Cataloging the LEGO licenses

[Blondie-Wan]

Since launching their first Star Wars toys in 1999, LEGO has released a slew of products based on narrative / character-based licensed pop culture entertainment properties. There are so many I’m trying to get a handle on them all, so I thought I’d draw up a list.

This includes everything from full-blown major themes like DC, Marvel, and Star Wars, to properties with as little as a single minifigure in the Disney Minifigures series, a single LEGO Ideas set, or an expansion pack for LEGO Dimensions. I’m trying to keep certain properties “together” (so, just having a single “Middle-Earth” listing for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, for example), but at the same time splitting out those properties originally created as discrete properties but since grouped under a blanket theme (so, for example, separate listings for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, etc., rather than just lumping them all under “Disney Princess”).

This is just for narrative / character-based licenses, not corporate brands, products, services, etc. like Shell, McDonald’s, Toys ‘R’ Us, and so on. For the moment, I’m also trying to restrict it to stuff with actual, physical LEGO products, as opposed to things that have been portrayed in media but not actual bricks (like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Red Dwarf in LEGO Dimensions, or The Matrix and Clash of the Titans in The LEGO Batman Movie). But I am including anything with physical bricks sold under a narrative-type license, even if the set had nothing to actually do with it (specifically, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium).

So... here’s my list so far, including some upcoming things that have been announced but not yet released. What am I missing?

• The A-Team

• Adventure Time

• Aladdin

• Alice in Wonderland

• Angry Birds

• Animal Crossing

• Avatar: The Last Airbender

• Back to the Future

• Beauty and the Beast

• Beetlejuice

• Ben 10

• The Big Bang Theory

• Bob the Builder

• Brave

• Cars / Planes

• Cinderella

• DC Universe

• Despicable Me / Minions

• Doc McStuffins

• Doctor Who

• Dora the Explorer

• E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

• Fast & Furious

• The Flintstones

• Friends

• Frozen

• Galidor

• Ghostbusters

• The Goonies

• Gremlins

• Hercules

• Home Alone

• The Incredibles

• Indiana Jones

• James Bond

• Julius the Monkey

• Jurassic Park / Jurassic World

• Knight Rider

• Lilo & Stitch

• The Little Mermaid

• Little Robots

• The Lone Ranger

• Looney Tunes

• Mario

• Marvel Universe

• Mickey Mouse & Friends

• Middle-Earth

• Midway Arcade

• Miles From Tomorrowland

• Minecraft

• Mission: Impossible

• Moana

• Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

• Mulan

• The Nightmare Before Christmas

• Overwatch

• Peter Pan / Jake and the Neverland Pirates

• Pirates of the Caribbean

• Pocahontas

• Portal

• Powerpuff Girls

• Prince of Persia

• Rock Band

• Scooby-Doo

• Seinfeld

• Sesame Street

• The Simpsons

• Sleeping Beauty

• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

• Sofia the First

• Sonic the Hedgehog

• Speed Racer

• SpongeBob Squarepants

• Star Wars

• Stranger Things

• Tangled

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

• Thomas the Tank Engine

• Toy Story

• Trolls

• TRON

• Universal Monsters

• Voltron

• WALL•E

• Winnie the Pooh

• The Wizard of Oz

• The Wizarding World

• Yellow Submarine

 

... and one I know was licensed but ultimately never released:

 

• Phineas & Ferb

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Blondie-Wan
added to list

[saysonder]

Great list! I don’t know if Pocahontas counts, since she appears only on the box art of one of the Palace Pets sets, which includes her pet raccoon. 

[Oky]

Very handy list! I think for what you're trying to do, you got pretty much all of them, although I think it's safe to say that we can add Overwatch to that list as well.

And just for format's sake, I would use single paragraphs, not double (shift+enter) or put them into a list format so that we don't have to scroll so much.

[Tariq j]

Excellent list! James Bond has (sort of) been confirmed to have at least one Aston Martin set. So I guess that could fall under corporate brands too. But no pictures have yet been released. 

[Digger of Bricks]

Whoa, Galidor was a licensed theme? I looked that up just now, and until then, I've always thought that was an in-house theme of theirs. 

[Blondie-Wan]

Thanks for the feedback, all!

