Random minifig of the day: sw0441

Very nice design! Love it.

@WolfpackBricks63 said:
" @BabuBrick said:
"I know it’s not the most accurate, but I always really liked this design."

None of them have ever truly been accurate (especially not that abysmal first attempt in 2002). I'm not one of the doomsday cultists who thinks LEGO needs to make a brand new mold for the droideka, but they seriously need to try harder.
"

Droidekas and STAPs. I finally designed my own STAP because I wanted to make a Christmas version, and I wanted to not hate it afterwards. Also built an Ep1 brown version, and just recently did a preliminary design for a gingerbread version. I might need to start looking at Droidekas soon. And maybe a Probe Droid...

People complain about modern battlepacks, but that one is probably one of the most hated ones.

@WolfpackBricks63 said:
" @BabuBrick said:
"I know it’s not the most accurate, but I always really liked this design."

None of them have ever truly been accurate (especially not that abysmal first attempt in 2002)."

So true.

@BabuBrick said:
"I know it’s not the most accurate, but I always really liked this design."

THANK YOU this is such an underrated version. While it doesn’t belong in a battle pack, this is one of my favorite destroyer droid variants

@WolfpackBricks63 said:"None of them have ever truly been accurate (especially not that abysmal first attempt in 2002)."

At least that version could actually roll up.

@Shadowcloner said:
"Repeat minifigure, apparently. https://brickset.com/article/124716"

I don't feel like going through the entire history of the RMotD to co confirm, but I think it's the first repeat that's a brick-built figure.

Oh come on.

So brick-built Droidekas are minifigs now?!?

Decently posable and can kind of turn into a ball. It gets the job done, I was definitely happy to have some as I did want a Droideka around that time.

@Noahcat1 said:
"Decently posable and can kind of turn into a ball. It gets the job done, I was definitely happy to have some as I did want a Droideka around that time. "

Looking at it again, I see that it does have the ability to fold up to some degree. I wasn't paying a whoil lot of attention to the picture, and thought that this was https://brickset.com/minifigs/sw0164/droideka-(destroyer-droid)-copper-top, whose legs can't fold in at all.

@Somnium said:
"I hate when these brick built are considered minifigures."
@Halex16 said:
"Not a minifig"
@SillyTwig said:
"So brick-built Droidekas are minifigs now?!?"
The reason these clearly not minifigs show up in RMotD is because BrickLink made the pants-on-head decision long ago to categorize every small figure as a minifig, even all the brick-built small models like this that clearly aren't minifigs in any way, and Brickset uses the BrickLink database for RMotD because it's the only database with a reasonable API for access. The alternative is no RMotD at all, sadly.

Possibly needed to call it a mini-figure so the only set it appeared in could be called a battle pack.

@Huw said:
" @Somnium said:
"I hate when these brick built are considered minifigures."

Me too, and have no idea why BrickLink does so. I guess because it's a named 'character'. However, the likes of Hamm from Toy Story, which is aguably closer to a minifig than this, is not."

Rex and Lotso also don't count. I'm still upset that named characters with importance to the plot of the stories the sets are based on aren't considered minifigs by Bricklink, but cannon-fodder with no lines are. At least battle droids say "Roger, roger," which is more than any droideka ever said!

@TheOtherMike said:
" @Huw said:
" @Somnium said:
"I hate when these brick built are considered minifigures."

Me too, and have no idea why BrickLink does so. I guess because it's a named 'character'. However, the likes of Hamm from Toy Story, which is aguably closer to a minifig than this, is not."

Rex and Lotso also don't count. I'm still upset that named characters with importance to the plot of the stories the sets are based on aren't considered minifigs by Bricklink, but cannon-fodder with no lines are. At least battle droids say "Roger, roger," which is more than any droideka ever said!"

You could have an AI filter of the BrickLink feed to accept/reject suggested ‘minifigs’. It would require its own training, not relying on current AI platforms like Copilot, Gemini or ChatGPT. Admittedly, it would likely be more effort to set up and maintain than it’s worth.

