minifigures, but there's no classic horror scene complete without one, either.
First Horror Icons--Castle Fantasy
These minifigures came before LEGO did anything officially under the horror genre, but they debuted two archetypes famous to the Halloween repertoire, and do so in a way familiar to classic horror/spooky atmosphere--they fit right into Halloween. There's a pretty blurred line between horror and castle-fantasy renditions of LEGO monsters. A good few Castle figures have gotten my invitation to the Halloween-horror side of things for now, but I'm thinking there's enough monsters firmly on the Castle side, like the foes from the Fantasy Era theme and LEGO's Dungeons and Dragons license, that I can do another project in the unspecified future about the grim and spooky side of LEGO Castle to catch some spooky monsters and villains that didn't quite fit here, as well as other cool figures that run in their circles. When I do such a project, a few Castle minifigures welcomed into this project might end up migrating to that genre in my collection, or else I might get duplicates to represent them both ways, but they're valid Halloween horrors for now!
"Black Monarch's Ghost" (earliest appearance: 1990)
Disclaimer: this is a generic minifigure design with several releases, and I don't know the provenance of this specific copy, thus the quotations at the top. This may not be the oldest release of this design. But also, it may be! This generic figure design is the oldest LEGO horror minifigure design that isn't the generic LEGO skeleton. Of the two simultaneous first appearances of this ghost in 1990, one of them offers it a form of address: the epithet of the "Black Monarch's Ghost", so that's what I'll call this figure!
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| Castle Black Knights set 6034- "Black Monarch's Ghost", 1990. |
Whether this is the ghost remnant of the deceased Black Monarch or a ghost merely associated with or hosted by this unknown living ruler is syntactically unclear, but the former sounds more likely. There was also a Black Monarch's Castle set in this Black Knights theme, but no minifigure was certifiable as the Black Monarch in question, so it might as well be this guy. I got my ghost as a young teenager in the same secondhand bucket of parts that gave me the top half of the next figure in this list, who hailed from the Fright Knights theme some years later, but I don't know if there were any other context clues from the parts in the bucket that could point this ghost's origin toward one release or another. Since there's no proof he isn't, he can be my Black Monarch's Ghost.
The figure introduced a new sheet piece that went over the head and body to create a round-topped fabric-like shroud with a face cut out of it. It's a blank black minifigure head underneath. This style of ghost had a cheery ghost smile paralleling the classic minifigure expression. These ghost figures could have white minifigure legs, but sometimes appeared in sets with the torso attached to a white 1x2 brick-plus-plate stack that let the sheet touch the ground with a seamless, legless look. The sheet essentially nullified the leg articulation anyway, so it's pretty much just a visual difference, and the sheet is sculpted to fit between studs on a plate when figures with it had no legs. My copy came to me as the brick-and-plate-legs version, which is accurate to the one in the "Black Monarch's Ghost" set.
This shroud piece has since gotten two standard successors which each change the facial expression and the drapery in their own ways, but it's also gotten a remake of sorts referencing the original mold directly. In The LEGO Movie, mentor sage character Vitruvius dies and comes back as a ghost, depicted in the photorealistc animation with the classic LEGO shroud plus a rubber band around his head, while the real figure of ghost Vitruvius features a new shroud mold based on the old ghost, but with the headband sculpted on. This version of Vitruvius is not using the typical sloped brick for legs that pre-2018 minifigure robes or dresses used--it's a two-brick-tall 1x2 brick so it fits between the sides of the shroud. They didn't mold the shroud shorter in back to make it compatible with a dress brick, they just used a thinner brick for the leg replacement.
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| Ghost Vitruvius's minifigure. |
Every rendition of the ghost shroud glows in the dark, though, and the original had to be one of the first glowing LEGO pieces ever, if not the first.
LEGO posited the idea of a nightlight shaped like the classic LEGO ghost during a survey for what kind of gear items LEGO fans want. Such a lamp which would be an awesome piece of decor, but they haven't made it yet.
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| Concepts for LEGO merchandise shared during a survey outreach, including giant customizable minifigures (statues?), a vase shaped like a 1x1 round brick, and a storage box or maybe cookie jar based on a minifigure knight helmet. |
The original shroud sculpt and the Vitruvius shroud based upon it are the only ones to echo the classic minifigure smile. The other two ghost shrouds have different expressions.
LEGO also released an atrocious-looking more translucent casting of the shroud on a ghost in a 2006 Knight's Kingdom Castle set, not helped by the figure also having discordant yellow hands.
I don't know if this gross-looking plastic was intentional or accidental. I'm sure this one glows too, but it's a contender for ugliest minifigure. It's got a crappy charm to it, for sure, but it's not a slick design.
The original LEGO ghost is just a classic. He's cute, spooky, simple, and cheerful like vintage LEGO does.
Willa the Witch (Fright Knights, 1997-1998)
She's back again!
There's a special story with my ownership of this figure, which I've recounted before here multiple times. As it's the third instance now, the short short version is this: I got the figure in two halves from two different secondhand lots of LEGO parts over multiple years, completing one grail figure by pure good fortune . As a lifelong fan of witches, Willa was on my radar for a long time. And lo and behold, she ended up in my collection by happenstance!
