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Collectible Monster Minifigures


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The fourteenth series of Collectible Minifigures have been unveiled on LEGO's Facebook page, which includes ures and Bios for all sixteen characters. They range from the Zombie Cheerleader to the Fly Monster to the reclusive Square Foot Sasquatch. The Series 14 Collectible Minifigures will be out in September 2015, with plenty of time to get your favorites before Halloween!

 

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So why are we having so many collectible minifigures and so few collectible masks?

Steam Name: Toa Hahli Mahri. Xbox Live Gamertag: Makuta. Minecraft Username: ThePoohster.

Wants: 2003 Jaller (from Jaller and Gukko), Exo-Toa, Turaga Nuju, Turaga Vakama, Shadow Kraata, Axonn, Brutaka, Vezon & Fenrakk, Nocturn, ORANGE FIKOU.

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So why are we having so many collectible minifigures and so few collectible masks?

Sigh... here we go again.

 

Minifigures, unlike masks, are FUN. You can pose a minifigure, and play with them. They're compatible with a wide variety of Lego themes. And they appeal to all sorts of people—even people who don't otherwise buy Lego at all!

 

Mask packs are just a delivery system for interchangable pieces of plastic. They offer zero play value on their own, and only marginally more play value combined with a Bionicle figure. A complete collection is exponentially more impractical (36 or more masks, many of which are identical in either color or shape, compared to a modest 16 minifigures that are all totally unique). And they have zero appeal to anyone except Bionicle fans.

Edited by Lyichir
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Formerly Lyichir: Rachira of Influence

Aanchir's and Meiko's brother

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And they appeal to all sorts of people—even people who don't otherwise buy Lego at all!

 

Can confirm. My sister doesn't buy Lego but as soon as she saw the Minotaur figure from way back when she went out and bought it.

 

I've seen a lot of accounts of that online. The Minifigures are a great "gateway drug" for new or relapsed fans. Their diversity (including a number of different professions, hobbies, and other subject matter) makes appeal to a wide audience, and their low price and self-contained play value gives them an extremely low barrier to entry. Also, while many buyers might stop at the one minifigure or only collect other individual figs, in a lot of cases they might be just the ticket to get those buyers interested in larger building sets again.

Formerly Lyichir: Rachira of Influence

Aanchir's and Meiko's brother

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I always found the minfigures kind of boring, because they took away from the "I'm playing with this model" feeling. Now it's a story...and I'm no longer the star, even though I built it. Plus they feel like lame one-dimensional archetypes.

 

It's okay for a story proper, because I "build" the characters too in my mind, but for a Lego play experience I tend to find it kind of sucks. Constraction makes me feel more involved in building the character, so I feel like it's mine - the minifigures don't offer as much of that, so I start to wonder what the point of them is after awhile.

 

But that's just me. I'm weird.   

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I always found the minfigures kind of boring, because they took away from the "I'm playing with this model" feeling. Now it's a story...and I'm no longer the star, even though I built it. Plus they feel like lame one-dimensional archetypes.

 

It's okay for a story proper, because I "build" the characters too in my mind, but for a Lego play experience I tend to find it kind of sucks. Constraction makes me feel more involved in building the character, so I feel like it's mine - the minifigures don't offer as much of that, so I start to wonder what the point of them is after awhile.

 

But that's just me. I'm weird.

Actually, your experience seems similar to one of the observations that led Lego to introduce the mini-doll. They found that on average, girls tended to have more difficulty visualizing themselves as the blocky minifigure characters than boys, which was one of the driving reasons for introducing the more natural-looking mini-doll. It seems you took things in a much different direction by moving to constraction, which makes me wonder how many other girls out there might think similarly—it's possible that the idea of a girls' constraction/buildable doll theme might be more practical than I'd even considered.

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Formerly Lyichir: Rachira of Influence

Aanchir's and Meiko's brother

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I always found the minfigures kind of boring, because they took away from the "I'm playing with this model" feeling. Now it's a story...and I'm no longer the star, even though I built it. Plus they feel like lame one-dimensional archetypes.

 

It's okay for a story proper, because I "build" the characters too in my mind, but for a Lego play experience I tend to find it kind of sucks. Constraction makes me feel more involved in building the character, so I feel like it's mine - the minifigures don't offer as much of that, so I start to wonder what the point of them is after awhile.

 

But that's just me. I'm weird.

Actually, your experience seems similar to one of the observations that led Lego to introduce the mini-doll. They found that on average, girls tended to have more difficulty visualizing themselves as the blocky minifigure characters than boys, which was one of the driving reasons for introducing the more natural-looking mini-doll. It seems you took things in a much different direction by moving to constraction, which makes me wonder how many other girls out there might think similarly—it's possible that the idea of a girls' constraction/buildable doll theme might be more practical than I'd even considered.

