A LEGO Horror Chronicle: 2026 Catch-Up!

Last year, I did a marathon series documenting LEGO's original horror ventures in figure-scale sets, plus a couple of licensed ones that caught my eye outside the LEGO Horror Chronicle series. Since it wasn't feasible to update those posts and expect them to be revisited, I thought I'd check in each year after to see what was added to the topic, and republish some content that applied if featured earlier in the year.

Recap

The first major addition to the spooky canon was licensed, but in territory I discussed outside the original blog series--a second The Nightmare Before Christmas set, featuring a minidoll playset for Sally that can display as a flowerpot table decoration. This was announced soon enough after my look at the minifigure LEGO IDEAS set for the film last November that I added this reveal to the end of that post.

I like the Sally minidoll and the recast jack-o'-lantern mask piece in the dark orange shade (the first time it's been in a different color since its 2015 debut), but I didn't seek out this set. I might get it someday, but for the purposes of this post, it didn't need reviewing, especially since I didn't include the first set for this license in the LEGO Horror Chronicle series. There's also been a couple more Wednesday sets, but that's also outside this scope.

The next major thing was an entrant into both the Minifigures-horror and minifigure-pumpkins categories I highlighted last year: the Series 29 Trash Monster. Review reprinted here, without retaken photos. All is what I published earlier:

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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 Halloween 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 only the dorsal and tail fins, 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 ghost 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.

***

Series 29 had a second horror character too--the Monster Hunter. Review reprinted:

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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 serious 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.

***

Series 29's Cute Witch minifigure isn't a third horror character in the collection, so her review is not being reprinted here. Too sweet to count!

Now I enter the territory of new reviews.

Set 40883-- Halloween Skull Candle

This is a diversion from the typical mission of the LEGO Horror Chronicle, with this not being part of the minifigure sphere of models, but I just thought it was neat. This is a new-for-2026 display model depicting the now-common image of a candle lit atop and dripping down a skull, spruced up with a spilled green bottle and some spiders.

All assembled, it's pretty nice. The skull looks a bit like it's floating since it's not on a fully-white column of bricks, but the modeling for the skull itself at this scale is impressive. The incomplete rings around the eye sockets give it a somewhat unhappy and pitiful look. Maybe the candle wax is too hot.

One sticker is used to put a tiny label on the bottle. 

The glowing eyes inside the sockets can be made with one of two pairs of round tiles--the translucent bright green you see here, or a glow-in-the-dark-white pair. I chose the one that pops most in the light, since the only glowing color is the eyes if you choose that option. 

I've almost never wanted non-minifigure LEGO Halloween sets, but this might be the most I've ever been impressed by such a model.

The Dia de Muertos altar set that was sold out and unavailable last year when I wanted it is still in production and back in stock, and I might seek it out if later October debuts new festive Build-a-Minifigure designs for the holiday. Not Halloween, but I did discuss that sphere of LEGO last year.

Set 11383-- Mayor Manor

The next big news relevant to this chronicle was the announcement of the "Midnight Valley" collection, which is essentially a new Halloween counterpart to the long-running Winter Village, a collection which releases one seasonal minifigure-scale Christmas village or fantasy North Pole-themed set per year. An annual spooky set was a blessing to me. The first set is fairly lowkey without specific Halloween monsters or iconography. It's called the Mayor Manor and includes nonspecifically-spooky people as its minifigure cast.

Now, Mayor Manor didn't totally light my world on fire, but I was on board anyway. I liked the twisted decayed architecture and the novel approach to spooky figures. The set doesn't tie into any prior LEGO sets or characters.

The figures in the set are all inhabitants of the house. We get the Mayor herself, and her two staff--her butler and maid.

All three characters in the set are nonspecifically-spooky human or humanlike characters, which is a departure from the identifiable monster archetypes in previous horror sets. These might be more on the vague wavelength of the Addams clan. All three have pale white skin and their heads are cast in glow plastic for more spooky vibes. 

