A LEGO Horror Chronicle, Part 9: Monster Miscellany

Time to wrap up some loose ends!

An Obligatory Aside on Hidden Side

LEGO Hidden Side was our last fully spooky theme at time of writing in 2025, and serves as an elephant in the room given this topic and the theme's absence from my discussion. The short version is that I didn't see fit to collect any sets from it and didn't find it quite right for my personal criteria. That's partially because of the minifigure issue. Hidden Side was a cartoon and playset theme and AR interactive app focused on the adventures of teenagers Jack Davids and Parker L. Jackson in the haunted town of Newbury. Aided by scientist Professor J.B. Watt and stuntman El Fuego, Parker and Jack access the "hidden side" of Newbury, where spirits possess the people around them and the scenery. The Hidden Side set designs were pretty great, featuring atmospheric spooky locations in a modern seaside town and a gimmick where the environments and architecture transformed to reveal monstrous ghostly features hidden inside the builds. Very clever designs, and I appreciated the specific character of the locations which gave Newbury a tangible, developed quality.

Set 70425, "Newbury Haunted High School". Parker is the girl with purple hair. Jack is the boy in the hoodie. His ghost dog Spencer is next to him. El Fuego is the man in the green jumpsuit. El Fuego became an undead LEGO skeleton later in the theme, with a unique take on the skull head print.

J.B. She's a mad scientist aiming for the iconography, but not played straight enough to fit into my horror ranking. She's too normal and nice.

Set 70422, "Shrimp Shack Attack". If any set encapsulates the unique setting of Newbury and all its visual character, I think it's this one. You don't see this combination of locale and atmosphere anywhere else in LEGO.

The theme was also basically the last hurrah of LEGO's translucent neon yellow-green. The only problem was, the ghosts were mostly all possessions that replaced parts on the civilian minifigures who could be completed in full unpossessed mode, and the designs were unified and generic greenish spirits. There were a few minifigures who were purely ghosts, but didn't call to me.

 A few of the possessions had unique parts. A fisherman got ghostly tentacles on his back when possessed. 

There was a torso extension on one possession.

 

One of the possessed circus clowns got a waist attachment that made him taller and put his torso bent to the side. One possession put two heads side-by-side on one torso.

My problem was that the more distinct character ghosts were digital entities in the cartoon and AR app, not defined minifigures. I don't like to collect unified villain "troops", so the line didn't have enough pull for me. 

The possession molds had so much more potential, only for it to look like they were all retired before they could be repurposed. They haven't reappeared yet, at least. I love the wild face-covering hair on some of the possessions and I'm shocked it wasn't cast in black for a Japanese-style ghost girl in a Minifigures series. The gap in back might have rendered it off-limits for reuse, though (and I'm not sure why it was sculpted in.)

The long hairstyle here would kill in black.

There's also a wavy ghost beard in some sets that would be awesome for sinister wizards and the like, and even the wedge-shaped short hair could do well on mad scientists, though that hair has the same issue of a gap sculpted in the back that could be unfit for reuse.

We were getting somewhere in the second wave, which featured eerie blues and introduced a spirit known as Nehmaar Reem, the Harbinger, bringing shadowy minions...

Set 70427, "Welcome to the Hidden Side, depicting Jack fully in the other realm. The ghosts here are just ghosts, not possessions.

Set 70437, "Mystery Castle". If I had cared more about LEGO during this time, and if Hidden Side wave 2 had made it to the stores around me (I'm guessing its faltering performance denied it a smooth universal release) I very likely would have gotten this set.

Nehmaar Reem the Harbinger as a wonky giant brick-built spirit.

Nehmaar Reem as a minifigure. Actually, this wispy magic platform piece for minifigures to stand in did survive the Hidden Side theme, but it debuted here.

Wave 2 was the end of the theme, though, and you were evidently lucky to even have access to that much. While the minifigure version of the Harbinger is very cool, he didn't feel like a required text for this review series. 

Overall, Hidden Side is far more of the adjacent genre of Ghostbusters than traditional or Halloweeny horror, so I feel comfortable leaving it out of this retrospective, though I do respect the design work and atmosphere the theme put out.

The LEGO Games Exclusive Monster Heads

Lego Games was a strange theme running from 2009-2012 consisting of tabletop board games assembled from LEGO pieces before gameplay, and with little player tokens or meeples represented by a new "microfigure" mold which was static, 1 stud in footprint, and featured printed details for the characters in the games. I can see the appeal of building a game before playing for more family time, and the appeal of a game board with pieces that stick where they're put down is strong, but the theme never really caught on, despite licensing, tie-ins to LEGO's active themes, and even a subtheme called Heroica capitalizing on DnD-like fantasy theming. (There are some Heroica monster microfigures, but I'm not discussing them here because most are too fantasy-themed.) Not every Games set had microfigures, though, and that's where I come in here. One game was called Monster 4, and its little character tokens were built from minifigure heads atop 1x1 cones. The prints consisted of the evil pumpkin I showed that also appeared in Hagrid's Hut, a troll head and evil skull from Fantasy Era Castle, and two exclusive head prints, heads which never appeared on complete minifigure character designs: a werewolf and a devil!

I was intrigued by these heads. This werewolf head actually appeared before the Series 4 character, and either this devil head, the Nexo Knights Scurriers, or the Cute Little Devil can be argued as the absolute closest LEGO has ever come to making a minifigure of a classic devil monster--perhaps they only got away with this head print because it wasn't a full minifigure! I wanted to get those heads and build them out into figures. 

These heads are dated and atypical, not fully matching the look of a traditional minifigure face or a modern design. These speak to the last elements of a more experimental era of unlicensed LEGO faces. The werewolf has white eyes with black pupils, basically unheard of for standard minifigures these days, and has a more crooked and rough rendering style, while the devil has similar traits that aren't in LEGO's style today. 

I got one copy of the werewolf head, but it was a bit damaged with a scuff or indent on the face, and then the brittle brown plastic curse got me with the neck chipping and breaking when I took it off a minifigure torso the wrong way, so I ordered a second copy. Ugh.

Completing these figures was a bit of a puzzle to solve because the trick is to make the figure look cohesive and like it could have been printed for a set officially. 

To complete the werewolf, I used Muppet Rowlf the Dog's torso, which is covered in furry texture, and put him in a dark blue pair of jeans. For hair, the bowl-cut sculpt in brown suited him in an unusual way and made him complete to me in a way better than any other hairpiece I tried. I kind of wanted to stay relatively period-accurate and match the weird vibe of his face print by not using LEGO hair that was too modern. For a bone accessory, he gets a skeleton arm.

