The Brick Connection – A novice Lego fan explores the great brick world of LEGO

It’s finally here! The last day of March. Good riddance to such a long and dreadful month. And hello to the beautiful, springy, sunshiny, joyful month of April!

Speaking of joy, LEGO made an announcement this week that will certainly bring joy to all the Disney fans out there (which I assume is everyone.)

When I started thinking about this week’s blog on Tuesday I thought I had a good topic all figured out…and then I saw this on Facebook:

And now I don’t want to talk about anything but this.

This is the next series in LEGO’s Minifigures theme, which began in 2010. There have been 19 previous collections. The Disney Series will be the second time that the Minifigures theme has used a licensed franchise, after having made two different series based on The Simpsons.

The Disney Series includes classic Disney characters like Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Donald and Daisy Duck. It also includes characters from classic films like Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Sleeping Beauty. Then there are the characters from the Disney films that I grew up with like The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Lilo & Stitch. And Disney’s collaboration with Pixar is represented as well with characters from Toy Story and The Incredibles.  

From Left to Right, Back Row: Syndrome, Ariel, Aladdin, Captain Hook, Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck, Maleficent. Front Row: Stitch, Ursula, Alice, Cheshire Cat, Peter Pan, Mr. Incredible, Buzz Lightyear, Alien (from Toy Story), Genie

My favorite Disney movies are Aladdin and The Lion King. The Lion King is not represented here (though a Rafiki minifigure holding up a baby Simba would be pretty sweet), but for Aladdin you can get Aladdin himself with the magic lamp and Genie, with a lamp of his own. 

How they did Genie’s bottom half is pretty cool, but I don’t like how the top of his head doesn’t blend naturally with the rest of his head. The designers I suppose wanted him to have a regular minifigure head, but then also wanted to give him his big ears and hair, so they made the hair and ears a separate piece that attaches to the head. They might have been better off just making a custom head like they did with Mickey Mouse and a few other of the Disney minifigures because it looks weird.

Looking at the minifigure-ized versions of all the iconic characters compared to their animated counterparts I would say my favorites are Stitch, Syndrome (from The Incredibles), the Alien from Toy Story, Captain Hook, and Maleficent.

Maleficent is definitely the best one though. The headpiece looks awesome and fits seamlessly on her normal minifigure head. And the cape/cloak looks really neat and matches nicely with the printing on her body. Plus she gets a cool staff.

Check out the minifigure version compared to the film version. Pretty accurate!

I was a little surprised that LEGO hadn’t done Disney minifigures like this before, so I did some research.

Winnie the Pooh, a franchise that Disney owns the licensed rights to, was LEGO’s first licensed collaboration with Disney and one of LEGO’s first licensed themes ever. In 1999 it was the first licensed subtheme for DUPLO (another LEGO theme I need to research more).

In 2000 there was the short-lived Mickey Mouse theme and Baby Mickey subtheme. For that there were Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto minifigures, but they were not comparable to regular LEGO minifigures like the new ones are.

In 2010 there was Cars DUPLO and the short-lived Toy Story and Prince of Persia themes. The Cars minifigures weren’t really minifigures because they were cars. The Toy Story theme produced many minifigures and DUPLO figures, including Alien and Buzz Lightyear, but they are different than these new minifigs. For one, Buzz actually has a normal LEGO head underneath his space helmet this time, unlike the old one you can see below on the left.

In 2011 the Pirates of the Caribbean theme was introduced (the franchise is owned by Disney) with normal minifigure versions of the characters.

It wasn’t until 2012 that the animated movies Disney is famous for first appeared in LEGO form with the Disney Princesses DUPLO subtheme. So far the theme has included sets and characters from Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Tangled, Brave, and Frozen.

There were no regular minifigures made for this theme. Only DUPLO figures and mini-dolls. Here is Ariel in DUPLO figure and mini-doll form next to her new minifigure form (on the right).

It’s kind of shocking that LEGO took so long to make products based on these films, but then again they only just recently began marketing to girls. Although I think it’s important to note that boys can also enjoy these Disney-themed sets.

Clearly LEGO should have started “marketing to girls” a long time ago because as discussed in a previous blog post, it was a set from this theme, Elsa’s Sparkling Ice Castle that was LEGO’s top-selling product in 2015.

As for the rest of LEGO’s collaboration with Disney, there are just the two little franchises of Marvel and Star Wars.

2012 is when the Marvel Super Heroes theme began. (Marvel has been a subsidiary of Disney since 2009.) LEGO has been working with Star Wars since 1999, but it was at the very end of 2012 that Lucasfilm was acquired by Disney, making all future collaborations with the Star Wars franchise, a LEGO/Disney collaboration.

Both of those themes have their characters depicted in normal LEGO minifigure form. 

So that means LEGO made normal minifigures for almost every licensed theme except the animated Disney classics. This Minifigures collection really is the first time that these particular Disney characters are getting the full LEGO treatment. Better late than never I guess. 

Here’s hoping they have more Disney Series for the Minifigures Theme in the future. (I am now counting on a Rafiki minifig being made.)

And those are my thoughts on the new Minifigures Disney Series. I think I will actually buy a couple. The packs will be released in May and sold for $3.99 each. As usual, the LEGO packaging people are buttheads and don’t let you see which minifigure is in each pack, but I think at least some of these characters will be easy to figure out by feeling them.

Which minifigure are you excited to get your hands on? Can you believe LEGO had not minifigure-ized these characters before?

Enjoy the start of the best month of the year! Stay alert for any pranks tomorrow. Don’t want to look like a fool!

Until next time…..check out the 2nd LEGO Batman Movie teaser trailer!! (This movie looks really good!)

*Compliments, general feedback, and constructive criticism are welcome. Any haters that are gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate can go step on some Lego with their bare feet.*