Another small batch of Minifigures cropped up between Monster Fighters and the next big crop of horror figures, so let's take a quick look!
Series 8- Vampire Bat (2012)
This is the first horror figure in the Minifigures line not to precede the Monster Fighters line, and indeed, this figure is pretty clearly intended as a tie-in or supplement or substitute, with Series 8 releasing parallel to Monster Fighters and the Vampire Bat being based on, and using the same new sculpts as, the Bat Monster figures in the concurrent theme. Because the Bat Monsters came in the second-largest Monster Fighters set, the Vampire Bat may be an offering to have basically the same monster for those with a lower budget, while remaining distinct and desirable for all collectors.
The Vampire Bat has a nose, unlike the Bat Monsters, and his fur and muscles have pretty different rendering, as well as his face being a patch of lighter fur on a darker head, unlike the Bat Monsters.
Collecting this figure could allow you to create an "elite" in their group when playing with Monster Fighters sets, or even to interpret him as a transformation of Lord Vampyre! He reminds me a lot of the bat-humanoid form of Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Vampyre seems like the type who never smiles even wickedly, though (his two facial expressions are unsmiling), so perhaps this isn't him. The former interpretation (that this is an elite bat monster under Vampyre) is canon if you go by the official LEGO bios, which describe the Vampire Bat as the supreme bat in his "master's" (clearly Lord Vampyre's) underlings. The bio also indicates that the Bat Monster isn't so sure about Vampyre's aims to create eternal night, and secretly agrees that the Monster Fighters should stop the plan because he's not all about that eternal darkness. He actually enjoys a sunny beach outing!
If you have the white version of DC Comics' Man-Bat, you'd get a fun squad of fur coats. Man-Bat has never been considered a "horror" comic villain in the sense of say, Morbius, though, so I wouldn't be able to put him in the licensed horror category.
Because this is a Monster Fighters add-on, I built an upside-down roost for him in my Monster Fighters display, hidden on the back so he's not interrupting the cast of the actual theme.
I actually prefer the design of the brown Bat Monsters myself, but the Vampire Bat is a worthy addition.
Series 8- Evil Robot (2012)
This is fully a personal pick for the horror category and it's not like LEGO intended him to fall into this group, but classic sci-fi and classic horror have a lot of overlap, and this guy's colors and retro look suit horror well.
The Evil Robot is actually the counterpart to the more friendly retro Robot from Series 1.
Both Robots use the same antenna'd bucket helmet sculpt (and are the only two figures to have it) and have the same LEGO robot arm which accepts a claw hand or any number of attachments at the end or in the stud hollow. I love the robot arm sculpt, but it baffles me that it's only ever been used asymmetrically on the right side of a minifigure. The arm mold is vertically symmetrical, so figures could conceivably be given the arm on their left, or have both arms in this sculpt, but LEGO has never done it. It improves the S1 Robot to have both arms the same, I think:
The Evil Robot works well with a jarring asymmetry, though, as if he is an aberrant, imperfect construct. The Series 1 Robot's face print under the bucket is oddly creepy and skull-like without resembling the LEGO skull, while the Evil Robot's is straightforwardly menacing but less eerie.
I think this guy is as welcome in any evil laboratory as the Frankenmonsters. Indeed, I also tucked him into Monster Fighters display, popping him into the lab section because he fit there and I just want my monster minifigures to be accounted for and situated. Finding a display home for them all is important. So long as the stand displays all of the official Monster Fighters gang, a few extras don't hurt.
There's no doubt this is intended to be more of a sci-fi character than a horror one, though, because he came with a red-laser ray gun. I think I still have the pieces, but I haven't displayed him with them in ages and don't care to now, either.
Series 9- Mr. Good and Evil (2013)
This is a really fun figure, and one of my favorites--a Victorian gentleman scientist who has split his Jekyll and Hyde sides into one simultaneous figure akin to Batman's foe Two-Face! I love the Victorian theming that removes him from a laboratory setting and all of the print detail in this figure is great. He debuts a translucent purple casting of the flask. His only flaw is the way the head can't be fully split between the two skin colors. I used to have green Sharpie coloring the figure's head to fill in the color, but I've removed as much of it as possible now. I might also like to see some tattered left-arm print and to have the mutton-chop sideburn on the Mr. Good side looking tidier than the one on the Mr. Evil side for a bit more contrast, but this is still an excellent design, and genuinely one of my favorite LEGO horror minifigures.
His hat works really well on the Zombie Groom, too!