Side-arm printing and back printing would likely not be afforded to a werewolf built from this head at the time it was released, but the torso was just perfect for him. 

Here's the devil completed.  I had to find a hairpiece that would give him a widow's peak without interfering with the horns, and I gave him the suited-gentleman look with a poor man's imitation of a pitchfork. I only have the one black version from the Cute Little Devil and didn't order a second.

I like these figures now, and I'm glad to put these Halloween monster heads to use!

Horror Figures Misc. 

Here we look at some more monsters, either with releases that don't categorize in another way, or cherry-picked horror figures from larger themes which don't fit the bill otherwise. 

Zombie Skateboarder (2015)

Well, someone else died. 

This is a direct zombie version of Minifigures Series 1's Skater, akin to the Series 14 figures who had (or received) human counterpart minifigures, and he released in the same year. Minifigures turning into monsters was a real problem back in 2015! The Zombie Skateboarder was a pack-in book-exclusive minifigure included in the book LEGO: I Love that Minifigure. DK publishes a lot of LEGO coffee-table books for kids, which have a rich history of including special minifigures in them, packaged within the covers.  These have plastic trays and cutout windows, with the cover having a thick section behind it to accommodate the minifigure before the pages begin.

Photo of I Love That Minifigure from Jay's Brick Blog.

Of the LEGO monsters with human versions as separate minifigures, he's the most similar to his human counterpart. The Wolf Guy is instantly recognizable as the Lumberjack from Series 5, though the lycan transformation changes a lot. The Zombie Cheerleader got a living version of her design later, but with more details changed than make total sense, and the Zombie Pirate changed a lot from his living predecessor. The two skaters are note-by-note, with detail on the pants and the element of decay on the latter. The original Skater had no leg printing whatsoever, so the zombie version adds regular clothing detail as well as the damage. I'm guessing the Series 1 figure would thus have the same jeans detail if he were made in a later year or series.

Series 1 Skater on the left.

I think this is a bit of an oddball choice for a book exclusive, but it fits what LEGO was doing at the time, and the Skater is something of a mascot for the Minifigures line, so a throwback to him makes sense.

The Zombie Skateboarder keeps most of the same colors outside of his skin and face, not darkening or muting things from his original counterpart, unlike the two cheerleaders and pirates. His hoodie does the same "deader version of a skull" gag as the Zombie Pirate, with X eyes making the original graphic even less alive, and his costume is tattered and damaged. He has leg print this time, unlike the original Skater, though he has no more printing than a typical Series 1 figure, with no print on his back or the sides of his limbs. His board is identical.

With both zombies being young people with living counterparts, perhaps the Zombie Skateboarder and Zombie Cheerleader might have a thing for each other...

Those mysterious extra spots on top of my Series 14 stand were added for the skaters. The zombie version feels like a Series 14 supplement and an honorary member of the series, and the original had to go beside him after I started cataloguing the other human counterparts on the display. I got the Series 1 figure for this project, not having had either skater prior.

Zombie LEGO Store Employee (2015)

This is the only minifigure I cannot review as an owner because it's exceptionally rare and absurdly expensive and functionally out of the realm of possibility for me, but it deserves mention as yet another zombie released in 2015. At a conference for LEGO brand store managers, attendees were given this exclusively-printed zombified LEGO store employee in the black shirt, khakis, and yellow branded apron of LEGO Store workers, tattered, and with a rotten head and hairpiece for a male or a female build of the minifigure. This figure breaks from the Series 1 design formula a bit, with the zombie eyes being green and the typical drippy grey printing being absent from the mouths. It looks like green and grey spots create a moldy effect on these heads, too.  Dang, I want this figure. I dearly wish there had been a wider release of this figure, even as a spooky gift-with-purchase for LEGO direct shoppers. I hate when things are made so scarce because this would be a really fun minifigure to have...or have twice, to build both ways. Shame I'll certainly never have it.

Fairground Ghosts (2020)

These are very simple figures from the Haunted House set in the Fairground LEGO theme. Not the Monster Fighters model of the same name! The Fairground Haunted House model is primarily a working drop-tower elevator ride build into a spooky house design, and the house itself is based on lore from LEGO Adventurers far more than horror.

The center tower is the elevator shaft. The brown doors on top of the tower briefly open when the carriage hits the top, letting the minifigure riders see the view up high, and then close again when it falls back to the bottom.

The house unfolded to show the interior--it opens from the front, not the back, so the view of the tower here is the same front view as the previous picture. 

There are no actual monsters at this house, but two park employees are playing ghosts for the ride, dressed in costumes that fully pass for unique LEGO ghosts! The figures are absolutely identical and share one double-sided head print. They're all white and and have no printing except for their black face print, with the one face directly replicating the original LEGO ghost mold with its smiling expression, while the other face provides a frowning alternative which has never been sculpted on a LEGO ghost shroud. The smiling face is a very faithful translation of the sculpted expression.

These are very basic figures, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with them. They can be scare actors or the real deal just like the Studios monsters. I like them as a happy/sad duo of ghost twins myself, and I chose to order two like in the set so I could display both face prints. It was easy to source two from one seller/one copy of the set so I got them simultaneously.

Monkie Kid- Spider Queen (2020)

LEGO has a couple of themes which might be uncharitably described as "pandering to China", as they are deeply focused on Chinese culture and the massive market found in China, though they make it over to the US as well. There's the annual Lunar New Year sets and celebrations of the Chinese zodiac, and there's also the Monkie Kid theme, which could be glibly described as "Chinese Ninjago". It has the same modern action sci-fi fantasy tones as Ninjago does for a Japanese theme, while centering on Chinese mythology as a loose adaptation of the epic Journey to the West starring the legendary Monkey King. Here, the protagonist is the Monkie Kid who seeks to find and work with the Monkey King, and I don't need to go far into this; I haven't collected a single set. What I did know is that a certifiably spooky minifigure released in the line which I just couldn't ignore, putting the Spider Lady herself to shame as a rival for her title--the Spider Queen!

There were two versions of the Spider Queen in full villain regalia, and a third in civilian attire, but I'm partial to the first, from the set "Sandy's Speedboat". Her dress is more spooky and not trying to do so much, and while the printed web cape of the second version is cool, the first one didn't need it. 

The Spider Queen wears a soft plastic-cast crown piece which has six spider legs, and the lower two curve forward. The back of the crown features her exposed short hair.

The queen has lavender skin and green eyes shaded deep, as well as heavy cheekbones, fangs, and a beauty mark. Her second face has a scary grin!

I love the shoulder piece shaping her dress more and the print of her costume is great, with classic web designs, a spider amulet, a surprisingly deep neckline, and overall excellent detail on both sides.