As for figures that BrickLink treats as animals and doesn’t consider as ‘minifigs’ so are never RMotDs, that’s a tricky one for AI and humans. The problem is that you need to be very familiar with the source material. Having lines isn’t necessarily sufficient. I’m no Disney expert, but I imagine there are animals/animated objects without lines that are still characters. From my limited knowledge, Carpet from Aladdin for example.

Are we defining ‘minifig’ for the purposes of RMotD to be any character - IP or not - that’s anthropomorphic in its broadest sense but not brick built?

This is lovely. I'll try to make one from spare parts.

@Zander said:
" @TheOtherMike said:
" @Huw said:
" @Somnium said:
"I hate when these brick built are considered minifigures."

Me too, and have no idea why BrickLink does so. I guess because it's a named 'character'. However, the likes of Hamm from Toy Story, which is aguably closer to a minifig than this, is not."

Rex and Lotso also don't count. I'm still upset that named characters with importance to the plot of the stories the sets are based on aren't considered minifigs by Bricklink, but cannon-fodder with no lines are. At least battle droids say "Roger, roger," which is more than any droideka ever said!"

You could have an AI filter of the BrickLink feed to accept/reject suggested ‘minifigs’. It would require its own training, not relying on current AI platforms like Copilot, Gemini or ChatGPT. Admittedly, it would likely be more effort to set up and maintain than it’s worth.

As for figures that BrickLink treats as animals and doesn’t consider as ‘minifigs’ so are never RMotDs, that’s a tricky one for AI and humans. The problem is that you need to be very familiar with the source material. Having lines isn’t necessarily sufficient. I’m no Disney expert, but I imagine there are animals/animated objects without lines that are still characters. From my limited knowledge, Carpet from Aladdin for example.

Are we defining ‘minifig’ for the purposes of RMotD to be any character - IP or not - that’s anthropomorphic in its broadest sense but not brick built?"

The carpet may not have lines, but it *does* have a personality, which, again, is more than can be said for destroyer droids.

@gearwheel said:
" @Somnium said:
"I hate when these brick built are considered minifigures."
@Halex16 said:
"Not a minifig"
@SillyTwig said:
"So brick-built Droidekas are minifigs now?!?"
The reason these clearly not minifigs show up in RMotD is because BrickLink made the pants-on-head decision long ago to categorize every small figure as a minifig, even all the brick-built small models like this that clearly aren't minifigs in any way, and Brickset uses the BrickLink database for RMotD because it's the only database with a reasonable API for access. The alternative is no RMotD at all, sadly."

You have to look at one of the bigger situations to understand why their decision makes quite a bit of sense. Look at C-3PO. Standard legs, standard torso, molded head. Two out of three meets the legal definition of a minifig. Then look at R2-D2, the Abbot to his Costello. Four elements, all custom-designed to make an astromech. 0% minifig, by the legal definition. So, would you attempt to justify excluding Artoo as a minifig? And if so, where would you put that clearly-not-an-animal so Sellers can list them and Buyers can shop for them? Even TLG recognizes that they are equivalent from a storytelling perspective, which is why they refer to Artoo as a “character”, so they can include him in the count for a set without risking the loss of trademark status on the term “minifigure”.

The only sticky part in this is that, now that they _own_ Bricklink, they have an obligation to bring them in line with corporate policy, or risk being accused of failing to adequately defend their trademark.

@Shadowcloner said:
"Repeat minifigure, apparently. https://brickset.com/article/124716"

Have the nearly-identical 2014 and 2015 versions come up? If not, it's a bit of a coincidence that this one's been picked twice before either of them.

@TheOtherMike said:
" @Huw said:
" @Somnium said:
"I hate when these brick built are considered minifigures."

Me too, and have no idea why BrickLink does so. I guess because it's a named 'character'. However, the likes of Hamm from Toy Story, which is aguably closer to a minifig than this, is not."