Series 10-Medusa
I've always filed this figure in my Greek mythology minifigures collection, and she's still gong to live with them, but Alexandre Boudon's sketch page for a LEGO horror theme that later became the Monster Fighters we know and love included this very minifigure design, so she gets to be here. Gorgons do enjoy a lesser status as Halloween icons, anyhow. And it's not like I needed any excuse to talk about one of my favorite minifigures.
I don't know what it was, but Medusa was my number-two monster icon as a child, after the Halloween witch archetype. I liked scary green women, I guess! I always found the Medusa myth fascinating and loved the wild monster design from the myth, and so I was elated to see the mythological menace coming to minifigure form in Series 10. Series 10 may be best remembered for its milestone debacle of Mr. Gold, a 5,000-piece chase minifigure release of a chrome gold gentleman seeded in Series 10 cases randomly, Willy Wonka-style, as a prize to hunt down. It went as expected: ransacked cases, exorbitant scalping, and lots of disillusioned children. (And the inevitable cheap identical fakes!) I never got Mr. Gold myself (and honestly, I'd probably buy a house with him today if I did instead of keeping him) and I think the real prize of Series 10 for me was Medusa. She's fantastic.
Medusa here keeps her proper name from mythology, with her, Orion, and Cupid being the other Minifigures who use proper names from mythology rather than impersonal epithets and titles. This figure could have been called the Gorgon quite easily, but I like that she's the capital M. Her design is closely derived from the old sketch by Alexandre Boudon, leading me to believe she's that same design realized at length. The art is attributed to the year 2010, and evidently comes before Minifigures Series 2, since its vampire and laboratory monsters take influence from the Studios versions and not the Minifigures editions. If so, this was a sleeper for success, with ideas like Medusa, minifigure tails, and the elements of Monster Fighters which flourished from this sketch taking their time to be realized!
Medusa's snake hair is a mold which debuted for her, which features both snake heads and tails poking out of the mass. Slightly odd, but still fun. I like the sculpting, but I think it was a mistake to not sneak a bar clip into one of the snakes on top so the severed head could be held by the snakes by a hero. The hair mold is cast in Bright Green, in rubber, though I don't think it needed to be. I'd have liked a hard plastic version.
The snake hair appeared only once after Medusa for the Ninjago character General Machia. Machia commands the Vermillion, a troop of humanoids who are composed of nothing but smaller snakes forming human shapes, so this mold is quite appropriate for her.
Machia's head and hair could be used to build one of Medusa's two gorgon sisters, Stheno and Euryale, but we never got proper further gorgon minifigures, which I would have loved, and I imagine the snake hair mold is gone now after two uses.
Medusa's skin is Sand Green (can't go wrong!) and her face has double-sided print. One side, seen above, has lime green inhuman eyes and a wary, calm expression with sunken cheeks and green lips with fangs. The other side shows her activating her petrifying powers with glowing orange eyes and a wicked hissing expression, revealing her green tongue!
Medusa having control of her powers isn't true to the original myths, but it's a fun idea.
Medusa's torso shows a chest armor piece that sits only around her breasts, leaving her shoulders and waist bare. The armor looks leathery with snake heads crossing and meeting on the top, and fang shapes projecting down from the lower edge. It's a little surprising she doesn't have back print. I'm sure she'd have some back contours today or some detail showing fastenings for her armor.
Boudon sketched a minifigure snake tail before one existed, but thanks to Ninjago, one got made. The snake tail is slightly raised off the stud grid so the length trailing behind doesn't have to interlock with studs, and the tail is rubbery so as not to break.
Medusa having a snake lower body originated in the 1981 film Clash of the Titans and solidified Medusa and gorgons as purely human/snake lamia mixes, though the myths attributed wings and tusks and claws to them rather than a straightforward mix. I think it's a fun visual, though. Medusa's tail is dark green and has a scale pattern which seems to outline the letter M on its front. This snake tail mold is still in use, probably because the Ninjago villains who debuted it never really go away! Its most recent use was in the Monkie Kid theme, however, which is kind of the Ninjago equivalent designed for the Chinese market which LEGO has devoted a lot of focus toward.
Medusa has no accessories because the ideal pair for her is a whole second minifigure depicted as a statue! Still, LEGO has released enough statue minifigures for her to build a gallery! I need to get more!
I love this Medusa minifigure. I wouldn't be the first to file her in horror, and she doesn't sit with the crew most of the time, but I'm very happy to let her in on the Halloween fun.
Series 11- Yeti (2013)
With the Holiday Elf, Gingerbread Man, and Yeti all appearing together, Series 11 was clearly framed as an unofficial Christmas series in a similar vein to the later Series 23 also having multiple winter icons (plus a Thanksgiving turkey). The Yeti spends time with my winter minifigures during the holidays as such. However, I pop the Yeti in my horror club during the fall season because there's a Bigfoot in the horror-themed Series 14, and the two deserve to be displayed together. Besides, we all know Abbey Bominable made it to Monster High.