The Spider Queen has a staff in her set, but I got her loose. Here's my own build for her.

This is the Spider Queen's second design. I don't like the costume as much.

This is her third design as a civilian.

The Spider Queen has minions too, but none of them read instantly "Halloween" like she does. They're more action-themed figures.

Huntsman--awesome spider-gijinka design.

Spindrax.

Syntax.

Monkie Kid also features the White Bone Demon and her Bone Spirit underlings, but I kept them out of this project because they capture something a touch more mythic to them such that they didn't feel exactly Halloweeny to me either. I didn't include Ninjago's Lord Garmadon and his skeleton army for basically the same reason--too folkloric. 

A Bone Spirit.

The White Bone Demon.

Dreamzzz- The Never Witch (2024)

Is this horror? I don't know. She is called a witch, though, uses evil magic, and claims to be the original witch that all others in cultural folklore are derived from! I could have left this figure out of the discussion and rested easy, but I happened to get her in a set I wanted for other reasons, so why not?

Dreamzzz is/was? a fantasy in-house IP with a TV series attached, in one of multiple attempts to create a long-runner like Ninjago which just didn't catch on. I've heard Season/Wave 3 of the theme is the end and that we've seen it all, but then there are also rumors of a 2026 wave, so it's not clear right now whether the theme is already over or ending next year. 

The series is set primarily in the dream world where the heroes change form and antagonists based on nightmares or lack of creativity threaten to destroy dreams. The Never Witch is the antagonist of Season 2, with her modus operandi being to create magical evil doppelgangers of the heroes, and to entrap magical realms in miniature form within magical containers like the one on the end of her staff here. The tile here depicts the Sandman's Tower.

The Sandman's Tower set.

The Never Witch herself looks a bit like a vampire queen of sorts, but she's obviously magical and leans goth in her look with her black clothing, pale white skin, and affinity for ravens. 

It's a shame the Dreamzzz sets aren't continuing past the third wave, because they can be objectively assessed as some of LEGO's wackiest and most creative, taking the surrealism and fantasy potential of a dream world to the greatest extent. The Dreamzzz sets all have a two-in-one gimmick where the core model is built up to a certain branching point where the owner decides which form to build the model in. It's not the same as Creator multi-models, which all start differently and use fewer and fewer parts from the A through the C models. The Dreamzzz sets use roughly the same parts each time, but with less drastic differences. I got my Never Witch through the set "The Never Witch's Midnight Raven", though it's not her only appearance. 

The Never Witch uses the smoky magic platform introduced in Hidden Side. This is not a leg replacement but is actually a fancy one-piece stand which the feet of a standard minifigure slot into so they look like they're riding around on a burst of energy. It nearly doubles a figure's height.

The feet fit if the piece is flipped the other way, but when the tail faces the minifigure's right, the legs can rock back and forth inside the piece, while they're fully stable and upright when the tail faces the figure's left, leading me to believe that's the "correct" orientation.

 Like the ectoplasmic ghost lower body as seen here first in the Series 14 review, this magic cloud piece has only been cast in dual-plastic blends of opaque and translucent, and the Never Witch's mixes translucent magenta with solid black. The piece adds a lot of height and presence to a figure, and sits on a roughly 2x2 stud footprint.

The Never Witch has a fancy hairpiece with dual-molding of black and coral. The piece has a fancy black crown with a raven-wing design on the back, and is styled in a bun and long ringlets. 

Her skin is stark white and her face has a sharp expression that reads vampiric, including very subtle fangs. Her eyes are red and shaded with spiky pink shadows. I wouldn't be hugely surprised to see this head used for a vampire lady in a 2026 Build-a-Minifigure Halloween assortment as this head part is retired from production.

The other side of her face has a magenta spike of makeup down her eye, which feels very eighties but not out-of-place. 

This might also be a parallel to protagonist Mateo, who has vitiligo in the waking world and a lighter patch over the same eye, while in the dream world, his slime companion Z-Blob has altered his lighter patch and turned it green, which also grows larger across the three waves' versions of the character design. The Never Witch's evil copy of Mateo, named Madteo, has a pink patch that kind of matches both characters.

Waking-world Mateo with Z-Blob.

Season 2 Dream World Mateo.

Madteo.

The Never Witch's torso and legs have really detailed print.

I know the Never Witch needs legs to ride her magic burst, but I would have liked one of her appearances to give her a robe with the dress legs instead, since the fae/vampire/witch tones of this design feel like they'd suit a long skirt. A version with the legs and magic burst and a version with a robe would have been great.

The Never Witch also brings ravens with her, which are cast in the same colors as her smoke tail, being half translucent magenta. The birds sit on one stud, and there's actually a gap between the feet even though the stud connection is otherwise enclosed.

The Dreamzzz theme admittedly didn't fully connect with me either, and its minifigures and concepts generally aren't quite there for me, but the Never Witch probably comes the closest to being what I want(ed?) from the theme. She's cohesive and dramatic and spooky.

Build-a-Minifigure Exclusives (Up to 2025)

The Build-a-Minifigure station has been a staple of LEGO brand stores for ages, but for many of those years, it wasn't worth visiting. BAM is a clever method for LEGO to offload excess parts, with the station's inventory being drawn from minfigure parts recently in/concluding production, and you're allowed to build up to three minifigures per purchase, with each consisting of a headgear, head, torso, legs, and a fifth piece, usually a handheld accessory, but could also be an add-on costume or body element. Other than that, you can mix the parts however you want. But in the mid-2000s when it was just generic LEGO City minifigure parts you likely had dozens of from buying sets, why bother? Things started changing when LEGO started releasing exclusive parts at the BAM station, with refreshed inventories of new pieces quarterly throughout the year, and this included a Halloween batch each year. We started with some recolors of parts and prints from previous monsters, never as complete as their original releases, but sometimes intriguing. But then we started getting fully new heads and torso prints and more original suggested character assemblies, ranging from the more basic/incomplete to fully-bespoke cohesive designs. 

It's variable sometimes what the official design for a suggested Build-a-Minifigure character is, so bear with me. I also saw fit to alter or polish many in my own ways. These character names are not official, and some refer to the alterations I made with the figures.

Vampire (2018)

The first round of Halloween BAM figures included a surprisingly late recolor of Lord Vampyre's prints, but a welcome one. 

His head was printed only with Vampyre's snarling expression, not the other side wirh the closed mouth, and is cast in light grey rather than white. His torso replaces dark red with purple, and his hands are cast white, implying gloves. He has no cape.

