Minifigures Series 14 was a big surprise when it was revealed as a "Monsters" horror collection of sixteen original figure designs. Many of them dip into familiar archetypes in new ways, while we also get archetypes never before seen as minifigures!
Series 14, on principle, became the first Minifigures series I fully acquired since my run of Series 2-Series 5 completion, and I dipped back put again after and resumed my more selective pattern. Series 6 was where I first fell off and got more selective (even though Series 6 deserved much more of my attention for its great figures and is one of my favorites in hindsight), but there was no way I was missing Series 14. (If I ever do a retroactive Minifigures series completion and another retrospective Minifigures series review, Series 6 might be the one.) Nowadays, I've gone back to collecting full series as a matter of convenience because LEGO shifted to blind-boxes. I've found myself enjoying discussing current full series here on the blog, but Series 14 was a special exception where I really wanted it all. As a closed series of figures devoted to monsters, and a space where multiple archetypes got new incarnations, I treat Series 14 as another "generation" of LEGO horror exploration that shaped the timeline. This series released shortly after LEGO Scooby-Doo hit shelves, with stores hosting both LEGO monster themes at the same time in a case of sharp timing.
Minifigures Series 14 has black-blue packaging with a rainstorm and lightning design, and uses lime green accents and displays the "Monsters" subtitle. I kept the first packet I opened!
The collector sheet has a storm only on the top, with black "shelves" dividing the rows and the usual question-mark Minifigures patterning as the background.
The back of the sheet advertises the Minifigures Online MMO game that was running at the time, and explains how the capes and skirts in this series go onto their figures.
These figure reviews are presented in as close to my acquisition order as I can remember. I documented my collection order arranged on a base with photographs, but either lost or never documented the order of the final four I collected, so the last four are placed in my best guess of the order. This is actually kind of the second time I'm blogging about this series. When these guys were new, several years before TT&T, I had an insecure attempt at a toy review blog which I've since taken down, and one of my topics was the first handful of Series 14 I'd collected. I now kind of wish I'd saved my writing from then, even though I know objectively it wasn't anything much, just to remember what I said.
Banshee
In a series that was entirely made for me, the Banshee still jumped out as my instant obsession. I loved her muted green and blue colors (Sand Green strikes again!) and that she was more humanoid and our first girl horror ghost. Her print features no stark black, keeping her looking translucent and faded, and she is weeping with a sobbing open mouth that's just an outline as tears gush from her colored blue eyes.
In addition to the Banshee's humanoid look and gender heing unprecedented for LEGO ghosts, ghosts didn't appear at all in the Minifigures line until this series, making ghosts unique among the monster types in Series 14 that had LEGO precedent. Every other monster type in Series 14 that had been made before by LEGO had also been made before within the Minifigures line.
In addition to the Banshee's colors, I also loved her new hair sculpt, which was doubling as the first translucent hair casting, using translucent black here. She uses the still-fairly-new-at-the-time "ectoplasm" ghost tail lower body element debuted in a ghost-themed wave of Ninjago just previously (none of those minifigures fit this project, though) with a color casting still unique to the Banshee with its mix of Sand Green and clear. This ghost tail mold has proven to be an enduring staple and is still in use currently.
She has back printing, too.
She was also one of, if not the first to have a head and hands cast in the Aqua color.
The ghost tail has an unusual, somewhat frustrating footprint. It takes the 1x2 shape of a minifigure and narrows it to a 1-wide foot in the center, "off-grid", like the genie tail introduced in Series 6, and also has the trailing section behind which fits between other studs on a plate.
The ghost tail cannot center on a Minifigures stand plate thanks to its irregular footprint, which is annoying, and while I love the sculpt, I'm sure LEGO could have widened it to a 2x2 footprint and still had it looking great. They could have at least thrown in a 1x2 jumper tile with one stud in the middle as an adapter to center the Banshee on her stand.
The Banshee looks great, but I also respected her nod to faerie lore, accurately portraying the banshee as a weeping mourning spirit able to foretell death. Her bio doesn't describe her as a fairy, though. She's a simple figure, but also fairly complex, debuting a lot of novelty for minifigure design at once and looking perfect. The Banshee has no accessories, but I can't think of what would suit her, and I don't think she needs any.
Wacky Witch
The resident witch of the series, and by far the Halloweeniest LEGO has ever done. Naturally, I love her. This is also the first classic "old hag" spooky witch since Willa back in '97!
The Wacky Witch debuted a new "tattered witch hat with hair" sculpt, which was immediately clocked as designed for scarecrow use as well, because look at the texture of the hair:
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| Awfully straw-like. |
The hat also doesn't have a sculpted band and buckle like the original LEGO mage's hat sculpt, and those are details that would limit its application for scarecrows.
