Clues to the minifig's lifecycle uncovered in City sets

Pure genius on TLG's part for slipping this Easter egg of sorts into their sets. What a fun place it must be to work for.

Those minifigs are growing up so fast... Also, I think it's supposed to be 1 human year = 6 minifig years instead of the other way around.

I love that the designers wove this subtle storytelling throughout separate sets! Judging from their proximity, it also looks like the baby minifigures have a fondness of croissants.

Dope. Love it!
Thanks for the intriguing article!

I’d love to see a return of the two original parents from the people pack set, now in their 60s, I suppose.

Great article, although that does mean some of my original Minifigs are around 240 years old now!

The implication that he chose a wife that looks remarkably like his mother...

*Sniff* they grow up so fast

Not sure if it is meant to be the same guy, but the torso of the dad does appear in last year’s bookshop modular (10270) with gray hair, so that might be him aged 45-50 or so.

I'd love to get a hearse! :D A good starting point could be 10274 ECTO-1, actually, if you get rid of all the accessories and change the body colour to dark gray…

@lolobelge said:
"Not sure if it is meant to be the same guy, but the torso of the dad does appear in last year’s bookshop modular (10270) with gray hair, so that might be him aged 45-50 or so. "
It could well be! If so, he seems to have separated from the mother.

So, my dad’s collection of classic space minifigures are not a day over 252? Interesting.

Nice Easter Egg though

so when they grow up, they still have the same clothes but their trousers grow.

@theguru1974 said:
"Pure genius on TLG's part for slipping this Easter egg of sorts into their sets. What a fun place it must be to work for. "

Or just a mistake they hadn’t noticed...

@xccj said:
"The implication that he chose a wife that looks remarkably like his mother..."

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who immediately thought of that...

This raises some grim questions for the lifetime of dogs and cats in the minifigure world.

This is genius from both the designers and whoever noticed that. I hope we see grandpa and grandma play with the new kid soon.

Hmmm my issue with this is the freckles disappearing. And him not wearing a hat so this feels like a stretch after the first 2. It would have been better if they had an older variant of the parents with grey hair aged features with an adult version of the kid.

@Fauch said:
"so when they grow up, they still have the same clothes but their trousers grow."
That’s assuming that they are wearing clothes and those are not natural skin markings or tattoos. There must be a transition from the baby onesie at some point as well...

So... My minifigs from the 90s and before that are zombies? Jeez!

Actually we might consider starting a study using DNA and the extensive 60204 hospital lab facilities to find out about more relationships among minifigs. Fortunately we all have buckets full of zombie ancestors to volunteer...

Assuming all minifigures are equal, this would mean that Clone Trooper minifigures age 12 years for every human year. Poor Captain Rex, he’s lucky if he makes it to the ripe old age of 8!

It says something that the man's wife looks and dresses like his mother. There's something happening there.

Thanks for using the word "extrapolate".

As Friends gets minidoll-kids next year, perhaps in the upcoming years we'll be able to figure out their lifecycle as well?

Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?

I don't remember growing older
When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?

Wasn't it yesterday
When they were small?

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset

I’m just impressed Huw knows what a meme is!

I was expecting some details on the ½ life of ABS or something....

I propose a slight amendment to the calculation- if it took between 2016 and 2018 (2 years) to reach the age of 10 (that kid clearly can't be much older than that), there must be a relationship of 5 minifigure years to 1 human year. This would place his age in 2021 as 5*5=25 years, which is still easily old enough to have a baby.

Although this is all supposing a linear relationship between human and minifigure lifecycles. As we have yet to see these specimens reach old age, it could just be that they have a much longer adulthood relative to childhood than us. Ninjago indicates this to be a possibility, with the ninja remaining young adults and Wu stubbornly refusing to die of old age. Only time will tell...

