Just What I Wanted: LEGO Minifigures Series 29

It's time for another review of a new Minifigures series...though I'm frankly surprised to be able to say so.

See, I passed on Minifigures Series 28 early this year because it's the precise kind of unlicensed series I did not want--a set entirely comprised of cutesy face-cutout animal costumes--a.k.a., my least favorite of the recurring Minifigures archetypes. There are other themed series concepts that would disappoint me, like a City set with zero fantasy, but there'd still probably be enough merit to collect it for its prints and accessories and archetypes. The animal costumes, however, at least when they're not full-head masks that let you build genuine creatures, are the genre of least appeal for me and a series of them was orthogonal to my interests. Read my thoughts here. Ignoring Series 28 was the right thing to do for me, but I was pretty sure doing so thus meant there would be no Minifigures series to review in 2026...or so I thought, because Series 29 leaks began showing up, and it turned out S29 was going to be the second unlicensed series this year. I'll admit, this exactly follows the 2024 release pattern of Series 25 in January and Series 26 in May. I totally forgot that was a good year of two original series! But in the last ten years, it has not been a reliable guarantee that two non-IP series will release in a year, so Series 29 came as a surprise still. Needless to say, I'm delighted, especially because Series 29 has some gems. It's also added new entries to some of the topics in my Halloween LEGO deep-dive last year, so those posts are already officially outdated by May 2026! (What I might do to address this is round up the relevant spooky LEGO additions of 2026 into one post during October as an update to the 2025 project, and carry this annual-addendum practice on as the years deliver more.) 

Another appeal to Series 29? Well, it looks like Series 28 being entirely made up of my beloathed animal costumes may have briefly detoxed the Minifigures line, as there are no such animal costumes to serve as duds for me in Series 29! 

I didn't get my lot of the complete series with boxes, but the collector sheets were included.

Series 29 is the third orange-branded series after Series 4 and 15. I'd still like to see the second red or black series, a darker blue series, or a true solid purple for the classic branding-purple that's not done by cosmic galaxy patterning. 

I picked the bags at random and played the "identify by touch" game as I opened each bag without looking at the pieces first. Since I'm no longer able to do this to find the figures for purchase, I get to uphold the old skill and tradition once I have them!

Order of reviews is the order I opened them in. One minifigure ended up in the same numerical position as on the collector sheet!

Marine Biologist

Diving has been done in the Minifigures line before with Series 1's Deep Sea Diver and Series 8's vintage Diver, while a Marine Biologist very similar to this one (a woman with a wetsuit, goggles, and sea creature) was released a few years ago in Series 20.

Despite the name, concept, elements, and gender of this Series 29 figure all seeming repetitive, she does contribute two important things: a new dual-molded piece depicting loose hair with snorkel goggles (the first time diving goggles haven't been a visor clip-on for a bike helmet piece) and a clownfish! 

Here's the hair/goggles piece.

The wetsuit's pink coloring is actually metallic, while the Biologist has two smiling faces, one with her mouth closed and the other more excited.

The Series 20 Biologist had curvature printed on her wetsuit, which can be seen as realistic reflection of the skintight garment, but this minifigure does what has become more common in minifigure design and is printed neutrally without gendered contour. It's become increasingly the case that any torso LEGO can make neutral and more useful for variable characters, they will, and feminine torsos are usually less breasty in their print design than in decades past, likely to avoid accusations of stereotype and objectification. True body neutrality and equality would be to not erase women's figures because that can come across as treating adult contours as inherently sexual or inappropriate, but when paired with the goal to make minifigure parts more versatile, downplaying contour designs can address two issues at once.

The flippers are dark blue, and I'm not sure they've been in this color before--definitely not yet in my personal collection, though.

The fish is a small piece that has no stud connections, mounting on a LEGO bar instead, here done with a clear 1x1 "stamp" piece on a pearl translucent pink frond presumably imitating an anemone the clownfish would live in. 

Another stamp piece is used to mount the Biologist on her base, with the bar going through the hole in one of her flippers, which cannot connect to the top side of studs.

