Real-person minifigs?

[hikouki]

I wanted to ask if Lego has produced original/ yellow-skin minifigs of actual persons other than these three:

Abraham Lincoln (tlm005 from The Lego Movie CMF)

William Shakespeare (tlm from The Lego Movie CMF)

Ole Kirk Christianson (adp025 from set BL-19008, and another version from the recent 2023 employee gift).

I know there have been several from GWPs but those have flesh-tone skin.

[BrickMatit]

I have not an encyclopedic knowledge of LEGO, but thinking at  my collection I say the french football player Zinedine Zidane (soc044 from 3401-2 Shoot 'n' Score - with ZIDANE set).

 

 

[TeriXeri]

Steven Spielberg , in 11 2000-2001 sets in the Studios theme

Edited January 16, 2024 by TeriXeri

[smazmats]

There are a couple I can remember from the early Lego IDEAS/CUUSOO sets: 

• The Hayabusa Project Manager - J. Kawaguchi, from the Hayabusa set

 

• Pete and Yve from the Exo suit set.  Even though its a fictionalized version of them, I think it’s worth counting.  They are based on the original project designer (and very well known AFOL)  Peter Reid and his girlfriend Yvonne. 

 

[MAB]

For a short time, they used the name Cleopatra in the online CMF bios for the Egyptian Queen. 

There are also employee 'business cards' minifigures.

[AmperZand]

@hikouki,

It depends what you mean. If you mean minifigures of people that LEGO recognises as representations of real people, there's the Hans Christian Andersen minifigure from set 40291. I don't think it looks anything like the real person but it is meant to be him:

 

If on the other hand you mean minifigures of people LEGO doesn't officially acknowledge as being representations of real people but seem to be anyway, there are a few. The Hollywood Starlet from Minifigures Series 9 looks like Marilyn Monroe:

  

The Roman Emperor from the same series appears to be Julius Caesar:

And the Constable from Series 11 is a real British policeman called Rob 'Norm' Thomas. It's not just that the minifigure coincidentally looks like Rob Thomas; it's actually him. We know that because the minifigure's collar number, 1337, is the same as Thomas's epaulette number. That can't be by chance.

[tafkatb]

On 1/15/2024 at 7:21 PM, TeriXeri said:

Steven Spielberg , in 11 2000-2001 sets in the Studios theme

This minifigure appeared in an officially-licensed Steven Spielberg movie maker set and clearly resembles him, but... is it ever actually labelled as such? As far as I can tell, all official packaging and marketing materials only ever label this minifigure as "Director." OK, yes, I'm splitting hairs here, but my own personal list of real-person minifigs does not include this one.

[MAB]

11 hours ago, AmperZand said:

And the Constable from Series 11 is a real British policeman called Rob 'Norm' Thomas. It's not just that the minifigure coincidentally looks like Rob Thomas; it's actually him. We know that because the minifigure's collar number, 1337, is the same as Thomas's epaulette number. That can't be by chance.

Of course it could be coincidence. There will be quite a few police constables with that number in the different areas, and the chances of one of them with that number being male and having a moustache is quite high.

 

[TeriXeri]

14 hours ago, tafkatb said:

This minifigure appeared in an officially-licensed Steven Spielberg movie maker set and clearly resembles him, but... is it ever actually labelled as such? As far as I can tell, all official packaging and marketing materials only ever label this minifigure as "Director." OK, yes, I'm splitting hairs here, but my own personal list of real-person minifigs does not include this one.

I listed it because of the resemblence and the brickset tag.

[lifeinplastic]

7 hours ago, MAB said:

Of course it could be coincidence. There will be quite a few police constables with that number in the different areas, and the chances of one of them with that number being male and having a moustache is quite high.

 

I thought I had read at the time it was released that the number was used as it is gamer slang...

1337 Meaning & Origin | Slang by Dictionary.com

 

[AmperZand]

8 hours ago, MAB said:

Of course it could be coincidence. There will be quite a few police constables with that number in the different areas, and the chances of one of them with that number being male and having a moustache is quite high.

 

It *could* be a coincidence but seems very unlikely to have been. In any given UK police force, not two officers have the same collar number to avoid them being confused for one another. So that reduces the potential holders of that number to 48, the number of police forces. But 48 is further reduced by the fact that the various forces use different numbers of digits (not all use a 4-digit number) and some add letters. That subset is further reduced by many forces not issuing custodian helmets (police in Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t wear them for example). That sub-subset is reduced even further by the officer having to be male (WPCs aren’t issued with that style of helmet), having to be the rank of constable or a sergeant, and having a moustache but not a beard. It really doesn’t seem unlikely that there’s only one such officer with the number 1337. Moreover, had there been another, I suspect that that would have come to light after PC Thomas made the tabloid press for his resemblance to the minifigure.

1 hour ago, lifeinplastic said:

I thought I had read at the time it was released that the number was used as it is gamer slang...

1337 Meaning & Origin | Slang by Dictionary.com

 

A person’s image is subject to copyright so LEGO might not have wanted to admit they used a real person’s look without their permission. Claiming that is was a slang reference would have been safer for LEGO.