I'm a bicentennial man. (In LEGO Minifig Years)

I think the 2018 set was intentional but the 2021 one is more likely unintentional

@MrClassic said:
" @lolobelge said:
"Not sure if it is meant to be the same guy, but the torso of the dad does appear in last year’s bookshop modular (10270) with gray hair, so that might be him aged 45-50 or so. "
It could well be! If so, he seems to have separated from the mother."

Honestly, I could see the mom from this article becoming the older lady from that set...

@xccj, @Brickalili, and @SolidState it’s not unheard of-Lily Potter and Ginny Weasley, anyone?

The mother is also in set 10270. Darker brown hair with glasses now.

https://images.brickset.com/sets/AdditionalImages/10270-1/10270_Back_14.jpg

The child is now the young man in the set. The bookshop owner is his girlfriend. She later changes her hairstyle and colour. She also is now wearing the mother's clothes.

https://images.brickset.com/sets/AdditionalImages/10270-1/10270_Back_11.jpg

The other boy is their second child.

That means some of my mini figures are at 252 years old!

The dad in the red shirt has always reminded Al, the guy from Home Improvement, who works with Tim the tool man.

It's amazing how durable and long-lasting minifig clothing apparently is.
;-)

It's a missed opportunityto have included medium legs for teenagers in the City line IMHO. They grew that family too fast.
Poor Classic Town minifigures if we consider this age calculation formula...

Wait but how slow do the pirates of the barracuda bay age then? The captain barely has a touch of gray 20 years later. Unless they found a fountain of youth in their travels??

@Slobrojoe said:
" @theguru1974 said:
"Pure genius on TLG's part for slipping this Easter egg of sorts into their sets. What a fun place it must be to work for. "

Or just a mistake they hadn’t noticed..."

Given Lego designers' penchant for Easter eggs, I am quite sure this is intentional. (Does anyone know if these sets all had the same designer? Wouldn't surprise me if so.)

Next year one of the ghosts in a Hidden Side set will be wearing those clothes...

@TransNeonOrangeSpaceman said:
"So... My minifigs from the 90s and before that are zombies? Jeez!"

Well, the Empire sure figured out the DeathTrooper project.....

What does this mean for ninjago? Let’s guess that at the beginning, Kai was 15, now he is almost 75!

Perhaps they just use the same clothing store.

@CCC said:
"I don't think the kid is the same person, as his eyebrows change colour from brown to black.

And if changes in eyebrows are allowed, then the guy in the wheelchair is a benefits fraudster. As after that set, he has also been spotted kayaking in set 60166, delivering pizza in set 951909 and driving an ATV in set 60148.
"
At the risk of being sanctimonious (which is not my intention), there are conditions that can require a wheelchair one day and nothing the next: multiple sclerosis and some forms of arthritis for example.

Also, there are wheelchair users who can kayak and drive.

@captcrouton said:
"The dad in the red shirt has always reminded Al, the guy from Home Improvement, who works with Tim the tool man. "

The face and hair remind me Billy Mays a lot, especially the big grin.

So when the 2018 boy grows up into 2021 man, does he impregnate is mom, or did he simply find a wife with the same color hair and likes to wear the same color schemes? Oedipus complex?

People are reading way too much into this. There are thousands of sets out there. People found a 'pattern' in 3 sets, throwing out the other sets which fit the camper redesigns and disproves this line of thought. This is people being silly AF.

This is the earliest I saw anyone tying these figures together: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AdultFansOfLego/permalink/3686329168054755.

Ninjago is a magical land where time flows fast and slow at the whim of the Ninja

Funnily hilarous!

Indeed, there is some nice easter eggs... So... we wait for LEGO City Cemetery / Graveyard for all those elder minifigs who passed out... Or minifigs are living eternally? THAT'S a question!

@TeriXeri said:
"The same mother is in 31068 in 2017"
Looks like it could be the same kid too, even though he's wearing different clothes. But where's the dad?

