Are Collectible Minifigure Series Getting Worse?

LEGO Collectible Minifigures are now on their 25th series with nearly 400 minifigures to collect across those series. The quality of LEGO minifigures has come a long way since 2010 when the first series launched. However, in recent years it’s felt like LEGO have, at times, been running out of ideas with regards to bringing new characters to the theme. With the hundreds of characters that have come before, it's no surprise that some characters are getting increasingly obscure to avoid repetition, and we started seeing a growing number of costumed CMFs. The number of non-licensed CMF series has also fallen to one a year, whereas we were getting three a year in the theme’s early days.

With this in mind, we look at whether CMF series are truly getting worse. To answer this question, we've analysed minifigure rating data supplied to us by Brickelo, to see what the LEGO community thinks.

The table below shows the average rating of minifigures within each series.

Series	Average Rating	Rank
1	988.3	25
2	1,002.3	22
3	990.8	24
4	1,017.2	15
5	1,035.1	11
6	1,036.1	9
7	1,040.6	8
8	1,041.2	7
9	1,035.9	10
10	1,047.9	3
11	1,042.9	6
12	1,045.5	4
13	1,071.4	2
14	1,081.1	1
15	1,031.7	12
16	1,009.2	21
17	1,016.2	16
18	1,014.7	17
19	1,018.3	14
20	994.3	23
21	1,012.9	19
22	1,018.9	13
23	1,045.0	5
24	1,009.9	20
25	1,014.3	18

It's not surprising that the first three series are some of the lowest rated, with Series 1 and Series 3 being considered the worst and second worst respectively. There are some fantastic minifigures in these series, with the Robot, the Demolition Dummy, and the Elf being examples, but these were few and far between. The CMF theme definitely wasn't as adventurous or inventive back then and LEGO played it safe with some of the characters.

The theme began getting into its stride from Series 4 onwards, and Series 10 - 14 can be seen as the theme's golden era as these five series all find themselves in the top 6. This period produced some of the most highly sought after CMFs, such as the Roman Commander, the Wizard, the Classic King, and of course Mr Gold.

Roman Commander - The highest rated CMF according to Brickelo

The other top 5 slot belongs to Series 23, which sits as an outlier amongst the more recent series, as the last ten instalments all rank in the bottom half. Series 20 marked a notable slump in form, as it ranks 23rd out of 25. While there were some personal favourite characters in Series 20, such as the Tournament Knight and Viking, the series as a whole was dragged down by some forgettable minifigures, such as Pyjama Girl, Drone Boy, Space Fan, Pirate Girl, and the 80s Musician.

The data indicates that Collectible Minifigures are indeed not as good as they were, but I should hasten to say that each series is not just about the minifigures themselves, as the accessories have always been a strong draw. Take the most recent series as an example, which brought back LEGO goats to much adulation from the LEGO community.

Personally, the CMF theme still excites me as a LEGO fan, as it's often the place where we see the most originality in terms of LEGO minifigure design. However, I'd like to see LEGO revisit some crowd pleasers like the historical minifigures, or for LEGO to do a themed series, like they did with Series 14, which only included monsters.

If you want to have your input into deciding the list of top rated Collectible Minifigures, you can do so here.

CMF Series 14 - The highest rated CMF series according to Brickelo

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