The butler is the first figure built, and charms me immediately by serving a teapot on his tray, in my favorite LEGO color of Sand Green (no teacups are provided in the set, though there is a glass which might be tea). The butler did present a point of concern. Several new LEGO minifigure head molds, including the current mold for the standard shape, have been under scrutiny by fans and consumers for feeling a bit too tight on some copies, and showing visible stress marks or forming cracks when pushed onto the torso for significant time. The butler's head felt pretty tight and actually snapped down onto the bottom of the torso neck post, and being aware of concerns of stress, I chose to lightly sand the neck post of the torso so the head pushed down smoothly with no sticking points. The fit felt dodgy, and in this scenario, it was either let the minifigure damage itself grievously, or let me lightly damage the minifigure in a place nobody would see to ensure the pieces wouldn't be under undue stress. I hope these issues get corrected quickly, as multiple minifigure parts being damaged in pretty new condition in 2026 have been reported. The next two figures' heads pushed on nicely and didn't drive me to sand their necks.

The Mayor is the second figure built. She's an older woman with a braided high bun hairdo. I associate this shaping with Black hairstyles, so the Mayor could be intended to be a Black woman, though her pale glowing skin could be read as contradictory. All unlicensed minifigures, Black-coded or not, use the same yellow color, but this white is inherently paler than the universal yellow as part of the spooky vibe. 

I like the Mayor's face print, and the olive lip color works well. Her costume style and domestic staff feel very old-fashioned, from an era where authority was more aristocratic than bureaucratic, but she avoids being definitively characterized as a vampire. I like her cane with the purple gemstone.

A recent technique that's cropped up for figures with the static skirt-legs piece is a brick-built bracket assembly with a slope matching the minifig skirt so the figure's torso can be put on top of the skirt bracket and it can hang over the edge of chairs to allow the robed minifigure to display while sitting, without swapping into standard minifigure legs. The Mayor is given such a bracket assembly to let her sit down in her armchair. The "seated legs" build is four pieces.

Back in the day, minifigures with dresses had to swap out into standard legs for sets or scenarios where they needed to sit down--thus why, in the first LEGO horror theme, a certain Lady wearing the same color skirt as the Mayor had a skirted edition and a legged edition in different sets.

The Studios Lady on the right (skirt edition). The alternate minifig-leg version of the character has the amusing fan name of "Lady with Legs"!

There are no stickers in Mayor Manor; everything is printed. Even if there were, though, the bowed tile for the Mayor's alternate seated build would still be printed, since these bow pieces have been in other sets which use this "seated dress module" technique. I like that--LEGO clearly refuses to let minifigure decoration be assigned to stickers which could be damaged or degraded or lost. Printing the faux-leg seated-dress bows keeps the characters consistent.

This kind of solution could have helped out the 2025 vampire minifigure so she could sit and play the organ in her haunted mansion, seeing as she was the most likely monster in the cast to be doing so...but the default mansion build left no room in front of the organ seat for a sitting-dress build to be put on it, so it wouldn't have helped.

My only gripe with the Mayor's seated leg build is that the model doesn't provide any discreet storage for whichever lower body she's not using.

After the Mayor but before the last minifigure, the set gives us the cat, who's maybe my favorite LEGO cat ever. 

It's a recolor and reprint of the longhair fluffy cat mold introduced in Minifigures Series 27, cast in the newer yellow ochre color (which remains exclusive to hair and fur) and printed with grumpy eyebrows suiting the spooky attitude of the set. I just love this kitty and his coloring and face. He's not the classic black cat as seen paired with a couple of witches, but he's absolutely in-tone.

The last figure is the maid, who has absolutely none of the dour attitude of the others in the household, including the cat! The maid is as pale and glowy as the mayor and butler, but she's youthful and looks entirely friendly and sweet and has pink lips. She uses a newer skirt element for her maid's uniform, which is nice to have, and carries a simple duster assembly of two parts. 

All three minifigures have alternate faces. The Mayor switches from stern to smiling, while the butler gets nervous and the maid continues to be chipper. The Mayor can be positive or negative, the butler can be only negative, and the maid can be only positive.

All three have back torso printing.

The butler in this set is LEGO's second horror-butler minifigure, and their second non-licensed horror butler out of the three they've made total. The third is Wednesday Lurch, a licensed minidoll figure. Out of the three spooky LEGO butlers, Mayor Manor's is the only one not tied to the Addams Family character, as the first LEGO horror butler, from Monster Fighters, was a clear unlicensed riff on Lurch.