I discussed this last year, but this is an imperfect solution to mounting a flippered minifigure on studs, since the figure lifts the stamp off the base when trying to separate it, and the stamp and flipper are not the easiest to separate. My personal best solution was to use a piece with studs on the side to plug into the holes on the back of the minifigure legs, though this wouldn't work well with the standard minifigure stand.

The Marine Biologist also has a notepad sketching the fish reading "106". I'm not sure what the number means here, or if this is written with an underwater pen or is a piece that would be kept up on the boat.

When I was three years old, I'd have cherished this minifigure above many others because that was my peak marine biology obsession time and I loved divers and all sea creatures. I still do love ocean creatures and even went to the aquarium for the first time in years this past birthday, but my fascination is now more on the animals, and clownfish are less important to me than they used to be. If this minifigure had included the "sea creature pack" of animal parts seen in some recent aquatic sets (which features an octopus!) or was more differentiated from the Series 20 minifigure, I'd be a bigger fan.

Mysterious Rōnin

This nameless figure is based on a lonely Japanese warrior, a samurai with no master...

...and yeah, it's totally obvious this "mystery man" is Lloyd from LEGO Ninjago. The blonde hair, green costume, plus the green minifigure eyes Lloyd has had since the LEGO Ninjago Movie redesign, are dead giveaways. 

Left: a pre-movie Lloyd (Target minifigure pack exclusive depicting him in the "DX" robes he never wore while the robes were featured originally due to not being part of the ninja then)
Center: One of Lloyd's movie minifigures debuting his new look (casual clothes edition)
Right: Totally unknown dude; don't even know why he's in this picture

This Series 29 minifigure is not lore-accurate to any part of Ninjago existing story material; he's not being used to adapt a moment the Ninjago toys haven't touched on yet. This is apparently a new hypothetical imagining of Lloyd in some future where he might be the only ninja left. Not much is really known about this AU take on Lloyd. He's just here in a cool new look, mixing moody ragged black with dark green and brown leather.

The hood/mask/hair is all one piece, dual-molded to make the colors clean. Painting the hair would make it look washed-out and darker like on hoodie Lloyd up there, but this is the shade of blond he's meant to have. (Why blond, exactly? Ninjago is fantasy Japan, right? This isn't dyed.)

Around his neck, he has a single pauldron with a katana sheath on the back. The katana only slides this far down, with the hilt stopping on the pauldron.

Lloyd's face is aged a bit with some cheekbone lines, and he has a happier and sterner determined expression as options. 

Lloyd is the son of Lord Garmadon, the first villain of Ninjago (get it? Lord Garmadon, Lloyd Garmadon?) and enters the show as a child, but then gets magically aged up to join the other ninja, who are somewhere under thirty. The Mysterious Rōnin would thus be the second time Lloyd has been aged up, though he may not be considered a canonical minifigure. 

The print detail is extensive.

The Rōnin carries a golden katana and a pair of golden shuriken, though it's not clear if these are the famed Elemental Weapons from the first arc of the franchise. The Katana of Fire did eventually get replaced with a unique mold, but that mold presumably no longer exists. The shuriken could be the Shuriken of Ice, since there was never a different mold for them. Lloyd doesn't wield fire, ice, earth, water, or lightning, so what he'd be doing with the elemental weapons is unclear.

When Lloyd takes the katana, he has no place to store unused shuriken.

The katana is the original mold dating back decades, and the shuriken are the same as their 2011 debut in the first wave of Ninjago sets. They're made of soft plastic and come packaged on a sprue as a pair. 

I feel like this is the kind of minifigure LEGO usually puts in as an exclusive selling point for a new DK visual dictionary--here's the new book on Ninjago with an exclusive Lloyd that wouldn't make sense to release anywhere else! I think this figure feels a bit out of place for a standard Minifigures series as such, but it is Ninjago's fifteenth anniversary this year, and he's well made.

Boba Cup Fan

We do get one mascot-suit figure in this series, but it's an object costume, which I accept much more easily than animal suits that can't be used as real animal humanoids. I like her look and energy. I've never had boba myself, though.

The boba cup suit is dual-molded in clear magenta for the body and glittery pearl translucent pink for the lid. Unfortunately, the minifigure's dual head print is not at all hidden by the translucent plastic, which is a glaring oversight.