To make him a bit more distinct, I swapped his hair for the Joker's LEGO Batman Movie spiky bush shape, removed his "gloves", put him in a shoulder piece that flares his silhouette, and gave him a cane. 

When I ordered the figure base, the seller put him in the original Lord Vampyre torso by mistake when I needed the recolor, but they were apologetic and refunded his portion of the order I made.

Pink Spider Lady (2018)

I decided to pursue this after all with some reconfiguration. Here's the default:

The hair has no printing, the silver details have switched to dark grey, the figure has dark grey hands, possibly as gloves, and red and purple have switched to pink. No cape. The graphic layout has also been adjusted so the waist spider has moved up to be entirely printed on the torso rather than being split across both body pieces.

And here's my restyle.

I used a pink copy of the beehive to match the recolor, swapped the arms for "bare" white with black "gloves" and gave her the Spider Queen's second cape design from the Monkie Kid theme, which is also plastic but has no collar. For accessories, she has a silver spider and a pink flask. I think this works as a strong alternate concept for the figure. She's less traditionally spooky, but she's a cohesive fun stylized vampire in her own right.

While I do think this is the same character as the Series 14 Spider Lady, grouping this restyled figure, the Series 14 figure, and the Monkie Kid villainess makes for a nice sisterhood of spiders!

Halloween Mascot (2019)

This was part of a lot of parts with explicit Halloween seasonal iconography--a black and orange recast of the LEGO Batman Movie Harley Quinn hair, a black and orange torso, the pumpkin head discussed above, and some orange legs with purple and black bats painted on them. I couldn't find the perfect head to complete the figure (I replaced the legs to get the purple out), and I wasn't sure what the official designated minifigure head for this assortment of parts was, so I decided to complete the figure in minimalist fashion with a blank orange head and orange hands and a spider accessory. There was a recast of the Tiger Woman hair in blonde with black cat ears that I should have gone out for. I think 2019 Build-a-Minifigure was maybe a little looser and didn't have clearly prescribed recommended ensembles for their Halloween parts. 

I have memories of getting these parts in-store in a later year than 2019, and maybe that's true. I heard, and think I saw, the 2018 parts past their own year too, so I think I did find this batch after 2019. I think it may have even been 2021. I first documented owning the parts in 2022, but I think that was only a year after getting them.

Halloween Wizard (2020)

While witches are the classic icon, it's nice to see the gentlemen in that Halloween niche too. The Build-a-Minifigure design has a unique color casting for the "scarecrow" witch hat, and a nice torso, but his face is very dull and not spooky, and his robe is unprinted.

I swapped out a lot of parts and gave him a long beard, though none exist in dark grey yet so he has mixed hair colors. His head is from a recent figure of Ninjago's ghost ninja Morro.

Mad Scientist (2021)

This was a castoff of J.B.'s hair mold, same color, but also included a unique mad-scientist torso print. I completed the figure with the Minifigures Series 7 Rocker Girl's face thanks to the lightning symbol...as well as a deficit of more spooky or sinister faces that would suit this hair sculpt. I also gave her a flask built from a goblet and a stud and a brain-printed Technic ball from the Ultra Agents theme.

I wasn't fully satisfied with this design, though, and I realized this would be the perfect place to use that villainous expression from the Pterodactyl Costume Fan! I eventually ended up swapping out her torso for the Series 11 Scientist's because the lavender coordinated more, but I kept the dual-molded arms from the original BAM torso, and I replaced the legs with a white skirt, which is impractical but very camp and felt in-tone. I gave her lime headphones around her neck as well. This is a more dynamic figure to me now, even if she's a little more basic in aspects like the unprinted skirt. I then took the core of the BAM torso and built a second scientist with short legs, transformed Ultra Agents Professor Brainstein's head, and Gandalf's beard.

Vampire Gent (2022)

In 2022, one of the Halloween figures was a bat costume for a trick-or-treating boy, with an exclusive torso and new coloring for the bat=ear hair and bat-wing arms.

I really liked this minifigure in theory, but I couldn't get past the head choice, which is from some adult robber in the City sets, big cleft chin and all. It doesn't work for a little kid and it was too distracting for me, so I cobbled the exclusive parts into a vampire gentleman and gave the torso to another character.

Midnight Witch (2022)

A witch was included in 2022's parts, and her recast of the scarecrow hair in black and classic orange was very useful and desirable...but the minifigure design was incohesive and bland. Her face is boring and her colors don't fit together right. She's got this gorgeous purple and black spider dress and then a shock of bright orange hair and it doesn't balance out.

I don't know why her dress was put on backward in this photo, or why her hand is upside-down.

I thoroughly reinvented her by leaning into cool tones and mystical atmosphere, giving her the Minifigures Series 22 Night Protector's sparkly aqua head and giving her a classic lightning bolt, a blue flask, a black conical hat, and a vampire cape to make her a cool-toned sorceress.

Cat Costume (2023)

2023's assortment featured this figure in a round-eared cat hood, depicting a black cat with white paws.:

The cat hood sculpt debuted for DC Comics' retro Cheetah minifigure in the DC Minifigures series, thus why the ears are round and only catlike when thinking of big cats.

I decided to change this up. I thought this costume would suit a shorter character and swapped the legs, and gave it a mime face paint for a generic vintage-Halloween makeup look (this mime face itself was BAM-exclusive) and an orange fish. Perhaps this is even less catlike, but it captures a charm of vintage Halloween costume iconography even if nobody is quite sure what this guy is supposed to be!

Old Witch (2024)

Nine years had passed since LEGO's last spooky Halloween witch in Series 14, and this witch follows from her in some ways, mainly in her skin color. Naturally, she's my favorite of 2024's assortment. She looks a bit more humble or serious with her drab colors of dark tan and sand green, and isn't wearing an archetypal Halloween outfit, with an old apron and scarf over a black dress instead. She reuses a casting of a witch-hat-and-hair mold used by Minerva McGonagall in that inescapable franchise, but the mold color of the hair suits her and matches her apron, despite being different from her grey-haired brows. While this is designed to be a hat implicitly being worn over a high bun, the fact that the hair looks short under the hat is fun and lets you interpret the wearer as short-haired. I think this hat-with-hair mold would improve the figures of the 1939 Wicked Witch of the West, if only it were cast in solid black. 

The Wicked Witch's official figure from LEGO Dimensions/The LEGO Batman Movie.

The Wicked Witch wearing the newer mold.

The shape of the hair nor the hat are especially accurate to Hamilton as the Witch, but they lend her a vibe of looking just that bit more like the movie character.

Sidenote-I don't think LEGO has gotten the Wicked Witch's skin color right either time. The Margaret Hamilton Witch's skin color screams to be rendered in LEGO's Bright Green, like the Series 2 Witch:

Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch. Her outfit seems far less detailed than the minifigure's!

