On 10/23/2023 at 8:13 AM, MAB said:

Why are there no Star Wars CMF / single figures sold. I have never seen anything concrete about LEGO not being allowed to produce and sell single SW minifigures. There are myths that it is down to Hasbro stopping them due to their action figures license but there is no proof of this. To me, there is little similarity between a minifigure and an action figure, no more than an action figure and a Funko pop or similar toys. LEGO did stop doing the normal minifigures in the SW magnets, instead gluing them and this is often cited as Hasbro's fault for demanding they stop producing individual minifigures as they encroach on their action figure license. But was that because of Hasbro, or was it because people were buying the magnets instead of sets that the minifigures appeared in. For me, it was the latter. LEGO benefits from this as fans assume that the Hasbro license stops LEGO from producing single minifigures, when the alternative could be that LEGO doesn't want to do SW CMFs (or even battle packs containing characters such as Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, or Vader, Emperor and 2x stormtroopers) because it would stop people buying the large sets that those characters appear in.

Honestly, I'm not sure if anyone will ever know the full truth, but I do genuinely think that there is SOMETHING to the Hasbro rumor, and the thing that leads me to believe it is that Funko Pops are slightly different for SW character than any other franchise.  I'm not a Funko collector (I have a couple but that's it), but from what I understand, the only ones that are bobbleheads attached to the base are the Star Wars ones, all of the others are solid figures that can be removed from their base.  I'm also fairly sure at this point that if they could've done a SW CMF series, they would've, because they've done basically every other major license, and it doesn't seem like having a Marvel or Harry Pottery CMF has hurt sales of those sets.  It would print money if they did a LSW series, since they'd have a way to include variants/obscure characters that don't fit into sets.

On 10/23/2023 at 9:13 AM, MAB said:

Why are there no Star Wars CMF / single figures sold. I have never seen anything concrete about LEGO not being allowed to produce and sell single SW minifigures. There are myths that it is down to Hasbro stopping them due to their action figures license but there is no proof of this. To me, there is little similarity between a minifigure and an action figure, no more than an action figure and a Funko pop or similar toys. LEGO did stop doing the normal minifigures in the SW magnets, instead gluing them and this is often cited as Hasbro's fault for demanding they stop producing individual minifigures as they encroach on their action figure license. But was that because of Hasbro, or was it because people were buying the magnets instead of sets that the minifigures appeared in. For me, it was the latter. LEGO benefits from this as fans assume that the Hasbro license stops LEGO from producing single minifigures, when the alternative could be that LEGO doesn't want to do SW CMFs (or even battle packs containing characters such as Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, or Vader, Emperor and 2x stormtroopers) because it would stop people buying the large sets that those characters appear in.

There is no proof of this :

https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help/buying_parts/replacing-or-buying-minifigures-kA009000001dblNCAQ

LEGO did stop doing the normal minifigures in the SW magnets, instead gluing them and this is often cited as Hasbro's fault for demanding they stop producing individual minifigures as they encroach on their action figure license. This was because of Hasbro, because very few people were buying the magnets instead of sets that the minifigures appeared in, as these were mostly common and popular characters who were maybe a little cheaper that way but which were much harder to find, so if an average consumer (aka a kid) wanted a minifig, their best bet was buying the set(s) it came in, since they likely had no clue about the magnets. Also, if that's the case, why would Lego make battle packs with Ki-Adi-Mundi and Barriss Offee, or a bounty hunter battle pack, or even the latest 15$ mecha series? Your argument doesn't add up. Also, it's fairly cheap to make individual figures vs full battle packs, and kids (and army builders...) would quite likely buy a lot more of them...

 

7 hours ago, Kit Figsto said:

Honestly, I'm not sure if anyone will ever know the full truth, but I do genuinely think that there is SOMETHING to the Hasbro rumor, and the thing that leads me to believe it is that Funko Pops are slightly different for SW character than any other franchise.  I'm not a Funko collector (I have a couple but that's it), but from what I understand, the only ones that are bobbleheads attached to the base are the Star Wars ones, all of the others are solid figures that can be removed from their base.  I'm also fairly sure at this point that if they could've done a SW CMF series, they would've, because they've done basically every other major license, and it doesn't seem like having a Marvel or Harry Pottery CMF has hurt sales of those sets.  It would print money if they did a LSW series, since they'd have a way to include variants/obscure characters that don't fit into sets.

