Generic minifigures vs. named minifigures

[Lord Admiral]

With the release of Space Police III, which is nothing like the first two incarnations, I curious to know what people here prefer, generic minifigures or named minifigures.

Generic doesn't necessarily mean the lack of details, but just the lack of a presumed identity. To specify, a city minifigure would be generic, one that can be anyone. Castle minifigs are also generic (and this is true of the current line, but inaccurate when speaking of the KKII line). Sets like Agents, Power Miners, and the new Space Police III have named minifigures. Licensed sets fall somewhere in between. Clone/Stormtroopers are generic, but Luke Skywalker and Batman are named.

Edit: I'm so busy trying to define what generic is, I forgot to include my own thoughts. :p As I might've stated before, I'm a big fan of generic minifigures (who would've guessed, right). I don't mind named minifigs in licensed themes, but I abhor them in the regular sets. I find that the more personality they have, the more creatively restrictive they are. This is particularly true for villians, oddly enough, while the heroes tend to be a little more generic, and I can more easily ignore the pre-imagined aspects.

I definitely ignore minifigure identities in a MOC, but I don't do that much anymore.

Edited June 6, 2009 by Lord Admiral

[xenologer]

Sometimes named minifigs bug me, like the Powerminers depending on where I look their names seem to change.

I definetly like that the SP3 aliens have names though, makes them more colorful somehow.

Maybe the real issue isnt names, but whether or not there's a story to go with a theme? They can call the minifigs whatever they want but its really not too interesting to me unless there's a context.

Edited June 6, 2009 by xenologer

[The Cobra]

I prefere generic. Beause I found silly to have 10 Vladeks or Johnny Thunders, and so on...

[Peppermint_M]

A bit of both. Generic is great for armies and named is cool for making a story, giving them a personality, voice and quirks. But I prefer named characters to have a uniform, or be part of an organisation with a uniform. This I shall explain:

At the moment I have lots of Agents lego and I am only going to be getting more. Because of this I have two Trace, Charge and Fuse and about five Chase figures, I have three Break-Jaws a second Spyclops and two Dr Inferno figures. As they have a uniform I can use my large collection of minifigures to create more Agents and Inferno figures. Generics would be useful for making the army bigger without repeating the character heads but I can still create generics or new characters with my own collection of heads.

Sometimes, however, I get fed up of generics because it looks like a cloning accident happened at some point with the royal guardsmen, police officers and firemen.

[SlyOwl]

I prefer the semi-named characters, like Knight's Kingdom 1. Only King Leo and Cedric the Bull's names were widely publicised (in set names), but in the magazines and comics, you find out about Queen Leonara, Princess Storm, Richard the Strong, John of Mayne, Weezel and Gilbert the Bad.

Of course, there are variations on these figs between the sets, so that unveils a wider range of names possible, unlike, say, Vader.

[Brickthing]

I prefer generic usually, although sometimes named ones are fine, as long as they're not too distinctive. I enjoy using the named figures in MOCs, because they've got a character that other LEGO-fans already know, so there's no need to introduce them. However, I prefer pulling my figs apart and making custom generic figs to use in my Bed-town, that I can then invent my own character for them. I find that the helmet of Darth Vader or the face of Dr. Inferno for example are too distinctive to use because I'd look at the fig, no matter what the other parts of the minifig are, those distinctive parts would make me associate the minifig with the character, instead of a generic minifig.

In short, I like minifigs as long as their parts can be used for my own custom minifigs, and aren't so distinctive that I can rethink their character.

[Zuntir]

I prefer generic ones but I like to give them names and create a story. So my generic figs become non generic Of course for licensed themes non-generic figs are allright.

[blueandwhite]

I don't mind named minifigs so long as they are reasonably versatile. Slyowl mentioned KKI. To me, this is a perfect example. Despite giving a number of figures names, the figures themselves were actually quite diverse and could be mixed, matched and integrated with amazing diversity. Conversely, KKII the figures were too specific. At the onset we had five coloured knights and a henchman. What the line initially lacked was a supporting cast. You ended up getting multiples of each Knight and none of the rich diversity that KKI (or most of the other castle lines) had.

Simply put; I don't have a preference either way so long as the figure in question is versatile.

[just2good]

Both.

While I like the minfigures from Agents 2.0, I also love civilians from city and Robo-Attack. I like how the Power Miners had new faces, but they got very repetitive. City has generic figures, but they don't use any new faces!