The lime that the minifigure has more closely matches Elphaba on the iconic Wicked Broadway poster. And on that note--

Cynthia Erivo Elphaba's skintone is better, but isn't quite done justice by LEGO's current palette. Bright Green is okay, but her makeup has enough of a yellow hue in a lot of scenes that the LEGO color fails to be spot-on. I don't think lime casting would be the solution or improve the likeness outright, though. Elphie is a case where LEGO was forced to pick a current color that doesn't perfectly match. 

Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in a promotional shot.

One of the Elphaba minidolls.

Elphaba as a minifigure.

Olive green would be the third possible option for Elphaba, but it would be too drab.

I think an ideal Wicked Witch (1939) figure would look like this, if LEGO wasn't molding anything new for her. Just fix the colors and give her the McGonagall hat/hair in all black.

There's another witch-hat-with-hair mold which is more angular and has an accessory pinhole in front and a more modest cone, and this one has been made in all black. 

Maybe a copy of this mold is truly the answer for upgrading the figure with what exists, but I don't think the shape of the hair sculpting on this one would help the Wicked Witch as much as the hair on the McGonagall mold.

Anyway, enough of that and back to the Build-a-Minifigure witch.

I love the print detail of her costume, with her Sand Green shawl and dark tan apron, and the frog in her pocket is really fun. Both skirt and torso are printed front and back.

Here's a better look at her face print.

I paired my witch an adorable grey kitten who sits on a single stud. Here it is next to a full-grown housecat.

The BAM parts assortment during this time also included an adult orange tabby, and that might have been the cat actually intended for this witch, but I chose the kitten since it was newer to me.

I upgraded the witch with a broom and a neon yellow-green flask.

I hadn't viewed her this way when she was brand new, and hadn't for a good while into this project, but all of a sudden, I began to see something to this witch's design. I was beginning to think she might be as good a candidate as any for the witch who scratched Ann Lee's face up. Doesn't her look fit well with the gloomier tone of Monster Fighters? This could be that very witch we never got to see. 

Granted, Halloween witches don't fit the monster-movie conceit of the theme, and perhaps this witch might have to have loose hair with no hat to fit the aesthetic better? Then again, it's not like Monster Fighters is that removed from spooky camp, so maybe the hat can stay. The bigger problem with putting her into the theme is that her face just isn't malicious enough for the villains of the story. She looks more like a Monster Fighters villain with the Wacky Witch's head.

The Wacky Witch looks very different with the 2024 head, like she's lost all her makeup.

Here's the 2024 witch with the Wizard of Oz head.

Regardless of how well she fit the Monster Fighters theme, I popped her in a nook in the back of the display stand to give her a home.

Her kitten is hiding above!

Part of the reason I have the Never Witch minifigure is because the "Midnight Raven" set she's in had a highly desirable model--one build of the set lets you make LEGO's first official Baba Yaga witch hut (see my unofficial take here!) and I wanted to try modifying its colors to suit this BAM witch/a Monster Fighters vibe.

LEGO promo shot showing the official build of the hut.

I built the set loosely, completing the raven portion of the set before the diverging point, then building the hut while making substitutions, never completing it the "official" way first. Here's my result, with the modifications in place. 

The core structure is the same, with only aesthetic details changed and substitutions made in cases where I didn't have the same parts in the right colors. Instead of pink, purple, coral, and sand blue, I've used brown and shades of green. 

This house is pretty small but also a very satisfying size that feels proper enough, and the legs and feet are simple but sturdy--a smaller house makes the chicken-leg Baba Yaga concept a lot easier! The legs are not jointed, but they swivel at the tops where they connect to the bottom of the house. 

Mushroom on the foot added by me.

The hut has a stone staircase under the door that implies the house might "root itself in" and rest with the legs buried in the ground, digging itself out again when it becomes mobile, as the stairs don't reach to the ground. I explored this idea myself in my own witch house, showing a tree grown through the side of the house with roots ripped out by the house digging itself out. 

    

The chimney of the Dreamzzz house is delightful, using simple hinge bricks to make it crooked and characterful, though the official build places no fireplace or fire source inside, and the pearlescent multichrome blue-pink color-shift casting of this magic flame element doesn't match the flames elsewhere in the set, which are green and used separate from the house in both models.

The windows on the sides and back are barred while plants grow in boxes outside on the sides. When shifting to green colors, I made the plants asymmetrical, while there's mirrored pairs of the large leaves in the original build.

The back had projecting arches with nothing to use them for, so I added a shelf across for a chest to be stored there.

I also added the roof shingles and spider and the plants on the front beams (themselves replacing curved tiles on the official build). The official set has two symmetrical hanging lanterns on the front of the house, but my parts availability when swapping colors required me to have only one, which I preferred anyway. The original beams the lanterns projected from were purple, but I only had one in a color that suited my rebuild.

The roof of the house is attached but hinges open in two parts, revealing shelves on the interior of the roof which don't make sense with the laws of gravity, but do optimize space. 

This house is for the BAM 2024 witch minifigure first and foremost and is not strictly beholden to the parts and colors available in 2012 when Monster Fighters was running, so I allowed multiple newer elements to stay, but I did adjust for tone and take out a few potion jars on the shelves that were too pearly and glamorous for a spooky forest witch.

Inside, I put a table, a barrel for a broom, and a candlestick. Not much room for a bed, nor could the witch use one with her dress.

Outside, I put the cauldron from the set with the green flames that are cooking it.

Bafflingly, this cauldron is two halves which have holes in the sides that must be filled by Technic wheels on axles, and while I know this factors into a build that turns the cauldron into a spider's abdomen, it feels like a waste of a mold that could have been a hollow closed bowl to put critters or minifigures into. 

I compromised by putting Ann Lee's torso on the surface of the plate serving as the witch's brew, but I wish this was a proper bowl she could drop into whole. 

Ultimately, since Ann is going to stay on the Monster Fighters display while the witch doesn't need to, I did away with the scenery piece and built a chain and hook for the cauldron to be able to hang on the side of the house.

I'm pleased with the house I designed for old Willa the Witch, but I have to concede LEGO did the concept better. The house is small, but the shaping is great and the legs just work. It's one of my new favorite LEGO models, though suiting it to the BAM witch makes it all the better for me. 

Scary Trick-or-Treater (2024)

This is a relatively alarming choice--a skeleton trick-or-treater, perhaps a sequel to the Skeleton Guy, but holding a cleaver! At least, consensus seems to be this is how the figure is built. I've seen instances with the cleaver and hair shuffled between the group of 2024 figures.