Monster/Zombie Butler from Monster Fighters on the left. His original tray was the same color, but I've swapped the unstable 2x2 round plate piece he was given for the shield solution the Mayor Manor butler uses.

I don't know why the butler has an anxious expression, but maybe the Mayor isn't the easiest person to work for.

Or maybe she's right to be stern because he's about to cost her her tea.

All three of the Mayor Manor figures are good, but the butler's look, teapot, and facial expressions might make him the most endearing to me. 

Here's a look at the full model.

There's been some contention about Mayor Manor not really meeting the brief as far as debuting a Halloween counterpart to the Winter Village series, as the model feels pretty tonally restrained, and neither especially autumnal nor Halloweeny. The foliage in the set is unambiguously cool-toned rather than warm, and the characters aren't anywhere in the sphere of "monster mash" or "trick or treat", so people have been disgruntled with a perceived failure to capitalize on the festive purposes of the set. I...kind of agree. At least as far as the foliage. That needed to be warmer. I also think there may have been a missed opportunity to have a minifigure from outside this household who could give a broader picture of what the Midnight Valley community is. Is this a place where normal humans wander in by accident? Do familiar monsters live here? Is it just a society of pale humans/humanoids who like things decrepit? Honestly, for how little the archetype matters to me as a minifig collector, including a human trick-or-treater to visit this house of actual supernatural people would have been a very smart choice. As it stands, we have to wait for the next annual sets to learn more confidently what the world of Midnight Valley is...and to possibly get more quintessential Halloween vibes. I do hope Midnight Valley feels more cohesive than anthological--each set being a totally different Halloween aesthetic or approach could make the collection feel unworthy of sharing a label. Like, if the next set is a suburban human trick-or-treating house populated fully by yellow lively minifigures, and the third set is a vivid purple and green castle with goofy Frankensteins and mummies and vampires, then there's no throughline and the sets don't need to be branded together. I hope there's enough flexibility that the sets can have more color palettes and spooky character-type variance, though. It's a tricky balance.

I do appreciate that the set has a clear vision and identity, even if it may be a little off-target for a Halloween theme. Mayor Manor looks like its own house, and neither the model nor minifigures are retreading or homaging the horror heyday of LEGO's 2010s. The 2025 mansion was a blatant nostalgia piece which is worth less to people who didn't miss the LEGO horror golden age it mimics. 

The Monster Fighters Haunted House.

The Creator Haunted Mansion, mimicking both Monster Fighters and its preceding Minifigures designs.

Mayor Manor stands on its own direction and is worth collecting for fans of LEGO horror regardless of what they already have.

Mayor Manor is a grey and tan house with, admittedly, a familiar black roof silhouette for many LEGO spooky buildings, including the aforementioned mansions, the fairground haunted house ride, and even things like the 2013 Arkham Asylum or the Nevermore Academy dorm room. The walls of the house are distinct, though, and the set has a central design gimmick--the tree on the right side (front view) is deeply ingrown and is actively splitting the house apart, splintering the rightmost wing and crumbling the walls. It's not immediately obvious at a glance how much this tree is interfering with the integrity of the house, but it's impossible not to see how thoroughly this visual gag is implemented as you build.

The work done to make the build seamless in the right spots, and sturdy in its disjointed damaged appearance, is remarkable. 

I love the branches snaking through under the second-floor window and tilting it to the side.

The roof is small, and the whole house is pretty cozy, but I like this model more than the 2025 mansion's default build because it has a more detailed design and avoids feeling cramped and unfit for its purpose. A gargoyle, a favorite new mold debuted in 2024, and which I first experienced last year, trims the top, and one of the pillars framing the window on the tree side is built to look broken.

Do you see a face here? I do!

The ground floor has some pretty stained-glass windows achieved by plugging 1x1 tiles into a lattice door insert.

Built into the foundation base of the tree side, and totally covered up by the flooring, is a 1x1 printed round tile depicting an acorn. There is no squirrel in this set and there's no easy way to uncover the acorn once the flooring is on, but it's a nice detail just for the builder. Right about now, I hear a lot of falling acorns at night when my window is open, and I've even seen some dumb squirrels leaving them in planters around. 

