A LEGO Horror Chronicle, Part 10: The 2025 Creator Haunted Mansion

This is a strange place to drop another parcel of monsters--a single LEGO Creator 3-in-1 set consisting of an homage to the 10228 Haunted House, with new but frustratingly unoriginal minifigure designs. I needed them regardless of what their designs were, of course!

The Creator theme is built foremost on teaching builders the creative potential of LEGO. As such, Creator almost always eschews molded animals in favor of small brick-built models to create animal figures, and the primary Creator sets have a "three-in-one" formula of three possible builds, which are basically an "A model", "B model", and "C model", decreasing in design quality and size from A to C. (Creator sets might also be a demonstration of compromise, since only one of the models typically ever excels in any set.) Each build is mutually exclusive with the others, so you cannot build any two of the models simultaneously from one copy of the set. Creator set minifigures used to be fairly generic, but these days, more interesting minifigures are making their way into Creator, and like the Minifigures theme, Creator has been scooping up genre subjects that LEGO doesn't want to risk a full play theme on. Pirates and Castle have lived on through Creator, and now "spooky" joins their ranks by getting a revival here! Had this set's minifigures not been fully-developed prints and designs, I probably could have passed, but LEGO knows how to get me, and I couldn't miss these minifigures, especially not after getting committed to this review project. I got my copy of the Haunted Mansion set as a very generous and deeply appreciated Halloween gift from my mother.

I was going to have this discussion within the "miscellany" post preceding, but I can never keep myself from expanding a topic, and the misc. post is long enough as it is! This turned into a set review and remodel as well as a minifigure review, so it broke into its own post!

Here's the box.

The "A" model of the set is the namesake Haunted Mansion, which is obviously a downscaled mimic of 10228, with a few stylistic changes--primarily, the heavy use of Sand Green masonry bricks, here turned inward so the single groove on the back side lends the house a shabby wooden texture on the outside. The "B" model is a spooky flying train locomotive hovering on clear bricks and a station platform on the ground, and the "C" model is a ghost ship. 

Only the latter setting did not also appear in the Monster Fighters theme, though I was right to think it could have, thanks to the early early concept sheet showing such a concept in consideration for the theme.

While paper bags are transitioning into use in LEGO set packaging, they've been very slow to appear in the USA. The small Creator set "Surprising Spider" had paper bags when I got it, and that was the first time I'd encountered them, but the Haunted Mansion had the plastic bags I've known for ages. The instruction booklets for the three models are separate and were packaged separately in a paper envelope to keep them in good shape.

Here's the Haunted Mansion built. It's cute, but it's also pretty hard to do much with it, such that I find it insufficient as a playset. 

It's so small that there's practically zero real estate to place and pose minifigures in it, and just a bit more stud footage would have been dearly appreciated. The set is built in a way where it can display with an open back or fold inward 90 degrees on each side to be a fully-enclosed model, which is fun, but the build feels lacking in some ways, and there's more walls than rooms. 

The mansion has a detached gate model like several other sets including ones we've seen here like 10228 and the Scary Laboratory. I've always had some intrinsic disagreement with floating models like this that are meant to imply a larger space. I kind of want the entirety of the grounds of a model to be on a connected plated base like a complete diorama.

Here's the mansion without the gate.

The set has some cute details. There's a monster tree on one side of the house, and a graveyard on the other.

The house has some weathered texture with the use of bricks and boards over the windows. I also like the bat spire on the tower section, which might be indicating a weathervane. This must be manually turned to make it face forward in both configurations of the house (open and closed) because the hinged rotation of the sides will turn the angle you're viewing the spire and bat at as well.

Here's the open back.

In the front hall, there are two portraits in black, white, and magenta, showing the mansion and the vampire. These portraits inspired my cover photo!

I was pleasantly surprised to find these are exclusive printed tiles, not stickers. The Monster Fighters Haunted House used stickers for its own spooky paintings. Maybe it's the Creator theme that did it--I don't believe Creator is in the habit of ever using stickers. 

Inside on our left from this view, there's a hall table with the hats worn by the skeleton in the other two builds of the set. It's one of the more blatant instances of Creator design needing to accounts for parts specific to other builds in the trio, but it's an elegant solution.