It's a freaky image, like this is a killer dressed up among a crowd of real trick-or-treaters. To play on that vibe, I added the red hands and the sketchy sack. The figure's hands were yellow initially. I really love her white skeleton hoodie.

Her costume's legs do what I wanted the Skeleton Guy's to do and print the classic skeleton bones on the front of the legs rather than the sides, so they look more complete from the front.

Honestly, a bone-costume figure with both surfaces of the legs printed would still be nice. It's also a shame the 2024 legs aren't as opaquely-printed as the Skeleton Guy's, because they'd be a good option to swap out on him otherwise. 

I'd definitely have liked a unique head print for this character, but the classic skull works well too and may make the figure more unsettlingly expressionless as a result. 

Mr. Fireplace (2024)

The official figure design was a ghost with imagery of smoke and fire, having orange hands, a translucent orange head reused from a powered-up transformation of Ninjago earth ninja Cole, and a body with black features and grey smoke, including a skull face with flaming eyes. I saw what they were going for with the ashy, smoky, fiery combination, and liked the surreal face in the torso...but again, this is orange and purple being combined badly. I hate that mohawk on him.

I didn't even get the mohawk and grabbed a copy of the Dreamzzz Mr. Oz grey hair and beard instead, leaning into the colors of smoke and ash, and then added a tattered black cape, a martini glass with ash and smoke, and a flame for one hand. I call him Mr. Fireplace because I see him as a fire ghost who would haunt a house's fireplace as personified fire, soot, and smoke.

Mummy Costume (2025)

Eh, it's cute. We have seen a mummy costume on a hayride-running farmer, but not in so classic a style.

The hayride driver.

While a real mummy wins over a costume for me any day, I do respect that the Mummy Costume is a fully bespoke and pretty detailed print, not reusing graphics from anything and having print on the back of his head.

The tan base under the white bandages is also an interesting and unique choice, and I like the simplicity of the minifigure face peeking out of the bandages. This is also the first LEGO mummy figure to use the head bandage piece that debuted on Minifigures Series 16's Clumsy Guy, and I think it's a good idea.

The teal snake is not this figure's designated accessory, but I selected it for him because it made sense and I didn't have the piece in that color.

Ghost Lady (2025)

This figure was a delight to discover as I sifted through the bins, and is a delight of a design. She kind of got better and better as I pieced her together!

This is a fully humanoid ghost woman rendered in white and grey to make her look faded and ghostly--no solid black print. While she's not a sheet, she's still hooded and ready for a scare, as her face is printed with a spooky moan to chill you to the bone! 

I love that she's depicted as an older woman, and while maybe I'd prefer a hairpiece for her instead of a hood, I think it still works really well. I like the detail of her nightgown and dress, and both her skirt and torso are printed on the back.

The first great surprise with this figure was her second face. Her alternate expression is winking, perfectly conveying the expression of "gotcha!" after successfully spooking somebody! I love that playful touch.

The second wonderful surprise was realizing what her accessory was as I examined the BAM station. LEGO repurposed their relatively recent "splat"/"spill" tile shape and printed it up as a floating ghost in itself!

Brilliant.

Is this ghost tile the Ghost Lady herself in a less corporeal form? Is it another spirit in the house she haunts? The face design is very much minifigure-styled and almost looks like her, but doesn't have eyelashes and its sunken eyes are different. I guess it's up to you to decide, but what a fantastic gag and creative use of this tile shape. I got two for myself.

I don't know what it is about this minifigure, but I like her so much among the official BAM assemblies. There's so much charm and style and creativity for a figure with zero new sculpts, and I think I'd be perfectly happy with her released the same way as a Minifigures entry...she'd even be a highlight in the series. This might even beat out the Old Witch as my favorite official BAM entry. I just really like this one!

Little Witch (2025)

This figure is nearly fully-bespoke in terms of prints, but she reuses the double-sided head piece from Minifigures Series 25's Mushroom Sprite. 

Whether the witch is a normal little girl trick-or-treating, or a real witch who happens to be a sweet little girl is up to you.

This is that half-cancelled VIDIYO witch hat/hair sculpt I was referring to previously; the windblown swirly hair sculpting makes it obvious the mold was designed for a VIDIYO character we never got, but the sculpt itself got released for other uses. 

Here's the hair next to a VIDIYO example to make the similarity clearer. VIDIYO was all about the stylized windblown hair, even on some of the anthro animal-head sculpts.

Since the mold's debut intent was cancelled, its actual first use was to depict trick-or-treating Dani Dennison in the Hocus Pocus set, with dark orange hair and a black hat and a printed hat band. The sculpt was recast with the same dark orange hair color and a grey hat for Dungeons & Dragons character Tasha the Witch Queen, and this is the third use of the piece, in classic black and orange. This piece is very useful for Halloween iconography in these colors.

I think this little witch girl is very sweet, and her reused face suits her perfectly. Her torso and skirt have nice printing, and the 2025 spooky parts mix gave us another black cat to amass as we please, with different face printing. 

I think I technically cheated the rules by giving the witch her skirt and the cat as her designated lot of parts. The skirt is probably the designated sixth piece for her figure, and the cat is intended for the mummy to balance it all out, but I was able to get the cat and the skirt and the snake and the ghost tile in one BAM pack of three figures.

I would prefer this figure design without the goofy vampire graphic on the torso, because it looks too much like a T-shirt for what is otherwise a serviceable classic patterned dress.

I love this Build-a-Minifigure tradition, and I'm always excited to see the stations even outside of Halloween, though having a regular source of Halloween minifigure parts to look forward to is frankly terrific. Fingers crossed more interesting monsters drop in the future. 

My Own Designs

These are just me playing around with parts to make monsters myself!

The Green Man

Inspired by plants and the Celtic folkloric figure, I built this guy when I did a since-disassembled spooky garden shop modification of the Modular Building Pet Shop set. This was meant to be like the plant version of a vampire, living in a terrarium and soil as the secret monster behind the whole scary garden shop. I don't have that model anymore, but I kept the figure around. His hair is the LEGO Batman Movie Joker's, his face is one of DC Comics' Martian Manhunter designs, and his torso is the Minifigures Series 6 Leprechaun's. 

This one builds from the Series 4 Punk Rocker's torso, which features a calavera design. I basically turned it into a skeleton punk with a different hair color (magenta switched to red) and gave him a Dia de Muertos marigold to hold.

The figure pairs well with the official holiday skeleton.

Brick Creatures

In Series 18 of the Minifigures, LEGO debuted a new minifigure torso depicting a costume suit shaped like a LEGO brick, and have since released other color variants in Series 20 and the Build-a-Minifigure stations. 