The front steps of the house are crumbling and the nicely-built doors swing inward.

The back of the house is open and not very deep inside, but it's better than the haunted house from last year. The back view makes it clear how the ingrown tree has shifted the wing of the house out of alignment, flexing it inward, and cracks are built into the floor as well as some roots. The footprint of the house tapers upward, with the second floor being shallower. This could be to let more light into the ground floor, but could also be a budget restriction.

The window wall that's askew and misaligned with the wall below and the roof is held in place by two Technic pins connected to holes on an angle. One of the bricks with holes is hidden in the grandfather clock. There's no mechanical animation feature like the simple pendulum knob in the 2025 mansion's clock.

The roof center has room for only a hanging bat.

The house is missing several fixtures, but it's comfortable enough. The ground floor has the living room and fireplace, a spooky suit of armor (a faceless minifigure) and a small sitting area with two chairs and a table.

The armchair is intended for the Mayor, and is situated on a rug with a single stud to secure the chair. It's right in front of a fireplace, and a candle atop has melted and dripped onto the floor. A glass cup of something orange is placed on a table beside the chair. I like to think it's autumn cider, but it could feasibly be tea from the butler's pot as well, seeing as it's the only drinking vessel provided that the pot could be paired with.

Above the fireplace is a printed portrait of the Mayor, built onto tiles to form a frame, which is something I haven't seen from LEGO before. In the portrait, the Mayor seems to be dressed in more ceremonial attire than the minifigure wears, as the portrait shows golden jewelry on her hair bun and torso. She carries a key in the painting.

This key can be found under a removable panel in the floorboards, where a rat and a wedge of cheese are also hidden.

Perhaps this is a ceremonial "key to the Valley" that the Mayor would present to honorees of the community. There's nothing in the house it's designed to interact with.

The foundation of the house isn't tall/deep enough for this floor compartment to hold the Mayor's lower bodies--not even the sitting build disassembled. There are two places they can go which are imperfect but relatively inobtrusive. When sitting, the Mayor's standing legs can be put on top of the table by her armchair, while the sitting legs can be put under the ceiling of the "attic" where they kind of look like a banner.

I didn't have the drive to mod the house one brick taller on the foundations, but it's something to consider.

The sitting area is okay. I like the portrait of the kitty in a top hat and clothes, but the chairs don't have studs and the tabletop is too low by default for a minifigure's seated legs to fit under the tile. I also would have preferred a studded tabletop to secure items on top, but the 3x3 tile mold doesn't have a studded version.

The chairs are also attached by "invisible" stands built under them, which I don't love stylistically. And the maid can't use this as a servants' table on account of her skirt keeping her from sitting.

Up on the second floor is a bookshelf, the balcony window (which doesn't open) and a desk and chest of drawers. Swords are placed on the walls framing the balcony window.

There are no hidden secrets on this floor, but the builds look nice. 

My wishes for the new fish skeleton to be associated with a cat were swiftly granted, as one is placed on the floor up here for the grumpy kitty to have eaten.

The desk is under a wall hanging of an architectural sketch of the Manor's better days, while a candle and inkwell sit on the desk and the paper on top of the pile shows a potion. A spilled silver goblet is attached under the desk, with a green 1x1 tile representing the liquid.

The maid's not doing her job...unless the job description in Midnight Valley is to make the house messier! 

The clock is a simple build that looks good, and the chest beside it features a candelabra the minifigures can carry.

If you take the flames out, then the maid can stage a particular movie reference...

Stay close to the candles. The staircase...can be treacherous. [stairs not included]

It would have been nice if this set was larger, of course. The lack of stairs, a bedroom, and a kitchen stand out. I do still enjoy the model for what it is.

Here's the table and chair replacements I implemented.

