After the original Castle and Studios monsters from the "pre-modern" LEGO eras, the Minifigures theme served as the next major repository for horror minifigure designs, and started delivering right at the very beginning! The Minifigures line gave us the first horror designs in LEGO's current minifigure art style which stabilized around the late 2000s-2010s and hasn't really changed since, though it's arguable early series still look a bit different facially from minifigures of today. The Minifigures line also gave us our first iterative designs repeating and reimagining monster archetypes we'd already seen. Let's take a look.
Series 1- Zombie (2010)
Right out the gate, Minifigures gave us horror, and didn't dip into familiar territory, either--this is something fully new for LEGO, being their very first zombie! He was also an extremely timely release for the zeitgeist then, as the early 2010s were the days of zombie mania, and LEGO rode that as far as they could with multiple future Minifigures zombies and multiple zombies in the Monster Fighters theme. This figure established LEGO's basic zombie design scheme, which isn't universal, but is the most common--light grey skin, red eyes, sunken eye shadows, and gross teeth and decay features. This Zombie is a generic bald fellow in a suit, holding a shovel he would have dug himself out with, and a chicken leg, alluding in a family-friendlier way to the gruesome appetites of the monsters. In the character bios, he's described as brainless and aimless unless you use the chicken drumstick to motivate him, as he'll always work toward reaching or acquiring it.
This was actually the only horror entry in the Minifigures line that was outstanding as something I didn't have and needed to "catch up" on. I've diligently gotten every other one during their time! I ended up accidentally ordering the Zombie twice, which was a waste I realized only too late after checking my orders and seeing another Zombie was shipped and on his way when I got the one I thought was my only order.
The Zombie's torso and legs are detailed prints, but this is the beginning of Minifigures, so the arms, sides of the legs, and back of the torso are blank.
It's not exactly the case that I've never had the Zombie before, though. I just never had the original Series 1 Minifigure. And by that, I mean the Zombie was reissued in a LEGO store accessory set with a partial recolor of the Zombie which switched the colors of his suit and tie. This brown-suited recolor was my "good enough" copy of the Zombie until I committed to this project.
The Zombie has a very strong lineage of figures derived from this design scheme, but that design scheme has also gone fairly dormant, if not fully dead. The last unlicensed minifigure zombies in this visual template were released in 2015 and the only recent unlicensed zombie since was released in 2022 and had a very different design style.
Series 2- Vampire (2010)
The second classic LEGO Dracula type displays several changes...and I find him quite a bit less stylish. He's got similar white skin and fangs and a grin, and all looks proper, but his more heavily black coloring from his one-color cape and the frankly fairly ugly slicked-back hair available at the time (from Count Dooku's Star Wars: The Clone Wars minifigures) isn't an improvement to me despite being a more plausible hair shape.
The original Vampire hair sculpt would return for use on Marvel's Wolverine a handful of times before its evident retirement (Wolverine has since gone to wear the same hair as the S2 Vampire here) so LEGO probably could have used the older hair shape if they wanted to. I think it looks good!
The Vampire's costume looks good. There's overall nothing wrong with the Vampire. I just like the little touches of the Studios version more.
The Vampire has a bat for an accessory. The bat is one of few classic LEGO animal original sculpts not to have gotten a replacement updated mold in the modern visual style. It feels like that could honestly come any day now. The bat's only other two color castings have been light tan and dark grey, but it's by far the most common in black.
Series 2- Witch (2010)
This was the first LEGO witch I was able to get my hands on in the history of my hobby, and she's very classic in her own right. If you want to split hairs, she's also the first LEGO witch to be purely associated with Halloween and horror with no direct ties to Castle and the medieval fantasy genre. (I still say Willa absolutely belongs in this discussion.)
Being green-skinned and clad in all black, the inevitable comparisons were drawn to the Wicked Witch of the West, but LEGO would make the actual character years later through the MGM film license featuring in LEGO Dimensions/The LEGO Batman Movie.
 |
| The MGM 1939 Wicked Witch figure. |
LEGO, oddly, never did any solo The Wizard of Oz licensing with traditional standalone sets based on the film. All of the licensed The Wizard of Oz material was included in themes with crossover universes which allowed the Oz movie cast in. The movie formed a game world in LEGO Dimensions where the Witch minifigure debuted in the toys-to-life sets and was a playable character in the video game. Next, the Witch reappeared with the same design in The LEGO Batman Movie and its sets as one of the crossover villains summoned by the Joker during the climax, and her Flying Monkeys joined her as minifigures in the toyline. Finally, the heroes of the movie (Dorothy and Toto, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion) were released as minifigures in the LEGO Movie 2 Minifigures series. LEGO currently has a theme based on the Wicked film duology which features minidolls and minifigures of those movies' versions of the Oz characters, but Wicked is a different canon and the films aren't produced by MGM so they necessarily have some aesthetic distancing beyond the basic plot differences to avoid treading on MGM copyright.