In the time since the Black Monarch's Ghost, LEGO had entered a transitional period experimenting with faces different from the classic dots-and-smile head the brand universally used earlier on. While she's meant to be a wicked villain, there's quite a charming cheer to her face. Willa has eyebrows, a wide red mouth with a white snaggle tooth, and wild hair printed on her head, a technique used for several years but almost never employed today. These days, hatted characters with hair are often depicted with sculpts that combine the hair and the hat together, like some witches we'll see later in this project. There are some exceptions where hair is printed on the head still, but it's the norm now for the minifigure's hair not to be depicted at all when hatted, or for a hat/hair combo to do the work.
Willa wears the classic LEGO mage's hat, which might be falling by the wayside these days as various "magic hat+hair" sculpts now provide a fair range of more detailed options. The hat Willa is wearing is slightly glossier and looser on her head than later hats with this shape.
Willa's outfit is all red, black, and yellow, and indeed, the entire figure is save for her white tooth. Willa is the only official LEGO "old hag" witch to be depicted with the human yellow skintone. All other classical ugly witches released in the brand have had green skin. Willa has a spooky spider motif with the brooch on her neck (possibly intended to be the clasp of her cape) and the design on the back of her cape.
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| Is this a spider? There's no distinct abdomen, and barely a distinct head. What's the entomology here? |
New LEGO capes come starched and stiff (unless they're the thicker, soft-fabric type), but over time, they soften and fray a bit at the edges. Willa's still looks good, though, and it's not wrong for her cape to look a little tattered. Since there are releases without the cape, mine is the "deluxe" version of the minifigure and I was especially lucky with my find(s)!
I imagine the 1997 and 1998 sets would have shared shelf space during 1998 because LEGO products have a healthy release period, so I don't think the effect was that LEGO cheaped out and made a lesser version of Willa for those who didn't get her the year before--I think both versions of Willa would have been available to the buyers of 1998.
Willa's dress is made of a tall roofing slope, in a technique repeated in LEGO minifigures up until 2018. Minifigure torsos are designed to fit together with unique pegs on leg pieces that keep them attached securely, but the torsos can also attach to a 1x2 row of studs on brick pieces, and LEGO exploited this by using the roof slopes as a dress or robed lower body. There were two major problems with this idea, though--the roof slope made the figures just a bit taller than the height of a standard minifigure with the standard leg piece, and the loose connection made it very easy for the figure to split apart at the waist, making it particularly easy to lift off just the top half of a robed figure secured to studs on a surface, or for the figure to break apart when dropped. Willa's slope is an older mold, with a glossy smooth back and no tube inside which would increase the attachment strength on studs--either this was a quirk of the piece in general, or maybe it was a conscious choice to make the attachment weaker and prevent robed figures splitting apart when lifted off studs? Later on, this slope got a rough back and a standard tube underneath. The Harry Potter theme revival in 2018 (booo) finally solved the problems with this technique by introducing a proper minifig-use dress slope with minifigure torso pegs and a height that matches the legs. (I think the modern wizarding theme is very well done and the IP is absolutely dead to me nonetheless due to significant disillusionment with the property and my complete disavowal of the transphobic creator. In a better world, I'd be able to appreciate the sets more openly and feel comfortable consuming or endorsing them because the design team did a great job and LEGO isn't at fault for any of my negative feelings therein. I dislike that they're keeping the license up, even though it's not realistic to expect them to end it..)
Here's a comparison--Willa, a newer figure with a slope-brick robe, a standard figure with legs, and a figure with the new robe legs. All bald to show height better.
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| Willa, Minifigures S2 Witch (green hands swapped in), Minifigures S25 Vampire Knight, custom witch--all to be featured within this project. |
Here's the pieces loose--you can see the new dress has the pegs that fit into the torso properly.
And comparing the three slopes--Willa's is glossy, the S2 Witch's is rougher, and the new dress has a concave curved back and rounded beveled edges.
And the undersides. Willa's has no central tube to reinforce attachment to studs.
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| The tube will fit in the middle of the four studs that fit in the corners. |
Up til now, my Willa had been technically incomplete. She officially came with a translucent red version of the magic wand piece, but I settled for a neon yellow-green copy I already had since the red wand came in neither of the parts hauls I assembled her from. I finally rectified that for this project and ordered the correct color for her.
During the nineties, LEGO character names were often localized differently between UK and US markets, with Willa being one such casualty of this confusion. In the UK, she was called Hubble Bubble, which is exceptionally British and charming in its own right, but makes less sense as a name.
As far as legacy, Willa still stands pretty uniquely and isn't really imitated. To date, she's LEGO's only old-hag witch with the typical default yellow color. The most wacky hag since her was the green-skinned CMF Wacky Witch, and the other yellow-toned spooky witches are more youthful and glam. She's also the only LEGO witch to have a red and black palette, though the colors have been repeated on vaguely similar figures like the Castle 2013 Evil Wizard and the Series 14 non-witch CMF Spider Lady who also has a spider motif. Willa is also the only spooky witch prior to the debut of the Wacky Witch hat/hair piece to be depicted with hair, which is printed on her head, and none of LEGO's subsequent evil spooky witches have had capes. I guess the Wacky Witch is Willa's most direct witch successor, but they're still wildly different. As Halloweeny witches were not part of the classic Universal Studios monster lineup, Willa has no Studios, Monster Fighters, or Scooby-Doo descendants unlike most of these monster types, but she does have two Minifigures descendants and one Castle descendant from the Fantasy Era theme.
