LEGO Collectable Minifigures Future Series Rumours

[K_Tiger]

16 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Personally, I'd kinda like to see a Series made up of an even mix of new archetypes (as typical of a non-themed traditional CMS) and modernized throwback designs based upon noteworthy figures/characters from themes past. For instance, such CMFs within that latter category could include an Adventurer archetype based upon Johnny Thunder, a Pirate Captain taken more after Lego's Captain Redbeard rather than Blackbeard, an antagonistic knight archetype inspired after Lego's Black Falcons, a modernized tribute to Classic Spacemen in some other color rather than White or Pink, and so on. 

Classic Spaceman in red or white @ 1 per case, just like Classic Police Officer. Or, worse still, a series of 16 with Classic Spaceman, Pirate Captain, Fireman and Knight packed 1 per case, with all the other figures being 3 per. It won't happen, but I like to spitball on the worst case scenario.

What are we looking at for a time frame for potential leaks? I reckon June or July, at the earliest?

[Digger of Bricks]

49 minutes ago, K_Tiger said:

Classic Spaceman in red or white @ 1 per case, just like Classic Police Officer. Or, worse still, a series of 16 with Classic Spaceman, Pirate Captain, Fireman and Knight packed 1 per case, with all the other figures being 3 per. It won't happen, but I like to spitball on the worst case scenario.

Thinking about further commemorative possibilities for Series 20, honestly, perhaps it'd just be better if they just do Series 10 (2.0). I feel that it'd be too soon after Series 18 to do another themed series, so doing a otherwise normal CMS with an additional commemorative Mr. Gold-esque figure might be best. 

Edited January 23, 2019 by Digger of Bricks

[williejm]

I do think they have to have some sort of 'theme' going on for Series 20.
I too would love a whole series of new animal moulds, but I think in reality they will need to do something more specific.

To my mind the top two ideas then are a series of reimagined or re-released figures or archetypes (so, a 'greatest hits'), or a series of national / regional archetype figures that is a kind of 'Lego all around the world' celebration. That *could*, like the monster series (and party series to a lesser extent), cover a bunch of types of figure.

For instance:

Beefeater, Uncle Sam, Islander, Terracotta Warrior, Mountie, Pan Pipe player, australian 'bushman', Chic Parisienne woman,
Viking king, NZ rugby player, Gondolier, 'Eskimo' woman, sherpa, Turkish dancer, Pioneer, native american Shaman

Another theme possibility is historic archetypes, but that to me seems less sense for a '20th' celebration.

 

[K_Tiger]

Yeah, I'm a big fan of the regional/cultural series concept. I wonder if they wouldn't do something like taking the most popular figure from each series, then do a re-imagining of each. In a series of 20 they could use the last slot for a Classic throwback, or perhaps an as-yet unknown archetype or figure type (think centaur, for example)?

Edited January 23, 2019 by K_Tiger

[Roebuck]

10 minutes ago, K_Tiger said:

centaur

WW is the most likely place that will pop up, probably to big for the minifigseries

[Aanchir]

18 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Personally, I'd kinda like to see a Series made up of an even mix of new archetypes (as typical of a non-themed traditional CMS) and modernized throwback designs based upon noteworthy figures/characters from themes past. For instance, such CMFs within that latter category could include an Adventurer archetype based upon Johnny Thunder, a Pirate Captain taken more after Lego's Captain Redbeard rather than Blackbeard, an antagonistic knight archetype inspired after Lego's Black Falcons, a modernized tribute to Classic Spacemen in some other color rather than White or Pink, and so on. 

This would be very fun! Although, notably, we already had a modernized Johnny Thunder in The LEGO Movie sets and a modernized Captain Redbeard in the 2015 Pirates sets.

In other examples of designers modernizing past minifigures, the Minifigures Series 16 Spy is blatantly based on the original Dash Justice minifigure from LEGO Alpha Team, and the Rench from Space Police 3 has a modernized Blacktron torso, and a mannequin from the City Square set was a modernized (green!) Futuron figure. And of course there are lots of other examples too. So LEGO designers clearly aren't opposed to the idea of redesigning classic characters… they just haven't done a whole collectible minifigures series based around that idea yet.