I expected this headpiece to be gracing DC Comics' Scarecrow sooner than later, because who else would it be designed for? Sure enough, it happened the next year:
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| The Scarecrow from the 2016 DC Comics Super Heroes set "Batman: Scarecrow Harvest of Fear." |
A 2018 Build-a-Minifigure recolor of the Wacky Witch reused this exact color casting of the hat since it was probably leaving production with the retirement of the above Scarecrow's set. The colors...did not flatter her.
I'll be discussing several Build-a-Minifigure exclusives later (and what I did to edit some), but this witch will not be one of them. BAM exclusives improved and began to include fully unique prints after 2018. 2018 was the first year LEGO released minifigure-part colors or print designs that were exclusive to Build-a-Minifigure stations, and they got more interesting later.
Jonathan Crane also used this hat-hair mold on his LEGO Batman Movie design, and the LEGO Batman Movie character designs truly can do no wrong; this one in full costume is perhaps the Scarecrow's best-ever minifigure.
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| The Scarecrow from The LEGO Batman Movie set "Scarecrow Fearful Face-Off". |
(He also had a minifigure in a pizza-delivery costume and a scooter helmet. It was that kind of movie.)
I could do a whole other LEGO review series about the different "generations" of just LEGO Batman villains; they're a niche that's integral to my hobby and it would be fun to catch up on the minifigures that passed me by.
Anyway, back to the Wacky Witch. Her colors play predominantly on Halloween purple and green with her costume and lime witchy skin, and I wouldn't have minded more orange too, like for her hair, but I can't say there's anything wrong with her. Her outfit has classic pseudo-Puritan vibes with the collar and buckle belt, and she has patches on her costume, including her left arm.
Series 14 was not the first to feature the factory technique that let LEGO dual-mold arms and legs in two separate colors (Series 12 featured some dual-molds after the Simpsons license and first Simpsons Minifigures series ushered it in), but these are the first certified LEGO horror monsters with dual-molding (the Spooky Girl had no dual-molded limbs, and the Goblin is a fringe inclusion on my part...and also has no dual-molded limbs). The dual-molding allows for clean color-blocking for short sleeves and separation of boots or shorts on legs. The Wacky Witch demonstrates this with dual-molded legs, having black on the foot section and white above, with black-and-white stripes on the upper half.
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| The dual-mold of the legs cleanly separates the two stud connections on the back, with the lower color arcing around the lower "antistud" hole. |
The Witch's face has an energetic expression with a snaggle tooth, wart, and eye wrinkles, but she's still got some good eye makeup.
Her skirt is an unusual fabric cut, a shape first featured on Ewok Village Leia.
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| Princess Leia from the 2013 Star Wars set "Ewok Village". |
This is one of the better minifigures with a fabric skirt. I'm fairly ambivalent toward them since the material is stiff and subject to tattering as it ages, and some better material might be nicer, but the Wacky Witch wouldn't be done as well with a dress slope or printed legs alone. I could see them maybe trying a plastic skirt today, like this:
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| Skirt from a future minifigure in this project. |
...but I do prefer the one she has.
The Wacky Witch comes with the classic LEGO broom in brown, and the modern LEGO cat mold in black for the fist time, and it's painted with gloomy lowered eyelids. The character bio stated this is just an ordinary lazy housecat, though, and not the magical familiar that the Witch had hoped for.
I think this is a pretty perfectly-executed Halloween witch minifigure, and she held out for a good nine years until LEGO did their next green-skinned Halloween witch. I really like her.
The bio also mentioned the Wacky Witch trying out the gingerbread-house storybook schtick, which makes me wish for a dedicated "Fairytale Witch" Minifigures character themed more directly in fairy-tale iconography.
Gargoyle
This is a really fun one. In a vein oddly similar to Monster High, LEGO made a gargoyle monster who's an actual stone statue covered in speckles! As such, the minifigure doubles as a character and an architectural feature you could pop onto a building!
The Gargoyle is a short fellow using the classic unarticulated short-legs mold, and he debuted his round-topped webbed wing piece, which is a bracket that goes around his neck before the head goes on, and also the cranium piece with the heavy brow, curled goat horns, and pointed ears. The figure is al light grey and all of his printing is dark grey rather than black to make him look less cartoonish and graphical so his details look like contours of stone. His face has a batlike nose, wide deep eye sockets, and two upward-pointing fangs, while speckles and cracks detail his cranium, head, arms and torso.