On the other side, there's a grandfather clock with a knob outside that lets you swing its pendulum on a pin.

Note the arch brick used to create a mouse hole in the wall.

On the second floor, there's a gear turntable where a ruby on a plinth spins around to reveal a ghost with a gear knob outside. This ghost is also visible in the windows, so turning the gear lets you peek the ghost around the little tower. 

There's also a very simple little dresser.

In the middle of the second floor is a grand pipe organ. That seems like an unlikely spot to me. Isn't an organ a heavy "downstairs" kind of fixture? Unfortunately, the most likely minifigure to be the organist (knocking out a round of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor) is the vampire...and she cannot sit down to play it. Even removing the bench doesn't give her full stud footage to stand behind it. 

There's nothing to speak of on the right side of the second floor. 

For some reason, the top roof section has a gap all the way down through it, allowing you to drop a minifigure down onto the organ balcony if you wanted to. I don't think this is intended as a feature, it's just kind of unfinished. 

The sides of the house swing at 90 degrees to enclose the walls. A clip brick is gently held in a click-hinge brick on the other side to keep the house together, but I think a full clip connection would have worked just as well and been even more secure.

Here's other angles of the closed house.

I like this feature, but at this scale, there's seriously no room to breathe here. The interior is so so tight when closed and the lack of minifigure access to the second floor is also highlighted this way.

Sealed in a six-stud deep second floor with no stairway up or down.

Even the porch is too tight. It's hard to put minifigures on the studs with how cramped it is.

The four unique minifigures in the set consist of a vampire woman, a Frankenmonster, a werewolf guy, and a sheet ghost. A generic skeleton is the fifth figure.

Vampire

This is the first female vampire minifigure since Vampyre's Bride to really feel super similar to her, but we finally got another Gothic vampire woman with long black hair and a dark red antique dress. This feels like a deliberate design homage. I'm glad; Vampyre's Bride deserves her credit.

Maybe the new figure is a reverse of Monster Fighters, which made darker takes on preceding minifigures? Is this the lighter counterpart to Vampyre's Bride? Is this the hypothetical wife of the Series 2 Vampire? It certainly fits to put her in a couple with him to form fully mirrored counterparts to the Vampyres.

There's not really a lot making the Creator vampire any functionally lighter in tone than Vampyre's Bride. She's more put-together looking with her costume not being artfully ripped and her windblown hair looking more glamorously loose than the Bride's, and there's no blood imagery in her necklace, but it's not like she's much less wicked-looking. Then again, without knowing his character bio, I wouldn't label the Series 2 Vampire as a truly friendly guy, either. I do like the magenta tones on the Creator vampire figure and the implication that she's wearing a black choker for a bit of a mix of Gothic and goth. 

The new minifigure is the second LEGO vampire woman with the windblown VIDIYO hair after VIDIYO's own Vampire Basisst, but this edition is solid black. Her front face is similar to the other female vampires, with a toothy smirk and purple eye makeup, while her second face makes her the first vampire woman in LEGO to have red eyes, changing her eye color so it looks like she's activated some magic. 

Her eyes don't have as intense of a glowy shading effect around them as the Vampire Knight's glow-eye face, but her expression lends her the same energy and the purple eye shading has turned pink to imply her eyes are giving off red light. 

I like this red-eyed face for the Creator vampire more. The purple eye shading on the other face feels disharmonious with her design and palette.

Here she is with the two vampires she most resembles.

The Creator vampire has print on the back of her torso, but not on the back of her skirt.

I really like this minifigure, and she's the best print design in this group (granted, the ghost isn't printed at all). I'm also pleased that the white print on her collar is opaque and matches her cast white parts. Opaque print on darker plastics can never be expected, so it's always nice to see. That being said, the light-reflection dot on the jewel on her waist accent is not opaque like it should be, compared to the jewel on her choker.

I think this figure would probably be able to be released through the Build-a-Minifigure assortments too, but she'd likely be the best in her yearly trio if so.

Monster

Monster Rocker, you are no longer the worst Frankenmonster minifigure. 

It's just...what is this bringing to the table? The coloring is identical to the Series 4 minifigure and the torso print is only barely changed to not be identical. It's a genuine game of spot-the-difference there.

Nothing about the torso printing is identical, and yet...

