LEGO Collectable Minifigures Future Series Rumours

[Pop Star c o]

14 hours ago, Brick900 said:

What is your opinion on there being four less minifigures for the newer series?

Well, I have no problem if some of the series are just twelve or if most of them are but there are some themes that simply don't work with such a small number. I already felt it with the Space series but there's absolutely no way something like Spider-verse could work with just twelve minfigures. Also, if they were to make themes like Doctor Who or Fortnite in the future, they couldn't possibly do that with a dozen-figure roster.

[MAB]

3 hours ago, Karalora said:

Going from 16 figures per wave to 12 was a downgrade, to be sure. I think we've all more-or-less gotten used to it, but in conjunction with the increasing reliance on licensed waves and the price increases, it does seem like TLG is much less invested in giving us fans of "vanilla" CMFs a good collecting experience than they were when the concept launched.

The whole idea of CMF has changed massively from the early days. I was a regular collector up to about series 15, owning every character aside from Mr Gold. The early days seemed to be much more about the collecting aspect. I regularly used to buy CMFs and trade duplicare figures with other collectors, all trying to complete their series or army build specific characters. I imagine I did at least 400 trades worldwide from 2011-2018, arranged through brickset forums or swapfig and other similar routes. That aspect of collecting seems to be dead.

Now it is more that you buy a box, have three sets, and keep one and sell two. Or you buy a set from a seller doing that. Or you scan figures and aim to buy 12 (or army build). The concept of schoolyard style trading seems to have gone completely.  For me, the trading with others was just as much if not more of the fun of these compared to owning the lot. Now it is so simple to just buy the lot without the fun of the chase. There is no sense of achievement when you open the 12 you bought in a box of 36.

That was a big reason I stopped collecting them all, alongside introducing too many licensed series that I had no interest in. 

[zoth33]

14 hours ago, MAB said:

The whole idea of CMF has changed massively from the early days. I was a regular collector up to about series 15, owning every character aside from Mr Gold. The early days seemed to be much more about the collecting aspect. I regularly used to buy CMFs and trade duplicare figures with other collectors, all trying to complete their series or army build specific characters. I imagine I did at least 400 trades worldwide from 2011-2018, arranged through brickset forums or swapfig and other similar routes. That aspect of collecting seems to be dead.

Now it is more that you buy a box, have three sets, and keep one and sell two. Or you buy a set from a seller doing that. Or you scan figures and aim to buy 12 (or army build). The concept of schoolyard style trading seems to have gone completely.  For me, the trading with others was just as much if not more of the fun of these compared to owning the lot. Now it is so simple to just buy the lot without the fun of the chase. There is no sense of achievement when you open the 12 you bought in a box of 36.

That was a big reason I stopped collecting them all, alongside introducing too many licensed series that I had no interest in. 

There were plenty of army builders in the early days too.  Myself included many of the fantasy and castle figs were scarce even back then.  

[Karalora]

I didn't discover the CMFs until...series 3, I want to say (still pretty early in the game). I was never in it to collect everything, but to build a stock of interesting characters for the themes I was into and various specialty projects. I never traded any because I don't know any other AFOLs IRL. But even with that, the more recent waves have felt like more of a crapshoot as to whether it will be worth buying a handful of blind boxes to see if I get something I like. People scanning all the boxes (or before last year, feeling all the bags) to get the figure(s) they want, leaving less variety in what remains, only exacerbates the problem.

[MAB]

7 hours ago, zoth33 said:

There were plenty of army builders in the early days too.  Myself included many of the fantasy and castle figs were scarce even back then.  

Yeah, S2 Spartans were expensive from day 1 and quite hard to find in stores, same with S1 Zombie. The S3 elves were relatively easy to get and relatively cheap at the start, and I found similar with S6 Romans. There were plenty of people swapping elves and Romans. I used to trade 3 regular CMFs for 2 elves or Romans.

[Kit Figsto]

On 2/20/2025 at 2:54 AM, MAB said:

The whole idea of CMF has changed massively from the early days. I was a regular collector up to about series 15, owning every character aside from Mr Gold. The early days seemed to be much more about the collecting aspect. I regularly used to buy CMFs and trade duplicare figures with other collectors, all trying to complete their series or army build specific characters. I imagine I did at least 400 trades worldwide from 2011-2018, arranged through brickset forums or swapfig and other similar routes. That aspect of collecting seems to be dead.