I love the design of this minifigure, but I wish his detail was more finished. The speckle printing doesn't touch his wings or legs at all, nor the back of his torso. He might also be a little spare. He could use an accessory, or maybe a small brick-built cathedral plinth to perch on. The ideal accessory for him would come years later, debuting in the Wednesday sets with a small sculptural gargoyle element (more accurately, a grotesque; "gargoyle" originally referred only to sculptural water-runoff conduits). It isn't a dead ringer for this minifigure, but is pretty close.
It's his now. I feel fairly certain this minifigure would come with this piece as an accessory today.
The Gargoyle's wings got a couple more uses, while his cranium only got one more, on the Ghostbusters (2016) ghost Mayhem, who's also one of the figures with the wings (and the angular skeleton torso discussed previously).
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| Mayhem, from the set "Ecto-1 and 2". |
Mayhem's wings are printed, making it frustrating that the Gargoyle's aren't.
The futuristic Castle fantasy theme Nexo Knights would feature a wave focused on a group of villainous lightning-themed stone creatures including several gargoyles, but none of them used parts from this Minifigure, having a new cranium mold and using different wings.
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| One example of a Nexo Knights gargoyle. |
Monster Scientist
I think I remember disliking this figure at first, but I can't understand how because I think he's absolutely fantastic today. This mad scientist figure goes full zany with huge goggles, googly unfocused pupils, and the classic visual gag of the scientist being so smart that his brain has expanded the shape of his head! I love that it's not even wider; it's just the same width as a classic minifigure head but taller, reading more absurd than grotesque and perfectly LEGO, which helps sell the element of visual departure. This visual exaggeration justifies the name, too--it's truly the scientist as monster. I like when the mad scientist transcends normal humanity through mutations and such to become one of the monsters in their own right.
The head isn't a full unique head sculpt-- it's actually just a head extension piece with the goggles and ring of grey hair perfectly disguising the transition between pieces. He has a perfectly serviceable minifigure head underneath the extension part, which looks quite a lot like Albert Einstein. The face works well with the same features as the extended head, though I'm surprised he doesn't have goggles under his goggles, because they could have been incorporated into the normal head for the effect of the same face underneath for a more normal equivalent, and it could be done without the goggles showing while the extension is on since the molded goggles are so large.
The head extension is dual-molded in yellow for the skin and black for the goggles, with the grey hair and the lenses being paint. It looks very clean. The "bald" head stud on the extension is fully standard so the Monster Scientist can wear hats or hair on top of his tall head, though visual logic limits the pieces that will make sense there.
LEGO has offered some minifigure parts which create a round-domed bald head by covering up the head stud, but I see nothing wrong with minifigure baldness depicting the stud, and I'm glad, with this unique mold, that they kept a minifigure stud on rather than depicting a smooth dome.
This head extension was never seen again, which is kind of understandable, but I'd have loved for it to have been available with new colors in Build-a-Minifigure stations at the least. If this was one of the Series 14 parts recolored/redecorated in 2018, I'd probably need a copy.
The rest of the Monster Scientist looks good too. He uses dual-molding on his limbs to depict black rubber gloves and boots, and his white smock has closures all down his right side, with a simple white belt. He carries a flask molded with an opaque liquid for the first time, with a solid magenta color inside the bottle, and it's also printed for the first time, with a fly on the side. This is implictily the serum that created the Fly Monster in this series! Like the Series 4 Crazy Scientist, the flask splashed the chemist, with magenta splotches on his torso.
I think at first, this Minifigure was too weird for me, but getting him told me just how delightful and purely fun he is. He's actually my favorite LEGO mad scientist!
Spider Lady
Despite her arachnid fascination, this is the resident classic vampire of the series and only favors spiders as an interest rather than being part-spider herself. I loved her immediately. Her black palette with red accents looks really nice, and the spider flair is perfectly spooky.
The Spider Lady uses the recent-at-the-time beehive hair sculpt in black, with a silver spider-in-web ornament printed on her left. For a vampire-lady minifigure to wear a collared cape, she can't have any hair falling down her back, and this is a good hairstyle sculpt choice.
Her cape is cut to look like a spiderweb with scalloped edges on the lower half (a cut we'd seen before dozens of times) and the upper half (which is new). The cape is sturdy frosted sheet plastic with print, and comes in two pieces, collar and cape, since the double-fold of the typical one-piece vampire cape would be infeasible with this thicker material. The cape originally came flat in a pre-cut plastic sheet you punched the pieces out of.
I appreciate how durable this cape is on the virtue of its material!
The Spider Lady's skin is stark white like other vampires, but her eyes are standard black. Most of LEGO's vampire ladies have normal black eyes, actually. The Spider Lady has two-toned purple eyeshadow and red lips with fangs on show. Her dress is black with red line accents for spiderweb detail, and silver spiders with red eyes adorn her costume. Her neckline is wide with a separate V dip in the middle and she has a silver locket with a red spider design. A red classic LEGO spider is her accessory. No bats here!