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| The Fantasy Era Evil Witch. She fits into horror just fine, but I'm keeping her out of this and considering her to be purely a Castle figure...mostly because there's no place to easily sort her in the timeline and collection if I were to invite her to Halloween. If/when I do a Castle villains retrospective, she'll be joining my collection and featuring there. |
I'd love for Willa to get a modern remake minifigure. The idea feels possible since LEGO remade her compatriot Basil in Minifigures Series 25, and to see how Willa's design would translate to a modern figure would be very fun. LEGO almost did this just recently, but it doesn't count because it's not truly Willa and almost nobody got to have the figure anyhow. At a 2024 design seminar accessible only to LEGO employees, an exclusive small set was distributed in limited quantities called "The Magic of Play". The set is a classic Castle vignette populated by various established LEGO characters playing dress-up as other LEGO characters. There's a robot dressed as a knight, Ninjago's Sensei Wu dressed as classic Castle wizard Majisto, Adventurers' Johnny Thunder dressed as a classic Forestman, and Dreamzzz's unusually-sculpted Mrs. Castillo dressed as Willa.
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| Image of the set taken by a seminar attendee--this item was packaged in a cardboard tube rather than a rectangular prism. |
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| Mrs. Castillo's normal appearance in Dreamzzz. She has a unique diminutive torso-and-dress mold with a dual-molded affixed harness which her backpack is built on. This minifigure of Mrs. Castillo uses arms from the Super Mario theme without rotating standard minifigure hands. The arms have Technic pins that slot into the torso. |
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| Detail photo of the Mrs.-Castillo-as-Willa figure. This minifigure uses the arms introduced in the Minions theme, which have standard rotating minifigure hands. The design is a stylistic fusion of the two characters, featuring Castillo's glasses, scarf, beads, backpack, and staff. |
I'd be absolutely livid if this impossible-to-get minifigure was the real Willa remade for the modern LEGO art style, but as a cosplay by another LEGO character, my displeasure is downgraded to being simply miffed. I hate that LEGO sees fit to expend on exclusive prints for limited and fully inaccessible releases, but then their market releases are governed by stingy and unnecessary margin-driven mandates limiting the amount of prints allotted to each set, even on their most expensive releases where zero corners should be cut. I'm glad the employees seem treated well and get some fun perks, but the consumers are treated poorly in comparison. I love LEGO, but everyone right now can see how inexcusable their pricing and design limitations are.
It was incredibly lucky for me to have assembled the original Willa figure from two LEGO lots across years, regardless of how many original Willas she’s composed of. And that's a huge part of why Willa is so treasured to me. She's not hard to get online now, and perhaps I could get one in better condition, but those stories of incredible finds are the magic that makes something priceless.
LEGO Studios
Studios was an unusual theme. With licensed collaboration from the Steven Spielberg, the theme is based on movie-making with sets that were framed as film sets with cameras and equipment and crew framing the scenes. Owners were even encouraged to create stop-motion animated films with the Studios sets and minifigures. There were multiple genres reflected--LEGO's first superhero license, Spider-Man, actually occurred through this theme with sets based on the just-recent Sam Raimi trilogy, while we also saw sets based on LEGO's own Adventurers theme, references to Jurassic Park, and most wonderful of all, a crop of sets based loosely on old monster movies--horror sets debuting our first classic monster archetypes derived from the Universal troupe, but not licensed. Horror movies deserve more recognition for their role in cinema history, especially since the genre is so badly unsung and unrewarded to this day, but this theme gave them their credit! As such, all of these monster figures can be interpreted as actors in makeup or even animatronics in one case, but none of the designs directly discredit the potential for the figures to be played as genuine supernatural monsters, which I dearly appreciate. They're all complete looks without hints of artifice or costuming that makes it impossible to play them as the real deal. Then again, movie monster production that looked like costumed actors and robots would make for pretty poor horror films, so they had to look legit.
The Studios figures felt like a pipe dream for ages until I had the independence to find them online.
Lady and Gent
The Studios horror films must have been part of a continuous series rather than just an anthology franchise, because set against the monsters as foils were two consistent human characters known only as the Lady and Gent.
The Gent doesn't strike me particularly as a horror leading man, but more as a caricature of the archetypal hunk actor in the classic film days--the first person who comes to mind is Cary Grant. He has heavy brows and a cleft chin and defined cheekbones with some thick eyebrows too, and has a confident expression. He wears a tan suit, and a subtle metallic gold chain is printed on his waistcoat vanishing under his lapel.
The Lady has an older ponytail sculpt in pure orange, an uncommon color for hairpieces, and has ringlets printed on her head to add to her hairstyle. Shortly after these sets, LEGO'S dark orange color replaced this tone as the default for ginger hair on minifigures, and for a good while, but recently, the classic orange has returned to use in minifigure hair on the odd occasion.
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| This ponytail mold ran a good while before being functionally replaced by the short side-parted ponytail mold that debuted on the Minifigures Series 1 Nurse. |
The Lady has pink lipstick and a beauty mark and an assertive look with a wide smile. She doesn't look like she's playing the terrified young horror ingenue, but she's not a sinister figure either. She looks like she's got some experience and toughness. She's wearing a dark red dress over a white blouse, the style of which could either be Victorian or 1970s. The torso print has very subtle vertical ribbed seams tailoring the costume.
Because these are horror leads, they have alternate scared faces after getting rattled.