Rex and Lotso also don't count. I'm still upset that named characters with importance to the plot of the stories the sets are based on aren't considered minifigs by Bricklink, but cannon-fodder with no lines are. At least battle droids say "Roger, roger," which is more than any droideka ever said!"

Wallace Shawn is great and all, but I can't remember Rex ever contributing much to the plot of those movies.

@Maxbricks14 said:
"People complain about modern battlepacks, but that one is probably one of the most hated ones."

Do you know why that's the case? I know I loved it when I had it.

@CCC said:
" @Huw said:
" @Somnium said:
"I hate when these brick built are considered minifigures."

Me too, and have no idea why BrickLink does so. I guess because it's a named 'character'. However, the likes of Hamm from Toy Story, which is aguably closer to a minifig than this, is not."

Hamm, Scooby Doo, etc get put in animals because there is an animals category where they naturally fit. Whereas there is no droids section, so R2-D2 went in minifigures and the rest of the droids followed. Then other characters that didnt fit into existing categories followed them. There was a big argument about Unikitty and so on but the catalogue admins decided they were minifigures rather than animals, even though LEGO was careful not to call them minifigures. Even worse are the cups, wardrobes and cars that get called minifigures. At least they finally marked things like dp027 "wardrobe without stickers" for deletion."

I'm waiting for the day when two stacked studs, such as in 75356, count as a minifigure.

'Master, Destroyers!'

@PurpleDave said:
"You have to look at one of the bigger situations to understand why their decision makes quite a bit of sense. Look at C-3PO. Standard legs, standard torso, molded head. Two out of three meets the legal definition of a minifig. Then look at R2-D2, the Abbot to his Costello. Four elements, all custom-designed to make an astromech. 0% minifig, by the legal definition. So, would you attempt to justify excluding Artoo as a minifig? And if so, where would you put that clearly-not-an-animal so Sellers can list them and Buyers can shop for them? Even TLG recognizes that they are equivalent from a storytelling perspective, which is why they refer to Artoo as a “character”, so they can include him in the count for a set without risking the loss of trademark status on the term “minifigure”."
The funny thing is that TLG's legal definition breaks down faster than they probably intend. For example, kaminoans from SW use the standard minifig torso, but a custom non-standard head and the quite common now dress legs instead of the standard legs. Both of these "not the standard minifig part" parts are only used with the standard torso for minifig-scale figurines as well. By the legal definition they aren't minifigs, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would claim they don't belong in a list of minifigs outside of a courtroom.

In my opinion, the definition shouldn't be TLG's overly-narrow legal defintion, but it can be based on it. For example, if the definition is "A minifig-scale character built using at least two of head, torso, and legs originally designed for and predominantly used for characters," that would include kaminoans (all three parts are designed for and only used in figurines), Artoo (30361 torso and 30362 legs were designed for SW astromech droids, and still predominantly used for them), skeletons (minifig head, skeleton torso, skeleton legs), minidolls (minidoll heads, minidoll torsos, minidoll legs), SW battle droids (battle droid heads, battle droid torsos, battle droid legs), but would exclude this RMotD because it doesn't use any of those parts. You could even argue that my definition includes bigfigs like Hulk, or doesn't include them (too big), and I'm fine with those being in a grey area since they're both rare and debatable.

I've excluded arms from that definition, since robot and skeleton arms as used in battle droids and skeletons are quite frequently used in all kinds of builds as non-arms.

This is everything but a minifig, not even close. Doesn't look like one, isn't built like one, doesn't even have a person as source material (which should be one of the most important requirements to be considered a minifig).
Hell, this could be its own Polybag build.

Among the many things in front of me on my desk as I type this are a small herd of random minifigs, and among them is the GNK droid from 75347. I think the argument that it isn't a minifig is very reasonable, but I really feel like it's as least as much a minifig as R2-D2 is. And I have no idea how much other commenters will agree or disagree with me on this!

Basically I think defining a minifig is kind of like counting how many Super Mario games there are.