I thought LEGO had gotten better about covering alternate faces for minifigures, for a long time now, but this is shocking. If she'd only had her sunglasses face, there'd be no loss in my book and the costume wouldn't cause any issues.

Speaking of faces, though--the sunglasses look gives her an attitude I love. The other side is cheerful but not as interesting to me.

The only print on this minifigure is the head and the boba suit.

Her accessory is a basic, if not super common, pair of pink LEGO cherries.

LEGO used to have a mold in the 2010s of a 1x1 dome-topped cup with a straw which was used for Squishees in The Simpsons sets, and was used one time for pink boba as an accessory for Shark Army General #1 in the LEGO Ninjago Movie Minifigures series. 

It's a shame LEGO let the mold vanish and didn't have it for use today, but if you have the piece from 2017, it's the perfect accessory for this minifigure.

Maybe I should like this minifigure less for being basic and having an exposed second face, but there's a vibe to her I just enjoy.

Chocolatier

This is a fun concept that required no new molds--just some nice printing and clever parts and recolors. Here we see a chocolate artist working on a dragon sculpture!

The chocolatier wears an askew chew's toque with sculpted hair in a center-part and pun. 

This debuted on the Series 17 Gourmet Chef, but I never got her, so this is my first time with the piece. The hair and hat are separate plastic colors, and the hair is a new yellow-ochre color introduced recently which is currently only in use for minifigure hair. Shame--it could do so much more.

The Chocolatier has a fitting chocolate-colored apron over a white shirt and her hands are white to depict gloves. Her legs are dark tan trousers but the only printing is the apron detail. I remember when working Minifigures had legible names on nametags as references to LEGO designers. I miss that.

The second face really makes this Minifigure. She has her gaze focused and her tongue sticking out. Is she locking in on precision when making her chocolate sculpture...or is she about to devour it?

To work on her masterpiece, the Chocolatier has a very simple build depicting a piping bag with chocolate squeezing out. 

The shaping is great, but it's not easy to make it look like she's using it in a plausible way given the size and shape of the piece and the minifig articulation.

On a little two-piece pedestal build, likely intended to be a swivel wheel to work on, is the chocolate sculpture. The dragon is a recent mold introduced in the D&D license, here cast in unprinted reddish brown to look like chocolate.

This one charmed me more than I expected. Great choice of mold for the chocolate sculpture, clever builds to set the scene, and a fantastic second expression.

Unicorn Elf

This is the third regal high-fantasy elf in the Minifigures line. The first came in Series 3 with the wildly popular blond Elf. 

He happened to carry quite a bit of similarity to Lord of the Rings character Legolas, and the Series 3 figure preceded LEGO's first collaboration with that license, so he flew off the shelves. I wish I hadn't given my copy up! This Elf's hairpiece recurred for the Werewolf in Series 4, and DC Comics' Beast Boy in 2015.

While Series 9 featured a Forest Maiden figure who looked fairly akin to the Elf, she was not described as an elf and her hair did not feature molded elf ears like his, so whether she's an elf or not is unclear. 

Her heraldry doesn't match the Elf, and her hair was actually designed for Princess Leia's Endor celebration minifigure in the Ewok Village set that released after Series 9, so it's ambiguous. This minifigure has also gotten comparisons to figures like Pixar's Merida or Robin Hood's Maid Marian. If this figure were getting a fully bespoke hairpiece for only her own use, would it have had elf ears?

Series 17 featured the second obvious fantasy elf in the Minifigures line with the Elf Maiden. She has a new hairpiece with ears (unseen since, I believe) and is elegant but also battle-ready.

Series 20 featured the Forest Elf, but he's not of the same ilk as the more Tolkienesque characters before him, instead being more of a whimsical pastoral fantasy character as would be seen in a vintage kid's book about fairies. He would later get a counterpart in the Mushroom Sprite from Series 25.

The Series 29 Unicorn Elf is neither well-fit into the more warlike high-fantasy elves nor the more childlike pastoral fairies, instead fitting a bit more into the magical/princess side of things with a regal look on par with the Elf and Elf Maiden, but no battle paraphernalia and the ever-popular unicorn companion. I suppose she could loosely be compared to Galadriel, though she's much softer and more typical of children's fantasy.