The piece has armholes, a neck peg, and a cutout for the legs, but it does function as a 2x3 brick on the front and back and can be built into things--the back is just shallower. I found the suit much more interesting without a minifigure head on it, though, and with some flower studs in the same color as the suit serving as eyes, it made a striking bizarre creature, like a brick come to life or a LEGO brick alien species! 

The green one is from Series 20, and the orange is from Build-a-Minifigure.

Sweet Treats Witch

This one is my creation with the castoff witch hair and bat-suit torso from the 2022 BAM parts. I completed the figure with a black skirt, Dr. Inferno's wicked face from LEGO Agents, and a tray of treats built on a 2x2 round plate.

Vengeful Vampire

This is another vampire design using the Superman hair sculpt, a spare Series 2 head, a red bat-cut cape (from the LEGO Batman Movie Red Hood design, shoulders pinched into shape by the armor that was over it!) and the Series 2 Ringmaster's torso as a base. The wand piece here is meant to be a stake, as if this is a vampire who survived a stabbing and is turning the tables!

Pumpkin Witch

This is a repurposing of the 2011 Professor Sprout minifigure, washed of the franchise it came from by making it an autumnal robe for a pumpkin-headed witch character. I think this is a cohesive and charming figure design.

Spooky Tree

LEGO released a minifigure tree-costume piece a few years ago, with a knothole for a face window, two bar connections, and four hollow studs on top. Despite the mold being great, LEGO took poor advantage of it, using it for criminal disguise in the City theme and a stage costume in a Friends set. A wildlife photographer disguising among nature in City used the connection points on top to add leaves, but it wasn't spectacular. I wanted a haunted tree from this mold from the moment I saw it. LEGO put a figure in a tree costume in one year's Halloween BAM assortment, but it wasn't spooky at all, nor well-realized.

Source: Jay's Brick Blog.

I made my dream happen with a blank brown minifigure body matching the costume, a Star Wars Jawa head for spooky glowing eyes, and some add-ons to make the tree look more detailed.

Leaf pieces have the tendency to fall off builds, but putting them on a hollow stud and pinning through the studs of the leaf piece and the stud below with a bar element will keep it in place.

Non-Horror Sidebar: Dia de Muertos Minifigures

LEGO surprised me with another dash of Build-a-Minifigure entries this year, so I decided to remove some Dia de Muertos material into a side discussion here. 

Dia de Muertos is a celebratory holiday with a warm reflective approach to death, so the minifigures don't fit a horror or Halloween designation, but the adjacent holidays and iconography of animate skeletons creates a common crossover. 

LEGO first indulged the holiday in their 2021 BrickHeadz model of the iconic La Catrina.

BrickHeadz faces are usually flat, but La Catrina's is built in two layers so part of her face is more sunken in skeletal fashion.

The first minifigure for the holiday came the same year--a skeleton Mariachi. He's not perfect. He has a bespoke torso print and sombrero design (the mold's been around) but his head is just a generic LEGO skull. I do appreciate that he's textually a legitimate skeleton and not just a costumed human. I didn't get this figure for myself, but he needs to be mentioned.

Photo from Jay's Brick Blog.

The following year, 2022's BAM assortment gave us a Catrina? Maybe? I'm not sold on using "Catrina" as a generic term for a lady in Dia de Muertos regalia, since it's the name of a more specific character, but that's the general consensus on what this figure is called, and it might be totally proper. You can be "a Santa Claus" without being the Santa. 

This is a gorgeous minifigure, and a fully bespoke print, depicting a Dia de Muertos celebrant who could either be a living person in full calavera makeup, or else an actual skeleton in festive garb. No yellow skin is visible on this character, so she can be either! LEGO even deliberately printed her bare collar white.

The Catrina lady is wearing a bolero jacket and a ruffled skirt, and carries a pink purse. Her waist has brown contour lines suggestive of a bone motif, and her face paint is beautifully detailed.

I'd welcome a different hairpiece or a hat with hair, since this mold in black again is not that exciting, but darn if it doesn't flatter her all the same. This is one of those figures that I kind of wish had been in a Minifigures series where just a bit more could be done with her, but I still like her a lot and she was my favorite BAM of her season, hands down. 

I gave her a skull trimmed with flower studs to make her a little fancier. If I was smarter, I'd have gotten a second copy of her own skull for her to hold as a sugar skull accessory.

This figure pairs with the mariachi from the prior year, but she's the superior design to me due to her higher detail. 

I also made a minifigure of my own from parts I had, rebuilding the Series 4 Punk Rocker since he has a calavera-printed tank top. I basically turned it into a skeleton punk with a different hair color (magenta switched to red), a Fantasy Era skull, and gave him a Dia de Muertos marigold to hold.

The figure pairs well with the 2022 Catrina. 

LEGO has done a couple of licensed figures for the holiday per Pixar's Coco, with Miguel Rivera and Ernesto de la Cruz featuring in Disney Minifigures Series 3 (the Disney 100 series in 2023).

Ernesto is a fabulously detailed figure and I'm glad they made him, though if I were picking only two Coco characters myself, the obvious choices would have been Miguel and Héctor. 

2025 brought us a sculptural model called the "Altar of the Dead", depicting a calavera on one side and a decked-out ofrenda on the other side. 

I was interested in this set, and it would be great to pair with minifigures, but by the time I actively wanted to get it, it was already sold out of LEGO direct, not at the LEGO store, and I didn't want to pay extra for a secondhand option that had slim chances of arriving before the holiday anyhow. Oh, well.

Part of why I wanted this model was because I was totally blindsided during this last week of October to find these next two figures existed-- a Build-a-Minifigure duo of a new, matched Catrina and mariachi. They weren't there when I was collecting the Halloween 2025 trio, so I rushed out to get them while I could! I was so glad LEGO finally released a male and female Dia de Muertos figure simultaneously, essentially revisiting both prior figures in one year, and even better, designed both with complete bespoke skeleton prints. They share a black, purple, and gold color palette and a design motif of golden stars. I needed them just as badly as I needed the 2022 figure. 

The lady here uses Disney Pocahontas's windblown straight hair with a pink flower in it as her designated fifth piece in lieu of a handheld accessory. This hair and this flower also featured on minidolls of Isabela Madrigal from Encanto. The tiny flower parts sunk right to the bottom of the BAM bin and were hard to find! 

Despite her costume being black, her color palette and personality and hair are quite distinct from the 2022 minifigure. 

I love the 2025 design with its colors and patterning. Her mouth paint gives her a sharper skull contour and her makeup and expression are great. Her dress is fully printed on both sides.