The newer face is uninspiring to me. The Sand Green doesn't flatter it this time because the rest is uninteresting, and the bushy eyebrows are a mistake, especially since they're also on the head extension piece which doesn't fully cover the brows on the minifigure head. Perhaps neither element should have had eyebrows; look how perfect the Series 4 face is!

Eye shading could have helped the new figure, too.

Even with no change to the print graphics, coloring could have made all the difference for the 2025 figure. Go more pop and give us our first lime green Frankenmonster. Heck, put him in a purple or magenta suit too! Go greyscale with light grey skin and a dark grey suit. Medium green skin, Bright Green skin, Spring Green skin! Any number of recolors of this print would instantly elevate the figure, but it seems like they're consciously courting nostalgia and creating a close substitute for the Series 4 Minifigure...in a way that satisfies nothing. Collectors getting this rendition in lieu of the old figure may find it inferior and a reminder of what they didn't get. Collectors who have the S4 figure have little reason to get this one; he's barely distinct. What a letdown. He should have been more original and tried to do his own thing. 

All of these messy color edits are more appealing to me than the figure as designed. Either LEGO chose the exact wrong colors for this print design, or they chose the exact wrong print design for these colors.

Purple suit, Sand Blue skin.

Black suit, standard green or Bright Green skin.

Greyscale.

Sand Green skin as designed, black suit.

Orange skin, grey suit.

Standard green skin, orange suit.

This next one is the color edit that breaks my heart, though--if this was the palette of this figure, I'd genuinely love him. This brings the design together in a wonderful way that would make him a perfect new iteration of the archetype.

Lime green skin, magenta suit.

I can only hope for any of these color schemes on forthcoming Frankenmonster figures. Fingers crossed this Creator figure wasn't the last hurrah of a head-extension mold that was just about to be retired after ten years of dormancy, and is instead a sign that the mold is revived and more interesting Frankenmonsters are to come. I'd love any of the color palettes I just proposed on a Build-a-Minifigure Frankenmonster. I'd even allow the print to be the same design as long as we got it in one of these colorations.

The Creator Monster has back printing the Series 4 figure didn't get, so you could easily swap torsos to upgrade the S4 Monster with the newer print.

The figure is also the first appearance of this head extension sculpt since the Monster Rocker ten years prior. I've heard LEGO keeps design files on hand with which to remake any molds which have been decommissioned due to inactivity, and this must be such a case because the sculpt is unchanged from the 2011-debuting piece. A new mold for the old design must have been created to bring this element back and make this figure, and I can only hope it means a good few more, and more distinct, Frankenmonsters to come.

So many missed opportunities here. It's not actually the print's problem; it's the colors. LEGO should have made this character stomp on his own two feet instead of seeking such blatant Series 4 nostalgia.

Werewolf

I'm getting real sick of these dark grey wolves. Cast this head in more colors; geez! Light grey! Medium brown for this sculpt, or dark brown! Black? Black would look awesome and set him apart in a great way. He's otherwise fine, though the eyes aren't vertically aligned and look wonky from the front, worse than on my Wolf Guy. He's basically a visual blend of the Monster Fighters Werewolf and the Wolf Guy, which makes him distinct enough. He's also buff, making him the first wolf-headed LEGO werewolf to have muscles...and he doesn't have a tail. Maybe the pants and muscles are drawn from the Series 4 minifigure.

Here's all the werewolves he's similar to. The Studios figure and the Werewolf Drummer have no real part in the Creator design.

Black fur and olive green pants with the same shirt would be awesome, but I'd also like him a lot more if his fur was light grey and his flannel was dark orange. Or even just the fur the same color but the shirt orange and the pants olive green.

Not perfect, but still stands out more.

Like the Monster, I just want a new color palette. This also would have been a great opportunity to do a horror werewolf with the digitigrade animal-leg minifigure mold...one who wasn't Remus Lupin. The vampire woman passes for the novelty of reverse-engineering a counterpart to Vampyre's Bride, but even she could potentially be a better figure with a different palette.

Ghost

This one might actually be the worthiest figure in the set? It's basic as can be, but this is a new ghost shroud sculpt! I'm guessing the Monster Fighters mold is retired, but this time, LEGO chose to make a new sculpt and this is our new sheet ghost in its stead. Who knows how long this one will run. I appreciate the variation, though! The facial expression is changed to make a third variety, still not happy like the original ghost, but with a wavy mouth rather than a direct open-mouthed frown. The back of the head still has a floppy fabric point like the second sheet, but it's less prominent. 