LEGO has a more realistic creepy spider sculpt these days, but I do prefer the older version as seen here.
This is just a beautiful minifigure, and she's perfect for Halloween.
The Spider Lady was the other Series 14 figure with a 2018 Build-a-Minifigure derivative, swapping red for magenta, turning the hands grey, probably having no print on the hair, and lacking a cape.
I do like the idea of a magenta vampire, and maybe with some parts swapping like bare white arms and a different hairstyle or color (the beehive comes in pink!), this could be a fun alternate costume.
Fly Monster
This is why I love Minifigures series--they're the perfect grounds to release offbeat characters LEGO would struggle to incorporate into set designs. A monster based on The Fly (1958)? You couldn't expect them to sell a whole set with him, but a Minifigure? Sure!
And indeed, this is a direct reference to that classic B-movie. In the film, French Canadian scientist Andre Delambre finds himself partially fused with a fly when he tests a teleporter on himself while a fly is also inside, with the two teleporting together and being reassembled as one being. This leaves Delambre with a fly's head and a fly's pincer for his left hand.
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| The mutated Delambre in The Fly (1958). |
I've discussed this all, and this Minifigure, before, when working with my Monster High custom fly character DiDi (here and here).
Now, I hate most bugs, and flies are horrible. I'd be ecstatic to never encounter a fly again in my life. But...I can't help but find the LEGO Fly Monster oddly precious. He's cute, right?
His giant compound eyes and little proboscis are really endearing!
The head is dual-molded in a matte plastic in black with translucent red for the eyes. When the head is illuminated from below, the red color really shines, but the eyes are dark and less distinct than they deserve to be when the figure is assembled. I wouldn't have minded the head being solid-cast with painted red eyes that read more defined.
The black plastic is also slightly flexible on the antennae, making them less fragile.
I'm a tiny bit surprised we never saw this head mold again. It could have been used for an alien creature in a later Minifigures series, at the very least. It doesn't quite fit the design style of the Galaxy Squad theme bug aliens that preceded Series 14, but I could have seen this sculpt in a Space Police revival. It wouldn't be hard to make an alien with this head that fit in with the ones from the 2009-2010 Space Police sets.
The Fly Monster uses the insect costume wings that debuted on the Series 7 Fairy Minifigure, here cast in translucent black, and his body is black with carapace plating on his belly and green fly hairs on his torso and hips. His claw is the second and so-far final use of the specialty hand mold. It debuted as Davy Jones' lobster claw on the same arm in the Pirates of the Caribbean sets.
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| Davy Jones, from the set 4184, "The Black Pearl". |
The claw has a standard open clip connection, letting the Fly Monster hold bar accessories in the claw hand (such as the serum that created him). This is the only LEGO connection the arthropod claw hand mold offers. A standard minifigure hand also serves as a stud on its top side.
The Fly Monster has no accessories for his own, but I don't mind. He's so charming he doesn't need any.
Tiger Woman
This is one of the figures I'd have considered to fall into the "costumes" portion of the series, but LEGO writes her as a real tiger-woman monster in the bios. I don't buy it, since her head and hands are LEGO's human yellow while her body is orange. She looks like she's wearing face paint and a tiger suit. This figure was the first use of the hairpiece which was very obviously sculpted for 1966 Julie Newmar Catwoman in the imminently-released Classic TV Batcave set. When we saw the Tiger Woman, we knew that Catwoman figure was imminent even before the set was revealed.
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| Julie Newmar's Catwoman minifigure, from set 76052 "Batman Classic TV Series- Batcave". |
I don't have very strong feelings for the Tiger Woman figure. I'd massively prefer if she did look like a full retro beast-woman rather than a costume. Just change her yellow parts to the light orange color, and she'd be a lot stronger. I appreciate her detail, though.
Her whip is possibly a reference to Catwoman, but is also explained as part of a circus act she works in--she's the world's first beast to tame humans, and it's described that she organizes teams of firefighters, construction workers, and the like to perform in her circus! Okay, that's pretty fun.
Spectre
This is another ghost in the series, and another with the ghost tail, but he carves out his niche pretty well as a classic house-haunting chain-rattler. He's cloaked in grey which extends to the color blend of his tail and carries a short chain to shake at people, and his robe is a unique fabric cut of felt which covers both sides of the torso, shorter in front. This was also the first appearance of this classic LEGO hood mold in dark grey in several years, with it last appearing in this color in 2004. The cape has a wide neck slit rather than a precise hole cutout sized to the neck. This style of cape attachment and material, and even a slightly similar cut, was also done with the Hun Warrior in Series 12.