I have to give the Lady's design kudos for not depicting her screaming. She's clearly shaken, but her eyes are open and her teeth are gritted, holding it together after a shock. While the term "scream queen" has shifted more affectionate in reference to actresses who become horror icons, often by acting scared really well, there are fair criticisms of the proliferation of stories where women end up depicted as panicky and helpless in scary situations, especially if they have male co-stars who are allowed to keep their heads. Here, the two horror targets are basically on par with the intensity of their fear reactions. The Gent may have even lost more of his cool, given that he's started to sweat! It's arguable that LEGO themselves supported the portrayal of the Lady as more collected, since the Gent's scared face is shown in the front box art of two of his sets, but the Lady's calm face is on the front box art of both sets she's in. She might look scared on the back of the boxes, though; I wouldn't know. The backs of old LEGO boxes don't tend to be well documented.
The Lady and Gent's face prints stand out as more dated to me than some of the other Studios faces we're about to see, but I like the humor and expressiveness in them. The Lady's face and hair were also used for Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man subtheme of the Studios theme, possibly implying the same actor played both MJ and the Lady in the LEGO world. In real life, the actress for Mary Jane Watson in the films the Studios sets were based on was Kirsten Dunst, but I don't think the head and hair on the first LEGO MJ were especially based on Dunst. It was a weird early license where the characters were more depicted than the real actors who brought them to life, despite the theme being about actors making movies!
There were plenty of orders for this project which I was able to postpone until October began, but I made sure to get the Lady and Gent in September so this first post of my series would be finished and ready to post on the dot at the start of October.
The Lady had this version with a dress and a version with plain legs in the same color to let her sit down, with each version in a different set. This creates one of the most absurd out-of-context minifigure names in the collector community, as seen in BrickLink listings: "Lady with Legs!"
The Gent came with a 2x2 tile printed with pieces of garlic on it to ward off the Vampire in the "Vampire's Crypt" set, and while it's a cute and enjoyably dated piece (the garlic would certainly be a 3D element today), I didn't see fit to get it for this review. You'll see it in the official set photo coming up.
Now for the monsters. These are listed in the order of Studios sets they appeared in by ascending size, not by the order in which I got them.
Mummy
The Studios Mummy even borrows stylistically from Hotep, so he's certainly not debuting everything to LEGO's mummy archetype design-wise. However, he is the first LEGO mummy explicitly in the horror context.
The Mummy comes from the smallest Studios horror set, "Curse of the Pharaoh". This would start a pattern of the mummy always being in the cheapest tier of a given LEGO horror theme. Neither of the human heroes appeared here--it was a monster-only set.
This figure stands out for its level of detail for the time, and of the Studios figures, he looks the least dated artistically, coming pretty close to LEGO's current art style and rendering. Even his face, borrowing so clearly from Hotep's red eyeliner and stitchy mouth, would still work for a modern figure with some mummy stylization. I love how dusty and aged he looks. The nemes headdress is tan and has simulated weathering with its stripes looking worn and faded on purpose, the collar has a spiderweb-like pattern and tatters, and the Mummy does what Hotep somehow didn't and uses bandages, all over his face and torso, and they have some nice texture. He stands out as an older figure because his back is unprinted, his legs and arms have no side printing, his greys are the older shades before LEGO altered the colors, and his legs aren’t dual-molded to depict the skirt, but the figure still looks good. This would be a high standard of printing even going into the early 2010s.
The design indicates the Mummy's flesh is dark grey while all of the lighter grey is bandaging even where it's not printed, and the face looks good. It works fine for only the eyes and nose to be uncovered and the mouth to be printed over the top. Later LEGO mummies all have uncovered mouths.
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| You can see his smile stretching the corners of his mouth with little wrinkle lines hidden in the bandage texture. |
He has another face that looks sleepy and leaves the mouth a much more subtle line in a smile which looks like it's under the bandages on this side. This face is fun for depicting his slumber and awakening. His closed eyes look great with the makeup outlining the lids really nicely. It gives the eyes an unusual amount of dimension for a minifigure face!
Two later mummies would kind of do the same "sleeping and awake" idea with alternate faces depicting burial masks covering their rotted heads.
I think this Mummy figure is really great. He'd need very little to be up to modern standards and he's charming even as an older figure.
Werewolf
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| Featuring the Lady with Legs! |
He’s a werewolf with grey fur, a wolf head, and only a tattered blue flannel shirt on his body.
I really like the shirt colors paired with the grey, and the effort to depict fur is appreciated, if clumsy and incomplete. The buttons are shown being stretched by the transformation as if the shirt has gotten tighter.
Today, the arms and legs would have to have some print as well, with the arms either continuing the flannel or being dual-molded to tear the sleeves halfway, while the legs would continue the fur detail and maybe paint claws on the toes. Unless perhaps the legs are meant to be trousers rather than bare wolf fur, but they'd surely change the color to something different if they were supposed to be pants.
What makes this werewolf interesting is that his head is a mask that can come off to reveal the face of the man pre-transformation…or, while on the wolf body, the actor playing him if that’s what you want him to be.
The face underneath is a generic head from the time (I already owned one beforehand from a figure in another theme) and it's a scuzzier take on similar heads before and after that have similar red wispy hair printed on them. The head has appeared on other Studios figures, suggesting that, like the Lady, this actor is a regular camera talent working on multiple films in the studio. He's the only Studios horror antagonist character to not have an exclusive minifigure head, but since it's his human face, it's acceptable.