The Series 2 Witch was possibly the first minifigure with body parts molded in the Bright Green color that debuted around the time, and was likely the first minifigure head in the shade. Bright Green molded hands came later, though, so the Witch looks like she's gloved with hands cast in black. I had her hands swapped for Bright Green ones for years, but came back to the black for accuracy, and I have to admit I like the goth effect of her arms being fully covered. I also like the Witch's ragged dress and the printed spellbook and potion on her belt.
The witch here walks a line between ugly and glam, with prominent cheekbones and warts but a still fairly pretty face, so she's more in the vein of a drag icon or Disney villain in terms of glam appeal. We'd not get our first true old-hag witch since Willa for some time yet, but this design is good.
LEGO gave her a simple brown classic broom piece for an accessory. This minifigure was later rereleased with the only change being dark grey hands, appearing in the same set the recolor of the Series 1 Zombie appeared in. That's a downgrade that doesn't make any practical sense. Why not just keep what she had? Maybe it's to do with LEGO not wanting to directly rerelease Minifigures designs, but why not change more, then? The Zombie got a full costume recolor; a more interesting Witch variant would have been nice. I'd love a green LEGO witch in a ragged brown dress.
Series 3- Mummy (2011)
This is where I have to separate out another evil mummy from the horror timeline, again purely on the pretext of adventure stories. The exclusion here is Pharaoh Amset-Ra, who was the central villain of the very LEGO Adventurers-like Pharaoh's Quest theme in 2010.
Amset-Ra is a very good scary mummy with a good case for claiming design lineage from the Studios mummy. Heck, all of his soldiers have that claim.
 |
| Mummy warriors in a battle-pack set from the Pharaoh's Quest theme. |
Amset-Ra's just not in the direct horror context, so the Series 3 Mummy stakes a stronger claim as the first definite horror mummy since Studios. He's certainly the first to drop more distinctly Egyptian signifiers to just be a bandaged corpse. Amset-Ra and this Mummy released in the same year, further muddling a timeline structure were I to include Amset-Ra. The undead pharaoh is an awesome minifigure and one of my treasures, but out he goes from this particular timeline. Amset-Ra does have an undeniable influence on a later figure which I do count as horror, so it's still worth briefly showing the king here. He has a creepy alternate face with a golden burial mask, the design of which could very well imply the Series 2 Minifigures Pharaoh was Amset-Ra in life.
 |
| Are these the same man? |
They're similar enough faces, but also different enough to not be certainly the same, and there's nothing specifically alike regarding the design of their costumes. The two pharaohs were released close enough to each other for the two figures being one character to be believable as intent or an in-joke, though.
The death mask also gives Amset-Ra a "sleep" face of sorts akin to the Studios figure.
The Series 3 Mummy is a pretty basic figure, but he has a lot of charm and he was an early demonstration of the Minifigures line expanding print detail for minifigures as a whole, as his printed bandages extend to his arms and the sides of his legs.
There have been countless figures released after with less thorough patterning, including the very next LEGO mummy after him--and that ends up exposing how Minifigures have a more printing budget than figures in sets. Figures produced in China at the time, like the Minifigures line, tended to get more thorough print coverage, and figures in sets are subject to ridiculous restrictions on print expenditure that Minifigures entries aren't, leaving the Minifigures line as a continued premiere showcase of LEGO's printing while expensive collector sets' figures often suffer. You want the best representation of a licensed character? It's probably gonna be in a licensed Minifigures series, not the licensed sets in the same theme. Perhaps the only exception is Jack Skellington, who debuted in Minifigures as a well-printed figure and then got arguably upgraded in a set with the revival of the longer minifigure limbs in his set release, though his arms lost print detail in exchange sice I don't think LEGO has rigged printing for the long arms yet. Jack getting a remake with the correct proportions was something I'd been hoping for for years, and LEGO delivered. The rest of the figures in the Nightmare Before Christmas set...absolutely not. Sally got her best minifigure in the Minifigures theme earlier and Lock, Shock, Barrel, and the Mayor were not done justice.
The Series 3 Mummy's flesh and eyes are a sickly pickly green under pure white wrappings, and his face looks pretty harmless, even worried, giving him a lot of charm. His accessory is a classic LEGO scorpion debuting in dark red. The figure was rereleased in a "best of Series 3" collection (I'm sure most fans would disagree since the Mummy was one of the most common of the series distribution) with a golden scorpion instead.
