The hero/villian minifig discrepancy

[Zarkan]

So, I’ve been browsing the pictures of the 2011 Pharoah’s Quest line, and the thing that first comes to my mind is “gee, I can’t see why the kids would root for the adventurers, when the bad guys are so much cooler.” The more I think about it, however, the more I realize that this is a trend common to many of TLC’s other recent action themes. To give you a picture of what I mean, I’ll list a few of them down below:

Space Police III

Good Guys: Standardized future-policemen with generic minfig heads

Bad Guys: Multiple alien criminals with unique head pieces and torsos

Agents:

Good Guys: Standardized agents with com-link wearing versions of generic minfig heads

Bad Guys: Multiple villains with unique heads, helmets, and torsos

Atlantis:

Good Guys: Standardized divers with generic minifig heads

Bad Guys: Multiple underwater monsters with unique head pieces and torsos

Notice a pattern here? If your answer is “yes, the good guys are all the same, while the bad guys are all different,” then congratulations, you’ve stumbled upon TLC’s formula for almost all recent action themes! Needless to say, it’s rather odd how the good guys seem to have so much little effort put into them, while the villains are always chock-full of neat concepts and unique molds and prints. The only exception to this rule seems to be Castle, which features a bunch of standout figures in both the good guy and bad guy factions, Other than that, however, TLC’s recent themes seem to generally sway towards the “villains unique, heroes alike” line, or in the case of themes like Mars Mission and Exo-Force, feature the same few figures on both sides over and over again.

What do you guys think? Should TLC invest more time and effort into making their heroes stand out as much as their villains, or are you fine with the good guys being marginalized in the design department?

[sok117]

Though I agree that the bad guys minifigs have more effort put into them, the good guys always have the sweet vehicles, and just look more appealing as good guys. I don't really see how the good guys could be more advanced, the new line have different torso's I believe, so I guess I'd have to go for set designs.

[prateek]

I think it's okay for the goodies to be generic, but the baddies seriously need better vehicles/sets based around them.

[Aanchir]

A couple things you're not acknowledging:

• The Agents "good guy" minifigs were not by any means generic. In their first year, they all had new head prints, other than sets where Agent Chase appeared without his sunglasses and communicator.
• None of the new Agent face prints were similar to existing minifig heads other than the fact that they depicted humans without deformities. Agent Trace even had a totally unique torso print to give her a more feminine physique.
• Also, all of the agents besides Agent Charge (and in the second year, Agent Swift) had new hair pieces.
• The Agents "bad guy" minifigures during the first year were hardly any less "generic" than the "good guys". Gold Tooth, Gold Tooth's henchman, Break Jaw, and Spy Clops (both versions) all had identical torso prints. And all the Inferno henchmen for the first year had identical back prints, besides Slime Face's green slime dripping down his black uniform, as well as color changes for Dr. Inferno's white outfit and Claw-Dette's black outfit.
• Fire-Arm and Saw Fist also had identical torsos, which were just variations on the standard villain torso, to boot.

Really the only recent action theme I can think of where the heroes did have a great amount of variety was Dino Attack/Dino 2010, where there were no villain figs. And the only way you could have made the Agents minifigs more unique would be by making far more of them and making many of them mutants or cyborgs. As with many TV shows and book series, there's a great value in having a consistent team of "heroes" facing off against an ever-increasing panoply of villains. Kids can grow to identify with the heroes, and the heroes come across as a close-knit "team" rather than as a sprawling, hierarchical organization.

An example of this problem is seen in the "hugeness" of Alpha Team's last iteration, where random, never-before-mentioned team members appeared along with hard-to-identify classic members. It ruined the idea of Alpha Team as an elite and close-knit team, at least for me. The fact that team members' codenames no longer had any connection with their particular specialties was also a turn-off, since I was a big fan of the Alpha Team Game Boy Color game.

Overall, you're right that villains have a great deal more uniqueness than the heroes in most themes. However, in my opinion there is nothing wrong with this discrepancy, and outside of the LEGO world it is a time-tested tradition in stories of all sorts.

[lightningtiger]

As much as children love heroes, like Luke Skywalker or Batman, it's the evil ones like Darth Vader or The Joker that kids love as well and sometimes more so !

The baddies generally look different, so I guess simple reason might be so you can tell them apart, look at Ninjago especially.

I'm a conformist! everyone !

[blueandwhite]

Heroes always seem a bit more dull to me. This seems to be pretty much standard in any children's toyline. Heroes are quite literally avatars for the child to relate to as he or she plays with the toys. As such they are usually endowed with traits that the child wishes to see in him or herself. How many children want to be deformed, grotesque or freakish? As I see things, the bland heroes LEGO produces are simply placeholders for children to act out their own fantasies against an undefined evil.

[Masked Builder]

I see your point but I think kids really go for the baddies because they can relate to the good guys but not the bad guys. I especially like all the bad guys Lego has done for Space police, Atlantis, and Pharaohs Quest stuff.

As much as children love heroes, like Luke Skywalker or Batman, it's the evil ones like Darth Vader or The Joker that kids love as well and sometimes more so !

The baddies generally look different, so I guess simple reason might be so you can tell them apart, look at Ninjago especially.

I'm a conformist! everyone !

Yeah those are good examples.

[Flare]

I think that some similar figures is OK, but they need to have a special hero minifig sometimes...

I still think that the villains are cool though!

[MetroiD]

Heroes, villains - it's all the same to me, when I start mixing torsos, heads and hairpieces in order to create my own minifigs

Back to the topic at hand though - I agree with you, Zarkan, but then again you've also got to bear in mind that the Heroes always have cooler gadgets / devices / machinery. So while from an AFOL's point of view villains may be cooler in terms of having more varied appearances or accessories, the heroes always come out on top with their fancy cars, trucks, etc - the Agents' 10-wheeler comes to mind as a very good example of that.

[Aanchir]

Also something my brother reminded me of when we were discussing this topic: Power Miners. In that, the "bad guys" are all identical Rock Monsters in different colors. The heroes, on the other hand, have unique double-sided face prints and (for the first year, anyway) a variety of different torso designs.

And that's not even considering older action themes like Alpha Team and (arguably) Knights' Kingdom II, where there were far more heroes than villains. The difference is that having repetitive heroes gives a feeling of unity while still ascribing some degree of personality to them, whereas repetitive villains become essentially a mindless horde that kids can't possibly identify with.

And of course, the "villains" seeming cooler is probably part of the reason there's more variety among them than among the heroes in recent themes. Heroes are typically fairly normal people-- villains, on the other hand, tend to be abnormal in some way. There seems to be just as much variety among the heroes in Pharaoh's Quest as among the villains in terms of the number of prints. But you naturally saw the villains as more "unique" and less "generic", when in fact they're about the same in terms of diversity (at least, as far as we can tell by the prelim pictures, where some of the figs on both sides are certainly not finalized).