The spooky LEGO news after the Mayor Manor's reveal was the announcement that an IDEAS project based on the Universal Monsters had passed review and will be made into a set! I asked for a minifigure-based Universal Monsters license last year! The set is going to be revealed/released next year at the earliest, with the final design and minifig cast not yet known. We don't know if all of the monsters will be included, but I'm incredibly excited that we'll finally get any minifigures of the Universal crew--and this is our chance to get the Bride of Frankenstein at last, an icon LEGO probably has never made before because Universal locked down her likeness and they couldn't get away with an original homage to it. LEGO hasn't done horror versions of the Phantom of the Opera or the Invisible Man either, but those are two I, unfortunately, think the LEGO set might exclude. Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Gill-Man, and the Bride of Frankenstein are the most I'm holding out hope for, and I hope we get the Sesame Street or Hocus Pocus treatment where the IDEAS set is allowed to have multiple brand-new molds...rather than the Nightmare Before Christmas treatment, where IDEAS limitations made the theme the worst possible vehicle for translating the licensed character designs. 

With the Universal model most likely to follow the submission and present a Gothic castle with a laboratory so Drac and Frankenstein have their places, that could force Midnight Valley set #2 to be neither of those locales. LEGO wouldn't want a sense of redundancy where one product could cancel out the sales of the other that's simultaneously available. As such, I wonder what the next set's theme could be. A carnival? A school? Both were done in Hidden Side. Maybe something in the shopping district of town, like a costume or candy shop, or a witch's apothecary if not a witch's residential house instead. A spooky farm is something LEGO's never done, so a barn-and-cornfield party scene could be really fun. And you can never go wrong with a graveyard.

Then we had to see what trio of spooky minifigures was headed to the LEGO Store this year.

Build-a-Minifigure

I don't know if I like this group of characters more than 2025's trio, but they're still nice, and I appreciate that LEGO aren't repeating character types in consecutive years.

Turns out, we did get a Frankenstein monster like I guessed, but very oddly, without the head extension piece that made its return last year after a decade of dormancy. This Monster is the first rendition of this archetype with a normal hairpiece that doesn't change the shape of the standard minifigure head.

The hair mold here is a tight curl predominantly intended for Black wearers, so that could be carried over to this Monster's portrayal. He's the same Sand Green as the majority of LEGO Frankenmonsters, but I appreciate his unique head print with bolts on his face--the first LEGO monster minifig with head bolts since the first LEGO monster in this archetype. His lightning accessory is also welcome. I feel like I haven't seen that piece in a while. I like the unique costume coloring with the dark blue shirt layer that looks to be full of tiny holes, and the candy corn in his breast pocket is a cute touch. The dual-molded black boot legs with dark grey pants could be highly sought-after for their versatility.

None of these three minifigures have second faces, but all have back torso printing.

Here's the updated group of monsters in order.

Left to right: LEGO Studios, Minifigures Series 4, Monster Fighters Crazy Scientist's Monster and butler, 2025 Creator Haunted Mansion, and Build-a-Minifigure 2026.

The 2026 figure stands apart better than the 2025 figure, but I'd welcome more monster skintones and different color castings of the bespoke head extension introduced by the Series 4 figure.

Here's what the 2026 figure looks like with the 2025 head extension. I like this combo more than the 2025 design, too.

I wouldn't say the 2025 figure was made for the normal hair, though.

It seems that LEGO must always depict at least one Halloween costume in their annual trios, so this group has a werewolf suit. 2025 was ambiguous about whether its little witch was a trick-or-treater or genuinely supernatural, but 2026, lucky for me, has only one clear human in its trio.

This reuses the mask sculpt from the wolf costume in Minifigures Series 23, and the lady inside looks cheerful. The torso features print of hoodie-style pockets stuffed with candy. The back has buttons printed on it.

I forgot to assign her an accessory when building my box of minifigures at the store, but she's meant to have a generic black modern spider. I'd have liked if she included the bushy animal tail in brown, which would be useful to amass for the real LEGO werewolves of this fur color. The Series 4 and Monster Fighters minifigures haven't had the luxury of tails.

The third minifigure looked like a vampire at first glance with the blurry first images, but she turned out to be a zombie once seen in hi-res...and she's the first LEGO zombie in the original grey-skinned red-eyed minifigure design template since 2015! 