The hairpiece with tiara is a bit of a surprise. This sculpt was debuted for the first minifigure of DC Comics' Wonder Woman in 2012, but neither Wonder Woman nor this mold have been seen in LEGO output since 2020. The elf's hair is an unearthly pearl gold, not blonde or ochre.

The very first LEGO Wonder Woman from 2012 on the left.

Does this re-emergence mean LEGO is going to put more energy into DC sets beyond just Batman (which, granted, has also gotten pretty sluggish)? Is another Wonder Woman minifigure on the horizon?

Because this is Wonder Woman's hair, no elf ears poke out of it.

The face is double-sided, with one alert face with a smile and a serene close-eyed face which also adds a silver accent to the forehead, as if jewelry dangling from the diadem. 

I kind of wish this detail was on both sides. Maybe it's meant to be magic instead?

I love that the Unicorn Elf's dress is a soft green color with silver accents. It feels very springtime and it's beautiful. She wears a pendant styled after a unicorn horn in a manner I hope is artificial and reverent, because otherwise I'd be quite scared for her companion! 

The dress is printed on the back too.

The elf has a very basic clear goblet as an accessory.

The unicorn foal is a recent mold, with the horn being a plug-in part with a hair-accessory pin size. The foal is three studs long. The mane and tail are a different plastic color and match the elf's hair.

I like this minifigure. I don't have much personal use for regal elvish minifigures, but I do love them even if I don't do much with them.

Trash Monster

This minifigure is total garbage.

;)

This was my immediate go-to of the series! Disgusting yet cute and perfectly cartooned, and an unconventional yet undeniable addition to LEGO's spooky canon! This is the minifigure who ended up in the same spot as the collector sheet through random opening--he's officially the sixth character and I got him opened sixth!

I'm glad to see another use of the drippy mask piece, and while I'd still like a pink semi-translucent blob alien, this garbage glop is fun too. This solid lime color is the second color casting of this mask, after two characters (the alien Slime Singer and Dreamzzz's Z-Blob) have used it in translucent Bright Green.

The Slime Singer uses the mask translucency for dimension but has a face printed on the mask, while Z-Blob's face of eyes is printed inside the slime by being on the head under the unprinted mask.

This mask would be ideal for a minifigure version of DC's villain Clayface, but LEGO just hasn't done it yet. We've gotten brick-built Clayfaces, and the Arkham Asylum set released last year featured references to Clayface but no minifigure. When's it happening???

The mask has an accessory pinhole on top.

The unicorn horn actually looks like an ice cream cone or cotton candy stick. You could use this mask with a beige horn inserted for a goopy candy monster too!

I love the face print with the heavy brow, gloppy drip mouth and green tongue, and the yellow sunken eyes and the centipede serving as the other eyebrow are perfect. The back of the mask is not printed.

The slime glop continues down his torso and arms as if the mass around the head is dripping down. Flies and other bugs dot the goop, as well as a couple of worms and a mushroom slice. The fly wings being metallic silver is a nice touch. The layer under the lime drip is disgusting olive green and brown, and some more detritus is depicted in the body. The hands are brown and the lower legs are very sludgy. There's no evidence of this creature bursting from a black trash bag. That could have been fun. I like the balance of flat, simple prints and extensive detail around the body.

Now why am I so positive this is a spooky-themed character fit for the Halloweem crowd? Well, under his glop mask, he adds a rotten jack-o'-lantern head print to LEGO's minifig pumpkin catalogue! 

He absolutely counts as spooky, and adds to both the monster collection and minifig pumpkin collection! I think this might also be the first minifigure design who wears a bespoke pumpkin head. There are other pumpkin-head minifigures, but not with pumpkin heads or helmets unique to them, and there are other unique pumpkin minifig-head prints, but they aren't used as minifigure body parts, being accessories or decoration instead. If you give the Trash Monster any other head under the mask (no one will know!), he could hold the rotten pumpkin as an accessory instead, though that dilutes the fascinating idea of him being some Halloween spirit born from a rotten jack-o'-lantern and embodying himself with the trash he was thrown into.

The pumpkin itself has a cheery noseless face with triangle eyes and two pumpkin teeth. A grey worm is coming out of the left eye socket, and a grey mold patch hangs above the right. 