The shroud extends basically to the bottom of the minifigure legs, meaning this sculpt is too long for the brick-and-plate leg replacement other ghosts have used. 

The edges of the shroud still slot into a LEGO stud grid. The plastic is less glossy this time, and less rigid. It's a thinner piece, so a harder plastic would likely snap, but I'm not sure why it was designed this way. The fit around the shoulders is also a looser arc which doesn't cover up the minifigure as much as I'd like. The cut of the face also extends lower on the minifigure, meaning the black visible through the neck includes the minifigure head's neck portion, and that can be visible and distracting in certain lighting. 

I do overall love the unique personality of this shroud sculpt, though.

The shroud was also given an accessory-sized pinhole on top for whatever reason, meaning this ghost can wear headpieces like tiaras and feathers and bows and the little hats designed for LEGO Friends pets and plushies. I wonder why this was included, but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth.

I tried the shroud sculpt on a minidoll wearer, but nothing about it is particularly suited to one. I'd wondered if the shoulder gap had anything to do with the ghost shroud being planned for use in both minifigure and minidoll sets, but it definitely fits a minifigure's blockier torso the best. I wonder what the future plans for this mold will be! This would be a welcome Build-a-Minifigure offering too.

I'm a little surprised LEGO upheld the old ghost formula. They could have tried a flat faceless shroud mold that they could print faces onto for more variety and versatility--eyes-only faces, varied expressions, art style shifts for different themes, etc. If a regular minifigure head was under a flat print-on shroud rather than it being a creature head of its own, then you could design alternate displays for the figure under the sheet with head colors and prints that can look like anything due to being fully hidden. I respect that they kept to the classic cutout-face ghost style, though.

Here's all the sheet ghosts together.

I think the third shroud upholds some LEGO playful spirit and charm in a way the gloomy and more detailed second shroud doesn't. I think the third sculpt has a promising future for LEGO, though the original is also wonderful.

The Mansion Remodel

I wasn't sure if I wanted to remodel the house, but I was curious about the prospect. I first tried looking at partially disassembling and extending its dimensions while built, but thinking about that was breaking my brain a little and I ended up taking it apart and starting over. Using and disregarding the instructions in turn, I rebuilt the house with an extended footprint in most directions, making the porch and sides of the house more spacious and giving more room behind the pipe organ. The house still closes up like before because I kind of liked the gimmick and how it worked despite it being impractical.

Here's the rebuild closed up.

 I made changes beyond the increased real estate. 

I extended the roof center into a cupola room for the ghost, with a hinged wall panel in back to open it up. It won't fully open until the house is unfolded, giving it consistency so the closed house is fully closed. 

The cupola doesn't use the upward slope bricks to expand the footprint out from the lower level of bricks in the way the official build did for the roof, as I found keeping the tower small and the same size as the floor below helped keep it in proportion with the rest of the house and looked less awkward. 

The roof has partial railing but isn't fully encircled because I didn't have the parts. I put a LEGO pumpkin build there for decoration, and minifigures can stand on the much more generous space.

The whole house is trimmed with plant pieces and spiders for more interest, and I hung the skeleton from one of the windows. I replaced the accents above the windows with new ones including bar plates above because I wanted to harvest the half-pyramid parts for my 10228 Haunted House rebuild.

I added a module to give the werewolf a doghouse he can crawl out of, which attaches to the side of the house with a Technic pin and axle brick I addded. I left the option to have the house detached if I wanted it that way. There's a 1x2 brick with studs on the side inside that his feet can connect to, but the house is 3 studs wide, making the connection a bit loose and awkward since I can't center two studs on the side of a brick within a 3-stud space. It's still possible to connect the werewolf's feet securely enough within the doghouse, though. 

I adjusted the bat spire on the tower to be more clearly used as a weathervane. 

I put one of the 2025 Build-A-Minifigure ghost tiles on an extension of one of the graves as compensation for not being able to adapt it to the turntable idea.

I added the lock tile from the gate I'm not using to the front door.