Series 4- Werewolf (2011)
Series 4 is the last of a strong continuous streak for horror minifigures appearing in each series, with Series 5 breaking the run by being the first of several Minifigures sets without any.
For a good while, this minifigure was a total outlier in LEGO lycans, since he had been the only werewolf to land further on the "humanoid" side of things, lacking a wolf-head sculpt and using a standard minifigure head and hair with pointy ears (debuted on the Series 3 Elf) as a more subdued transformation. He's one of the rare minifigures with a nose as a result of his design!
This was perfectly fine, though, since the first famous horror werewolf in The Wolf Man (1943) was in this vein. Today, there are now two LEGO werewolves with this approach, but the Series 4 one was quite a holdout and unique in LEGO's repertoire for a while. I really like his design. My copy has a curved white line mark on his nose down, which is annoying, but only shows in these close photographs. Maybe I'll get a better copy of the head at another time.
Series 4- Crazy Scientist (2011)
This is an awkward name, and probably one LEGO wouldn't use anymore due to the pejorative and sometimes ableist implications of "crazy". I personally don't go so far as to say the word is always inappropriate, so long as it's not being used as an insult or a way to discredit somebody. I'd argue "Crazy Scientist" just doesn't sound right in terms of typical phrasing, and naming him after the established terminology of "Mad Scientist" would be just fine. Minifigures minifigures don't get full proper names, so a "Dr. Legostein" or whatever else would probably be too much like a real name.
Regardless, this is a good rendition of the sci-fi horror archetype. The Crazy Scientist uses a since-retired vertical "mad scientist" rubber hairpiece developed for the awesome LEGO Agents line, here in solid light grey. In Agents, the hair was black with painted orange streaks on the front three tufts for main villain Dr. Inferno, and was white with lime green in the same spots for goopy slime-man Dr. D. Zaster.
 |
| Dr. Inferno. |
 |
| Dr. D. Zaster. |
On both renditions, the hair paint just wouldn't stay on and easily peeled off when rubbed with your finger.
 |
| My copy of Zaster demonstrates. Such a shame. |
This sculpt and both villains would have been better off if the hair was cast in hard ABS plastic where paint would last. The hair points aren't even long enough to justify the softer casting; this piece would not be fragile in hard plastic. The Crazy Scientist not having painted streaks to begin with makes the hair work much better.
I like the Scientist's facial expression and purple goggles, and his coat looks good, but I don't know why his hips are cast in white while the legs are black. It would be a cleaner look if his jacket and pants were fully blocked as white and black, respectively, or if the jacket was painted longer onto the legs. Here, it looks like he has a straitjacket crotch strap holding his jacket on between his legs. Odd.
The Crazy Scientist introduced a very exciting accessory piece--a classic Erlenmeyer flask, a favorite of mad scientists, alchemists, and potioners the world around. The flask is dual-molded with clear plastic for the bottle and colored translucent or opaque plastic for the fluid inside, and multiple color variants of the fluid in the flask have been made, but the one debuted here, which remains the most common, has a translucent Bright Green filling. The piece has a hollow stud on top that bars or bricks can connect to, and connects to a one-stud footprint on the bottom. It's a modern classic of a LEGO piece.
I like this figure, but I think a better leg design would improve him, for sure.
Series 4- The Monster (2011)
You can't have one without the other!
With this making three classic horror figures in the set, Series 4 is pretty darn spooky. Three horror figures in a series is a record only beaten (by a mile) by all-monsters Series 14.
Compared to the Studios figure, the Monster here is a more direct riff on Boris Karloff's role in the Universal films, debuting a new head extension piece which is smaller and has a heavy brow and flat-top hair. His design is very obvious, but might avoid copyright troubles for lacking bolts and for continuing the gag from the first lab Monster by closing his forehead without stitches--this Monster has Band-Aids crossed over two cuts! I always liked the facial expression and colors of this Monster, and the design works great.
I was obsessed with LEGO's Sand Green color at the time and loved basically any minifigure with it as their skintone. I even got my old bedroom walls painted in a similar color!
 |
| My 2017 bedroom wall with my teenage LDD fan art. |
This Monster's head extension mold became a standby for LEGO, and is still in use to this day despite being dormant for ten years between the most recent two figures who used it! Maybe it was recreated, or else the mold was kept around unused for all that time. Of the all the figures to use the piece, though, I think the Series 4 Monster who debuted it might be my favorite.
Series 5- Lumberjack (2011)
Wait, this guy's not a monster. He's just some lumberjack named...Kel, yeah, that's right. Right there on his shirt. Um. Well. Nice to meet you, Kel, but this is a monster showcase. Sorry, bud. We gotta end this post now. Next up: Monster Fighters!
No comments:
Post a Comment