@RogueWhistler said:
"Wallace Shawn is great and all, but I can't remember Rex ever contributing much to the plot of those movies."

Rex definitely did. He’s one of the characters who frequently jumped to conclusions about Woody in TS1 (which helped drive the plot), and the only toy who could see over the dashboard when they stole the Pizza Planet truck in TS2. And he’s kind of important to the plot of Partysaurus Rex.

@gearwheel:
Usually, it’s our understanding of their definition that breaks down. AFOLs would look at a Kaminoan minifig and say, “It’s a minifig.” TLG is very careful about how they refer to them, so they’re started calling non-minifigs “characters”. The only instance I found for “mini” on this page is for the up-scaled Santa set:

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/obi-wan-kenobis-jedi-starfighter-75333

They did slip up here, though:

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/jango-fetts-starship-75433

Now, minidolls get a lot messier, because they have multiple different molds for legs (pants, skirts, shorts), multiple different molds for torsos (girl, boy, man, woman), and I think even multiple different molds for the heads, so you could have a family of four that share zero molds between them except maybe the arm-twigs.

@AustinPowers said:
"This is everything but a minifig, not even close. Doesn't look like one, isn't built like one, doesn't even have a person as source material (which should be one of the most important requirements to be considered a minifig).
Hell, this could be its own Polybag build. "

It's a magazine gift

@tne328 said:
" @CCC said:
" @Huw said:
" @Somnium said:
"I hate when these brick built are considered minifigures."

Me too, and have no idea why BrickLink does so. I guess because it's a named 'character'. However, the likes of Hamm from Toy Story, which is aguably closer to a minifig than this, is not."

Hamm, Scooby Doo, etc get put in animals because there is an animals category where they naturally fit. Whereas there is no droids section, so R2-D2 went in minifigures and the rest of the droids followed. Then other characters that didnt fit into existing categories followed them. There was a big argument about Unikitty and so on but the catalogue admins decided they were minifigures rather than animals, even though LEGO was careful not to call them minifigures. Even worse are the cups, wardrobes and cars that get called minifigures. At least they finally marked things like dp027 "wardrobe without stickers" for deletion."

I'm waiting for the day when two stacked studs, such as in 75356, count as a minifigure."

Min242 and similar get close, but they are 3 stacked 1x1s.

@PurpleDave said:
"Usually, it’s our understanding of their definition that breaks down. AFOLs would look at a Kaminoan minifig and say, “It’s a minifig.” TLG is very careful about how they refer to them, so they’re started calling non-minifigs “characters”."
You're right that from TLG's perspective, it's a complex topic. As far as I can tell, TLG's definition of "LEGO® minifigure" is meant to describe what is covered under their design patent for the term. A kaminoan minifig (in the everyday or fan sense) is excluded because it is too far from the original design patent. TLG would need to come up with a separate design patent for each of kaminoans, astromech droids, and skeletons, with distinct names, to protect them the way the classic minifig is protected, and at least for the kaminoans and astromech droids, they may not be able to do that given Disney's ownership of the original designs that the Lego implementations are based on.

BrickLink being owned by TLG now does make this even messier, since you're probably right that BL will need to change what it calls minifigs.

That all said, my point wasn't to say TLG is wrong, it was just to try to codify what the larger Lego community considers a "minifig", since almost everyone would consider Taun We and Artoo minifigs, but not this droideka. We don't need to adhere to the same limitations as TLG, since we aren't creating official TLG documents, and anything we decide is legally ignorable by TLG as well.

@gearwheel said:
""A minifig-scale character built using at least two of head, torso, and legs originally designed for and predominantly used for characters,""

Even this definition would exclude the Tee Vees from 6775 or 70436 , which I would say definitely are minifigures.

Is a velociraptor a minifigure?

@WolfpackBricks63 said:
" @BabuBrick said:
"I know it’s not the most accurate, but I always really liked this design."