The pumpkin is detailed on the back, too, with more mold and a hole with the other end of the worm, but this is not an alternate expression since that wouldn't get much use with the slime mask hiding it.

The Trash Monster has fun accessories--a tile printed as a ruined pizza box and a new mold depicting the archetypal cartoon fish skeleton. 

The pizza box looks good, but misses an opportunity for graphic design continuity--it's not designed to look like a spoiled copy of the pizza box from Series 12's Pizza Delivery Guy.

LEGO has called back to the Series 12 minifigure and built a consistent Minifigures pizza brand with the Series 19 Pizza Costume Guy.

I'm not sure why they didn't do that again with the Trash Monster.

The fish skeleton is closely based upon the classic LEGO fish mold which has existed...wait, only since 2009; really? I could have sworn this design dated back to the eighties, or was older than me at the least. It's so ubiquitous and looks so old-fashioned next to the newest LEGO animals. Maybe growing up with it always there, as I entered LEGO at that period, made me feel it had a much longer history. Huh. Well, the skeleton is based on that mold!

I'm honestly surprised a skeleton variant took so long now that we actually have it. The skeleton fish has ribs cut out and the eye sockets are bored into a hollow straight through the fish. The eye hole is not a LEGO System connection for accessory pins or LEGO bars.

I hope this new mold doesn't fall into obscurity. Could be great as dressing for trash receptacles in City-themed sets, or as ornamentation in a ghosts ship, or undead creatures in a haunted lake setting! Or if there are future cat-costume minifigures, it could be a good accessory. The one in Series 28 just missed out, while there was one in Series 18 that could enjoy this mold too.

The monster also comes with two 1x1 clear round tiles printed with flies on them. 

One is a spare/extra, but it makes sense to use both for such a filthy creature! You're suggested to stick one on the end of the fish skeleton (the fish lips are a hollow stud), which doesn't look very natural to me.

I think it would have been fun if a minifig-costume trash can could have been developed for the figure to wear, like the flowerpot piece from Series 18:

I do see the shape of a trash can being hard to capture as a minifigure suit with the right proportions, especially with the arms and mask getting in the way. Maybe this guy lives in a brick-built dumpster instead. I made him one!

The dumpster closes while he's in it and it rolls. I'd love to have a modular city street again to put this behind one of the buildings, but it might be too large for that, or for my modified 10228 Haunted House scene. Maybe this just goes on my shelf as its own little model.

Here's a couple more staged pictures.

The Fly Monster was in a bad scene in his native Series 14, what with a spider-obsessed vampire and a plant monster occupying the roster alongside him. I think he may have found his soulmate now, though!

I love this minifigure. I shouldn't, realistically, because yuck...but he's awesome.

Robot T. rex

I never got Series 24's T. rex costume, the first of a series of dinosaur costumes which followed with Series 25's triceratops and Series 27's pterodactyl. Well, I guess I got my T. rex after all, as this figure is basically a recolor...but far more interesting. He's an oddball for sure, but this is a genuine robot T.rex, not a mascot suit! Works for me!

I think this is based on some real modernistic RC robot dinosaur toys. The T. rex humanoid robot is white with black and silver futuristic details, and his print is extensive. His mask repurposes the face opening with a unique minifigure head depicting the interior of the dinosaur's mouth. The head is dual-sided and depicts an open and closed version of the same throat aperture as if to show the dino roaring and ready to eat or more relaxed.

The open-aperture side makes more sense to me since the jaw is always going to be open, but it's a nice head print that could be useful for other contexts.

Masks for faces which are open to printed minifigure heads for mouths have been done before. The first was LEGO Atlantis's Hammerhead Warriors. Their heads are translucent red and mostly mouth, but they also have hidden eyes to let them be used as standalone creature heads.

Then, The LEGO Batman Movie's Orca repurposed the Minifigures Series 15 shark mascot suit and filled the face gap with a minifigure head printed like a tongue, throat, and uvula.

I have both of these shark suits, but Orca's head is in a monster flower right now and their official promo images illustrate things just fine.

The detail here is great. I love the glowing LED effect in the chest and the transition between the torso spine and tail.

The sides of the limbs are detailed well too.

The dino has some symbols similar to those seen on the Series 24 Robot Warrior and the Series 27 Nurse Android.