The Spectre is a very simple minifigure, being almost all dark grey and with no print besides his head. I'm not totally in love with his weird goofy expression, but his head glows in the dark!
The Spectre is the only glowing figure in the series.
This isn't a high point of the series, but he does what he does okay.
Zombie Pirate
This Minifigure has some close visual similarities to Series 8's Pirate Captain, as if suggesting this is the same guy after zombifying, but his facial hair is different, colors have changed, the hat has less detail, the eyepatch is on the opposite side, and the coat is longer, so it's a looser resemblance. It could still be the same character, but maybe with a longer time between the two minifigures so more non-zombie visual changes took place during his life. This zombie figure suggests death was still a good couple decades after the time we saw him in Series 8, what with his grey hair and grizzled look.
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| The Series 8 Pirate Captain beside the Zombie Pirate. |
I'm not sure why this zombie isn't more similar to the Series 8 figure, because it's clearly aiming to reference him. I'd definitely like him more if he was more accurate to the Pirate Captain.
I got the Series 8 figure for this project!
It's a cute detail that since the original cap'n already had a skull on his hat, the zombie version's skull has cartoon X eyes and a crooked jaw to look even deader! The hat has no plume. The Zombie Pirate's face has a scowl with a gold tooth, and his facial hair is different from the Series 8 figure, with a bushy chin-only beard and stubble printed on his head. As mentioned, his eyepatch is different and on the opposite eye, while his remaining eye is zombie red. The pirate's coat is similar to the Series 8 design, but darker and damaged with tatters and rips, as well as being longer, extending down his intact leg as a longcoat. He has a hook hand and a peg leg, which are old LEGO pieces. The hook has a clip connection for LEGO bars, and the peg leg has a stud connection at the foot, but not the hip, making it harder for this leg assembly to sit on a studded surface. The peg leg swings further in both directions than the standard leg, and the section between the foot and hip is a standard bar.
The peg leg and hook hand are more cases of LEGO prostheses being oddly factory-locked to one side of the body despite their molds being perfectly symmetrical. The hook and peg leg easily swap onto the opposite arm and hip with no visual or functional issues, but LEGO has only manufactured the hook to be on the left arm and the peg leg to be on the right hip, same as the robot arm only being on the right side. At least the Series 25 Sprinter demonstrates symmetrical double-leg prosthetics with two versions of the mold that was debuted just on the one side. The Sprinter debuted the mirror of the existing mold, so now minifigures can have this prosthetic type on either side, or both.
Here's more details from the pirate. He looks a bit more like the Series 8 figure with the beard off.
Zombie Businessman
No relation, not even a little, to the Series 8 Businessman. He's definitely not him.
He has a standard LEGO briefcase in black. It opens, but he has nothing to put in it, and the piece is fragile folded plastic. A larger hard-plastic briefcase piece, which uses a modern minifigure book cover for its opening side, has since been released, but seems to have been a total one-off. The "Zombie Times" newspaper is a printed 2x2 tile, with the paper having a biohazard-skull logo which was Toxikita's villain insignia in the Ultra Agents theme!
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| Not my photo. I have this minifigure, but was too lazy to photograph her myself. |
Skeleton Guy
This is the most visually explicit costumed human in the series, and the only one written that way in the bios. It's clear behind the eyeholes that he has normal yellow LEGO-human skin. He represents a classic skeleton suit, based on the anatomy of classic LEGO skeletons with all of his printing, and has a cute trick-or-treat bucket. His printed detail is exceptional, especially since his head is given a very rare 360-degree print to depict the string tying his mask on.
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| The arm bones have rings around them like the original ball-joint skeleton arm mold which is long out of use. |
I do wish they had printed the lower leg bones on the front of his legs rather than just the sides, though, since the legs would look better if the whole structure showed from the front.
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| Painting the bones on front and side would have been the answer. |
As far as white-on-black printing goes for LEGO, this is one of their better showings. The color isn't as weak or thin as it could be.
The pumpkin bucket uses the mold that debuted as the Series 6 Leprechaun's pot of gold. The piece always had the bumps for a bucket handle attachment, but didn't use one when it debuted.
The bucket connects to one stud on a surface, and has no connections inside the bowl. It can store a 1x1 round brick or a few 1x1 round tiles or stud plates.
I really like the Skeleton Guy's bio. It's written that he wandered too far one Halloween and realized he was among real monsters and thus has lived in anxiety about being discovered as human, keeping his costume on at all times. However, he doesn't realize that all of the monsters know he's human (you can't fool the Wolf Guy's sniffer) and have no problem with it because he's a nice neighbor.