Now it is more that you buy a box, have three sets, and keep one and sell two. Or you buy a set from a seller doing that. Or you scan figures and aim to buy 12 (or army build). The concept of schoolyard style trading seems to have gone completely.  For me, the trading with others was just as much if not more of the fun of these compared to owning the lot. Now it is so simple to just buy the lot without the fun of the chase. There is no sense of achievement when you open the 12 you bought in a box of 36.

That was a big reason I stopped collecting them all, alongside introducing too many licensed series that I had no interest in. 

I feel like part of this was the switch from bags to boxes.  Certainly not all, but it makes it way, way easier for someone to go and clean out the desirable ones from a store when it takes three minutes to scan an entire case of 36, whereas before it would probably take at least 15-20 minutes to feel through that, and that's someone who knows what they're doing.  I keep harping on the scalping of the Wolfpack figure this series (which I finally did find today!), and I think part of the issue this time around, compared to some of the other desirable ones from past series, is that people now have to spend way less time and effort to pull the desirable figures out of a box.  Someone who's goal is to scalp toys and resell them wasn't spending 20 minutes standing there feeling through a package.

I appreciate the environmental aspect, but I do miss the fun of feeling the bags, in addition to it seemingly help make CMF less of a "who can get to the store first before they sell out" race.  I wonder why they couldn't do a thicker paper - the magazine gifts do it.

Edited February 21 by Kit Figsto

[Black Falcon]

13 minutes ago, Kit Figsto said:

Someone who's goal is to scalp toys and resell them wasn't spending 20 minutes standing there feeling through a package.

They did that before, and they were standing there and feeling. But now it is just more easy and I think there are more people doing it and as they need less time they also just can scan more boxes than they were willing to feel before. I mean there are people scanning several displays some shops have on the shelves.

13 minutes ago, Kit Figsto said:

I appreciate the environmental aspect, but I do miss the fun of feeling the bags, in addition to it seemingly help make CMF less of a "who can get to the store first before they sell out" race.  I wonder why they couldn't do a thicker paper - the magazine gifts do it.

I think it was mentioned before somewhere that they tried it and it just didn´t work. I mean, replacing polybags and magazin sets is one thing, but I think because people are trying to feel what is inside, they would just not be durable enough.

[Lyichir]

1 hour ago, Black Falcon said:

They did that before, and they were standing there and feeling. But now it is just more easy and I think there are more people doing it and as they need less time they also just can scan more boxes than they were willing to feel before. I mean there are people scanning several displays some shops have on the shelves.

I think it was mentioned before somewhere that they tried it and it just didn´t work. I mean, replacing polybags and magazin sets is one thing, but I think because people are trying to feel what is inside, they would just not be durable enough.

Another aspect of making the sets easier to identify is unscrupulous people are less likely to just tear open a bunch of boxes to find the ones they want (which in the past would be way easier and less time-consuming than the feel method). So yes, scanning being easier may make it so that desirable figs get bought quicker, but from the retailer's perspective I'm sure they prefer those figs getting bought at all instead of valuable figs getting stolen and a bunch of opened, unsellable products being left in their wake.

[Kit Figsto]

27 minutes ago, Lyichir said:

Another aspect of making the sets easier to identify is unscrupulous people are less likely to just tear open a bunch of boxes to find the ones they want (which in the past would be way easier and less time-consuming than the feel method). So yes, scanning being easier may make it so that desirable figs get bought quicker, but from the retailer's perspective I'm sure they prefer those figs getting bought at all instead of valuable figs getting stolen and a bunch of opened, unsellable products being left in their wake.

While true, I feel like the flip side is that it was a lot harder to tear into the bags than it is these boxes.  You 100% needed either a knife or scissors to get into the bags, and I feel like that'd be more difficult for someone to subtly do that to just rip open a box and pocket the figure.  I'd be curious to see which has a higher rate of theft.  Personally, I don't really remember seeing bags torn into ever, and I think I've only seen a couple of the boxes ripped open in stores, which is fewer than I would've expected.

Either way, I doubt that they're ever going back to the bags, I'm just reminiscing...