The T. rex's accessory is a simple printed 1x1 round brick and silver stud piece to depict a battery, adding to the toylike aspect of the character.

Where would I use this? I don't know. But he's great!

Monster Hunter

Called it. And I hardly had to wait, either! I guessed here last October that a monster-hunter CMF who could slot into the team of old LEGO Monster Fighters would be coming sometime, and here we have it. This monster hunter is steampunk enough to be mistaken for the S27 Steampunk Inventor's counterpart, but her look is definitely adjacent to Monster Fighters rather than more familiar preexisting fictional monster hunters in mainstream media. 

The Steampunk Inventor.

The Series 29 minifigure doesn't explicitly reference Monster Fighters the way I wanted, and she also doesn't introduce a garlic bulb sculpt, instead just having the poster and a new weapon. 

The hat/hair sculpt doesn't debut here, but it looks good, like the 2004 "Van Helsing" design, and I like the dark red hair color.

Her face features the same strapped eyepiece on her left on both sides, and both faces look confident, while one side is more enthused.

The costume looks great, with a dark orange longcoat enhanced by a cloth skirt piece to extend the coat around her hips. She has a ruffled shirt underneath, armor strapped over her left shoulder, vials strapped onto her right arm, a spiked knee or thigh pad, dark brown boots done with the aid of dual-molding, and dark brown gloves. The original Monster Fighters were well-detailed, but didn't get the opportunity to be this lavish.

The accessories are a new weapon and a bounty poster. The poster is a 2x3 tile printed with the recognizable face of the vampire from last year's Haunted Mansion set as the target. 

This makes a lot of sense, because this figure is a legacy of Monster Fighters in the same way the 2025 set was. All of the monsters in that set have Monster Fighters predecessors, while the vampire is directly based on the first LEGO vampire woman, who debuted in that theme, and the sand green Victorian mansion design of the model, and the ghost-train alternate build, are both references to sets from that theme. While it would have been cool to see the Monster Hunter associated explicitly with the original Monster Fighters theme, I understand why she's lumped into a mini-universe of products paying tribute to the original instead. It interacts more with what's been recently released and rewards current kids who have the Creator set but not the 2012 theme. 

The vampire in the poster has cheekbones the minifigure version does not.

The Monster Hunter's new weapon is a gun with a blade attachment that could reductively be called a bayonet. It looks more like a full knife. 

She can only hold the piece by the hilt/stock grip, since the barrel is not a traditional LEGO bar and isn't meant to be clipped onto. It stresses the hand clip if you try to push it in. This is a pretty awkward weapon as such, and she looks far better holding it like a sword because it doesn't look right as a gun. A LEGO candle flame inserts into the barrel to simulate it firing. I appreciate wacky steampunk weaponry in tone with old Monster Fighters, but I feel like this mold could be more versatile or feel a bit more LEGO-like.

Here she is compared to the original Monster Fighters.

Left to right: Dr. Rodney Rathbone, Major Quinton Steele, Frank Rock, Ann Lee, Jack McHammer, and the Monster Hunter.

She definitely fits in, seeming similar to Major Quinton Steele and his eyepiece. The eyepieces are not the exact same design, but they're clearly meant to be compared. 

I'd worried the Monster Hunter looked too young or friendly, but her vibe in person feels series enough to join this team. She could also be from the succeeding generation or Monster Fighters legacy, like she's Steele's daughter. That interpretation would be strengthened if the eyepiece totally matched his, like it was an heirloom she now wears in his stead. With Steele, it's implied the eyepiece might be replacing an eye he lost, putting him in line with scarred Ann Lee and bionic prosthetic users Rodney Rathbone and Jack McHammer, but maybe Steele had two intact eyes, and maybe this figure does too. It's up to you.

While I could add this minifigure to my Monster Fighters display as a bonus non-canon character in the way I've done for a few other horror figures, the wanted poster makes it very clear this figure should be added to the Creator Haunted Mansion playset instead. Her world is one which inherits from the original Monster Fighters theme, and her vampire nemesis is the 2025 figure, not the 2012 ones.

The Monster Hunter might as well take on all of the 2025 set's monsters as her own rogues gallery.

