Written by Jonathan Wojcik
Lego's Halloween 2015 Minifigures!
Lego isn't something I've ever really gotten too into. It's a hobby people of all ages get pretty hardcore about, and it's certainly had some cool stuff in recent years, but most of it is absurdly expensive and I generally like my silly collectibles with more organic shapes, for whatever reason. That said, this year's latest blind-bagged lego minifigure line has a Halloween theme with some amazing additions, and it's been widely requested for one of my Halloween reviews, so let's talk about all fourteen new figures!
The Banshee
A category of monster that doesn't get a whole lot of attention, this wailing apparition has a lovely green-grey color scheme, wailing tear-streaked face and an ectoplasmic, translucent mass instead of the usual leg piece, which I'm pretty sure is a really new idea to the brand. She also comes across as some sort of aquatic spirit, like a really unhappy undine, or maybe she's just a banshee who died by drowning in a swamp.
Zombie Businessman
Zombies are getting kind of old, but I can still appreciate this ragged corpse still carting around his briefcase, not to mention reading a zombie-specific newspaper with a biohazard logo, implying that maybe he isn't just a dead businessman dimly remembering his past life, but that he is in fact a part of a zombie society with its own infrastructure and media industry. He could have been become a businessman
after the zombie uprising.
The Gargoyle
Another underrepresented monster. Yes, gargoyles are common Halloween iconography, but it's surprisingly not as common that they're explicitly
living gargoyles. It's too bad this one doesn't come with any accessories, like maybe a dead pigeon to chew on or something, but his gargoyle horns and ears as well as his wings can come off if you wanna mix and match with something else.
Zombie Cheerleader
I'm going to continue our last zombie's logic and say that this isn't a cheerleader who became a zombie, but vice-versa. Zombies have jobs and schools and sports teams. While we've all seen zombie cheerleaders before, the face on this particular specimen is just adorable, with her off-kilter red eyes and missing tooth.
The Monster Rocker
I appreciate that they decided Frankenstein's Monster alone would be too conventional, and that he oughta have an electric guitar. Frankenstein's monster on an electric guitar feels like such a natural fit, doesn't it? I've seen it in cartoons before, I'm pretty sure, but cartoons have basically put an electric guitar in the hands of
everything in existence at some point during the 90's. Of all the things arbitrarily given electric guitars, Frankenstein's Monster works exceptionally well, even if we all know a heavy metal cover of
Monster Mash is the only song he knows how to play.
The Zombie Pirate
Thankfully, they decided three zombies would be enough zombies, ending on a good old fashioned rotten sea captain. I'm a little disappointed he has no seaweed, barnacles or crabs clinging to him, or even a skeleton parrot or something, but I'm pretty delighted by his hat. His Jolly Roger icon is
actually more dead than it already normally is. That's adorable. It's also further evidence that he was already a zombie when he decided to become a pirate.
The Squarefoot
"Squarefoot" is a rather odd choice for a gag name. I get that it's a play in "Bigfoot," but doesn't EVERYONE in this setting have square feet? He also looks a whole lot more like a wookie than a sasquatch, but I'm splitting hairs here. I like that this legendary cryptic actually comes with a camera. What's he gonna do with that? Take blurry photos of normal people striding through the woods? Maybe he stole it off a cryptozoologist before he ate their face. Yeah, yeah, we all like to think Bigfoot is a gentle, enlightened vegetarian, but come on, how's a giant primate going to survive in a climate with icy winters if it only eats berries and nuts?
The Spectre
Not satisfied with the banshee alone, Lego recycles the ghostly tail piece for another, less specific phantasm, now with a chain to rattle and a real cloth cape. Phantasm's face doesn't look quite as ghastly as it probably ought to, but it's charming enough. It kind of looks like he just told a joke to try and cheer up the Banshee and he's just now awkwardly realizing it made her feel even worse.