 

I don't think it was the minifigure design, per se - because the mini-dolls don't cure the weird feeling. It's kind of hard to describe. The point of a constraction set is to build a character. The point of the Tahu set was to build Tahu. So the result of my effort is...Tahu. Hi buddy.

 

When I got the Lego Elves set a few months later, the point of the set was to build a boat. But while I assembled all of the minidoll characters and put them in a boat, I felt that they were "stealing my effort" so to speak, since I built the boat...so it should be my boat, not these characters' boat. I built the thing, right? And it wasn't my characters either much - it was the Lego Elves' characters, not mine. And while I did technically assemble the dolls, it just wasn't involved enough. It was the same deal with my collection of actual minifigures - it seems to be a function of building effort, rather than dolls vs. figs.

 

Another factor may be that in a set that contains an object such as a bike, boat, structure etc, I tend to focus on the bike or boat. For example, in the Speeda Demon set I focused in hugely on that bike, and kinda ignored Speeda except to criticize him. I'm just used to interacting with objects as objects, and putting a character between me and that object always feels strange to me.  

Edited by fishers64
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I always found the minfigures kind of boring, because they took away from the "I'm playing with this model" feeling. Now it's a story...and I'm no longer the star, even though I built it. Plus they feel like lame one-dimensional archetypes.

 

It's okay for a story proper, because I "build" the characters too in my mind, but for a Lego play experience I tend to find it kind of sucks. Constraction makes me feel more involved in building the character, so I feel like it's mine - the minifigures don't offer as much of that, so I start to wonder what the point of them is after awhile.

 

But that's just me. I'm weird.

Actually, your experience seems similar to one of the observations that led Lego to introduce the mini-doll. They found that on average, girls tended to have more difficulty visualizing themselves as the blocky minifigure characters than boys, which was one of the driving reasons for introducing the more natural-looking mini-doll. It seems you took things in a much different direction by moving to constraction, which makes me wonder how many other girls out there might think similarly—it's possible that the idea of a girls' constraction/buildable doll theme might be more practical than I'd even considered.

 

I don't think it was the minifigure design, per se - because the mini-dolls don't cure the weird feeling. It's kind of hard to describe. The point of a constraction set is to build a character. The point of the Tahu set was to build Tahu. So the result of my effort is...Tahu. Hi buddy.

 

When I got the Lego Elves set a few months later, the point of the set was to build a boat. But while I assembled all of the minidoll characters and put them in a boat, I felt that they were "stealing my effort" so to speak, since I built the boat...so it should be my boat, not these characters' boat. I built the thing, right? And it wasn't my characters either much - it was the Lego Elves' characters, not mine. And while I did technically assemble the dolls, it just wasn't involved enough. It was the same deal with my collection of actual minifigures - it seems to be a function of building effort, rather than dolls vs. figs.

 

Another factor may be that in a set that contains an object such as a bike, boat, structure etc, I tend to focus on the bike or boat. For example, in the Speeda Demon set I focused in hugely on that bike, and kinda ignored Speeda except to criticize him. I'm just used to interacting with objects as objects, and putting a character between me and that object always feels strange to me.

 

I'm not saying it was the minifigure design in your case—I'm just observing that it's a different response to a problem that, on the surface of it, seems similar. In other words, while the mini-doll design works better than minifigures for a lot of girls, there might also be a lot of girls like yourself who would prefer Constraction figures, for the same reasons as you do. I dunno. Just a thought. :notsure:

Edited by Lyichir
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Formerly Lyichir: Rachira of Influence

Aanchir's and Meiko's brother

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I'm not saying it was the minifigure design in your case—I'm just observing that it's a different response to a problem that, on the surface of it, seems similar. In other words, while the mini-doll design works better than minifigures for a lot of girls, there might also be a lot of girls like yourself who would prefer Constraction figures, for the same reasons as you do. I dunno. Just a thought. :notsure:

I don't think it's quite so similar. I thought the problem with the minifigs versus dolls was that the figs didn't look human enough, or "enough like me". For a lot of girls relate-ability is huge - witness the super-popularity of dolls that look human appealing to girls, versus the vast armies of strange-looking male action figures. I know this. 

 

I see what you're arguing through - you're arguing that I can't see the mini-dolls or figures as a representation of me, therefore...but then going to constraction would make even less sense, since Tahu looks even less like me than Naida does. Yarr? My mind doesn't identify with plastic Lego characters. I view them as friends (where do you think they got that name from? :P) who are very different. (Or enemies, in the case of my evil boat-stealing Elves. :lol:)

 

It seems to be the opposite - I'm viewing the characters as competition for what I built, and they inevitably lose and get kicked to the bottom of the Lego drawer, because I am the evil master fishers, destroyer of lame characters and all who threaten to steal my bikes, boats, and towers.

 

I doubt most girls think anywhere close to that. Somebody is buying all of those Lego Friends sets.  

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