This style of LEGO zombie started with the first LEGO zombie in 2010's Minifigures Series 1, and the Monster Fighters theme and the LEGO Store employee exclusive minifigures followed this template even as they took on slightly different styles. Minifigures Series 14 in 2015, and the concurrent Zombie Skateboarder minifigure redesign of the Series 1 Skater followed the Series 1 zombie design more closely...and that was the last we saw of it. The only unlicensed zombie minifigure between 2015 and 2025 was the VIDIYO Zombie Dancer...until now. The 2026 zombie woman returns to the familiar minifig zombie aesthetic after a long lapse. I like it.

The 2026 zombie is very simple. She's the third female LEGO zombie in this style, and the third with dark tan hair depicting a moldy off-blonde tone. All three zombie ladies have the same hair color, and all three are the only figures to wear these hair molds in this color. I'm sure there have been a few totally normal living LEGO ladies with this dark tan hair color, but these pieces use it exclusively for zombie decay.

Family reunion?

The 2026 woman uses a different hair sculpt from the previous female zombies. Her printed torso and blank dress legs depict a tattered dark red cardigan and a matching skirt over a pink shirt (over a light tan shirt!), and she carries a lantern I declined to give her for my copy--I grabbed a fire axe, a piece I didn't have, instead, for someone else to use. This zombie isn't a bad fit for the 2025 Mansion set thanks to feeling related to the aesthetic of Monster Fighters in the same way that set is, but she's closer to the Minifigures-series zombies artistically. Maybe she could even be the belated counterpart to the Series 1 minifigure! The 2026 Frankenmonster is redundant with the 2025 Mansion set's cast and might be better off living in Midnight Valley.

The new zombie and her dark red outfit and blank skirt are somewhat evocative of the Studios Lady, but there aren't any concrete similarities that would form a decent argument they're meant to be the same person. If this was the Studios Lady in undead form, that would be a wicked Easter egg, but I can't call that intentional.

Here's the back print.

To give the zombie a little more character, I swapped one of her hands for a dark brown "glove" and gave her a torch.

Here she is now with the Series 1 Zombie. He's somehow on a higher level than her, and I think LEGO could have put more printing budget into their 2026 spooky trio. 

With the similarities the 2026 zombie has to the Zombie Cheerleader, she could be interpreted as her mom. The Zombie Businessman is the father of the Cheerleader, so maybe the 2026 figure is his wife and the Series 1 Zombie has no connection? The fact that the Cheerleader has a "living" counterpart minifigure design complicates the question of how her whole family unit ended up undead, including her several-greats grandpa, the Zombie Pirate. Read my 2025 series if this confuses you.

None of the 2026 Build-a-Minifigure spooky trio feel like they could be placed into a Minifigures series as-is, though the Frankenmonster comes the closest with his production level. The zombie probably feels the least polished. The 2025 trio of mummy costume, witch maybe-costume, and ghost lady all felt near the level of a polished Minifigures design.

Because I got Mayor Manor, the skull candle, and the Build-a-Minifigure sets (plus a second round of non-spooky BAM figs and a keychain my mom picked out) all in one go, I more than qualified for...

2026 Early Spooky-Season Gift With Purchase: Set 40900-- Spooky Haunted Tree

I planned my Halloween trip timing around being able to get this purchase bonus. Mayor Manor alone qualified me for the set, so I knew not to go out before this promotion was active.

The box art depicts the 2025 Haunted Mansion in the background, which is still on shelves and which shares the Creator theme branding. The 2025 Mansion is just below the price threshold to earn this freebie set, though, and Mayor Manor is the more timely release that can earn this set. Mayor Manor is part of the LEGO Icons theme, not Creator.

This set with its light feature follows 2025's Luminous Ghost model, also a gift-with-purchase, and releases alongside the "available for all, whenever" Halloween Pumpkin Lantern set this year. The Pumpkin Lantern features the second appearance of the ghost minifigure design debuted in the 2025 mansion. I liked the Luminous Ghost last year, but never got it. I like the Spooky Haunted Tree even more.

The tree is a squat fellow with spare autumn coloring on its mostly-dead branches, and has a spooky face of semicircular eyes and a "cutout" smiling mouth in its trunk. The mouth is filled with pearlescent bricks which will distribute the red light from the light brick inside. The eyes are flat white, not glow-in-the-dark white.