Zombie Cheerleader
At three zombies, we're getting to the feeling of excess and unfairness. 2015 was already a little late to capitalize on zombie mania, and why have three slots in the series devoted to visually homogenous takes on one monster type when two of those slots could have been two other monster archetypes? And why a cheerleader? I guess it doesn't matter that much, because I do like her.
This isn't a zombie version of a previous Minifigures character, but she's the third (and so far, last) in a running sequence of mainline Minifigures cheerleaders, directly following the design scheme of the Series 1 Cheerleader in blue and the Series 8 Red Cheerleader by providing a green uniform, plus rot.
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| The Series 1 Cheerleader. |
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| The Series 8 Red Cheerleader. |
The Zombie Cheerleader has a different hairstyle than her predecessors, and actually debuted this split-bangs pigtail hair sculpt. There hadn't been any high-pigtail LEGO hair sculpts before this mold dropped on this minifigure, and the only previous (arguable) pigtail hairpiece was literally the first female LEGO hair ever, so suffice to say it's dated.
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| Are these pigtails? Closest we got before the Zombie Cheerleader, at any rate. |
The Zombie Cheerleader's pigtails are nicely sculpted with paint for the green hairbands. The dark tan color seems to be suggesting a blonde gone moldy, like the Zombie Bride's use of the same color. The Cheerleader could have used the Zombie Bride's hairpiece exactly if she wanted to fit in with the previous cheerleaders more.
Doing so would have made that hair in that color much more widely available, too!
The pigtails debuted shortly before DC Comics' Harley Quinn would become a frequent wearer of the hair sculpt in her minifigures. Harley usually wears pigtails that evoke her original costume's jester hat, and I guessed this sculpt was going to be used for Harley the moment we first saw it.
The hair has an accessory pinhole in the top. This is one of the hairstyles that least suits LEGO hair accessory parts, though--at least, in my mind.
The Zombie Cheerleader's face follows the same stylistic design formula as the other zombies, and has an endearingly awkward or sheepish expression with a missing tooth. Her uniform is dark green and naturally is marked with a "Z" initial. The blue Cheerleader had an "M" and the Red Cheeerleader had an "A". The Zombie Cheerleader's outfit is all printed without dual-molding on the legs, so she has the same standard of production as the previous cheerleaders, but adds some tatter and holes. She carries the same pom-pom mold with green coloring for her uniform.
I'm not sure which of the Series 14 zombies feels like LEGO losing the plot on this series the most, but I do know I prefer the Cheerleader to the Pirate, and if I was to axe one of the zombies to use their slot for a more interesting unique figure, he'd be the one to go. If he can't be a closer echo to the Series 8 figure, he can just go.
The Zombie Cheerleader's face design has been replicated for some 2025 "zombie minifigure head" merchandise, including a mug and some storage boxes, though the face is made too small so it only needs to be printed on the lower part:
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| This looks bad. |
It's overly small on the one-piece ceramic mug, too, where there's no excuse for undersizing the print. Odd.
LEGO did do something (kinda) with the character between Series 14 and the 2025 gear, however. In a Toys "R" Us exclusive Minifigures-themed four-pack set, we got what looks a heck of a lot like the living version of the Zombie Cheerleader! Same hair, and she's in a shade of green. Her grin is even quite similar...
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| Coincidence? Who are you kidding? |
There are arguments that this is a different girl. Her uniform has a different letter, and decay wouldn't change the monogram on her costume. It's also not likely red hair would turn into the Zombie Cheerleader's color in decay. But, like, come on. I think this is intentional. LEGO could have chosen any other color or hair shape or facial expression for this figure. I do wish the hair ties were painted on the later figure, though.
I think this angle to the normal cheerleader elevates what's otherwise a simple skippable supplemental Minifigures design. Getting the non-monster "before" counterpart of a monster figure afterward is a fun reversal of what LEGO was doing in the era of Series 14 by monsterfying older figures! This is also ridiculously morbid, though. This green cheerleader character? She died. She's canonically dead. And rotten now. This living cheerleader figure is but a snapshot of a girl doomed to decay. She's not old enough in the historical timescale for it to feel like "yeah, of course she'd be a zombie today" in the way the Zombie Pirate can convey. This is very believably a recently-alive person before and after death and resurrection, and there's something a lot darker about that to me.
The Series 14 bios tie all three zombies together as family. The Businessman and Cheerleader are father and daughter, and the pirate is an uncle a few greats away.
Wolf Guy
So this is another werew--wait a minute. Is that Kel?
