LEGO has produced over 3500 different minifigure heads over the past 44 years (1978-2022), and yet it may still be difficult to find one that looks like you– representing your skin tone, gender, age, and the emotion you are feeling at any given time. In this analysis we explore the… Continue reading
Part 1 of this discussion presents an overview of cultural representation within LEGO Minifigures, exploring the distributions by region, gender, and flesh tone color for minifigs that are explicitly inspired by a specific culture. Part 1 also provides background on the data collection and categorization processes. In Part 2, we… Continue reading
When LEGO creates minifigs, they are by default assumed to be white individuals of Western European descent. However, there have been numerous themes and sets over time in which some or all of the minifigs are explicitly created to represent individuals of a specific culture or geographic region. For example,… Continue reading
As touched upon in our previous articles (link to the articles), we noticed that male is considered the default gender in LEGO minifigs. Given that we found a number of neutral heads without any gender-identifiable keywords associated with them, an interesting question that follows is, are neutral heads actually ‘neutral’?… Continue reading
Have you ever tried to build yourself as a minifig? If you haven’t, you might give it a try. In almost every LEGO store, there is a Build a Minifig (BAM) station, and you can also do it online either through the LEGO online minifig builder or through Bricklink. At… Continue reading
This is Part 2 of the article series. It’s recommended to read Part 1 before Part 2. If minifigs are meant to represent people living in the world, everyone deserves to see themselves represented. Currently, despite the existence of 3,300 facial expression options for minifig heads meant to represent humans,… Continue reading
The idea of this flowchart started with a conversation when trying to find minifigures in different professions. We were having a hard time finding specific minifigures, and wanted to make a way to easily design a minifigure in any profession and doing any activity. LEGO has been releasing more and… Continue reading
A significant number of LEGO minifigures are created to represent characters from TV series or films. LEGO has been creating Star Wars minifigs since 1999, and has created a total of 1,276 as of July 2022. In [Part 1], we analyzed the relationship between screen time, gender, and number of… Continue reading
A significant number of LEGO minifigures are created to represent characters from TV series or films. LEGO has been creating Star Wars minifigs since 1999, and has created a total of 1,276 as of July 2022. Some characters have many minifigs, while others do not have any. In some cases,… Continue reading
We researched the history of minifigures of the professions of doctor, nurse, and EMT appearing in sets under the categories of ambulance, rescue, hospital, fire, and doctor. The three main topics we were exploring were the gender divide in each set to see if gender equality tends to improve over… Continue reading