I wouldn't take this as absolute fact. LEGO sets don't release at the exact same time as their in-universe counterparts. The Ninjago Ninja are still described as teens despite the series lasting 10 real-life years, and the 2001-2008 run of BIONICLE all took place within one year. Also in Ninjago, Lil' Nelson seemed to age from around 8-10 to around 12-13 over the course of 2016-2019 which roughly correlates with human aging. It's possible that 60134 takes place in 2008, 60182 takes place in 2018, and 60283 takes place in 2028 for example.

Since I've seen a few people mention minidolls I'm gonna have to say it depends on the universe. In stuff like the LEGO Movie universe where the characters are actual toys minifigs and minidolls are separate things, while in "reality" based themes like Ninjago or BIONICLE the toys are just a representation of the characters. For example, the Exo-Force Heroes were depicted as humans in the comics despite being minifigures in the toys, and the Toa form BIONICLE are canonically 6ft tall despite being 10 times the size of a minifig. Technically all minifigs and minidolls are the same, they're just depicted in different art styles for the toys. If the Heartlake City cast actually showed up in a LEGO City set they would more than likely turn into yellow minifigs for continuity's sake, like how Takua was scaled down to minifig scale for LEGO Backlot.

Rumor is that the original father in red was based on Kevin Hinkle, whose wife had recently given birth when the first of these sets came out.

@CCC:
The original parents are clearly meant to be the same family. Between two sets of legs, two torsos, two heads, and two hairstyles, the only thing that changed was the color of the father's jeans. They may not crank out hundreds of new Town/City minifig prints every year, but they have enough variety that there's no way that it was just a coincidence that the first parents of a minifig baby showed up again with a young kid.

@essel:
I've already got a hearse. Black, 80's body style, bits of chrome including a chrome frog hood ornament, driven by a crew of zombies that bear a suspicious likeness to the Three Stooges...

@vizzitor:
Every dog and cat is a new animal. Open two copies of the same set, and it's still a different dog or cat in the box. You have no idea how many dogs they've gone through in the Scooby-Doo theme...

@TheOtherMike:
None of them have a designer listed, so it's _possible_, but there's no way to confirm it without a designer stepping up.

@CapnRex101:
I'm pretty sure that when minifigs go visit Heartlake City, they're murdered on arrival.

@Galaxy12_Import:
They do have Time Twins...

@MeganL:
They do have minifig/minidoll versions of a few characters. I know Disney has Aladdin, Anna, Ariel, Elsa, Jasmine, Maleficent, and Ursula. DC has Batgirl, Bumblebee, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Steve Trevor, Supergirl, the Flash, and Wonder Woman.

Not long in from work.......and I’m in hysterics!
What a thoroughly entertaining read. Totally tickled!

Cheers everyone.....made my day!

@CapnRex101 said:
"While we are inhabiting the LEGO City Twilight Zone, I have a couple of questions:

Firstly, could the female minifigure from 60283-1 Holiday Camper Van be a time traveler? Her clothing has appeared twice before in the City theme, worn on both occasions by an elderly woman with white hair. The minifigure from 60234-1 People Pack - Fun Fair is particularly interesting, accompanied by an elderly man wearing a sport jacket with a mountain insignia. Presumably his love for the outdoors remains, even after growing older and travelling back through time.

My second question is only tangentially relevant. We know that LEGO City and Heartlake City exist within the same universe because Heartlake City appears as a likely destination in both 60261-1 Central Airport and 60262-1 Passenger Plane. That being the case, do minifigures and mini-dolls change body type upon arriving in the other location?

Lastly, what was in my orange juice this morning?"

What happens when their flight arrives at Voya-Nui then?

This is really interesting. I'm sure this was intentional, at least the first 2 sets

So genius and so subtle, that's why naming city characters is a TERRIBLE idea.

@CarolinaOnMyMind said:
"Dope. Love it!
Thanks for the intriguing article!

I’d love to see a return of the two original parents from the people pack set, now in their 60s, I suppose. "

Take a look at the couple that lives in the townhouse beside the bookstore in 10270. Looks an awful lot like older versions of the original parents, now the grandparents.