[lifeinplastic]

At the Bentalls Centre in Kingston, the CMF boxes are secured by a removal tag on the shelf, so you can't remove them without shop supervision. However, there never seems to be any staff around to ask to remove them so I have always avoided buying them there.

[Westbrick]

7 hours ago, lifeinplastic said:

At the Bentalls Centre in Kingston, the CMF boxes are secured by a removal tag on the shelf, so you can't remove them without shop supervision. However, there never seems to be any staff around to ask to remove them so I have always avoided buying them there.

I don’t think they’ve thought that through properly

[MAB]

On 2/21/2025 at 7:38 PM, Kit Figsto said:

I feel like part of this was the switch from bags to boxes.  Certainly not all, but it makes it way, way easier for someone to go and clean out the desirable ones from a store when it takes three minutes to scan an entire case of 36, whereas before it would probably take at least 15-20 minutes to feel through that, and that's someone who knows what they're doing.  I keep harping on the scalping of the Wolfpack figure this series (which I finally did find today!), and I think part of the issue this time around, compared to some of the other desirable ones from past series, is that people now have to spend way less time and effort to pull the desirable figures out of a box.  Someone who's goal is to scalp toys and resell them wasn't spending 20 minutes standing there feeling through a package.

Yes. It was also why the S2 Spartan was relatively hard to find or expensive to buy on the secondary market early on, as the barcodes meant you could scan a box of 60 in 10 minutes or less.

[Lion King]

If Cat Lover is truly a trans person, then i wonder if we would see moe LBGT characters in non-licensed CMF Series. I mean of course they won’t be identified without a Pride Fla but i would like to see how Lego am gaze that way. 

[williejm]

1 hour ago, Lion King said:

If Cat Lover is truly a trans person, then i wonder if we would see moe LBGT characters in non-licensed CMF Series. I mean of course they won’t be identified without a Pride Fla but i would like to see how Lego am gaze that way. 

My take on that figure is that it’s a non-binary person. It isn’t specifically gender-coded, be it with ‘curves’, eyelashes, facial hair or whatever and is therefore ambiguous. It *could* be a man, or a woman, or someone who’s non-binary. I think that’s probably the only way that Lego could give us characters like this - and, yes, they can be interpreted by people according to their own bias - as neither presenting male or female. I’d like to see more of the CMFs like this. 

To the wider LGBT representation in CMFs, I don’t see how that’s possible since people don’t specifically look gay or bi or whatever. So I think we will possibly see more nods to things like pride flag colours, unicorns, and bear paws, and be left to interpret them as we want. As I’m fond of saying - all my minifigures are Queer anyways 🤷🏽‍♂️

 

 

[zoth33]

2 hours ago, williejm said:

My take on that figure is that it’s a non-binary person. It isn’t specifically gender-coded, be it with ‘curves’, eyelashes, facial hair or whatever and is therefore ambiguous. It *could* be a man, or a woman, or someone who’s non-binary. I think that’s probably the only way that Lego could give us characters like this - and, yes, they can be interpreted by people according to their own bias - as neither presenting male or female. I’d like to see more of the CMFs like this. 

To the wider LGBT representation in CMFs, I don’t see how that’s possible since people don’t specifically look gay or bi or whatever. So I think we will possibly see more nods to things like pride flag colours, unicorns, and bear paws, and be left to interpret them as we want. As I’m fond of saying - all my minifigures are Queer anyways 🤷🏽‍♂️

 

 

The beauty of Lego has always been you can create whatever you want and interpret things the way you want to.  When I was a kid there wasn't any minifig heads that you could use for a non-human villain/hero so I had to use my imagination to create interesting bad guys.   There wasn't much variety in fig heads in the 80's and it was up to you to come up with what you thought your knight, suire, nobleman, princess, queen, king, peasant, etc looked like.  If you like more male knights you can make make them if you want your army more female you can do that.  Today there is so many options for minifig heads and parts.  There are so many different creatures like in the DnD series and a lot of different species in Ninjago and Monkie kid the possibilities now are endless.  