The main advantage to doing such figures as a blind bag series, of course, is that the higher than usual price per figure means more of a budget for new molds, prints, and recolors than you'd often get in other themes. So for things like Classic Spacemen it would not be all that useful — as we've seen, the most well received "Neo Classic Spacemen" are those that use the original, very basic designs, rather than ones like the CMF Astronaut and Galactic Girl who have more heavily re-imagined designs.

[williejm]

2 hours ago, Roebuck said:

WW is the most likely place that will pop up, probably to big for the minifigseries

Although maybe not if the new packages being used for TLM2 CMFs continue 

[Roebuck]

7 minutes ago, williejm said:

Although maybe not if the new packages being used for TLM2 CMFs continue 

You could be right, have not seen the new bigger bags yet

[K_Tiger]

You can fit a horse in a standard CMF bag, I imagine the new ones would be even more accommodating.

[Digger of Bricks]

5 hours ago, williejm said:

To my mind the top two ideas then are a series of reimagined or re-released figures or archetypes (so, a 'greatest hits'), or a series of national / regional archetype figures that is a kind of 'Lego all around the world' celebration. That *could*, like the monster series (and party series to a lesser extent), cover a bunch of types of figure.

For instance:

Beefeater, Uncle Sam, Islander, Terracotta Warrior, Mountie, Pan Pipe player, australian 'bushman', Chic Parisienne woman,
Viking king, NZ rugby player, Gondolier, 'Eskimo' woman, sherpa, Turkish dancer, Pioneer, native american Shaman

I've always thought of that as an excellent idea for a themed CMS; but, when you put it that way, yeah, I can totally it see working in that case as a commemorative CMS for the occasion come then!  

4 hours ago, Aanchir said:

So for things like Classic Spacemen it would not be all that useful — as we've seen, the most well received "Neo Classic Spacemen" are those that use the original, very basic designs, rather than ones like the CMF Astronaut and Galactic Girl who have more heavily re-imagined designs.

Well, for me at least, I definitely prefer well-executed reimaginings over straight-up remakes when paying homage to such! 

[leafan]

Lego CMF Series 20: Fabuland - can you imagine?

[K_Tiger]

42 minutes ago, leafan said:

Lego CMF Series 20: Fabuland - can you imagine?

 

I can imagine that would cause some heads to explode.

[Digger of Bricks]

Just now, K_Tiger said:

I can imagine that would cause some heads to explode.

For me at least, an entire CMF series inspired after Fabuland (i.e. Anthropomorphic City Dwellers) would be much more worthwhile than what Series 18 had offered us.

[williejm]

Maybe just reimagined characters as zombie skaters for series 20...?

zombie skater bee girl

zombie skater crash test dummy 

zombie skater librarian ...

[K_Tiger]

If they were done like the Anubis/Werewolf/Minotaur/Yeti I could probably be in for that. It would require lots of new head molds, though.

 

 

Edited January 24, 2019 by K_Tiger

[Digger of Bricks]

Just now, K_Tiger said:

If they were done like the AnubisWerewolf/Minotaur/Yeti I could probably be in for that. It would require lots of new head molds, though.

Yes, which on one hand I might take some issue with; but, on the other, if they're going to introduce all these ridiculous headgear molds for CMF Furries... 

Ya' know? 

[ShadowWolfHount]

12 hours ago, leafan said:

Lego CMF Series 20: Fabuland - can you imagine?

And before their all costumes.

[Digger of Bricks]

On 8/28/2018 at 4:53 AM, x105Black said:

On 8/27/2018 at 11:06 PM, Digger of Bricks said:

Art Deco-styled female android inspired after the Maschinenmensch from Friz Lang's Metropolis from 1927. 

I would love this homage to classic cinema.

As so not to be too "on-the-nose" with the character, this concept art I discovered recently is a pretty good example for what I'd wish to see design-wise for such an archetype inspired after the Maschinenmensch: Deviant Art - Art Deco Robot by DESMONDDx

[Pop Star c o]

I wonder what series we'll get in 2020.

