The LEGO Maniac

  Especially in the early days of LEGO, there were sometimes themes that honestly were not that remarkable on their own. But what they contributed to the ongoing evolution into the LEGO of today still set them apart. The 1994 theme “Spyrius”, a subtheme of the ongoing “Space” theme, was one such theme. While a cool little theme with some iconic imagery associated with it, Spyrius is often panned by the current generations of AFOL’s. It definitely has not had the staying power of Blacktron, Ice Planet or Space Police. The Spyrius theme consisted of only 6 sets and 3 Minifigures. Following their usual trend of having a faction of designated “bad guys” in opposition to a force for good. In 1994, with Ice Planet 2002 on its way out, Spyrius played the villain while Unitron, another fresh theme for 1994, played the good guys. The Spyrians were cast as a faction of thieves, spies and scavengers who stole the technology of the other factions. After acquiring said stolen tech, they would then

 Minifigure Spotlight 24.1: There has been a lot of talk and excitement circulating regarding Series 26 of the Collectible Minifigure Series. AFOL’s who grew up in the 90’s particularly are excited to see the return of classic LEGO Space themes such as Blacktron, M:Tron and Ice Planet 2002.  A fun reference that seems to mostly have gone unnoticed, is the undisclosed identity of the female Ice Planet astronaut included in the series. LEGO Space fans love the Space Penguin, as well as the resurrection of the translucent orange sawblade and ringed planetary logo. The minifigure includes short red hair to use when removing her helmet, and with that one detail LEGO has referenced one of the most important LEGO Space figures from the early 90’s. The 90’s saw a change in LEGO’s minifigures, with more detail being included in the faces and body printing, and female characters becoming more and more present and unique as the decade progressed. With the addition of the “Ice Planet 2002” theme i

Recently we have seen a few offerings from LEGO in related to video games and crossovers with physical LEGO sets. No? I’m not speaking to the recent “Dungeons and Dragons” releases, or the on-going Mario and Sonic the Headghog themes. I’m referring more to the recent rerelease of the LEGO Star Wars game, along with LEGO Worlds, 2K Race, Brawls, and even the LEGO Movie 2 game and the now defunct Hidden Side and VIDIYO interactive games. Back in 2014, the LEGO Company teamed up with Funcom to bring us “LEGO Minifigures Online”. A tie-in with the “Collectible Minifigures” line (CMF), the game played like a typical RPG with dungeons, PVP and PVE activities, and character design and leveling.  One awesome feature of the game, which has been only poorly replicated in 2K Race, Hidden Side and VIDIYO, was that you could buy minifigures from certain runs of the CMF series and, by using the code provided inside the package, import your minifigure and their parts into the game. Then you could use