The set also included pieces to swap in to complete the human form, with a counterpart non-tattered human torso design and a black baseball cap. The legs stay the same, suggesting they are trousers on the wolfman. Still, it doesn't make sense that they'd choose the same color as the wolf fur if he's meant to be fully clothed. His shirt is already tattered from the transformation, so I assumed he just lost his trousers completely. This is where printing would help clarify things.
This normal torso print was commonly used for long enough that I happened to have gotten a copy myself in my collection long before getting the Werewolf, but I did have to make an order for the cap--a generic piece like the torso, but not one I ever had.
I didn't see the need to order separate parts to build both versions simultaneously because it's the point of the Werewolf figure to have one copy transform. The transformation feature is pretty fun!
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| This photo taken with another minifigure wearing the mask to cast the wolf shadow. |
The wolf head itself is simultaneously the most innovative and outdated feature of the character. The overly-fluid and exaggerated animal sculpt and the period-typical lack of paint make it look like the relic it is, but the idea of a mask element being used to depict a character like this has continued in the form of the Legends of Chima sets (who use printed anthropomorphic animal designs on standard minifigure heads under animal masks creating the real head, which allow for some changes in expression by turning the minifigure head to the alternate face) and characters like the Minifigures Series 23 Snowman, who can be displayed with the mask to be the real deal or without as a guy in a costume. The Studios mask was later reused one more time to transform Professor Lupin in the first Shrieking Shack set, from the franchise that deserves to die. Since then, all werewolf minifigures have been in wolf mode the whole time and all of them with fully canine heads have had custom molded heads rather than masks. I do like the transformation idea even though it requires a separate body for the face under the mask. That might be why it wasn’t done again, and why the next rendition of the Shrieking Shack many years later had a platform to swap out two separate minifigures of Lupin in fully-human and fully-wolf form so that each would get a proper rendition without piece-swapping hassles. I do respect and like the recent Lupin-wolf minifigure design, but I refuse to seek it out. I'm not above reusing the LEGO parts from that license which I already had before cutting it out of my life, but I'm not interested in seeking out any more LEGO from that story even secondhand.
Here's a sketch of what the Werewolf head might look with paint to finish it more.
The sculpt isn't in the modern style, but this would bring it more in line. The unpainted creature sculpts were part of the look of the time, though, so I'm fine with what we got.
Vampire
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| Note the garlic tile. |
He introduced the rare pointy wedge hair piece he wears, likely meant to evoke bat wings or ears in a relatively plausible masculine hair shape, and it's since been used in green for the Joker during the original Batman theme and black again for Marvel's Wolverine ten years later, where it's since made sporadic appearances for that character thereafter, but hasn't been seen for years now. I'm pretty sure the Vampire hair sculpt is retired now, unless I'm proven wrong. A similar, more flowy equivalent to the piece has since emerged for Beast of the X-Men in the second Marvel Minifigures series, so the Studios Vampire could possibly be directly remade and updated with that piece. Perhaps the stray lock in front would be too undignified, and maybe the pointy ears built in invalidate its reuse too.
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| Marvel's Beast. |
I’d never previously owned a minifigure with the Vampire's hair element. It's a fairly goofy piece but it does look good and iconic on this guy. We love camp drama.
The biggest concern with the Vampire minifigure was finding one with a decent cape. LEGO capes don’t age the best and tend to have a unique texture and some wear and fraying when they’re old, and with it being so key to the minifigure, I avoided listings that said the cape was tattered or losing its color. This made the minifigure more expensive, but I can’t argue with it. He’s a great figure and I signed on to the price. Even so, the cape is naturally a little ratty with age, and the black coloring on the back has badly faded.
While I'd love to see about restoring the color somehow, for a two-sided color design, that seems beyond my capabilities. Better versions of this cape can make copies of this figure extremely expensive, but that's not worth it to me.
The cut of the cape was introduced by this Vampire and has been seen since for other vampires as well as the Evil Wizard in the Fantasy Era Castle theme. It's all one piece with the cape having two folds. The hole in the middle doesn't go around the neck, but the other four large holes do. You fold the collar holes backward to stack over the holes below and then cross the stacked holes on one side over the holes on the other so they're all around the minifigure neck, and pop the collar up.
The Vampire's face design set a formula for LEGO, with stark white skin, grey shading around solid red eyes, and the requisite fangs.
Studios figures seem to have naturally shaky variable print quality with the color and line layers not always registering perfectly with each other, so that's another variable in the value of a figure. There are Vampires with faces that look more tidily printed than the one I have, but again, not worth nitpicking because he looks fine enough. I'm comfortable with a bad print if I know it's historically consistent and not just a dud, and because this was the norm for Studios, I'll let it slide.
Double-sided minifigure head printing was introduced in 2001 by the franchise that shall not be named (Quirrell's minifigure demanded the new printing expansion to depict You-Know-Who), while Studios Horror came out in 2002, making the figures fairly early adopters of two-sided heads. The Lady and Gent's faces have been shown above, and most of the Studios monsters use back head printing for alternate expressions or more detail.
The other side of the Vampire's face is worse-registered on my copy, but depicts his mouth open in solid red with no outline and blood dripping as if he's just had a feed! This feels highly out-of-character for LEGO today, who almost never invoke bloody imagery.
