I'm Not Reviewing Minifigures Series 28

I love LEGO. I love LEGO Minifigures. Since last January, I've been having fun reviewing the full casts of their new unlicensed Minifigures series (Series 25, Series 26: Space, and Series 27). I've even done a retrospective review of Series 14: Monsters, a near and dear collection to my heart. So I've been set on a train of keeping up with Minifigures as a staple feature. And then...

...we found out the theme of Series 28. It's all animal costumes. And I really couldn't be more alienated. 

Animal costumes have a proud history in the Minifigures theme, and the first entry was a genuine classic. I love the Series 3 Gorilla Suit Guy!

The gorilla costume is a ubiquitous comedy gag, and the full mask over a sweating human face was a really fun visual, as well as the zipper on the back. This was an awesome minifigure design. Things already started to change with Series 5's Lizard Man, though.

The costume choice was very cute, with the gorilla and lizard evoking King Kong and Godzilla as a pair. But already we have the new style of mask design with an open mouth over the minifigure's human face, and I hate it. I love a full mask option that allows for more of a gag idea or for the pieces to be portrayed literally as humanoid creatures. With these masks, for many of them, there remains the option to fill in the space with a black minifigure head or with one of two heads printed with mouth designs (the Atlantis) Hammerhead Warrior, or the LEGO Batman Movie Orca head to make the costume read as a creature, but I still don't love this style.

Animal costumes, as well as goofy object costumes, would continue as staples, to the point of oversaturation for me personally. I wasn't thrilled when Series 18 was a costume-party concept, but at least the Minifigures weren't all in the mascot-suit style and were costumed in other ways. We also got a more committed mask style with the cat costume.

After her, the masks all shifted to open-face mascot heads.  From Series 18, I got the Spider Suit Boy out of spooky obligation, but I don't love him for his concept alone.

Series 23 was also a costume party, but like Series 18, it didn't force everything into a mascot suit and had a late-year holiday motif. 

I've put up with the animal costumes in the Minifigures reviews I've done, but they consistently rank low for me and part of it is because of the insistence on leaving the minifigure heads and faces visible. It's such an ugly costume design style, and makes for far less versatile mask pieces. So my heart sank when I saw that Series 28 was to be entirely this style of designs. Even worse, the new animal masks vastly reduced the novelty factor in the accessories side of the design, with only one new mold for an accessory in the series. And despite the animal theming, none of the characters come with actual animals that match them or haven't yet appeared in the minifigure world. If they did, that would have been great.

Animals and goofy costumes have some of the broadest marketing appeal in the world, especially for children, so I'm not surprised LEGO emphasizes them so much in the Minifigures line. I'm the outlier here, but it still stinks that they've served up something I'm so thoroughly apathetic to. So I'm passing on a series review. It wouldn't be worth it and wouldn't be fun. 

I can see myself seeking out the goldfish costume. That will be hilarious with a black head filling in the mouth.

This is the only one where such a substitution seems like it would really fully work thanks to the sculpt of the mask. There are some reasons to enjoy the others. The fluffy cat costume looks like she could be related to the Series 27 Cat Lover by way of his cat matching her pretty well, creating a whole family obsessed with the animal. There are a couple of good new face prints in the set, too...but some of the figures have reused heads, including from very recent series and sets. The goldfish uses the Mushroom Sprite's face from Series 25, also reused by the Build-a-Minifigure 2025 witch girl. The bunny costume reuses the head the Astronomer Kid had in Series 27.  It used to be the case that every print on a new Minifigures character was fully bespoke. That should have never changed.

I'm trying not to be too down on anything, and I do still love this toy, but it feels like most LEGO news of late is discouraging. They want to discontinue BrickLink service in many countries and announced the plan with hugely insufficient advance notice until backlash caused them to postpone things. After numerous consistent failures to integrate tech into their toys, they're trying their biggest effort yet to push smart technology into their plastic bricks and figures, not isolated to one product line. They're releasing ridiculously expensive collector sets with nonsensical budgetary compromises imposed on the design team. LEGO often releases stickers for their collector sets' info plaques which contain errors, and recently, with one such case, they released a correction sticker that introduced new errors, forcing a third sticker. Designing a Minifigures series I don't like is low on the list of concerns, but it adds onto a vibe of not feeling really excited for what LEGO is doing these days. I still hold out for the next good Minifigures series and the novel parts in the Build-a-Minifigure stations, but the brand isn't feeling great overall right now. I hope 2026 is a learning time for the company where their excesses and misguided turns actually affect them.