Huzzah -- they’re finally out in Australia!
Minifigures Series 14 had an official release date of
September 2015, but as is often the case they began showing up earlier in the
US and UK. Well, now they’ve made their ways to the sunny shores of Sydney, and
you can read my take on them.
This series is subtitled “Monsters”, designed to tie in with
Halloween. I’m curious to see how it sells over here – anecdotal reports
suggest it’s selling gangbusters in the US and UK, but while Halloween is getting
bigger, it’s still not an especially huge occasion over here. Trick-or-treating
was unusual when I was a kid, though it seems to have taken off in the last few
years.
Specter
Serving as an ominous reminder of our own mortality, the
spectre is a surprisingly gloomy topic for Lego to tackle – but they have been
making ghosts for years, so I suppose it’s not that shocking. Bedecked in a hooded robe and loud clanking chains, this one
dispenses with the traditional legs. It instead uses a new piece which was introduced
with this year’s Ninjago theme – a kind
of smoke-waft, which gives the illusion of a hovering ghost while still
providing adequate support to stand. It’s cast in semi-translucent plastic,
which adds nicely to the effect. Regular readers will be well aware of my
fixation on glow in the dark items, so I was extremely pleased to discover that
his face does in fact glow in the dark too!
Tiger Woman 
Though she’s obviously meant to be a woman in a Halloween
cat costume, one of the good things about Minifigures is the way they can be
used as backdoor characters for other settings too. So she could also serve as
Tigra from Marvel Comics, or at a bit more of a stretch, as Cheetah – Wonder
Woman’s archnemesis. 
She’s a fun figure, and I can see her being one of the rarer/more
expensive figures as time goes on – these human-animal costumed characters tend
to be incredibly popular.
Wacky Witch
I’ve never been all that enamoured of the pop culture
version of witches; Suspiria was
pretty entertaining, but they’ve never impressed themselves on my consciousness
in the same way as other horror archetypes.
Nonetheless, as cartoon witches go, this one is fine. She
reminded me a bit of Witch Hazel from Looney Tunes at first glance, though on
close inspection the only real similarity is the purple dress. The best part
about her is probably her cat. The cat is black, as one would expect, and has also
been rendered with a frowny face – it’s a fun little accessory for just about
any Lego scene, though would work particularly well for Catwoman. She’s not as
cool as the one in Series 2, but is very Halloweeny.
Skeleton Guy
This is easily one of my favourites out of the entire series.
Explicitly described as a guy who wears a costume to fit in with the Monsters,
he is excellently executed. And as this is a minifigure of a guy wearing a suit, you can
swap out pretty much any head you want, for when he’s un-costumed!
His trick-or-treat basket is particularly cool. Decorated as a jack o' lantern, it's another item that you could hand off to pretty much anyone if you felt like making a Halloween display. I knew he'd be cool, but I didn't expect to like him this much.
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