The closed-mouth face of the Vampire looks more in line with the modern minifigure standard than the open-mouth face. The closed-mouth Vampire and the Mummy are the two minifigure faces from this Studios group which hold up the best with modern minifigure design.
The Vampire's torso is printed only on the front and has a black jacket open over a red shirt, and more blood imagery LEGO wouldn't do today with his red-stained handkerchief printed poking out of a pocket.
The figure wasn’t complete to me without his unique coffin, and I needed to get it.
The figure wasn’t complete to me without his unique coffin, and I needed to get it.
The coffin body has been used for mummies and vampires before and since this figure, with the mummy coffins/sarcophagi having a lid sculpted with a pharaoh in relief on top with studs on the hands and headdress, and later vampires having a flat coffin lid with print decoration and studs in the same spots as the mummy lid. The shape of the coffin is top/bottom symmetrical rather than tapering more at the bottom, and can sit on studs two ways--on its back, it has a slightly raised 2x4 stud footprint that can attach to a base without LEGO having to engineer the full silhouette of the coffin into a stud grid, and it can also stand upright, occupying a 2x3 stud footprint. It has studs on top of its pieces as well, and can be locked closed by attaching pieces across them on top and/or bottom. The lid clicks onto the body with some thin ridges on the top and bottom edges of the body that fit into the lid.
The Vampire's version of the coffin was unique for two reasons--one, it’s the only coffin to have been released in a form of medium brown (his was the older version of the LEGO color). For two, the Studios Vampire coffin has a unique lid comparable to the mummy one, with the Studios Vampire himself being sculpted in slightly off-model but charming relief on the top and having a stud connection--here, a single one with a full hole through on the portrait's chest rather than two hollow studs (that don't go through the lid) on the portrait's hands.
It’s a really neat piece because, unlike the easily repurposed blank pharaoh relief on the Egyptian lid, this lid with the Vampire's distinctive hair is pretty much completely specific to storing this figure alone. Later, the Scooby-Doo Dracula would imitate this coffin by using the newer flat lid with the figure of Dracula printed in dark grey on the top, and that’s much more sensible than wasting a mold on a piece that can only be used in one set…but it’s also not nearly as special. The coffin in the Vampire's Crypt set also came with stickers for the lower part to represent pallbearers' handles, but I didn’t mind getting an unstickered version, since the decals were likely to age pretty poorly and the coffin didn’t need them.
Inside the coffin is the same 2x4 stud grid as on the bottom side, and I don't think these quite make sense. They don't go under the legs of the figure when lying on their back, and are only really useful to secure a minifigure in the process of sitting up inside the coffin. I think this piece could have had no studs inside and been just fine.
The Vampire looks good inside!
When ordering my Studios parts, which was last year, the Vampire gave me some hiccups. I first got a copy of the coffin lid with the stud section cleanly broken off leaving only the hole through the middle of the stud. The seller was apologetic when I brought it up and was very kind about it, but I was able to accept it. For a while. When I got things in order to make this project happen this year, I wanted the best I could reasonably manage, and committed to ordering an intact copy of the lid (I didn't need a whole other coffin) so I'd have that in good condition.
The other mishap was related. When I first got the Vampire, his hair seemed different from how I expected, and he wouldn't fit into the coffin with it.
The moment I double-checked with images of the Vampire online, I realized I'd gotten a figure with a fake hairpiece, almost certainly from a clone-LEGO knockoff figure of Marvel's Wolverine, since he used the same hair as the Vampire for a time. The sellers didn't take responsibility when I contacted them about it, saying they'd sold plenty of the figure in question and didn't believe the hair was wrong. I then wrote a transaction review saying the figure was all good but the hair was fake, and the sellers left a "neutral" rating on the transaction with the comment (verbatim) "The hair a fake?? Without words". So that was pretty sucky, but I got the correct hairpiece from a separate order very easily and completed my Vampire properly. I knew LEGO was better than to design a figure that couldn't fit into his own coffin!
To date, this is LEGO's only vampire minifigure to have two new piece sculpts that were created for him--the hair and the coffin lid. Lord Vampyre in Monster Fighters introduced a flat coffin lid for one new piece, and the Vidiyo vampires simultaneously introduced a literal axe guitar piece, but none of the other minifig vampires have debuted more sculpts than this guy. Balthazar from The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part debuted two new parts with his crystal hair and the peg-necked bat body that lets his head go on top…but he's a minidoll.
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| Balthazar the literal sparkle vampire (not to be part of this blog series, but I do like and want him!) |
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| Human-headed bat Balthazar, using a variant of the classic LEGO bat with a peg instead of a head so the minidoll head can fit on it. This mold is terribly underused and hasn't been seen since. With a 1x1 stud piece that fits around a bar, minifigure heads could be put onto this body too. |
When I got the Studios coffin, the seller had put a couple of bonus pieces inside--a green jewel piece and a solid yellow goblet. I'd never had the goblet in that color before, so it became the Vampire's accessory.
There are better copies of this figure out there, but any of them are still pretty good. His treasured status is understandable, and he's a great start to the vampire LEGOcy.
Hunchback
His head with its stringy hair and snaggle tooth was a unique print, as was his torso print.
He wears a round open-top basket on his back (the piece is a predecessor to the current back sack which is sculpted to look like cloth). The basket may be for practical use, but may also be an indicator of a hunched back, which doesn't quite work, but you kinda get the idea.