[williejm]

3 minutes ago, zoth33 said:

The beauty of Lego has always been you can create whatever you want and interpret things the way you want to.  When I was a kid there wasn't any minifig heads that you could use for a non-human villain/hero so I had to use my imagination to create interesting bad guys.   There wasn't much variety in fig heads in the 80's and it was up to you to come up with what you thought your knight, suire, nobleman, princess, queen, king, peasant, etc looked like.  If you like more male knights you can make make them if you want your army more female you can do that.  Today there is so many options for minifig heads and parts.  There are so many different creatures like in the DnD series and a lot of different species in Ninjago and Monkie kid the possibilities now are endless.  

As an aside, I really LOVED the DnD CMF figures that came with both ‘male’ and ‘female’ heads

[hikouki]

6 hours ago, williejm said:

As an aside, I really LOVED the DnD CMF figures that came with both ‘male’ and ‘female’ heads

I love the DnD series too, even though I do not play that game! LOL. Do they really have just different faces for the genders, and the hair and head gear are the same between male and female? Truly asking.

[Artanis I]

2 hours ago, hikouki said:

I love the DnD series too, even though I do not play that game! LOL. Do they really have just different faces for the genders, and the hair and head gear are the same between male and female? Truly asking.

The heads all have a reverse face. Some of the minifigs have 2 heads: 1 with 2 female faces, the other with 2 male faces. I don't think any of them have 1 of each on the same head.

[Lion King]

15 hours ago, williejm said:

My take on that figure is that it’s a non-binary person. It isn’t specifically gender-coded, be it with ‘curves’, eyelashes, facial hair or whatever and is therefore ambiguous. It *could* be a man, or a woman, or someone who’s non-binary. I think that’s probably the only way that Lego could give us characters like this - and, yes, they can be interpreted by people according to their own bias - as neither presenting male or female. I’d like to see more of the CMFs like this. 

To the wider LGBT representation in CMFs, I don’t see how that’s possible since people don’t specifically look gay or bi or whatever. So I think we will possibly see more nods to things like pride flag colours, unicorns, and bear paws, and be left to interpret them as we want. As I’m fond of saying - all my minifigures are Queer anyways 🤷🏽‍♂️

 

That’s fair about  Cat Lover’s non-binary identity. It’s retry open for us to decide / interept their gender. 

As for LGBT character, i imagine there would be a man wearing a hot pink tank top with a rainbow painted on his cheek or a lesbian woman wearing  plaid shirt with sleeves rolled up, revealing  a pride flag tattoo.  We haven’t seen a woman in a wedding tuxedo yet (of course there are so many tuexeo torsos out there). As you mentioned bear paws, i don’t know if Tina bow bear costume guy from S19 is considered as a part of LGBT community.  We have a couple in modular building collection’s Parisian Restaurant becuase of engagement ring which it’s Cleary a set driven by story. CMF is quite difficult for LGBT characters without  any rainbow, unicorn or bear paw. 

Oh and we have Jayden from DreamZzz who wears an unicorn PJ.

 

[BrickBob Studpants]

12 hours ago, williejm said:

As an aside, I really LOVED the DnD CMF figures that came with both ‘male’ and ‘female’ heads

I wish more CMF series did that, but I get why it‘s exclusive to the D&D series. Character customisation is such an integral part of D&D, they couldn‘t just ignore it  And the other reason are the faceprints themselves. With any unlicensed series, finding a fitting faceprint to represent another gender is easy since they’re all yellow, while some of the D&D species have uncommon skincolours (like orange), making it a lot harder to kitbash a gender-bent version, hadn‘t they provided both male and female options.

Definitely one of the best CMF series so far

[Renny The Spaceman]

You know what, I agree with most people on here, there is a magic to the old CMFs that has been lost in recent years.

Back in the day you go to the store, you see every case having 60 minifigures, five of which being Demolition Dummies, so you have more chance of getting the figure you want. There'd be the communal element of feeling the bags, trying to find the parts of the Demolition Dummy, with the big display minifigure bag hanging above you (which you assume has a massive Demolition Dummy inside). The wider selection of 16 figures means that dud figures, like everyone but the Demolition Dummy, mean less as there's a whole extra third of a modern series per series. The characters would have little sets between series that all go together with funny bios that connected them and told us who the Demolition Dummy was friends. And had a slightly different aesthetic to normal minifigures in the CMFs, they still all fit together with regular figs but you could just tell who was a CMF because they had a slightly cartoonier design language with memorable expressions like the Demolition Dummy had. With the instructions having a cool image on the back telling us how we can turn a LEGO nudist into a baller baller shot caller half as cool as the Demolition Dummy.