17 hours ago, saysonder said:

Great list! I don’t know if Pocahontas counts, since she appears only on the box art of one of the Palace Pets sets, which includes her pet raccoon. 

For now, I’m going ahead with it. It’s hardly the first time LEGO’s treatment of something includes just a very tiny part of that thing, or combines it with other stuff as part of a larger combined theme.

17 hours ago, Oky said:

Very handy list! I think for what you're trying to do, you got pretty much all of them, although I think it's safe to say that we can add Overwatch to that list as well.

Done!

Quote

And just for format's sake, I would use single paragraphs, not double (shift+enter) or put them into a list format so that we don't have to scroll so much.

Thanks for the reminder about the list option. I’ll do that later.

17 hours ago, Tariq j said:

Excellent list! James Bond has (sort of) been confirmed to have at least one Aston Martin set. So I guess that could fall under corporate brands too. But no pictures have yet been released. 

Yeah, I was really surprised by that one; 007 seemed like something they wouldn’t do - but then, so did The Big Bang Theory, Gremlins, and The Simpsons, so what do I know. And the recent social media activity certainly makes it sound as though we’ll get not just an Aston Martin, but specifically a James Bond Aston Martin (not unlike how there are a couple LEGO products featuring a DeLorean, but specifically the DeLorean time machine from Back to the Future, rather than just a standard, stock, regular DeLorean).

17 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Whoa, Galidor was a licensed theme? I looked that up just now, and until then, I've always thought that was an in-house theme of theirs. 

You know, it really seems that way sometimes, enough so that part of me wonders whether that isn’t actually the case. But I do know it was a TV show, and the Wikipedia entry for the show sounds as though it was conceived of as a show first and foremost, and LEGO was merely a licensee. I’m going to have to research it further.

Edited June 17, 2018 by Blondie-Wan

[Digger of Bricks]

5 hours ago, Blondie-Wan said:

You know, it really seems that way sometimes, enough so that part of me wonders whether that isn’t actually the case. But I do know it was a TV show, and the Wikipedia entry for the show sounds as though it was conceived of as a show first and foremost, and LEGO was merely a licensee. I’m going to have to research it further.

Same here, the Wikipedia article was the first and only link I looked at for that information. 

[MAB]

It might be worth keeping the large licenses, so SW, DC, Marvel, Middle Earth, etc in a separate list, otherwise putting Star Wars on the same footing as Pocahontas' raccoon seems a bit odd. Personally, I would have kept all the Palace Pets together as that is the theme.

[Blondie-Wan]

7 hours ago, MAB said:

It might be worth keeping the large licenses, so SW, DC, Marvel, Middle Earth, etc in a separate list, otherwise putting Star Wars on the same footing as Pocahontas' raccoon seems a bit odd.

Perhaps, but this isn’t listing all the sets or whatever in each theme; it’s just a list of all the different licensed entertainment properties that have LEGO products at one time or another.

That said, I might eventually break it down into a couple major groups - one of those properties that are either ongoing with indefinite ends (Marvel, DC, Star Wars) along with ones they’ve done frequently if sporadically over a long period, and for which we might reasonably assume LEGO will be the construction toy maker for the franchise for the foreseeable future (Wizarding World, Jurassic Park / World), and a separate group for those franchises that are one-and-done, where LEGO might do a single Ideas set or a wave for a new movie, and then never return to the property, perhaps even freeing it for some other company to grab. A third group could be for those properties that LEGO hangs onto for a while, even multiple years, yet without maintaining the sort of ultra-close relationship with the rights holder that it does with, say, Warner or Disney, and for which other toy makers are able to step in as soon as LEGO drops the theme (à la SpongeBob Squarepants and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

But for now, I just want to make sure I get everything.

I will note that simply grouping into “large” and “small” licenses is really tough, since there’s not a hard, clear line of demarcation, but rather a continuum, with Star Wars at one end and, perhaps, Lilo & Stitch (which might get an Ideas set or Brickheadz or both or something else in the near future, but for the moment is just a single Disney Series Minifigure) at the other. But along the way, there’s a gradual slope - and the sequence might even vary depending upon whether we’re talking about the total length of time the theme is maintained as active, or the total number of sets, or the total combined size and/or price of all the sets, whatever.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Blondie-Wan

[Anonknee Muss]

What about car licenses?

