How Good Are LEGO Minifigures in 2024?

27 October 2024 by Graham

LEGO 2024 minifigures

With every year that goes by, LEGO seems to get ever more creative with the minifigure blueprint by bringing out increasingly complex and creative moulds. Over time, we've also seen more detailed minifigure printing and a wider variety of colours. With all the advancements in minifigure design, are minifigures released today considered better than those released ten, twenty, or thirty years ago?

Chart of average LEGO minifigure ratings by year

I was expecting to see a gradual increase in average rating as we got nearer the present day, but instead the results show certain "golden" periods in minifigure design. Obviously, what people consider a good minifigure and what they consider a less good minifigure is influenced to some extent by which character the minifigure is representing. Although I've tried to remove as much bias as possible in the ranking process, this will always be a factor. As a result, the years when some of the most popular themes were around score highly. This explains why we see 2011 - 2014 being some of the highest rated, as the Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, and Pirate of the Caribbean sets were released then and minifigures from these themes have a strong presence in the top 100.

King Théoden - Highest rated minifigure from 2012

However, LoTR, Hobbit, and PotC minifigures are not solely responsible for these years being considered some of the best for minifigures. There were also some much sought after Collectible Minifigures released in those years, such as the Minotaur, the Conquistador, the Roman Commander, Hazmat Guy, and Medusa to name but a few.

The more unexpected result is the popularity of minifigures released during the late 1980s through to the late 1990s, which culminates in 1998 being the “best” year for minifigures. So what made these years so good?

Taking a deeper look into the data reveals that the classic Castle and Spaces minifigures score well. There's also the fact that far fewer minifigures were released back then, so you just need a handful of good ones to really bring up the average. I should mention here that some of the minifigures from those years, such as City/Town ones, are not in the database yet and these might bring down the average. Regardless, I think these findings highlight that the nostalgia of themes from yesteryear are a strong determinant in people's favourite minifigures.

Looking at the other end of the scale, the worst years were between 2001 and 2004. This saw the release of the first licensed themes in the form of LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Harry Potter. While licensed minifigures tend to score better than unlicensed ones, let's be honest, the early minifigures from these themes were awful, and they're among the worst rated minifigures in the database.

Moving on to the present day, I thought 2024 would be considered one of the better years for minifigures but it scores below average, like the previous six years. We've had some fantastic releases this year, such as the new LoTR minifigures and two well received CMF series with Space and Dungeons & Dragons, and personally I think we've been spoiled for choice this year. I expect the average rating for 2024 will increase over time as the newer minifigures in the database get time to enter into more match ups so I'll provide an update in a few months.

Thanks for reading, and if you want to have you're say on which minifigures are the best, you can vote for your favourites here.