Having a hobby is something one can do to stay sane when one's not working or studying. One such hobby is getting into collectibles or becoming a collector. There are countless things that people collect out there from post stamps to coins from different places and dates. For this article though, we'll talk about our favorite collectible: the Lego Minifigure [and versions of it from Lego themselves and other brands].
So why get into Minifigures instead of other toys? There's the widely popular Funko Pop toy line that has attracted casual collectors and hardcore collectors. There are also more detailed and articulable collectibles like action figures or even more premium toys like Hot Toys. So why Minifigures? We'll dive into why and how these little collectibles can be your Funko Pop alternative while still offering most of what makes Funko Pop and action figures attractive for collectors.
Size
I would argue that the first advantage Minifigures have over most collectibles is size. These things are tiny but still sizable enough to contain enough details. One box of your Funko Pop is wide enough to accommodate almost 4 Minifigures (that's just with the width alone). For me personally, we have a small house and not enough room to display many toys so having Minifigures is a great alternative to larger toys; display efficiency is high with smaller collectibles!
Of course, if you do have a large room and enough space to display bigger toys, that doesn't necessarily mean that Minifigures aren't worth getting anymore. We can expand on what our Minifigures are displayed with! This leads us to our next point.
Customizability and Displayability
LEGO is still first and foremost known as a building blocks toy brand. Their Minifigures are simply there to co-exist within their brick-built towns and vehicles. If you're looking to make your Lego brick cities look more alive, then add in your Minifigures to live within them!
Then, if you're mainly a Minifigure collector with no huge emphasis on their toy bricks, you can still build custom buildings, vehicles, or props for your Minifigures to be displayed with! No need to buy or create your own shelves or display cases, you can use your own LEGO bricks to make your display setup; of course, this might cost a bit more, but your Minifigures will [literally] fit right in. Plus, you can design your own display setup, the limit is your imagination!
In terms of customizability, Minifigures themselves are modular collectibles. You can mix and match certain parts: heads, arms, hands, torsos, legs, and more accessories across all your Lego Minifigures. This customizable feature has lead LEGO to spawn countless custom designs and accessories from various companies worldwide.
Though while custom parts and designs come from various LEGO communities internationally, Lego themselves still make a variety of LEGO Minifigure designs yearly. This leads us to our next point.
So why get into Minifigures instead of other toys? There's the widely popular Funko Pop toy line that has attracted casual collectors and hardcore collectors. There are also more detailed and articulable collectibles like action figures or even more premium toys like Hot Toys. So why Minifigures? We'll dive into why and how these little collectibles can be your Funko Pop alternative while still offering most of what makes Funko Pop and action figures attractive for collectors.
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| Here are some of my favorite minifigures. I collect mostly just Marvel characters. This is a combination of LEGO, Custom LEGO, and Knockoff Minifigures. |
I would argue that the first advantage Minifigures have over most collectibles is size. These things are tiny but still sizable enough to contain enough details. One box of your Funko Pop is wide enough to accommodate almost 4 Minifigures (that's just with the width alone). For me personally, we have a small house and not enough room to display many toys so having Minifigures is a great alternative to larger toys; display efficiency is high with smaller collectibles!
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| Here are some of my favorite Minifigures on display beside some other collector's items. (Only the Minifigures and brick Avengers Tower are mine, the others are my brother's.) See the space my minifigures take up compared to other collectibles. |
Customizability and Displayability
LEGO is still first and foremost known as a building blocks toy brand. Their Minifigures are simply there to co-exist within their brick-built towns and vehicles. If you're looking to make your Lego brick cities look more alive, then add in your Minifigures to live within them!
Then, if you're mainly a Minifigure collector with no huge emphasis on their toy bricks, you can still build custom buildings, vehicles, or props for your Minifigures to be displayed with! No need to buy or create your own shelves or display cases, you can use your own LEGO bricks to make your display setup; of course, this might cost a bit more, but your Minifigures will [literally] fit right in. Plus, you can design your own display setup, the limit is your imagination!
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| The different components of a base LEGO Minifigure |
Though while custom parts and designs come from various LEGO communities internationally, Lego themselves still make a variety of LEGO Minifigure designs yearly. This leads us to our next point.