The monster tree lost its eye tiles because they were too cartoony for me and I think the hollow studs underneath do the same job.

Here's the house unfolded from the front.

The porch is now one stud deeper, making it easier to put minifigures on it.

Here's the open interior. The cupola door can fully open with the house unfolded.

The platform inside the doorway is unchanged, while the area with the organ has been extended one stud backward. The side wings have grown the most.

I moved the hat table to the opposite wing of the house where there was now room for it beside the grandfather clock. The clock pendulum is still on its Technic axle with the knob to turn it on the exterior.

I also added a mouse because of the mouse hole built in.

I put a staircase into the other side to give the space some logical accessibility. There was just enough space to put a one-piece staircase brick in and then narrow the stairs and build some steps up to second-floor level from that piece. 

Under the stairs, there's a chair in the nook formed by the tower section, and a crate. The lantern that came in the set sits here too.

I sacrificed the turntable gag in the round tower on the second floor since the rebuild changed the shape of some things and made it awkward to keep it in, plus I had wanted to replace the cartoony ghost pattern with one of the Build-a-Minifigure 2025 ghost tiles, but those are wider than two studs and don't hide behind a 1x2 pillar well. I used the turret space as a small sitting spot with another chair, since I won't be using the house for play features as much as display for more minifigures. The tower on the second floor ended up jutted outward one stud further than on the floor below. I used one less angled wall panel when reconfiguring the dimensions of the house, so the second-floor tower section isn't enclosed by three walls, only two. That makes it accessible as a space to place minifigures as a consequence of how the rebuilt shape came together.

For the house to fold up, the center of the second floor must always floor gaps between the middle and side wings of the unfolded house, but it's still more visually logical than it had been. While unfolded, it's a slight hop to the organ, but there's a bit more room here, with enough studs for the vampire to stand right at the edge, but with her full dress on the floor, to play. I left out the bench this time and added parts below to suggest pedals...which, granted, make less sense for a standing organist. Oh, well.

On the other side, I created a bedroom for the vampire with a tiled rug, nightstands with goblets to drink blood from (including a 1x1 stud of spilled blood on the floor) and a lidless coffin for her bed. 

She doesn't fit into the coffin properly thanks to her hair sculpt, but she'll still lie in it okay. 

Here's the closed house without the roofing in back to show the expansion better--and the organ isn't even in the uncovered portion this time!

And side-by-sides of the house before and after.

Open front.

Open back.

Closed front.

Closed back.

Top-down views of the second-floor interior.

This all might not look like much, but figuring out this rebuild was extremely time-consuming. It took an entire night just to reconfigure the dimensions and recomplete the house that way. I then spent a little less time on the next night aestheticizing the rebuild and tweaking elements so it looked more polished. Changing the dimensions of the house had certain consequences for the house's folding gimmick, with more visible wall space when closed up than there was before, so I had to edit aspects like taking the trim off one window that had to be folded against the house in "open" mode.

And of course, after taking all of these pictures, including the cover, and finishing this review...I revised some builds. I reworked the fence I was designing for my 10228 upgrade, leaving me with the pieces I needed to fully trim the Haunted Mansion's roof, so this is actually the final design. The giant pumpkin no longer fits on the roof this way, but that's okay.

Before.

After.

With my changes made, I think the Haunted Mansion has become a complete playset, whereas it wasn't up to the task beforehand. I preserved the intent and spirit while making it much more functional and logical (there's actual space!) and I now have a welcome extra display repository for figures that need a spot that isn't one of my other displays or the Haunted House renovation. This could be the monsters' summer home getaway, their side property cottage escape for when they're vacationing away from the Haunted House.

This set isn't super worthwhile as designed, and it can come across as more of an insult to older LEGO horror than a tribute. I really like the vampire and ghost, but otherwise, it doesn't do much that comes across as comparable to the older horror LEGO outings it's visually referencing, and it needed a lot of work to become a more useful model. I'd have liked more originality to all of the minifigures, and for this set to overall be les dragged down by nostalgia. It clearly didn't do justice by its predecessors as designed in the factory. After working with the set, it's really fun, though.

As of this October 2025, this set and the Build-a-Minifigure trio are the last major releases of horror minifigures. Next up will be my conclusion post and overview of monster types all assembled.