Saturday, January 7, 2012

Dissecting The New Lego Friends Minifigure

We've seen the preview images of the new Lego minifigure shape for new Lego Friends line. It's a taller custom mold that, at a glance, doesn't fit in our familiar Lego universe. But is that the truth? Will any manly men bear to wander down the girl aisle of their toy store and actually purchase a set to see for themselves?

Well I decided to sacrifice myself for all of those who are too beef to take the plunge*. Click through the jump for a full dissection of the new minifigure, and the answer to the three-week old question... DOES THE HAIR FIT ON A REGULAR MINIFIGURE???


*I am not a manly man.
*I bought these for my 4 year old daughter.
*I then stole them from my 4 year old daughter.



Onto the dissection!

The hands match the minifigure hands, but the neck is not even close to the regular Lego neck. It is a standard Lego shape though (similar to lightsabe handles, tools, and other items that standard minifigures can hold).



And the torso to waist area features a piece that doesn't match anything I'm familiar with. If they could have made her a teeny tiny sliver wider, it could have been compatible with a 1x1 Lego brick top.. but any wider would be totally unrealistic. 


The feet aren't squared off, but they do fit on standard 1x1's.



The head is close... real close, but there is a pointed chin coming out of he bottom, and a little slant to the cheeks. The top matches perfectly though and you can place a standard 1x1 on top. WILL THE HAIR BE COMPATIBLE??? IT'S GETTING CLOSE...





YES IT DOES FIT!!! Well, the Friends hair fits a minifigure pretty well, and a minifigure hair/helmet will just about fit the Friends head. The razor sharp chin can cause some issues (watch your eyes kids).









Now that we have our answer, here are pictures of all (?) of the Friends sets. There are a ton at all of the price points. You can start planning your purchases right now.

And if the manly men are still with us, and can make it to the very end... I have one special image for you.

















That's all of them. Oh wait.. here's Batman riding a motorcycle, chasing Bane riding a drill!!!

7 comments:

  1. Holy crap they've made a lot of them! I think that dwarfs the Star Wars line for 2012.

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  2. I still don't like the way these are being marketed, but as I helped my niece put a set together last night, I had to admit, the design of the figures is pretty nice. While I don't want to see the standard minifig go away, I actually think they could have made a male figure too, and then offered them as an alternative and been fairly effective.

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  3. I haven't seen any of the marketing for these. Just a few pictures online and the actual product in stores. How are they marketing them?

    As for updating the old minifigure... if there was a 2.0 I would think it would just have a few tiny tweaks to the hands and feet. Soften up the straight lines and hard edges. And add tight, but bendable knees. The height needs to be consistent with doors and other relative pieces.

    I wonder if an updated minifigure would happen before a full conversion to skin tone. I'm really surprised the yellow skin is still a part of the non licensed lines.

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  4. I like the head shape - it has a lot of potential for licensing etc - although of course once that genie is fully out of the bottle, is it still Lego? You move too far from the original minifig and you lose that iconic brand.

    That said I wish Lego would team up with a company like Blizzard. Can you imagine if they could print any of the various armour sets and you could order your Warcraft character in Lego form. Or your Skyrim character, or anything. Do this please, Lego. I need craven idols of my virtual selves.

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  5. Such a good idea, and not too difficult to implement. Have you ever looked at places like BrickForge? I've never ordered from them, but there are some awesome custom parts available for pretty cheap.

    I was also thinking that if Lego took the Skylanders approach for their video games. Instead of just getting every character or costume in the world, you had to buy the minifigure in a store, and they would have a special base to connect to your console. With the success of those games and the demographic, it would have to be huge.

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  6. I've ordered way too much from Brickforge--they do a fantastic job.

    Nice review, I was actually wondering about the Friends hairpieces fitting a standard minifig. So that's good. I guess. If I want to go there.

    I don't think these are offensive, I just hope it wasn't something that takes them off course too far and then falls apart, IE Galidor from a few years back. Kids who want LEGO want LEGO, not...something else.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Quinn. And Galidor... wow. I totally forgot about that. Lego has kind of tinkered with the large scale, action figure style for a few years now (Bionicle, Ben10, HeroFactory, DC) but those were nothing like that at all. So realistic and just plain weird.

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