I always liked the Yeti with his big fangs and simple adorable brutish look. He's got some of the same appeal as the Fantasy Era Castle trolls, and his sculpt is perfect.
The Yeti came with a translucent pale blue ice pop, which was a new ice pop color for him, but I lost the piece so I swapped for a more common neon yellow-green, and then the one you see pictured, which is darker and not the original color for the Yeti, but it's blue so it's good enough for me. With all the orders I needed to make to flesh out this Halloween project, a replacement original Yeti ice pop was one of those items I chose to let go for now.
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| CGI render of the Yeti demonstrating what the original ice pop basically looked like. |
This head sculpt, in addition to being used on his warmer ape cousin later, was also used with dubious success for the beaver character Breezor in the Legends of Chima sets.
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| Breezor the Chima beaver. |
The sculpted fangs were hard to ignore here, and this head hasn't been seen since Breezor and the Yeti's later counterpart. Thanks to this head, and Breezor being the only Chima beaver, the Beaver tribe were the only animal tribe in the theme not to have animal heads comprised of two parts (a printed minifigure head and an animal mask over it).
I like the Yeti's blue face and yellowed fangs, and the same blue is used for his furless hands and print of uncovered toes, as well as being the color for his fur texture.
If I ever do a project about LEGO winter holiday minifigures (I have no plans to right now), this guy would feature there too.
Series 12- Spooky Girl (2014)
This character is just what she sounds like--a greyscale...spooky girl. She can be taken as a loose homage to Wednesday Addams with her black-and-white palette and intimidating expression, and possibly has a hint of Japanese horror there with her haircut, but she's not an overtly defined monster and is just stylistically eerie. I love her striped tights, pocket spider, and creepy teddy bear. This is one of my treasured minifigures, though her bear's white muzzle paint has gotten a nick. I guess that's how you know it's been loved!
A replacement for the teddy bear was one of the "not right now" calls I made to trim the ordering for this blog series. I want a better copy someday, but I decided it could be cut from the list for now.
The Spooky Girl actually debuted this hair sculpt, and it was cast in rubber at first, perhaps out of fear the front locks of hair would be too fragile? LEGO switched at some later point to molding this hair sculpt in hard ABS plastic, so I replaced my Spooky Girl's rubber hair with the ABS version because it's nicer. The ABS one popped up in the LEGO store Build-a-Minifigure stations so it was easy to source. It seems like LEGO has weaned off rubber hairpieces in most instances these days. Lady Liberty was released in Minifigures Series 6 with a rubber casting of her hair and crown thanks to the spikes, but then a version of her released later with an ABS casting of the same piece. Might be worth tracking down, as well as a copy of the printed tile for her tablet to complete my copy. Minidoll sets in girls' themes also used to have rubber hairpieces as a rule, while today, they're the exception, with ABS hair being standard.
Series 13- Goblin (2015)
This is another editorial pick just for me. While clearly intended as a medieval fantasy Castle figure, even perhaps a sideways throwback to the Fantasy Era Castle theme, goblins have long had overlap with old Halloween iconography, and Marvel's Green Goblin uses green and purple colors, bat-shaped jet gliders, and jack-o'-lantern designs for his explosives. The Goblin counts in this pool, while the similar Orc in Series 24 is firmly fantasy-themed (and a much more direct throwback to the Fantasy Era sets). I can reassign the Series 13 Goblin to a collection of fantasy horror monsters if I decide to set one aside, but he ekes into Halloween well enough for now.
The Goblin is also just here because I love him so much. He immediately leapt out of the crowd of Series 13 as the one figure I needed above the rest. I think his colors and face and overall design are just perfect for a sneaky forest bandit.
I think the olive green skin and yellow eyes really suit him, though it's possible I'd like him more in Fantasy Era Sand Green and red eyes. Let's try it.
The Goblin debuted the pointy-cap-and-ears sculpt before the Green Goblin himself got it in the LEGO Marvel theme, though it was obvious the piece was developed for the GG and merely released early here.
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| The Green Goblin's first of many minifigures with this mold, released in 2016. |
The Series 13 Goblin is armed with a huge weathered sword, a familiar sculpt, especially to Fantasy Era collectors, and a fabric sack accessory in dark brown.
This is where we stop in the Minifigures theme for now, because we have another horror theme to discuss before we proceed with Minifigures...and Minifigures is going to drop its own horror theme to discuss too! First things first--we have a mystery to solve with the gang!
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