Continuing with my coverage of the LEGO minifigure’s 40th birthday, we’ve already taken a look at some of the patents that have been granted and after that, we go to the design process of some minifigures that have been produced already. Below are some hand sketches from various LEGO designers to show some of the details and thought processes of how they came up with the particular characters. Again, we as fans don’t usually see this kind of stuff so we definitely appreciate that LEGO sent over some assets for us to share to the community.

Alexandre Boudon

Austin Carlson

Chris Bonven

Matthew James Ashton

Tara Wike

On this day in Denmark back in 1977, the first patent for the LEGO Minifigure was handed in but there are also other patents for many other countries as well granted on different dates. As you can see below, some of these countries include the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and China. LEGO chose August 29 to celebrate the birthday of the LEGO minifigure and the date seems random but there’s an explanation.

August 29th has been chosen as this was the original date that the first patent was filed in Denmark, in 1977. The first minifigures were not launched until 1978, hence we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first launched minifigures and not when the first patent was filed.

In Denmark, it is August 29 and this was the original date that the first patent of the LEGO minifigure was handed in back in 1977. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the LEGO minifigure, LEGO has sent over a ton of assets for us to use and to show you some of the behind the scene stuff of how the minifigure went from an idea to what we have now. Note that the first minifigures were not launched until 1978, and hence LEGO is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first launched minifigures and not when the first patent was handed in, which is opposite to the 60th celebration of the LEGO brick.

Some of the images that were sent to us include design sketches of the Collectible Minifigures line and some of the design process of some of the characters from the past few years.

In addition, we also have an infographic showing some of the key milestones of the minifigure development from 1974 to today.

Since there’s so much content that LEGO has provided us with, I’ll be spreading the posts out for the next few days so stay tuned as you’ll get a look at things that you normally don’t see from LEGO. Before I leave, there’s a short story about the LEGO Minifigure.

Little Figure, Big Story
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the LEGO® minifigure

In 1978, Disco was dominating the charts, mobile phones were non-existent and the Internet was still more than a decade away. It was also the year