Minidolls... Action Themes Ideas

[Harkonen]

So, there is one theme that I'm so sorry I didn't buy any sets from it and that one is Lego Elves, I've looked at the sets and it looks like the theme was a pretty good success lasting for 4 years while other themes don't last even 3 years. So, I suppose this means we'll get another action minidolls theme, what would you want to see? Fantasy? Sci Fi? Horror? Adventurers? I think a minidoll space theme using colorful aliens like Sweet Mayhem would be something unique. 

[Peppermint_M]

A true space opera style minidoll theme would be super. Rayguns and colourful aliens, exploration, maybe a diva of a Space Empress to provide the conflict. A real Raygun Gothic aesthetic with a lot of colour.

[Digger of Bricks]

16 hours ago, Harkonen said:

So, I suppose this means we'll get another action minidolls theme, what would you want to see? Fantasy? Sci Fi? Horror? Adventurers? I think a minidoll space theme using colorful aliens like Sweet Mayhem would be something unique. 

14 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

A true space opera style minidoll theme would be super. Rayguns and colourful aliens, exploration, maybe a diva of a Space Empress to provide the conflict. A real Raygun Gothic aesthetic with a lot of colour.

Absolutely with you guys on the Space theme idea, especially if it went the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers route aesthetically. A Minidoll Space theme wouldn't likely be inhibited or affected by Star Wars; and because of Star Wars, we may never see an in-house minifigure-based Space Opera theme anyway, so a Minidoll one would be the ticket. Sure, I'd lament that it hasn't minifigures that'd be more useful to me, but at least it'd likely offer new raygun and headgear molds and recolors that can be "figbarfed" for custom purist minifigures; and if the spacecraft builds are as awesome as General Mayhem's craft was, then I'd be sold. 

[Harkonen]

14 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

A true space opera style minidoll theme would be super. Rayguns and colourful aliens, exploration, maybe a diva of a Space Empress to provide the conflict. A real Raygun Gothic aesthetic with a lot of colour.

That would be great. I think it would be fun if the aliens would have a new minidoll head and be based on the big grey alien head but they have different colors. This way scifi fans could also use them for mocs. I was thinking also of either a fairy or witch theme, I was watching a Disney show from the 00s called W.I.T.C.H. and I think it would be neat to take some inspiration from it. 

Just now, Digger of Bricks said:

Absolutely with you guys on the Space theme idea, especially if it went the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers route aesthetically. A Minidoll Space theme wouldn't likely be inhibited or affected by Star Wars; and because of Star Wars, we may never see an in-house minifigure-based Space Opera theme anyway, so a Minidoll one would be the ticket. Sure, I'd lament that it hasn't minifigures that'd be more useful to me, but at least it'd likely offer new raygun and headgear molds and recolors that can be "figbarfed" for custom purist minifigures; and if the spacecraft builds are as awesome as General Mayhem's craft was, then I'd be sold. 

Don't forget new aliens! I love those goblins the sets gave us back in 2017. I think such a theme could also have a variety of colors for alien fauna. 

I looked upon Lego Movie 2 concept art and found this:

Very interesting vehicles for the minidolls, everyone can see why they didn't get approved,probably. 

Edited April 29, 2020 by Harkonen

[Lego David]

As much as I would like to see a Space Mini Doll theme, i'm not sure exactly how much that would appeal to the target demographic of young girls. 

[Digger of Bricks]

18 minutes ago, Harkonen said:

Don't forget new aliens! I love those goblins the sets gave us back in 2017. I think such a theme could also have a variety of colors for alien fauna. 

Well, in regards to aliens, not only would there be a lotta creative freedom given for such from a minidoll theme, they'd have a better chance being typecast as benevolent rather than antagonistic like most minifigure-based themes have historically done.

23 minutes ago, Harkonen said:

I looked upon Lego Movie 2 concept art and found this:

Huh, never seen those before... 

Just now, Lego David said:

As much as I would like to see a Space Mini Doll theme, i'm not sure exactly how much that would appeal to the target demographic of young girls. 

Well, I do think it'd have a better chance done as a more colorful, exotic Space Opera inspired theme rather than something more like Star Trek.

[Harkonen]

12 minutes ago, Lego David said:

As much as I would like to see a Space Mini Doll theme, i'm not sure exactly how much that would appeal to the target demographic of young girls. 