I like this minifigure a lot. Her new weapon is awkward and not the best possible accessory in my mind, but her look is strong and builds out the 2025 tribute to Monster Fighters in a way I'd personally wanted.

Another haunted house set is allegedly in the pipeline for this year, which is very exciting news to me. If it's larger and more substantial than the Creator set, I might move everybody over into that house. I hope it includes some good new monster figures, but I'm sure I'll end up with it and review it, whatever it happens to be.

Cute Witch

All witches are valid, but I'm not sure this minifigure is really for me. She's definitely not spooky.

This is a cute, soft, cozy magical witch, but isn't very much of my aesthetic. I know this style has a lot of appeal. I've even heard this Minifigure associated with popular transfemme aesthetics, and that's really fun. There's just something not clicking her for my own tastes. The hat and hair are a new mold, and at this point I'm wondering why LEGO is molding quite so many witch hat/hair combos. There's a sizable handful of witch hat/hair pieces that already existed before this minifigure, and I'm really not sure LEGO is holding back their new molds as much as they used to or should. I love new pieces and they make customization more useful, but sometimes it seems like we're getting granular new options in a field that's well-covered, and that might take away from the feeling of creativity in reusing existing parts sculpts. I don't see how this minifigure needed this sculpt when some of the molds from the franchise that shan't be named, or the intended-for-VIDIYO/Dani Dennison witch hat, exist already.

I'm not sure the hair color or shape flatter the face of this witch, or vice-versa. More dramatic makeup would be fun to push a mystical ethereal look, but she's meant to be a cute witch, so she ends up more simply friendly. I'm not in love with either facial expression. 

The face of the Plushie Collector I didn't care for might actually flatter this design more in my view. The swap suits both figures:

The Cute Witch's original head has grown on me, though. Her outfit is sweet, and the cat socks are a nice touch. She has a basic pink wand as an accessory, and something newer would have been fun.

The cat is a new sitting mold. While his chest is printed quite bushy, the physique looks quite lean, and I'd expect this in Siamese patterning more than the colors he has.

Maybe this is where the Trash Monster got his accessory!

The Cute Witch is fine, and her not being spooky is fine, but my personal vision for a sweet fantasy witch would be a little different.

Soccer Goalkeeper

In lieu of animal costumes, least appeal falls to the sports! I don't follow soccer/football at all, and this seems to be part of LEGO's recent push to license extremely dubiously with FIFA and popular footballers and cash in on World Cup fever. Not for me. 

While the goalie is more printed than the Boba Cup Fan, he feels just about as basic in his impact. The uniform colors aren't attractive to me, though the hair and face prints are fine.

The ball is a mold which sits on a single stud, and it has an accessory pinhole for some reason.

Maybe this is because the mold can be also used as a minifigure head, and somebody is going to use this as a head with an accessory in the future? A basketball counterpart to this mold was used as a head, for a recent Nike set with a basketball-headed minifigure! I actually really like this guy.

This is the only way I found entertainment with the goalie:

Bionicle Cosplayer

Instantly projected to be the hardest figure to get after early buyers and scalpers hit the scene...I'm unbothered. I understand BIONICLE was a huge phenomenon, but it sailed past me entirely. I don't like the look of the figures, and the strange sci-fi mystical worldbuilding narrative focus of the line with all of its Polynesian loanwords for its terminology feels more like a work to study through textbooks than something that can be understood with casual entry. For sure, the right time to have entered BIONICLE has passed me. I've maybe become less of a geek with time, as I no longer have the interest to invest in heavy worldbuilding franchises like Star Wars or Middle-earth. Middle school would have been the right time for me to have latched onto BIONICLE, but those years for me were past the original run of the toys. I did try some of the rebooted line and briefly fixated on its toys, but never while diving into the "G1" narrative", and both the reboot and my interest were short-lived.

For what it's worth, this is a great little design of a minifigure playing the iconic fire-themed Toa warrior character Tahu and his first release. The cosplayer even includes a replica of the iconic canister packaging Tahu came in.

The minifigure has a unique Tahu mask as a new mold, which is open on the back since BIONICLE masks are only stuck onto connectors with no back sides. The minifigure is wearing a grey balaclava and a pink banadanna on his forehead, which fills the mask's eye sockets. Seeing the band on the exposed back of the head doesn't allow you to play this as the real Tahu in minifig form.