Very subtly, LEGO skeleton ribs are visible at her neckline, confirming her to be an actual fantasy calaca woman. 

The mariachi gives us our first masculine calavera head print, and he has a matching forehead star to the lady. Perhaps they're relatives, honored by one family of descendants.

His jacket is even more open over bare ribs, Ernesto-style. This makes the "genuine skeleton" thing even clearer on him, though it is a bit odd because I've never seen a shirtless living mariachi. Is the land of the dead a ribs-out kind of place?

This figure is well-printed too on his body pieces and his guitar...it just sucks that the brim of his sombrero is blank. That feels like a real absence of detail, and the older skeleton mariachi BAM got it. I might order a copy of that hat piece to upgrade this figure later.

The guitar has a peg on the back like other LEGO guitars. It's hollow on the back side.

To accessorize the Catrina, I learned from 2022 and built a minifigure that would give me an extra copy of her skull so she could hold it as a calavera portrait of herself. I also gave that "only for parts" figure a pink peach that matched the Catrina's flower and was a piece I also wanted from the BAM bins.

The three BAM calacas I have make a merry trio! These are beautiful designs and I'd love to see them become a consistent fixture of Build-a-Minifigure. They might have just become so!

LEGO Minifigure Factory

This was a new novelty service I discovered while browsing LEGO.com--Minifigure Factory, a kind of online made-to-order equivalent to Build-a-Minifigure promising customizable torso designs!

The tool itself is pretty limited. There's a small selection of face prints, hair, accessories, and legs, all prefab parts currently in production, while the torsos let you mix base colors or patterns with graphics that you can lay over the top and place as desired. Some torso designs are limited-time and themed to current releases, like Willy Wonka patterns around the time of the LEGO IDEAS Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory set. Other torso designs use years-old graphics as throwbacks, like a jester torso from LEGO Kingdoms or Mac McCloud's Pharaoh's Quest torso. I wanted to see what the possibilities were for spooky minifigures in this venue.

The minifigures each cost about $12, which feels overpriced for something so limited. 

The Minifigure Factory items come in boxes very reminiscent of the VIDIYO Bandmates packaging in shape.

The minifigures come disassembled, and also include a printed white 1x3 brick with a serial number and QR code that doesn't pull up anything I can understand--just a string of text code.

I assume this brick is part of the factory and ordering process, used to identify which shipment a custom minifigure order is and where it goes, and the factory just pops it in with the completed pack to get rid of it so it doesn't get mixed in where it doesn't belong. 

My first minifigure used a mummy torso base with an edgy skull graphic placed over it, into which I put the initials "TT&T" so the figure could be something of a LEGO blog mascot. He has a classic skull head, the only spooky print option offered, and a teapot. I chose the hair because I didn't have it yet and greens fit the figure and my blog design.

The torsos seem to come only cast in white with white arms, which I worried would severely limit the amount of prints that worked since if the base color didn't match, it would be distracting. That was part of why I chose the mummy base. I'm not super happy with the low contrast of the text print in the eyes and if a lighter lime green was offered as a color, I'd have taken it. This was the absolute smallest the text could be in the editing tool. 

The print of the torsos is unsurprisingly done in a different manufacturing method (I believe it's UV printing), which shows when the light hits it, giving the print a shinier, grittier look on the surface of the plastic.

I upgraded the figure with lime arms to make the torso look more like an edgy shirt and gave him black arms and pants with some more detail, as well as a green accent on his teapot. I also gave him a better-printed copy of the skull head, but I liked the charm of the design and didn't find another face for him.

I'm not really sure what the title for this character would be. TT&T Terror? Horror Guy? He's kind of vague.

I kept at the service with two more figures, which I got mainly for parts and to test the torso options further. I wanted to try a suit jacket with a more shaded skull on it as a badge for a "monster scholar" character. Here are the bases who came in, each with their own QR code bricks.

I wanted the blue ice lolly for my Yeti, and this is where that came from. The swirly torso gave me flashes of Tim Burton, particularly the Martian Girl in Mars Attacks!, so I had to try that (no alterations on my end). The other figure gave me the LEGO Friends Paisley hair and another kitten color. The braided hair and the face with it were the pieces I selected for the Monster Scholar character, but I didn't put the torso on the same order.

Unfortunately, every Minifigure Factory torso is indeed printed on a white cast. This is frustrating. The swirly torso base tone in the print isn't even a standard LEGO molding color, so it would never match any torso cast, and that confuses me. 

The black print on the back of the "monster scholar" torso is also very weak.

Here's the figures rebuilt.

Monster Scholar

I see this figure as something of a professor or even a museum curator specializing in monster studies, and may even have been a Monster Fighter herself at one point. I added a sword belt for that purpose, and gave her a crystal staff and a glow-in-the-dark copy of the minifigure skull as artifacts she's collected. I made the best of the torso limitations by letting it look like a waistcoat instead of a jacket, and used the original Bellatrix Lestrange minifigure's dress for her lower body. I used to treasure that minifigure, but now I have no qualms about recycling her parts.

I wonder what her Monster Fighter name would be? Maybe Helen Van Sloan to mix "Abraham Van Helsing" with "Edward Van Sloan", the actor who played Van Helsing in 1931's Dracula? 

I'm not going to be the least bit surprised if a future Minifigures series includes a new Monster Fighter character in homage to the old theme, either as a legacy character who learned from them, or as a mentor figure who taught them. I imagine this character, Helen, to be the latter. I want there to be a garlic bulb accessory that sits on a single stud, and a monster hunter Minifigure would be the perfect introduction for one.

For the other character, I built this:

Surreal Girl

I leaned into the white and red and Tim Burtony feel with the Paisley hair and the head of the Minifigures Series 4 Kimono Girl to give her a pale exaggerated look with the dolly lips. Her face paint is worn, so I need to look into a replacement. For accessories, she has an eyeball and a lollipop with a swirl that matches her shirt. I wish the base color of the shirt was just the white of the cast torso, but this works pretty well.

Minifigure Factory is not as exciting as it sounds, and isn't really worth its price. I wish the prints looked better and weren't so limited by the torso coloring.

Display Shelf

This is a very simple piece built with elements from the original Haunted House 10228 model. I just wanted a simple shelf as a catch-all for monster minifigures that didn't otherwise have a display spot. Most of these have a place elsewhere though--we'll get to that soon.

I'm waiting on a BrickLink order to see just how many more parts of this series remain, but we'll wrap up before Halloween, give or take one post which can still be published outside the holiday. Next up, we're going to talk about a mansion renovation. And it won't even be the last time in this blog series that I do so!