Honestly the rumour that Lego haven't been allowed to make individual minifigures of Star Wars characters predates Funko, and I'm fairly sure predates even Collectible Minifigures in their present form. The story I used to see when I lurked this forum back in 2008/2009 was that Lego had got into hot water when they released the Star Wars minifigure sets back in 2000/2001 (as they did for a lot of other themes, such as World City and Rock Raiders; figures on a square base with a collectible card) which might go some way to explaining why that particular product line never resurfaced.

Having said that, I don't believe the battlepacks were an attempt to get around this. To me it's more a case of Lego holding the Star Wars licence until 2008 but having run out of sets to produce. If you look at it, 2006's range is basically a "fill in the gaps and add some greatest hits for effect" - V-Wing, Sail Barge, Star Destroyer and TIE Interceptor for the first time, plus X-Wing and Y-Wing because they always sell. But when planning the 2007 range they would have had no more movies to make sets from (don't forget: when the Clone Wars film came out in 08, some companies didn't do cross-promotion because they had no idea the film was coming). I'm convinced the battle packs were Lego's attempt to fill the last two years of their licence with new products. Of course, Clone Wars happened then Disney happened and now the idea of not having new Star Wars is unthinkable, but those were different times.

Umm…i don’t know it’s appropriate to talk about here but well…. When I googled. “Lego urban legend” and I saw “Lego sh*tter”….

21 hours ago, Alexandrina said:

Honestly the rumour that Lego haven't been allowed to make individual minifigures of Star Wars characters predates Funko, and I'm fairly sure predates even Collectible Minifigures in their present form. The story I used to see when I lurked this forum back in 2008/2009 was that Lego had got into hot water when they released the Star Wars minifigure sets back in 2000/2001 (as they did for a lot of other themes, such as World City and Rock Raiders; figures on a square base with a collectible card) which might go some way to explaining why that particular product line never resurfaced.

Having said that, I don't believe the battlepacks were an attempt to get around this. To me it's more a case of Lego holding the Star Wars licence until 2008 but having run out of sets to produce. If you look at it, 2006's range is basically a "fill in the gaps and add some greatest hits for effect" - V-Wing, Sail Barge, Star Destroyer and TIE Interceptor for the first time, plus X-Wing and Y-Wing because they always sell. But when planning the 2007 range they would have had no more movies to make sets from (don't forget: when the Clone Wars film came out in 08, some companies didn't do cross-promotion because they had no idea the film was coming). I'm convinced the battle packs were Lego's attempt to fill the last two years of their licence with new products. Of course, Clone Wars happened then Disney happened and now the idea of not having new Star Wars is unthinkable, but those were different times.

I've heard that too about the minifigure packs, I guess the point I was trying to make was that the Funko thing also would suggest that there's merit to the Hasbro license rumor, as that's another company production action-figure adjacent toys who has to change their way of doing things for Star Wars specifically.

Now, what's unclear to me is whether or not that's still the case, because we did get those two SW minifigure packs, which still came with accessories like a battle pack, but were way more minifigure focused than even a BP is.

On 10/26/2023 at 1:37 PM, Lion King said:

Umm…i don’t know it’s appropriate to talk about here but well…. When I googled. “Lego urban legend” and I saw “Lego sh*tter”….

Apparently not untrue....

On 10/23/2023 at 4:13 PM, MAB said:

Why are there no Star Wars CMF / single figures sold. I have never seen anything concrete about LEGO not being allowed to produce and sell single SW minifigures. There are myths that it is down to Hasbro stopping them due to their action figures license but there is no proof of this. To me, there is little similarity between a minifigure and an action figure, no more than an action figure and a Funko pop or similar toys. LEGO did stop doing the normal minifigures in the SW magnets, instead gluing them and this is often cited as Hasbro's fault for demanding they stop producing individual minifigures as they encroach on their action figure license. But was that because of Hasbro, or was it because people were buying the magnets instead of sets that the minifigures appeared in. For me, it was the latter. LEGO benefits from this as fans assume that the Hasbro license stops LEGO from producing single minifigures, when the alternative could be that LEGO doesn't want to do SW CMFs (or even battle packs containing characters such as Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, or Vader, Emperor and 2x stormtroopers) because it would stop people buying the large sets that those characters appear in.