Variety
LEGO has countless themes under its belt. At DownTheBlocks, we focus mainly on Marvel sets and Minifigures (mainly due to lack of space for other themes and the high financial cost of expanding our collection). If you want to expand outside of Marvel or superheroes, LEGO has video game themes from Minecraft to Overwatch. Don't forget their widely popular LEGO Star Wars theme too.
In addition to those themes, LEGO has a Minifigure-only toy line known as Collectible Minifigures (aka CMF or CMS); they're blind bags that have Minifigures inside them based around a certain theme or sometimes just a random assortment of Minifigures. These things are perfect and they even come with their own baseplates to make displaying them easy right out of the pack.
What makes Minifigures great is that it's perfect not just for Minifigure-only collectors but also for those who are more interested in building cities and vehicles. This leads us to the next point, the LEGO System.
The "System"
The LEGO System is basically saying that Lego has a system when they create their own designs. They have to make sure that every single piece is compatible with each other. This is the part that many 3rd party customizers have trouble with.
One example of a 3rd party brand failing to apply the LEGO system is this brand called POGO. They turned a digital LEGO Adventure Time concept art into real plastic miniature toys.
Finn came with a small Jake figure that doesn't have any studs or anything a Minifigure can interact with. Jake came with a violin that a Minifig can barely hold. If LEGO or a more detail-oriented LEGO customizer made these, they wouldn't have had those problems. Having Minifigures be able to interact with almost anything in their brick worlds is essential and something that countless other collectors overlook.
If you don't care about the system, then that's alright too. The point we're trying to make is that if you did care about a system and having compatibility throughout your collection, you wouldn't need to worry about it [as long as the designs themselves come from LEGO]. (Again, it's a different story if it involves 3rd party brands.)
What about the cons of collecting Minifigures?
We don't think there's a lot, but the largest factor for many of the people in our community is the price. Collecting can be an expensive hobby. With LEGO, some Minifigures are more expensive than others. Your first figure could be worth $5, then the next $50. Custom Minifigures from third party designers can be found priced from around $20 up to hundreds of dollars.
That lead countless collectors, most of our community, into collecting Minifigures from alternative brands. Most Minifigures from the Bootlego brands are priced at around $1 only and still have most, if not all, of the perks we listed above. Just don't expect the quality to be as good as LEGO's, though some knockoff brands have been producing great work that rivals or improves upon LEGO's.
Bootlego made an affordable but still satisfying hobby possible. The quality we got for the price was highly efficient and worth what we paid for. I've also met countless collectors who started with knockoff Minifigures who then expanded into authentic LEGO Minifigures and even custom, 3rd-party Minifigures (including myself!).
In the end, if you're looking to start a collection, we think Minifigures are one of the best collectibles to have. These miniatures can be displayed almost anywhere, be it on your brick-built platforms or just on a shelf. You'll probably never stop too since there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of Minifigures released in the past and more coming in years to come (and that's just from LEGO themselves!). Outside of being a collectible, you can also play with them as they do have decent articulation, especially for their size.
As a friendly advisory though, only get into collectibles if you know you can afford it. Your food, shelter, personal relationships, and education should still be your priority.
Also, as a disclaimer, we have nothing against other collectibles at all. If we could afford it (financially and space-wise), we'd also get into Funko Pops and action figures. They admittedly have more themes than Minifigures but if we could choose only one line of collectible toys, we'd pick LEGO Minifigures based on the points we listed in this article.
Stay tuned for a Brick Brands Guide that we'll be posting soon! We'll list down alternative brands to LEGO if you can't afford the high prices that LEGO sets and Minifigures have.
If you're looking at what some of these Bootlego or alternative Minifigure brands have to offer, check out our checklists for some of the bigger brands.
Buy Lego from Amazon using our affiliate link:
https://amzn.to/2XABwBp
Buy from AliExpress using our affiliate link:
http://bit.ly/2TzFJmQ
Using these affiliate links will help support the blog at no additional cost to you! No pressure though, spend where you can and where it's best for you! :)
Personally though, since we're in Manila, Philippines, we get most of our minifigures from AngeloMarcus Greenhills and various mini LEGO conventions from time to time. (At least when there was no pandemic.)