They just don't make them like they used to

 

[RenLUG - Central Florida]

13 hours ago, williejm said:

As an aside, I really LOVED the DnD CMF figures that came with both ‘male’ and ‘female’ heads

I really wish they would do this with all the series. 

[williejm]

1 hour ago, Renny The Spaceman said:

You know what, I agree with most people on here, there is a magic to the old CMFs that has been lost in recent years.

Back in the day you go to the store, you see every case having 60 minifigures, five of which being Demolition Dummies, so you have more chance of getting the figure you want. There'd be the communal element of feeling the bags, trying to find the parts of the Demolition Dummy, with the big display minifigure bag hanging above you (which you assume has a massive Demolition Dummy inside). The wider selection of 16 figures means that dud figures, like everyone but the Demolition Dummy, mean less as there's a whole extra third of a modern series per series. The characters would have little sets between series that all go together with funny bios that connected them and told us who the Demolition Dummy was friends. And had a slightly different aesthetic to normal minifigures in the CMFs, they still all fit together with regular figs but you could just tell who was a CMF because they had a slightly cartoonier design language with memorable expressions like the Demolition Dummy had. With the instructions having a cool image on the back telling us how we can turn a LEGO nudist into a baller baller shot caller half as cool as the Demolition Dummy.

They just don't make them like they used to

 

Man, I love Demolition Dummy. My recollection of series one - so VERY long ago - was that there were far too many magicians in circulation. Heady days though. 

1 hour ago, RenLUG - Central Florida said:

I really wish they would do this with all the series. 

I can remember a while back someone suggesting this as the norm for CMFs, and necessarily also excluding any gender-specific elements on the torso and legs to allow it to work. There were conniptions! 

[MAB]

1 hour ago, RenLUG - Central Florida said:

I really wish they would do this with all the series. 

I don't think they need to do it for the regular series as we'd end up with a glut of heads. But what I do like is when they do gender neutral torsos so that you can switch male and female heads around.

Of course, it is not possible to do it for every torso. If a male torso needs to have clearly defined muscles, or on a beach type torso where male is topless and female has a bikini, or on a dress where it needs a V-neck type opening, it is fine to have gender specific prints. I prefer no hips print, as they look a bit silly when the adult appears skinny next to a small girl with small legs. But where no gender stereotype is necessary, a gender neutral torso allows more customisation. I go even further, and prefer no skin print on the torso too, so hands can be switched to go from yellow to fleshie or vice versa.

18 hours ago, williejm said:

To the wider LGBT representation in CMFs, I don’t see how that’s possible since people don’t specifically look gay or bi or whatever.

Indeed. The carpenter could be gay and in a relationship with the plumber. If someone wants that, it is fine. If someone doesn't, it is also fine.

It is like the old (in my view, wrong) argument that a character must be male because there is no strong indication that it is female, so just because a character doesn't have LGBT stereotypes on it, it doesn't mean it cannot be L, G, B, or T.

[williejm]

13 minutes ago, MAB said:

It is like the old (in my view, wrong) argument that a character must be male because there is no strong indication that it is female, so just because a character doesn't have LGBT stereotypes on it, it doesn't mean it cannot be L, G, B, or T.

I wonder if we will ever see a return to the somewhat clumsy female-ification of CMFs? I’m thinking of the ‘lady’ robot in series 11 and cyclops in series 13. Somehow they managed to be both offensive and hilarious … but I think we have moved on. 

17 minutes ago, MAB said:

Of course, it is not possible to do it for every torso. If a male torso needs to have clearly defined muscles, or on a beach type torso where male is topless and female has a bikini, or on a dress where it needs a V-neck type opening, it is fine to have gender specific prints. I prefer no hips print, as they look a bit silly when the adult appears skinny next to a small girl with small legs. But where no gender stereotype is necessary, a gender neutral torso allows more customisation. I go even further, and prefer no skin print on the torso too, so hands can be switched to go from yellow to fleshie or vice versa 

Yes! 
Though I much prefer it when the defined muscles are on fleshies. I bought *so many* swimsuit Batman figures …