LEGO sets often contain exclusive minifigures that are not available anywhere else. LEGO may not want to reduce the value of these sets by releasing the minifigures separately.
 

On 11/3/2023 at 12:49 PM, Alomzo said:

LEGO sets often contain exclusive minifigures that are not available anywhere else. LEGO may not want to reduce the value of these sets by releasing the minifigures separately.
 

The thing is, this doesn't hold up to scrutiny when you consider that:

A) Lego have happily made CMFs for Marvel and Harry Potter, both of which have run alongside regular waves of the sets.

B) The core characters from Star Wars - the ones most likely to be in a CMF series - are all periodically released in cheaper sets, with the exception of Lando. Even as a kid whose budget for Lego would just about extend to one mid-range set a year and some smaller ones, I was able to acquire at least one variant of all the main characters except Yoda and Darth Vader, both of whom were available in low-end sets just before and just after the period I was buying Star Wars kits. Sticking Jar-Jar Binks or C-3PO in a blind box wouldn't have any impact on the movement of big sets for an exclusive Mon Mothma or Clone from the Clone Wars (she says, having no idea who is in the current big budget SW sets) and Star Wars is the franchise least likely to run out of characters to minifigurise.

2 minutes ago, Alexandrina said:

Star Wars is the franchise least likely to run out of characters to minifigurise.

There could be an entire series just of named Clones! 
 

Haven't been around in a long time... still expanding and now rewriting my (soon to be 4000 page) digital LEGO guide...

But in the LEGO color discussion... TLG didn't make gray and green bricks for several reasons.  One was they were weirdly stingy about producing a lot of different LEGO colors in bricks for decades.  When the tube bottom bricks were introduced in 1958, LEGO bricks/plates were only found in red, white, blue, yellow, clear (and starting in 1961 (EU), and 1963 (UK/AUS, USA/Canada)) black bricks. 

 

Also gray plates were introduced starting in EU in late 1962, in USA/Canada in 1963, and UK/Australia in 1964.  Green plates were introduced in USA/Canada in 1963, and elsewhere much later.

The first gray bricks were found in the 1974 introduced 1650 Maersk Line Container Ship, and in regular sets (in about a dozen sizes) in the 722 Universal Building Set in 1980, as well as a few in (starting in 1979) Space sets.    When the 375/383 first Castle sets of 1978 were introduced, they were not intended to be the beginning of a LEGO System... just a pair of sets in the parts colors that were available.  Had these sets been introduced 2 years late (1980), they likely would have been gray.  When the actual LEGO Castle System was introduced in 1984... gray became the color of choice.  So if TLG was worried about gray being used for war toys by children, that worry was pretty much over by 1980 (of course after the yellow castle introduction).

 

The reason for using yellow to represent minifigure heads had its' origins in the mid 1960s, when yellow was the best color suited for LEGO built figures, such as those in the 905 Doll Set (USA/Canada only), and the 321 Clown Set (Denmark, Norway and Japan only)...

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=905-1#T=S&O={"iconly":0}

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=321-1#T=S&O={"iconly":0}

Also, this is unknown to most LEGO collectors, but the introduction of black bricks in the 1960s, made for some "alternate builds" of many of the 316-324 sets of the mid 1960s, as African figures...

 

 

TLG was very stingy in creating new colors for some very odd reason.  They made dark gray, tan, and Maersk blue bricks for the model shops, but not for general sets until much later.  In 1985 I saw a model at a Detroit KMART of a very large model of Brussels Gothic City Hall (Hotel de Ville) using ONLY tan and old dark gray colors.  I became angry at the time, because they were being dishonest to kids of that era, of what could be built with LEGO colors that was actually available to the public.  And it wasn't until the 1990s that other color bricks started being produced for sets.  And since 2000 we started having an absurdly large number of LEGO colors.  It's almost as though TLG was atoning for their lack of colors stinginess of the 1960s-1990s. 

 

 

Edited November 20, 20231 yr by LEGO Historian