None of them have ever truly been accurate (especially not that abysmal first attempt in 2002). I'm not one of the doomsday cultists who thinks LEGO needs to make a brand new mold for the droideka, but they seriously need to try harder.
"

Nah, the 2002 version is in LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game (2005), so it's goated. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

@gearwheel said:
"You're right that from TLG's perspective, it's a complex topic. As far as I can tell, TLG's definition of "LEGO® minifigure" is meant to describe what is covered under their design patent for the term"

Patents expire. In the US, I believe you get 20 years before anyone can make your widget. They shifted the minifig to trademark protection several years ago, because, “it’s part of our brand identity,” never expires. But yes, the trademark should be based on the patented design. They attempted this for the 2x4 brick, but were told that was too generic to qualify. The minifig, on the other hand, is complex enough that their trademark wasn’t rejected.

"A kaminoan minifig (in the everyday or fan sense) is excluded because it is too far from the original design patent."

I believe so, yes. My understanding is the trademark requires two of the three universal components used for the original 1978 minifig design (excluding some structural changes, like the style of stud on the minifig head, or internal bracing on the torso). So short legs, midi legs, tall legs, and skirts would fail to qualify now, as would the chicken suit and shark suit torsos due to their non-standard arms.

"TLG would need to come up with a separate design patent for each of kaminoans, astromech droids, and skeletons, with distinct names, to protect them the way the classic minifig is protected, and at least for the kaminoans and astromech droids, they may not be able to do that given Disney's ownership of the original designs that the Lego implementations are based on."

Disney/Lucasfilm may own the copyright for a character, but TLG can still own the patent on the components involved. That would include the generic skirt element, and the IP-specific Kaminoan neck-and-head. They’re both new enough that patents wouldn’t have expired yet.

"BrickLink being owned by TLG now does make this even messier, since you're probably right that BL will need to change what it calls minifigs."

They don’t _have_ to, but failing to bring BL in line with the rest of the company gives competitors grounds to challenge TLG on failing to defend their own trademark, and that can lead to having the trademark permanently revoked. Probably the simplest solution would be for BL to borrow a page from TLG and switch the terminology from “minifigure” to “character”. The latter is a generic term, but also one that has no legal definition that they’d need to abide by.

@PurpleDave said:
" @gearwheel:
Usually, it’s our understanding of their definition that breaks down. AFOLs would look at a Kaminoan minifig and say, “It’s a minifig.” TLG is very careful about how they refer to them, so they’re started calling non-minifigs “characters”. The only instance I found for “mini” on this page is for the up-scaled Santa set:

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/obi-wan-kenobis-jedi-starfighter-75333 "

That page has something that's always amused me about Lego: Calling the 2x2 dome a "small ball" in the choking hazard warning.

@TheOtherMike said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @gearwheel:
Usually, it’s our understanding of their definition that breaks down. AFOLs would look at a Kaminoan minifig and say, “It’s a minifig.” TLG is very careful about how they refer to them, so they’re started calling non-minifigs “characters”. The only instance I found for “mini” on this page is for the up-scaled Santa set:

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/obi-wan-kenobis-jedi-starfighter-75333 "

That page has something that's always amused me about Lego: Calling the 2x2 dome a "small ball" in the choking hazard warning."

You mean the astromech head? That reminds me that I didn't mention that all three of the Artoo parts (head, torso, leg) were introduced in 1999, so I think any patents tied to those would have expired in 2019. But they put copyright notices on parts, so some of these they seem to be claiming protected status as a work of art, rather than a functional device. But that includes stuff like the 1x5 plate, which I guarantee would be rejected as being too derivative of the 1x series of plates. TLG bought the Kiddiecraft patent to force Tyco to stop making compatible parts, and once that and their own patents had expired, they shifted to trying to claim trademark status on the 2x4 brick, which was rejected. They never tried to claim copyright status, which they should have been able to do for a great many different shapes, which would have effectively rendered the system off-limits to clone brands that wanted any reasonable amount of modern functionality.