Sources:
https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Minifigure
LEGO has countless themes under its belt. At DownTheBlocks, we focus mainly on Marvel sets and Minifigures (mainly due to lack of space for other themes and the high financial cost of expanding our collection). If you want to expand outside of Marvel or superheroes, LEGO has video game themes from Minecraft to Overwatch. Don't forget their widely popular LEGO Star Wars theme too.
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| LEGO Minifigures Series 20 |
What makes Minifigures great is that it's perfect not just for Minifigure-only collectors but also for those who are more interested in building cities and vehicles. This leads us to the next point, the LEGO System.
The "System"
The LEGO System is basically saying that Lego has a system when they create their own designs. They have to make sure that every single piece is compatible with each other. This is the part that many 3rd party customizers have trouble with.
One example of a 3rd party brand failing to apply the LEGO system is this brand called POGO. They turned a digital LEGO Adventure Time concept art into real plastic miniature toys.
 |
| POGO Adventure Time |
If you don't care about the system, then that's alright too. The point we're trying to make is that if you did care about a system and having compatibility throughout your collection, you wouldn't need to worry about it [as long as the designs themselves come from LEGO]. (Again, it's a different story if it involves 3rd party brands.)
What about the cons of collecting Minifigures?
We don't think there's a lot, but the largest factor for many of the people in our community is the price. Collecting can be an expensive hobby. With LEGO, some Minifigures are more expensive than others. Your first figure could be worth $5, then the next $50. Custom Minifigures from third party designers can be found priced from around $20 up to hundreds of dollars.
That lead countless collectors, most of our community, into collecting Minifigures from alternative brands. Most Minifigures from the Bootlego brands are priced at around $1 only and still have most, if not all, of the perks we listed above. Just don't expect the quality to be as good as LEGO's, though some knockoff brands have been producing great work that rivals or improves upon LEGO's.
Bootlego made an affordable but still satisfying hobby possible. The quality we got for the price was highly efficient and worth what we paid for. I've also met countless collectors who started with knockoff Minifigures who then expanded into authentic LEGO Minifigures and even custom, 3rd-party Minifigures (including myself!).
In the end, if you're looking to start a collection, we think Minifigures are one of the best collectibles to have. These miniatures can be displayed almost anywhere, be it on your brick-built platforms or just on a shelf. You'll probably never stop too since there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of Minifigures released in the past and more coming in years to come (and that's just from LEGO themselves!). Outside of being a collectible, you can also play with them as they do have decent articulation, especially for their size.
As a friendly advisory though, only get into collectibles if you know you can afford it. Your food, shelter, personal relationships, and education should still be your priority.
Also, as a disclaimer, we have nothing against other collectibles at all. If we could afford it (financially and space-wise), we'd also get into Funko Pops and action figures. They admittedly have more themes than Minifigures but if we could choose only one line of collectible toys, we'd pick LEGO Minifigures based on the points we listed in this article.
Stay tuned for a Brick Brands Guide that we'll be posting soon! We'll list down alternative brands to LEGO if you can't afford the high prices that LEGO sets and Minifigures have.
If you're looking at what some of these Bootlego or alternative Minifigure brands have to offer, check out our checklists for some of the bigger brands.
Buy Lego from Amazon using our affiliate link:
https://amzn.to/2XABwBp
Buy from AliExpress using our affiliate link:
http://bit.ly/2TzFJmQ
Using these affiliate links will help support the blog at no additional cost to you! No pressure though, spend where you can and where it's best for you! :)
Personally though, since we're in Manila, Philippines, we get most of our minifigures from AngeloMarcus Greenhills and various mini LEGO conventions from time to time. (At least when there was no pandemic.)
You can communicate with us below or through our other media channels:
Sources:
https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Minifigure
nice to read this. l have more then 200+ minifiguers in my collection
ReplyDeleteGreat article!! :)
ReplyDeleteI've been buying mine from aliexpress, but I can't find a Daredevil that's not the Netflix version.
ReplyDeleteAny idea where I can get the comic book version?
Galactus is still my personal favourite. Where did you find the destroyer figure on the right?
ReplyDeleteAnd Moonknight and that cool Ultron?
ReplyDelete