The LEGO bone accessory piece didn't exist yet to fill his basket, but he could tote some skeleton parts if you wanted him over in the laboratory instead of in the Vampire's service.
My copy of the neck basket is a newer edition provided by me--it's a copy after LEGO switched its brown color formulas, so it's not a perfect match, but I wasn't able to get a copy with the original basket and right now, he's not quite important enough for me to get the original color.
Of the Studios horror creeps, the Hunchback is unique for having no LEGOcy whatsoever--there has never been a subsequent minifigure representing this archetype, and there probably won't be now, due to the problematic disability depiction inherent to the archetype and LEGO's strong commitment to respectful disabled representation in their current output. I wouldn't call it a bad thing that this archetype stopped where it started in LEGO's toylines.
Mad Scientist
This is one of two horror characters from the "Scary Laboratory" set.
The Mad Scientist looks little like his successors. His hair is short-cropped and black, and his face has spectacles and thick eyebrows and a super huge grin. He doesn't look much like the Halloween wild-haired scientist archetype, nor too much like Henry Frankenstein in the Universal films...maybe he's a bit like Herbert West as played by Jeffrey Combs? His eyes are red, which is spooky.
His torso and legs depict a lab coat, the former much better than the latter. In the current days of dual-molded legs, this figure's colors would be perfectly blocked, but he came far too early for that. He has a stethoscope on his torso, which makes sense for checking the reanimation success of his monster.
The other thing about this figure is that he's a monster in his own right, as he has a second face which is a bestial Mr. Hyde-type transformation!
That's a fun twist! Only one later figure would go for the Jekyll/Hyde angle, but his alter egos are simultaneous. This one transforms!
The hair doesn't cover up the second face properly, though. I remember that being more of a problem then, but maybe it still happens fairly often now too.
I gave him the hammer and oilcan he's shown holding in the official photo for the LEGO set. There's a clear minifigure head printed as a brain jar in that set which I'd also like to have someday. I like that he's using more mechanical tools on his Monster like he's less flesh and more machine. Speaking of...
The Monster
This figure is more commonly known as Frankenstein, but a LEGO Club page referred to him as the “Studios Monster” and also “IT”, so those names are more official.
While most minifigures have headgear to depict hair and/or hats or helmets, this minifigure might be the first with a headgear piece designed to alter the contour of his actual head--and remained the only such figure for a long time. The head extension is a unique piece that was only seen on him, and I enjoy how atypical it is. Rather than a short flat-top brow with hair, it’s a fairly bulging wide bald flat-top cranium with a heavy brow and two studs on the sides that imitate designs of the monster that place bolts in the temples.
While most minifigures have headgear to depict hair and/or hats or helmets, this minifigure might be the first with a headgear piece designed to alter the contour of his actual head--and remained the only such figure for a long time. The head extension is a unique piece that was only seen on him, and I enjoy how atypical it is. Rather than a short flat-top brow with hair, it’s a fairly bulging wide bald flat-top cranium with a heavy brow and two studs on the sides that imitate designs of the monster that place bolts in the temples.
Grey or silver studs could be added to make those bolts clearer, or else you could attach his head to cable hoses in a machine!
Out of all famous depictions of the Monster, this head shape resembles the modern design of cereal mascot Franken Berry the most, which is interesting. It’s pretty neat. The forehead scar is depicted as being sealed with a metallic zipper printed on it, which might be a direct reference to Young Frankenstein, which parodied the Monster’s bolts with zippers on his neck. The head underneath has a nice ghoulish but serene expression, and the back of the head is printed with a snaking zipper as well, unzipped to show gears in the head! That's an unnecessary but very welcome detail.
Technically, this rear zipper could indicate the minifigure's nature as an animatronic on a film set rather than an actor-portrayed monster, but it's not explicit and it's very plausible that this is a monster with clockwork mechanical augmentation in the narrative of the film--again, quite a bit like Franken Berry.
The monster and scientist have Minifigures, Monster Fighters, and Minifigures Series 14 descendants, but no counterparts from the Scooby-Doo or Vidiyo themes. For the latter, it makes sense, since the Series 14 Rocker Monster basically blew the musician Frankenmonster concept early. A Vidiyo laboratory monster would be redundant unless it was a lady, and again, a Universal license would probably be needed to do such a figure!
While the Vampire has an exclusive accessory sculpt with the coffin lid, the Monster is the only Studios horror figure to have an exclusive sculpt on his person--the head extension.
The Scary Laboratory set also included a makeup table with the original smiling ghost shroud, but not parts for a full ghost figure--it was up to you to dress up one of the minifigures in the set in the shroud.
The Original Monsters Display
As the first examples of LEGO horror archetypes and as figures neatly preceding the modern Minifigures art style without any successors before then, it made sense to display these all in a place of honor. While the Ghost and Willa have no relation to the Studios cast, appearing years apart from Studios and each other, they're still all the first minifigures of their horror archetypes, and LEGO's next classic horror figures were years after Studios and were conceptual revisits, setting all of these apart into their own "generation" of "founders". While there are obviously firsts in the monsters to come after these, with later horror archetypes debuting to LEGO after Studios, they're from a different period and don't get filed with these originators, who are also defined by their time period in LEGO'S history. Furthermore, while we have those other monster "firsts" later, they came after LEGO had begun iterating upon these guys with successor designs. These are all the first monsters from the time before any of the LEGO monsters had successors. By the time we get to the first great ape, first spooky kid, first female vampire, etc, we already got derivatives of the figures in this post.