Here's the face.

The body and arms feature clever printing to evoke the distinct parts that built the BIONICLE figure, which was considered part of LEGO Technic at the time. Buildable figures like these share a lot of Technic compatibility and DNA, but later into the line, and successor lines, dropped the Technic branding.

The front and back of the torso depict a Technic gear (back) and stopper (front) in light grey, with the Technic axle being rotated out of an upright plus shape. The gear was linked to Tahu's shoulders and allowed the right arm with the flame blade to move when the gear turned. 

While Tahu's blade and arm were one and the same, the cosplayer carries the blade as a costume prop, with a standard flame in a red lightsaber hilt. His canister is built like the Robot T. rex's battery, but with different colors and a unique set 8534-Tahu print.

I think LEGO could have made two characters insanely valuable if the Tahu canister was included with a more subdued LEGO City civilian type, because I know people would go nuts trying to get any figure with this canister accessory even if it wasn't the Tahu cosplayer himself. It's a great little piece for the minifigure world.

I think this is a well-done tribute to something that doesn't personally resonate.

Tuba Player

This is a fun piece, adding a new minifigure instrument mold and potentially setting up a marching-band collection. Certainly, getting multiples of this figure for the uniform would be great, though the head and instrument are pretty specific.

The Tuba Player wears a classic band uniform in white, red, gold, and black, and it includes the expected shako hat and epaulettes. His face is sweating (marching in uniform on a hot day with a heavy instrument will do that) and he's printed to look like he's blowing the tuba.

The Tuba Player is the only Series 29 figure with no print on the back of his head, because it would be hidden even less than the Boba Cup Fan's. Three minifigures, including the Tuba Player, don't have alternate expressions, but the other two, the Trash Monster and the BIONICLE Cosplayer, use print on the back of the head for additional detail.

The tuba itself feels a bit odd. It looks proper, and can pose properly, but something about the style looks a bit unfinished and a bit un-LEGO.

This is a cute minifigure, but not super special to me.

That's Minifigures Series 29! It's a pretty good batch, and exactly what I needed after Series 28's onslaught of inverse appeal. 

Here's the spare parts from this series.

You get a spare stamp from the Biologist, and a spare sprue of two shuriken from Lloyd (I tore one off each sprue for his held set). The Boba Cup Fan has a spare cherry pair, and the Chocolatier has a spare tea saucer (used in the pedestal), a spare angled-bar stud (from the piping bag) and a second wand from the sprue that gave her the "squirting chocolate" wand piece. The Unicorn Elf had two spare horns, and the Trash Monster has a spare fly tile (only one is treated as canon). The Robot T. rex has a spare silver stud and the Monster Hunter has a spare flame. The Cute Witch has a spare wand, while the Tahu cosplayer had a spare hilt and two spare studs from the top of his canister. The Tuba Player had spare epaulettes. Only the Goalkeeper had no parts small enough for spares to be included.

Here's my ranking of favorite to least--left to-right, row-by-row.

The Trash Monster is one of those minifigures that becomes a favorite for me from the first second. I see it. There was never a question of anybody else taking it. I put the Monster Hunter next because she's part of my beloved LEGO horror canon and she's executed pretty well. The Robot T. rex impressed me enough to be third, while the Unicorn Elf landed in fourth. On the bottom, the Soccer Goalkeeper is bland to me, and the Tuba and Marine Biologist before him also don't bring the oomph for me. The Cute Witch ended up above Tahu but below the Boba Cup Fan, maybe unjustly, but I like the Boba Cup Fan's energy. The Chocolatier charmed me enough to end up above Lloyd.

I'm glad I didn't have to wait until 2027 for a fulfilling series of Minifigures to approach. I wonder if LEGO has anything special to commemorate the big 3-0 coming next year. Series 10 had the Mr. Gold fiasco. Series 20 had a new brick costume color with a commemorative printed tile--not that special. It would be fun to see the thirtieth series lean into the milestone aspect.

I expect I'll be back on the LEGO topic this fall as Build-a-Minifigure introduces new Halloween specimens and that rumored haunted house set drops. I look forward to it!