[Blondie-Wan]

1 hour ago, J4ck said:

What about car licenses?

I was also thinking about those when I wrote this:

On 6/16/2018 at 4:53 PM, Blondie-Wan said:

This is just for narrative / character-based licenses, not corporate brands, products, services, etc. like Shell, McDonald’s, Toys ‘R’ Us, and so on.

Essentially, this list is for fiction - characters, stories, and so on from movies, television, comics, video games, books, etc., as opposed to real-world products, brands, companies, etc., like Porsche, Volkswagen, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Ford, McDonald’s, Target, Exxon, Maersk, and so on.

But someone should do a similar list for those.

[Oky]

On 6/16/2018 at 3:29 PM, Digger of Bricks said:

Whoa, Galidor was a licensed theme? I looked that up just now, and until then, I've always thought that was an in-house theme of theirs. 

 

On 6/17/2018 at 8:32 AM, Blondie-Wan said:

You know, it really seems that way sometimes, enough so that part of me wonders whether that isn’t actually the case. But I do know it was a TV show, and the Wikipedia entry for the show sounds as though it was conceived of as a show first and foremost, and LEGO was merely a licensee. I’m going to have to research it further.

In the Lego episode of The Toys That Made Us, David C. Robertson says that Lego commissioned the TV show, and on Brickipedia it says that Lego partially funded it (although no source is sited for that info), so it does seem like they had some involvement in the production of the show, but it's debatable if that disqualifies it for this list.

I'd say just leave it. I mean, it's Galidor. Who cares.

[Blondie-Wan]

7 hours ago, Oky said:

 

In the Lego episode of The Toys That Made Us, David C. Robertson says that Lego commissioned the TV show, and on Brickipedia it says that Lego partially funded it (although no source is sited for that info), so it does seem like they had some involvement in the production of the show, but it's debatable if that disqualifies it for this list.

I'd say just leave it. I mean, it's Galidor. Who cares.

I did watch that episode of The Toys That Made Us but had drawn a blank on what it said re: Galidor. It seems strange that it’s so hard to find info on Galidor, considering it wasn’t really that long ago.

Is there a way to actually watch Galidor these days? I shall have to see if it’s streaming anywhere...

[PickleManDan]

I'm not sure if any of these count, but there have been some keychains released based on Julius the Monkey, Top Gear, and Rock Band.

https://brickset.com/sets/852023-1/Julius-the-Monkey-Key-Chain

https://brickset.com/sets/THESTIG-1/Top-Gear-The-Stig-Key-Chain

https://brickset.com/sets/852889-1/LEGO-Rock-Band-Promo-Key-Chain-Minifig-1

https://brickset.com/sets/852890-1/LEGO-Rock-Band-Promo-Key-Chain-Minifig-2

[Anonknee Muss]

On 6/18/2018 at 11:41 PM, Blondie-Wan said:

I was also thinking about those when I wrote this:

Essentially, this list is for fiction - characters, stories, and so on from movies, television, comics, video games, books, etc., as opposed to real-world products, brands, companies, etc., like Porsche, Volkswagen, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Ford, McDonald’s, Target, Exxon, Maersk, and so on.

But someone should do a similar list for those.

Ahhh I see, awesome, thanks for clarifying 

19 hours ago, Oky said:

In the Lego episode of The Toys That Made Us, David C. Robertson says that Lego commissioned the TV show, and on Brickipedia it says that Lego partially funded it (although no source is sited for that info), so it does seem like they had some involvement in the production of the show, but it's debatable if that disqualifies it for this list.

I'd say just leave it. I mean, it's Galidor. Who cares.

I care.

[Digger of Bricks]

5 hours ago, PickleManDan said:

I'm not sure if any of these count, but there have been some keychains released based on Julius the Monkey, Top Gear, and Rock Band.

Bizzare, I was never before aware of those "Rock Band" keychains. 

[Oky]

Does Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales count? I guess the Creative Storybook is more of a tribute to the author himself than a representation of his works, although the swan is clearly at least a reference to The Ugly Duckling.

On 6/19/2018 at 3:58 PM, J4ck said:

I care.

Sorry, no offense to any Galidor fans out there.