The Skeleton Guy
Lego already produces wonderful little lego-person skeletons, so rather than rehash those, they decided to make this figure of somebody
dressed as a skeleton for Halloween, or maybe some
thing, since most people don't have luminous yellow eyes like that, and given how the default lego eyes are just dots, these would be relatively massive, owl-like eyeballs. You're not fooling anybody with your skeleton disguise, owl-goblin.
The Spider Lady
At first glance, she just seems to be a generic vampire queen, but her spider motif and various eight-legged pets indicate something else entirely, most likely a servant of
Lolth or even one of her personal avatars on the prime material plane. The spider she comes with also seems to be a new, unique lego piece; lego spiders came out way back when I was a kid, but this one has jaws the size and shape of a lego person's hands, allowing it to actually hold stuff in them! I know they just represent fangs, but I want to pretend this spider has a whole human hand for mouth parts.
The Wacky Witch
A good old fashioned Halloween witch, with everything that entails. Green, warty skin, a pointy hat, a broom and even a black cat. If only she had a special leg sculpt, though, so she could actually
ride the broom, like a hole between her knees or something, though she wouldn't be able to put her hands on it either. Lego people are so frustratingly limited, how do they even go through life at all?
The Wolf Guy
I don't need to tell you, reading this on that there internet thing, that wolf-headed people are wildly popular. I don't know if Lego ever produced one before. I think it had werewolf figures at some point, but they had humanoid wolf-man faces, like the Universal Studios version. This is the scarier kind of lycanthrope, with the full-blown fanged muzzle, and he comes with a leg bone so massive it could only have come from giraffe he managed to take down, which is especially frightening, both because it indicates how lethal this wolfman is and because he ruined the zoo for who knows how many children.
The Tiger Woman
Ehh, there isn't that much you can say about this one. Unless she's actually supposed to be a cat-human hybrid, she's not especially Halloweeny, since she's not even a
black cat of some sort, and if she is indeed a cat-human hybrid monster, it's rather disappointing she has such a boring face. Why not a specially sculpted one with snarling jaws, like Wolf Guy?
The Monster Scientist
NOW we're talking. This crazy-eyed mad scientist sports an abnormally large lego cranium, which must be what they mean by "monster" scientist, having presumably traded his humanity for unnaturally enhanced intelligence. What's more, he's got a vial with a
fly in it, or at least a fly insignia on it, and you know that only spells good things.
The Plant Monster
Clever! Even though this Audrey II wannabe is mostly an elaborate "helmet" for a standard Lego humanoid, the panicked expression seems intended to assure us that this is a
real plant monster, and it's
eating that guy. This makes the humanoid shape even more interesting; it's basically like the
Ivy enemies from Resident Evil II, a shambling botanical monster in a roughly bipedal form possibly brought about the assimilation of human DNA.
The FLY MONSTER
The very last figure is of course what really caught my attention, my all-time favorite monster archetype and something I already go out of my way to collect wherever it crops up in plastic. Though your common houseflies and blowflies don't usually have long antennae like that and flies are specifically defined by having only
two wings, they thankfully remembered the most endearing feature of the group, the sucking proboscis-like mouth. The huge, multifaceted eyes are also done in translucent red plastic, and like the fly of the classic horror films, it has one human arm and one insectoid claw!
As delighted as I am by this figure, however, it's a tad bittersweet. I actually
did go through a lego-maniac phase in my childhood, but back then, the weirdest lego figure available was just a sheet ghost. If you wanted lego monsters or bugs, you had to stick some bricks together and flex your imagination to its breaking point. My love of the bricks didn't last all that long compared to other kids, but there was a point I'd have been ECSTATIC to see this. Now I'm almost 32 years old, writing about toys I don't own on the internet, and this isn't even the first insect-person Lego has released over the past few years. There have been Lego fish people, Lego reptilians, Lego space mutants, Lego brain parasites, even Lego brain creatures if you count the
Kraang in their ninja turtle tie-ins.
Where were you all when I needed you?
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