I have been a fan of the LEGO skeletons since I first saw them in one of my S@H mags. Unfortunately, I have not had the privilege of getting my hands on one to date. But now with two different body molds I am having trouble deciding which to get.

There's the classic skellie with ball-joint arms, then there's the new skellie with new arm things. Personally, I don't care for the new heads, but it's the arms that I'm really curious about. The old ones seemed looser than the new, but I would like an opinion on how the difference is before I go searching on Bricklink.

Thanks in advance!

---Vertea---

Depends on what you are using them for:

Undead army: new ones

Laying around dead guy: old ones

The older ones are more floppy and cute. They're good for more realistic skeletons. The Fantasy-Era ones are for undead armies, their primary function already. I personally am completely for the old skellies. But that's just a preference.

I'm also all for the old skellies, and I'm rather glad Lego decided to bring them out again. I prefer less fantasy in my Pirate building, and really only collect castle sets on sale as a cheap source of earth tone bricks to use for MOCs. I really have no use for the new Skellies and may only have 2 or 3 of them. I probably have around 20 of the old ones.

The older ones are more floppy and cute. They're good for more realistic skeletons. The Fantasy-Era ones are for undead armies, their primary function already. I personally am completely for the old skellies. But that's just a preference.

I'm with you! I hope TLG bring back the old ones. I do have at least 5 of them though.

Depends on what you are using them for:

Undead army: new ones

Laying around dead guy: old ones

Agreed. Funny that you don't have one, Vertea, I swear I have about 50 of each. I still haven't found a MOC to throw them in yet!

Oh my God... inspiration! Off to build!

I only have 1 of the older ones and maybe 8 or so of the new ones (I'm not really a castle builder so I haven't had that many opportunity to get them) But I'm looking forward to getting some older skeletons (if TLC really is bringing them back) I love the cute smiley faces and I never got one! All mad or undead

I don't mind the new skellies, I find my little undead death squad amusing. However, I want some more of the older skellies as I find they make great decorations for evil lairs/badlands. The new skellies do sort of work for this as well, but the old ones are more convincing as dead guys. Really depends on what you want them for. If you don't really know I'd honnestly recommend the new ones because they can fulfill the other kinds function better.

good god! how'd you get all of those??

If you bought tons of the recent castle sets with skellies you would be swimming in them. Well I believe an upcoming Prince of Persia set will have one of the older styled skeleton.

Not much to add. The older ones are best dead, the new ones are best undead.

If you bought tons of the recent castle sets with skellies you would be swimming in them. Well I believe an upcoming Prince of Persia set will have one of the older styled skeleton.

Yep, that one and an atlantis set come with the older ones. I think since we're done with undead armies (because of the ending of the fantasy line) Lego is reverting to the older styled skeletons.

I like the old skellies, but the new ones are much better for poseability.

I think the reason why many didn't like the new ones so much was that using the super-long droid arms (instead of creating a new skele arm piece) gave the skeletons really strangely proportioned arms.

I would have liked an updated skele with a tailored arm design as a third option

I do find it weird that LEGO seems to be going all out to remove difficult (ie small) click-connection points (like changing the window shutter design and now the Castle round-topped door piece as seen in Toy Fair pics) but reintroducing old skeles with their minisicule arm connections.

I prefer the old ones, as the new ones remind me of gorillas with their broad shoulders and long arms.

my main thing is poseability, so I will go with the new skellie bodies( with classic heads) and I might pick up a classic skellie, too for the sake of having a limp corpse.

Does anyone know a good way to get several of them without buying whole castle sets?

my main thing is poseability, so I will go with the new skellie bodies( with classic heads) and I might pick up a classic skellie, too for the sake of having a limp corpse.

Does anyone know a good way to get several of them without buying whole castle sets?

The only reasonable alternative would have to be BrickLink.

I agree with some of the commenters here. The new skellies have their benefits as undead warriors, but the old ones are more versatile as regular dead bones. After all, the old ones can stretch their arms out at various angles, and can have their arms clipped to walls or other things.

Of course, this balance of usefulness is rather undone by the newer skeletons' disproportionately large arms. Besides the arms, both types of skeleton are designed to look as though they'd fit within a minifigure's anatomy, and upsetting that is quite a loss indeed. I've been saying for a while, though, that the solution is not to stop using the new-style skeleton but rather to design a newer, more proportionate arm piece for them.

Regrettably, it'd probably just be wishful thinking to hope that the arms of the new General Grievous were designed in part to serve that purpose. While they've got the right shapes to serve as the understructure of a Minifig arm (and to echo the styles of the old skeleton minifig), they still look far too long to serve that purpose appropriately (although the possibility remains that they might be better than the battle droid arms of the current skeletons).