In the branches is a fairly massive built grey bird. If this is a full-size tree, then the bird could only be considered part of the roc family. It's bigger than minifigures, while the tree itself is quite respectable for minifig-scale otherwise. 

The top middle branch is static, while the two where the bird is perched are on click hinges and can move up and down. I know these hinge parts have been produced in black, so I wish they were here. I probably have the correct pieces in my collection to swap them out.

The tree's "arm" branches three have articulated "claws" at the ends, which can rotate while the claws hinge closed. The tree is more than capable of snatching up a minifigure.

Some days, you can't get anything done around the house. Like when your tree seizes your staff. Considering the other one is destroying her house, I can imagine the Mayor might like to learn something about the logging industry! Midnight Valley Sawmill, perhaps?

The back of the tree has two knobs.

The darker green asymmetrical knob turns a geared axle that both arms are linked to. When the knob turns, the arms windmill rotate at the "shoulder". The bent "elbows" are not articulated, and the arms are too long to spin 360 degrees continuously by turning the knob. They get stopped by the floor. Mounting the arms at different rotations on their cross axles makes them look more animated as they rotate at different angles.

The lime green ball on the back is the button for the red LED brick that illuminates the tree's mouth. This has to be held down to keep the light on, so I used tape for photos.

The seam between the two quarter-circle parts which form the top arc of the mouth isn't tight enough to keep light from coming through.

The tree set also has a small brick-built pumpkin, with only 1-stud-wide faces. It's not a bad build and has no jarring colors, but the silhouette is almost more like an apple.

I decided to overhaul the tree more to my tastes. I systematically replaced the grey and brown parts with the best solutions I had. While I'd been sure I had the click-hinge tube pieces in black, the pieces I have are actually the "socket" version of the mold, and all of my "plug" half click-hinge tube joint parts are the wrong color. I swapped the connection for a clip and bar instead. I also removed the tree's light feature. I built one brick's worth of height under the tree to make it taller so its arms could spin complete circles, and changed the eye color to the same tiles in the newest red-orange shade, filling the mouth cavity with the same color. Since I didn't have any attractive way to change the eye design to hollows, and black tiles were too hard to see, I decided to make the tree face entirely "glowing orange" with orange tiles for the eyes and orange plates filling the mouth cavity. One of the only two orange half-circle tiles I had was defective and had almost no clutch, so I had to dab some glue into the antistud to cure and tighten the connection before putting it on. I also swapped the oversize bird for a classic LEGO parrot in grey to transition the tree firmly into minifigure scale. I also changed the arm knob on the back to a symmetrical, easy-to-turn, and less visually jarring black gear.

This was true with the unaltered build, but rotating the eye tiles lends a lot of potential variety regarding the tree's facial expression and personality.

This makes me feel sad this set wasn't chosen to be an off-the-shelf release, because getting multiples and creating a variety of trees just by turning the eye tiles could be a really fun display option.

I really like this model, especially after modding.

My ensemble photoshoot with these models came before I modified the manor's table area and before I rebuilt the tree, so we're jumping back a bit for these.

Overall, I enjoy LEGO's 2026 spooks. Series 29 had a couple of awesome horror minifigures. Mayor Manor is an intriguing start to an annual theme that sounds like it could be a smash with the right balance of variety in characters and colors and aesthetics, so long as it's controlled and unified and the designs keep being good. I liked the moody, cozy tone of the set, perhaps capturing more of the chill of autumn than the cozy colors and warm foliage. That's still a valid seasonal atmosphere, and where I live, autumn has begun right on cue and has felt more like itself than it has in years. I can't expect that to be consistent, so I'll cherish the familiarity and the feeling of seasonal correctness while I can. Mayor Manor feels like the perfect set for a rare autumn atmosphere I recognize. It's also a better model and design to me than the 2025 Haunted Mansion set. That needed a lot of work to be worthwhile, and it's let down in all aspects by being derivative.

The spooky LEGO display models this year are also pretty good. The skull candle looks excellent and the spooky tree is really charming. Build-a-Minifigure is a bit weaker than last year, but still worth collecting. I look forward to seeing what 2027 will add to this creepy canon.