I don't think it's impossible. Also, demographics change. I looked yesterday on a Lego commercial, for Frozen II, I think? And it had a boy playing with girls, I was quite impressed by that. I think Lego would make the sets for both genders to enjoy. Look at the Elves sets for example, later on they got more action oriented (which I'm curious if that was a reason to end it or they just thought that's all they could do with the concept). 

[Peppermint_M]

17 minutes ago, Lego David said:

As much as I would like to see a Space Mini Doll theme, i'm not sure exactly how much that would appeal to the target demographic of young girls. 

What Digger of Bricks said. If you use the more appealing look taken from "Raygun Gothic" style (Google it), it involves a lot more colour and grandeur than the current popular design in SF. 

Guardians of the Galaxy has been a much-needed breath of fresh air in that respect.

[Digger of Bricks]

1 hour ago, Peppermint_M said:

Guardians of the Galaxy has been a much-needed breath of fresh air in that respect.

With you too on that, I just loved that movie's spacecraft designs!  They had just right balance of comic strip colorfulness balanced with a more worn, retro/rustic charm that you'd otherwise see from Star Wars. A Space theme with spacecraft designs much like this guy's work would be pretty sweet to see for instance... 

ArtStation - Alejandro Burdisio

[Harkonen]

On 4/29/2020 at 3:43 PM, Digger of Bricks said:

With you too on that, I just loved that movie's spacecraft designs!  They had just right balance of comic strip colorfulness balanced with a more worn, retro/rustic charm that you'd otherwise see from Star Wars. A Space theme with spacecraft designs much like this guy's work would be pretty sweet to see for instance... 

ArtStation - Alejandro Burdisio

 

I wonder if the sets would be toned down to not be too complicated. Elves was more complicated compared to friends in sets. 

Edited September 5, 2020 by Peppermint_M
Please don't quote pictures.

[samurai-turtle]

On 4/29/2020 at 12:49 PM, Harkonen said:

 

I looked upon Lego Movie 2 concept art and found this:

 

Very interesting vehicles for the minidolls, everyone can see why they didn't get approved,probably. 

That stuff looks like something out of Metroid. But looking at more it does have a Bionicle look to it. 

Edited September 5, 2020 by Peppermint_M
Please don't quote pictures.

[MAB]

21 hours ago, Lego David said:

As much as I would like to see a Space Mini Doll theme, i'm not sure exactly how much that would appeal to the target demographic of young girls. 

Like this ...

[Lego David]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

Like this ...

From what I've heard TLM2 sets didn't sell very well though...

[Harkonen]

16 minutes ago, Lego David said:

From what I've heard TLM2 sets didn't sell very well though...

That's not the fault of the space concept, the set designs were weak af. Compare the LEGO Movie 2 sets to the first one, they are a down grade. 

[AMD]

I would definitely love a minidoll space theme. LEGO already made Sweet Mayhem and she may be the first step towards it.  I would like to see different yet unique races as well.

Edited April 30, 2020 by AMD

[ProfSrlojohn]

While I know it's a meant for constraction, this would be interesting to see.

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/270f4844-20f9-4910-a0a5-94a687b21f87

It probably could be adapted to minidolls.

[Peppermint_M]

A lot of girls love fantasy (I mean, I did, so do both my sisters and Disney does well with their fantasy princess worlds) so a Space Fantasy would be a nice move to take.

Honestly, I was disappointed as was my sister, that Forces of Destiny never got as far as a LEGO Minidoll theme.

[MAB]

8 hours ago, Lego David said:

From what I've heard TLM2 sets didn't sell very well though...

Most themes go to a discount so most themes "don't sell well". LEGO over produce / stores over stock. I'm sure they sold plenty at similar prices to other themes. 

[redhandjane]

I'd love to see an action minidoll theme. Elves really got me back into Lego. 

I think a magical girl theme would be awesome, Sailor Moon would be epic! The genre is still going strong in anime, "Glitter Force" on Netflix is proof of that! There could be cute outfits, lots of sparkle and cool monsters to fight.

[Lyichir]

While there are plenty of good possibilities, there's a part of me that holds on to the vain, selfish, incredibly unlikely possibility that if nothing else shows up to fill the niche Elves left behind, Elves might be able to come back.

Failing that, though, I feel like I'd really like something in a similar vein—maybe something a little more steampunk, with a setting sort of like the webcomic Girl Genius? There's also a huge opening for a sci-fi type theme, which could take all sorts of forms. Personally, I think a mech-focused anime and manga-inspired theme like Exo-Force could potentially work even better with mini-dolls than it did with minifigs, since mini-dolls already have more of an anime-esque aesthetic than classic minifigs and putting the action in mechs could help to make up for their comparatively lower range of articulation.