[Roebuck]

41 minutes ago, Pop Star c o said:

I wonder what series we'll get in 2020.

My guess is wizarding world 2, series 20 with a twist and another movie or similar licensed series

[Robert8]

I think 

Series 20

Series 21

Wizarding World S2

We kind of clear of LEGO movies for the upcoming months. So there is more room for regular series again

[Roebuck]

16 hours ago, Robert8 said:

I think 

Series 20

Series 21

Wizarding World S2

We kind of clear of LEGO movies for the upcoming months. So there is more room for regular series again

I hope you are right, but to me it looks like they could fit in more regular series if they wanted. Take the second batman series as a example, who was asking for or expecting that to show up?! Turned out to be a crappy seller as well, still have shops that have it in stock around here  The regular series seem to sell well, so hopefully they have learnt 

[Digger of Bricks]

23 hours ago, Robert8 said:

I think 

Series 20

Series 21

Wizarding World S2

We kind of clear of LEGO movies for the upcoming months. So there is more room for regular series again

I'm not holding my breath for a return to more than a single "traditional" CMS per year, as I'm pessimistically expecting this current pattern of theirs to remain the norm. 

But hey, with that attitude, at least I'll be pleasantly surprised if they indeed do more than one next year rather than disappointed if they don't. 

[notpennysboat]

On 5/23/2017 at 7:28 PM, notpennysboat said:

With the cast of the movie on Wikipedia, it is possible to have a 16 minifigures series, even a 20 minifigures series, including 2 flying monkeys and 3 munchkins. 

Maybe a CMF series or a 5 sets theme like they did with Scooby Doo. We have some clues this could happen : 80 years of the movie in 2019, TLG has the license to do it, we already have a version of the wicked witch of the West, and the molds for the flying monkeys and Toto. All this makes me hope a good surprise from TLG.

2 years after, I didn't get a complete series or sets, but still happy LEGO included the 4 main characters and Toto in a 2019 series :)

Edited February 9, 2019 by notpennysboat

[Aanchir]

13 hours ago, Roebuck said:

I hope you are right, but to me it looks like they could fit in more regular series if they wanted. Take the second batman series as a example, who was asking for or expecting that to show up?! Turned out to be a crappy seller as well, still have shops that have it in stock around here  The regular series seem to sell well, so hopefully they have learnt 

I don't know whether The LEGO Batman Movie Series 2 was strictly "necessary", but I definitely appreciated a lot of the minifigures that showed up in it, including many characters who'd appeared in the movie and not in any other sets. It was also less bogged down with Batman variants than the first LEGO Batman Movie series, allowing room for other fun characters like some of the Super Friends and more variants of supporting characters like Alfred and Batgirl.

Additionally, any "regular" series figs they could have released at that time would probably sell about as well no matter when they released them… but the window of opportunity for releasing those LEGO Batman Movie figures was already closing by the beginning of 2018, and if LEGO had waited any longer they might very well have missed their opportunity to release those figures altogether. So to be honest, I'm grateful LEGO seized that opportunity instead of letting it slip by.

There's also something sort of nice about the way recent "regular" minifigures series have had a series number corresponding to the year number… makes it a little easier to keep track of when those series came out, whereas I often can't remember what year many of the earlier series came out without looking it up. Also, I remember with the early series how some people were worried that LEGO was "running out of ideas" or that they were losing interest in the Minifigures theme as a whole due to how many series they had to keep track of per year, and how many figures in each of those series were merely variants of already released archetypes like skaters, surfers, snowboarders, robots, or clowns

So I think there's some benefit to varying up the "theme" of the minifigures so that they appeal to different groups of buyers. There's no point in releasing three generic numbered series a year if that's more figures than many fans of those series have the patience, interest, or attention span for collecting in the first place. It makes more sense to use those production slots for series that are better at attracting other groups of fans who might not be interested in the "generic" series at all.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Aanchir