So that's why that guy popped up earlier! He wasn't a monster in Series 5, but Series 14 turned him into one! The Wolf Guy is the very same character as the Series 5 Lumberjack, and I think this is one of LEGO's best gags.
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| These things happen sometimes when you work in the woods. |
The design of the flannel is not identical, and the pockets have lowered, but it's clearly the same costume.
If you were collecting for long enough, you now have two figures you can play a werewolf-transformation story with! What a treat for loyal collectors. I'm lucky I completed my Series 5 collection back then so I had the original version of Kel by the time this figure came around.
This guy introduces a new werewolf head sculpt that's still in use, leaving the Monster Fighters werewolf head mold replaced after just one appearance. This head has a slimmer shape and closer eyes and feels just a bit more in line with LEGO's blocky animal designs. LEGO seems to have trouble printing this one, though, since two of my three figures with this sculpt have eyes that aren't vertically aligned, and this is one of them.
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| The tail makes the Wolf Guy slightly taller. |
This is a grey werewolf like the Studios one, and this dark grey color has been used for all but two this wolf mold's applications thus far. I'd get one of the exceptions, which is rendered in dark tan, if it wasn't from a franchise tied to a crusading transphobe. The other exception is a werewolf in LEGO's nougat color, but it also happens to be a multiversal rendition of Spider-Man, shredded costume and all, so it's of no use to my collection.
The Wolf Guy uses the bushy mammal tail that debuted for Marvel's Rocket Racoon minifigures. It's a good touch that future werewolves follow in. He has a long bone as an accessory, which is very awkward on its own. It was introduced in Ninjago to build on for the weapons of Lord Garmadon's skeleton army, but without axe heads and the like clipped onto it, it's an oddly long bone and doesn't look great. And why not? Putting an axe head on this would make Kel look even more like himself...though to be sure, only medieval axe head clips exist, so a piece in line with the Series 5 modern logging axe wouldn't be available.
I love the fact that the Wolf Guy is our friend Kel. It's a great joke, and this little in-joke sets apart the Wolf Guy in a really meaningful way as later LEGO werewolves came, since their resemblance to him could stand to water him down without that character gimmick.
Squarefoot
Squarefoot has significantly less printing than the Yeti, which is disappointing. More fur detail could be nice.
Plant Monster
This figure is rather ambiguous, since it can be read as a man in costume...or as an actual plant monster swallowing a terrified human! The name just being "Plant Monster" and not "Plant Monster Costume" or something like that seems to land way closer to the figure being a really terrified person being actually devoured by a real monster, and LEGO's bio for the figure also framed it as a real monster swallowing a guy (though with the kid-friendly story that the monster isn't carnivorous, doesn't digest its victims, and spits them out soon after swallowing them). The "real monster" interpretation is definitely what I prefer. You can swap the head out for a pink one if you want to create a full monster, but that does look a little plain and I do commit to keeping the monsters true to their original designs. The arms are lime green and hold spiky vine elements to make the figure look like it's got stalky plant tentacles for arms.
The leafy pod mask is a unique piece with a sculpted tongue and leaf veins on the back. This mold has proven to be a total one-off, like the Monster Scientist head extension.
The figure's design struggles to frame this as a plant thanks to the very humanoid shape and the darker green not coming across as negative space very well, but the print is still impressive as the viny stalks of the plant wrap around three sides of the legs!
The back also has printing.
While I want to uphold the official designs of these figures and won't take away elements of the LEGO monsters, I think additive edits are fair game, and adding the flower pot waist piece from the Series 18 Flowerpot Girl costume is the touch that really clicks this figure together.
It really sells the figure and the design concept to its best and I'm certain LEGO would have done this if the pot piece was available then.
Monster Rocker
This was my last figure because he was the one who felt like a completion obligation. He's muted and dull and I didn't connect to his weird rock-music spin on Frankenstein at all. He's another olive green monster in this mold after Monster Fighters, and his detail is great with his punk denim costume and steel toes and bat-wing guitar and stitched arms...he's just not really my thing. I wish he'd been more vibrant, at least.
The Monster Scientist is actually LEGO's most prolific horror mad scientist, with the bios confirming he has three monster creations to his name, all from this series' cast!
The Studios and Minifigures Series 4 Scientists had one monster each, unless the Studios scientist also counts his Hyde-esque alter ego. The Monster Fighters Crazy Scientist implicitly has two creations--his Monster and the Monster Butler, who looks very similar.
The poor Fly Monster is just not having a very good time in this crowd. He wishes he were in a different Minifigures series!
Display Stand
My display for Series 14 is closely based on the original display I built for the series back in 2015. This was my first fancy "designed" minifigure display, though it was very simple then.