[Mr No]

A new fantasy minidoll theme like Elves but with focus on knights, witches, trolls, etc would be nice. A space theme too. 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Mr No

[Killian]

An idea I've been batting around for a couple of years that I'd like to eventually MOD/MOC would be a minidoll theme based around Unicorns.

Basically, there would be a group of maybe 5 teenage minidoll friends (2 boys and 3 girls) who live on Earth, but befriend a group of 5 Unicorn siblings who had to flee their magical realm when an evil sorceress or sorcerer took over their world, imprisoning the Unicorn King and Queen. 

I would probably have the villain allied with an evil Unicorn who was the sibling of the King or Queen. This evil Unicorn would have been jealous that his sibling was chosen to rule instead of himself and is perhaps manipulating the villain for his own designs on the throne. 

The 5 Unicorn siblings (2 stallions and 3 mares) would be the royal children of the Unicorn King and Queen and would need the help of the 5 human friends to battle the forces of evil with a view to liberating their world. Maybe the unicorns can only access their full power when they have an emotional bond with a special human. Which could also explain why the evil Unicorn needs his evil minidoll ally. Perhaps the Unicorns can only grow wings and fly when ridden by a human? 

The gimmick for the sets would be that each Unicorn would appear as a "normal" horse most of the time on earth, masquerading as pets of the teenagers. Though it's a minidoll theme, so I'd still want them to be fantastically coloured or detailed. The existing minidoll horse mould would suffice for these characters in their regular horse disguise. However, when magic was needed, there would be a Unicorn horn piece that would attach to the horse's head, as well as armour and/or wings to give the toy a transformation feature.

In their magical mode, the Unicorns can enchant everyday items to give them special features. So I'd maybe design a set that had a car that one of the minidolls drives on Earth, but it could transform into a chariot that could be pulled by the Unicorn to fight magical battles. Perhaps a bed belonging to a minidoll could transform into a magical flying boat, or an ordinary Wishing Well could flip up to make the magical gateway to the Unicorn's world.. and so on..

I would have each of the 2 Unicorn Princes come with 2 of the female minidolls as their chosen rider and 2 of the Unicorn Princesses having the 2 male minidolls as their riders, so it's not just all about having boys with boys and girls with girls, there would be more of a sense of different genders getting along. Though there would be the 3rd minidoll and her female Unicorn as the main characters to still kind of code it as a "girl's theme". So there's 2 more female protagonists than males, but it's not only got minimal male representation.

Each unicorn would probably share personality traits and interests with their rider, so the sensitive male unicorn connects with a sensitive female rider and the warrior Unicorn Prince connects with a more aggressive female rider and so on, so each gender is represented in different roles to show any gender can be good in any role. The main minidoll and Unicorn will maybe be the eldest of their respective social groups, with certain leadership responsibilities to give them a commonality. I don't know, I haven't thought it all through yet.

I did experiment with making an attachable Horn for a minidoll horse, using the existing small hole in the Lego minidoll horse's heads but it's not great.

 

 

[Lyichir]

If this topic's back I may as well renew my wish for Elves to come back...

The newly revealed Little Mermaid set 43207 has me once again thinking of how cool an underwater story arc with mermaids could've been. This new set seems to be the first where the dual-molded mini-doll mermaid tails (which had already been done with awesome prints) also have transparent fins—that could've been great for elementally-colored mermaid tails for the main characters. The abundance of newer parts representing undersea life like the baby dolphins, baby sea turtles, and coral pieces would have also been great for it. I suppose that failing the unlikely scenario of Elves itself returning, an entirely mermaid-focused theme could be cool too—though I doubt it would be able to replace Elves' spectacular range.

[Flaming Bricks]

Question, why can't you move minidoll legs? The legs are stuck together, but they can bend forward. I prefer minifigures, but I understand that minidolls are more focused towards girls. Minidolls look more human like, instead of being blocky, which makes sense to make them more realistic.

But why in the little Disney Princess books are the princesses so tiny like baby figures? Sorry I'm not trying to rant on them or anything, I know I'm not the target audience for minidolls, but I did get Sweet Mayhem for The Lego Movie 2 and she is by far my favorite minidoll that I've ever seen

[Killian]

Looks like we're getting a minidoll theme, probably with Princesses being Knights?