Category: Documentation

Identifying Collectible LEGO Minifigures is a big problem since LEGO started to use bump codes as of series three. There are, however, plenty of Apps that identify series 1&2 based on their bar code. Smart consumers need to “feel” the Minifigures to identify them. I am lucky to have a very talented young woman in my local toy store that has a nearly 100% accuracy with this method. I am afraid that I myself am not that skilled.

Leokimvideo proposed to weigh the Minifigures in order to identify them. This does seem like a very easy and reliable method, under the assumption that you have a sensitive scale and that the Minifigures have distinctly different weights. So we put this assumption to the test and weighted all the 60 Minfigures of the series seven that came in one box (Thanks to Timo and Martin). Below you can see our measurements. The Minifigures are sorted by their average weight.

We then plotted the Minifigures’ weight and distribution into this nice graph. A PDF version is also available. The biggest problem is the small difference between the Bunny Suit Guy and the Hippie. These two can not reliably be distinguished by weight. You will have to feel the Hippie’s hair to be certain. All other Minifigures can be distinguished. The weight methods may be particularly helpful if you need to identify a larger number of Minifigures.

Here is the pairwise comparison of all the Minifigures. Keep in mind that the sample size has not been that great. For some figures we only had three measureemnts.