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| This photo was my documentation of acquisition order for the figures, save the last four. |
The base was always backdropped by a giant tombstone with brown detail between the rows for cemetery dirt, but my rebuild has tiered rows. The tombstone has been basically intact since 2015, with the Minifigures packet held to it with two uses of tiles pinning it to bricks with studs on the side. A copy of the collector sheet is held inside the packet.
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| I cut a flap in the back to let me take out the contents and put the sheet back in without ripping the bag apart. |
The base has gotten some tweaking to alter the heights so the steps raise the minifigures up enough from the previous tier, and the levels use only eight Minifigures stand parts, with custom tile and plate layouts filling the remaining four spaces to accommodate for specific display needs.
For the Wolf Guy's, Zombie Pirate's, and Zombie Cheerleader's stands, I placed two 1x2 stud attachments, with one raised by two plates, so the mundane forms of each monster can display simultaneously within the footprint of of a single Minifigures stand while the figure in the stand adjacent is no obstruction.
For the zombies, the human forms add a "before/after" note of memento mori, while Kel can be both of his minifigures simultaneously. There's no rule that he was permanently transformed into a wolf if you don't want him to be. All of these monsters are contextualized by featuring both of each duo, which makes the stand a more useful library for Series 14.
For the Banshee and Spectre's unique footprints, I devised a tile setup with a 1x2 "jumper " plate with a single stud in the middle, off-grid, so the ghost tails can be centered on the base and keep the rows tidy.
The ghosts need one stud row free behind the footprint of the base because their tails trail behind them. This dictated the rest of the design to have the stands at the front of each layer of the base and one row of studs behind the stands on each layer. There also couldn't be any studs directly in the way of the ghost tails on the same height as the stands because the tails would be pushed and rotate the minifigure with studs in the way. With the minifigures on a studded base "in grid", they stand aligned, but with the jumper tiles taking them off grid, any studs aligned with the back of their tails rotate them to not look forward. I needed to have the ghosts' stands be raised one plate above the studs behind them so their tails weren't obstructed in any way.
Lastly, for the Wacky Witch, I imitated what I did for my Series 26 shelf with the animals and baby and built a custom base layout with room for her cat to attach securely to a 1x2 footprint.
Here's the stand all together.
Is that a flare with more studs on the top? Hm, I wonder what that could be for...
Minifigures Series 14 was a major event for me, and it was a milestone in that it got me out for a whole Minifigures series during the era where that was never a goal of mine. And it made things worth it for most of the designs!
Series 14 enjoys a reputation of some extravagance.
The series debuted three total one-off molds just so these characters were done right--the Plant Monster mask head, the Monster Scientist head extension, and the Fly Monster head. It also debuted the Wolf Guy's head, the Wacky Witch's hat/hair piece, the Tiger Woman's hair, the Banshee's hair, the Zombie Businessman's hair, the Gargyole's cranium and wings, and the Zombie Cheerleader's hair. The least-reused piece of these is the Gargoyle's cranium, and the most-reused is the Zombie Cheerleader's hair. The Wolf Guy head and Wacky Witch hair have become staples too, as well as the Banshee hair.
The printing is also largely exceptional, and dual-molding is used to its potential. We have prints wrapping around three faces of a leg, a 360-degree head print, and lots of detail. There are weak spots where it looks like LEGO ran out of budget, though. The Gargoyle has incomplete speckling. The Skeleton Guy's leg print design leaves the bones looking absent from front views. Squarefoot and the Spectre feel like the sacrificial minifigures to make the rest of the series so fancy. Both Squarefoot and the Spectre are all pre-existing molds, and they aren't even elaborately printed for it. Blank torsos are exceedingly rare within Minifigures releases and might be extinct today.
These are my very favorites, personally:
The Gargoyle can be accused of being underdone, but otherwise, all of these are flawless. I think the minifigures that are my least favorites would be the Monster Rocker (drab and not an appealing concept to me), Tiger Woman (should have looked less like a costume), and Zombie Pirate (unnecessary, or at least, an unsatisfyingly incomplete visual homage to an older character). Everybody else is solid, and I appreciate the additions to the archetypes. Especially that wacky Monster Scientist. Such a fun expansion of the LEGO archetype. He's not my number-one favorite of the series (could there be one?), but he's definitely the wildest groundbreaker among the repeated archetypes.
The only edits I saw fit to make were adding the flower pot waist accessory to the Plant Monster and adding a gargoyle piece as an accessory for the Gargoyle minifigure--both things I'm positive LEGO would have done were those molds available at the time.
We'll continue with the Minifigures theme in the next post as we see what else the line had to offer, and we'll also unravel the mystery of LEGO's biggest recent failure...
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