Jesus Diaz over at Gizmodo has posted a pictorial timeline of the LEGO minifig over the 30 years of its glorious plastic life.
Fair warning that several hundred images on a single page might take a while to load:
The BrickLink Reference Catalog lists just over 4,000 minifigs, so the Gizmodo timeline isn’t complete, but the pictures sure are pretty. ;-)
Whoa! I have a friend who has people from ALL those years! I had no idea that LEGO has been giving us excellent mini-figs since ’78. Keep up the good work guys!
The photos are pretty indeed, but it’s puzzling why this couldn’t be a more definitive and complete timeline considering the author worked “painstakingly” with LEGO to produce it.
It’s not just that certain minifigs from certain product lines have been overlooked, entire product lines are absent including groundbreaking minifigs like the Yellow Castle knights and the NBA license figures, not to mention Rock Raiders, Ice Planet, Alpha Squad, Trolls and Dwarves, figs from the Ferrari sets, and probably many others I can’t think of offhand.
At first it was fun to look through this timeline and think “Oh, cool, that’s when such-and-such a hairpiece first debuted.” But with all those gaps, I don’t know if such potential insights are accurate.
I don’t mean to be a hater. It’s a very cool timeline, and it’s nice to see LEGO helping out with a cool project. It’s just a bit of a shame that when Gizmodo gets such an enviable “in” with LEGO it can’t be exploited to the full, maximum potential of all LEGO fans.