On a small base, I constructed a stage of dirt and "red carpet" to display these Very Important Monsters in pairs (Ghost and Willa, Vampire and Hunchback, Monster and Mad Scientist, Mummy and Werewolf). A classic ball-joint skeleton with a shovel adorns the back as a mascot. The shovel is clipped to the back, and the arm is clipped to shovel--symbolism of the oldest figures being dug back up! I kept the aesthetic retro with bright red and classic green rather than newer, moodier LEGO colors.
I felt like there was a lack of presence or stature for this important collection despite the polish of the stand, so I built a simplistic bust of the Studios Monster as a prop to elevate the stand into a pedestal. Building another layer of display space under the stand would invalidate the crypt I built into the back because I could just stage the coffin in the "underground", so I built a prop for the stand instead of a second layer. I'm very proud of the likeness, given the limited parts I had to achieve the portrait. I didn't have the biggest range of Sand Green bricks to work with!
The top of the head slots into a square ring of plates on the bottom for stable display, but lets the base come off with no stud connection so I can use the hollow head for storage of the Werewolf's alternate human-form pieces and another skeleton.
I liked the effect and was very pleased with my design.
I played with the rows and spacing of the minifigures until landing here as the best display for visibility on each tier.
I included another feature, too. Around the back of the gravesite, there's a panel with a bat design.
That comes off to reveal a tiny crypt in a hollow space...
...which is snug storage for the coffin!
...and wouldn't you know, I didn't stop there, and I took the model down for another round of revisions.
My initial goals were simple. I'd tweaked another "staircase" minifigure display build to widen the height gap between tiers so the minifigures were easier to see behind each other from a level front view, so I set to doing that, raising the stairs and making them even blocks of three stud rows each, rather than staggered with plates bridging between the levels. This necessitated the removal of most of the detail behind the last row to adjust the height of the grey section too. The other thing I wanted to do was improve the cover over the crypt in the back. I wasn't so much a fan of having to fully remove a lid anymore, and I had rounded plates which would fit over the hollow better, so I fashioned a new cover attached to a clip hinge that lets me hinge the cover up like a garage door and swing it closed without removing it. I also used more shaped newer tile parts to improve the bat design.
I could have stopped there and reconstructed the original stone effigy on the back of the stand, but I was also thinking about the Studios Lady and Gent I'd neglected to account for...since I hadn't started this build with the intent of even owning them. As this project has developed, I've shifted to wanting to acknowledge and include whatever "hero" team these horror themes featured, even as footnotes, because every monster needs a target! I could have plopped the Lady and Gent to the side of the stairs on the dirt and grass, but that felt a little lazy, so I constructed a flared-out extension with a trio of arches to suggest the scenery of whatever haunted mansion or castle these creatures would come from, spilling into the grave scenario. It's extremely minimalist location suggestion, but having arches the Lady and Gent could stand under, as if exploring the creepy setting or getting left behind as the monsters march out onto the world, was a good visual.
I reincorporated the torches, spider, foliage, and shovel skeleton within this new configuration, and matched the tile kf the "plaza" to the tile inside the crypt, leaving studs for the Lady and Gent's designated standing spots. The LEGO roof brick hadn't been updated yet by the time the Lady came around, so I put three studs under her, shlrt of a full 2x2. A later dress brick would need just one stud to attach to the tube inside the brick, or two studs for one half of the brick, but the Lady's older mold had no such tube, like Willa, and no less than three studs can secure her dress. A 2x2 plate lifts off the base when I try to take the Lady off because the grip is so strong, so I switched to three studs below her. I also retiled the Gent's spot to put him aligned with the Lady.
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| First iteration of the tiling. The Gent stands one stud behind the Lady this way, and the Lady's skirt lifts the 2x2 plate away because the connection is too strong. |
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| Second tiling pattern for the Lady and Gent's spots. |
With the build redone this way with the arches and larger stairs, the model is heavier and more back-weighted than before, but it still sits stably on the sculpture of the Monster's head.
The Monster sculpture is less necessary than it had been before, though. The focal point of the plaza arches competes with the head, and the display doesn't feel like it calls for the head anymore to lend it a sense of completion and presence. I also realized the spare Werewolf parts easily fit in the Vampire's coffin within the crypt, so the head's storage aspect is also unnecessary. I guess I could keep it to the side as its own little model, maybe a cup for supplies like brick separators, but it's not hurting anything by keeping its spot.
Here's the revised crypt door design.
While this stand was initially built last year before revisions, building minifigure displays became a major theme of this Halloween LEGO project. The original build of this stand inspired me to build more displays, and refining them inspired me to revise this one! It's been a fun experience. You'll see more displays emerging for more subsets of LEGO monsters as we go on!
I really like the cheery retro-LEGO effect of my final "Old Classics" stand, and the arches are such great minimalism in scenery and effective appeal. I think the filled stand looks great.
After Studios, LEGO and horror didn't cross paths minifigure-wise for several years. LEGO didn't seem to have much of a vehicle for them. And then we got the Minifigures theme, the perfect place for characters with no greater playset theme to put them in. We'll talk about those first horror Minifigures entries next.
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