On 6/19/2018 at 4:04 AM, Blondie-Wan said:

Is there a way to actually watch Galidor these days? I shall have to see if it’s streaming anywhere...

Most of the episodes can be found on YouTube, but be warned: It's even worse than you remember, so watch at your own risk:

 

[Blondie-Wan]

2 hours ago, Oky said:

Does Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales count? I guess the Creative Storybook is more of a tribute to the author himself than a representation of his works, although the swan is clearly at least a reference to The Ugly Duckling.

Well, his original stories are in the public domain, so not really licensed for the most part - though Disney’s take on The Little Mermaid certainly qualifies.

But I actually have been mulling over whether to include some of his other tales, and not just because of this recent set. LEGO actually did a series of HCA-inspired sets as a subtheme of Belville back around 2005; I actually have the Snow Queen set. Between it and the other Belville Hans Christian Andersen sets, the recent promo (which I’m very sorry to have missed out on, alas), and the various Disney-derived Little Mermaid items, they’ve done perhaps a dozen HCA-based sets.

2 hours ago, Oky said:

Most of the episodes can be found on YouTube, but be warned: It's even worse than you remember, so watch at your own risk

Thanks for the heads-up! I never actually saw it in its original run (or any other time), so I have no memories against which to measure it, but I’m a fairly forgiving viewer (though I’m certainly not expecting much).

On 6/19/2018 at 5:13 PM, PickleManDan said:

I'm not sure if any of these count, but there have been some keychains released based on Julius the Monkey, Top Gear, and Rock Band.

https://brickset.com/sets/852023-1/Julius-the-Monkey-Key-Chain

https://brickset.com/sets/THESTIG-1/Top-Gear-The-Stig-Key-Chain

https://brickset.com/sets/852889-1/LEGO-Rock-Band-Promo-Key-Chain-Minifig-1

https://brickset.com/sets/852890-1/LEGO-Rock-Band-Promo-Key-Chain-Minifig-2

Thanks for the reminders!

[Anonknee Muss]

9 hours ago, Oky said:

Does Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales count? I guess the Creative Storybook is more of a tribute to the author himself than a representation of his works, although the swan is clearly at least a reference to The Ugly Duckling.

Sorry, no offense to any Galidor fans out there.

Most of the episodes can be found on YouTube, but be warned: It's even worse than you remember, so watch at your own risk.

 

No offence taken and I’m also not a galidor fan. I care about everything.

[Blondie-Wan]

I’ve updated the list to add The Flintstones, coming soon via LEGO Ideas.

[Blondie-Wan]

And now I’ve updated it again with Friends (the ‘90s sitcom, obviously, as opposed to the existing LEGO theme that introduced minidolls).

[Marvelous Spidey]

I think it would be interesting to break the list down into columns by liscencer. The list would then be "shorter" and easier to see at once, and it would be really interesting to see who, other than Disney, LEGO works with the most. If I had to guess it's be Warner Brothers but it could be a surprise!

[Blondie-Wan]

In light of today’s reveal, I’ve added Hercules to the list - finally, a property beginning with H, at last! Now we just need to take care of Q, U, X, and Z, and the LEGO licenses will include at least one for every letter of the alphabet.  

On 2/19/2019 at 12:22 PM, Marvelous Spidey said:

I think it would be interesting to break the list down into columns by liscencer. The list would then be "shorter" and easier to see at once, and it would be really interesting to see who, other than Disney, LEGO works with the most. If I had to guess it's be Warner Brothers but it could be a surprise!

Oh, it should easily be Warner Bros., no question - DC, the Wizarding World, Middle-Earth, Speed Racer, Adventure Time, Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones, The Powerpuff Girls, The Goonies, Gremlins, Beetlejuice, The Wizard of Oz, and probably other stuff I’m forgetting. Some of those are just a single Ideas set or LEGO Dimensions pack or whatever, but the first three are all big, multi-year themes with D2Cs and everything, a couple of which are still running, and are huge.

(That’s not to mention that the “LCU”, which we think of as LEGO’s own, is technically more of a joint property they share with WB.)

[Blondie-Wan]

List update: added Stranger Things (!).

[Blondie-Wan]

Another update: added Trolls, per today’s reveal.