Contents:
- Briefly about Chinese minifigures.
- Assortment.
- Brands.
- Quality.
- What should I know before buying?
- Minifigure databases.
- Extra tips about minifigure lookup.
- Where to buy minifigures.
- Minifigure guides.
Briefly about Chinese minifigures:
This is the guide about alternative minifigures that are made by Chinese brands. They usually cost from 1 USD to 2.5 USD per figure (though there are also big figures that cost more than that).
Be aware that some shady online stores try to pass chinese minifigs as custom ones, increasing their price to 5 USD or even more. If you don’t want to overpay, use recommended stores and/or AliExpress.
First of all, we are talking about Lego-like chinese minifigures here. Several brands have modified minifigures that do not infringe Lego’s minifigure patent thus these brands’ minifigures can be sold legally. But such minifigures are not sold individually usually.
Let’s separate minifigures that come with sets and the ones that are sold separately. A lot of brands are making sets only, thus minifigures that they put in their sets are impossible to buy outside of the set. For example King brand, you won’t be able to buy minifigure from King set separately from the set itself. Some of the brands that produce full sets also make minifigures for single-sale, but there are many brands that only make single figures.
Assortment:
What is produced:
- Replicas of Lego minifigures
- Replicas of custom minifigures
- Original minifigures (based on existing Lego series or just original ones, often based on some movie or anime, etc.)
- Minifigure spare parts
The Chinese minifigure market isn’t infinite, not every minifigure gets clones. Brands tend to produce what’s popular, but even if a series is popular that doesn’t guarantee that all the characters will be made in minifigure form, even if Lego originals exist. More recent minifigures are copied more frequently than old ones.
From what I’ve seen, Chinese brand prioritize popular series like SW or superheroes over other ones. Sometimes they clone Lego collectible minifigure (CMF) series, but there are not too many civilians figs.
And the most important thing: Minifigures have a lifecycle too. If a certain minifigure was releaseda couple of yeas ago, it might be out of print by now – just like Lego sets go EOL at some point.
Brands.
Active brands:
Pogo, Xinh, World Minifigures (WM), Koruit, KDL, Kopf (all of them are minifigure brands, meaning they are focused on producing minifigures).
Not very active brands:
Shen Yuan, Lele, Decool, Bela (got shutdown)
Some of the oldest brands are Shen Yuan, Bela, Decool, Lele, Pogo and Xinh. They were focused mostly on producing replicas of current Lego minifigures and I don’t mean minifigure series only, for example Lego issued series of Batman Movie sets and those brands copied minifigures from these sets. Unfortunately Decool and SY are not really active anymore. Pogo and Xinh have increased their quality massively – just remember that Pogo for example has existed for 5 or 6 years and their older minifigures were not very impressive quality-wise. Besides a lot of old minifigure are out of print, means they are hard or impossible to find.
World Minifigures, Koruit and KDL are next generation brands. They have very detailed minifigures even compared to Lego and they are not limited to mere Lego cloning, they clone custom figures and more importantly, they make their own minifigures based on popular series.
Quality.
Quality highly depends on the year minifigure was produced. For example Pogo started in 2014 and their early minifigures are nowhere near stellar, but the newer ones are better.
Some brands like Koruit make amazing details and molds that Lego does not have. Sometimes Chinese brands do more than Lego, for example they print leg sides or arms, and mold custom pieces.
Quality might be varying, nobody is safe from issues like misaligned or smudged printing. Sometimes it’s hard to connect hands and arms or rotate heads/hair of the minifigures.
Just remember how much you are paying for it. Sometimes it is worth it to order some extra minifigs, that way it’s likely you’ll get a good one.
It’s not very common but you might receive a damaged or a missing piece in the packet.
What should I know before buying?
- Minifigures have a lifecycle too, some are out of print by now and are impossible to find.
- Minifigures are often announced before they become available. If you saw new minifigures on some webstore’s Instagram, don’t rush to check all the stores, they might not even have made it to production. Have some patience.
- A lot of brands sell minifigures in sets (usually in sets of 8 or 6). They usually belong to the same series but that’s not the rule. If there are only some minfigures you are not interested in, your best bet is single sale minifigures.
- Originally minifigures are packed in small boxes, each one has its own box. But it’s the same as with the sets, the boxes get removed to save on shipping and to avoid copyright issues. So it’s pretty hard to find boxed minifigs online.
- Every minifigure is usually packed individually in a transparent packet. In most cases minifigures come with a plate (depends on the brand) to stand on and an extra hand.
- Usually minifigure sets have their own set number and every minifigure in the set has its own code. But not every seller uses them.
- There were several waves of minifigure sale bans on AliExpress which lead to different tricks with minifigures displaying (most likely to avoid being detected by image search). For now the most common way to display is either minifigure head, torso or both.
- Fitting a hand in an arm might be tricky. Use a bar piece for it. Insert the bar into the hand and push the hand in, slowly swaying it from side to side and back.
- Spare hands from one brand might not fit well in the arms of another brand. It might be too tight or too loose. Same is true about arm-to-torso and head-to-torso connections.
- Sometimes it can be challenging to detach the head from the torso or the hair from the head. So try to connect them with the right angles from the start.
- Some minifigures come with capes that might be smelly or folded. You can simply wash it with soap and let it dry.
- If a minifigure is dirty you can try to clean it with micellar water (it’s a makeup remover) and wash with regular water after.
- If there are paint smudges you can try to remove them with nail polish remover. Be very careful as it dissolves plastic, so be quick and don’t overdo.
- Custom minifigures by own order/design? Nope, never heard of it.
Minifigure databases.
There’s no db like brick4 but for minifigures. You’ll have to check different sources.
So where to look up the minifigures:
(1) On the website: https://www.herobloks.com/
It’s a fan-made minifigure database, it includes Lego, custom minifigures and clone brands (Chinese minifigures).
Depending on what you are looking for you might need different filter types. By default it contains Lego and custom minifigures, if you are looking for clone brands, uncheck it and uncheck hide duplicates.
Also it’s a good idea to learn which brands are custom (I mean the ones that are usually making expensive stuff) and should not be taken into consideration while browsing replicas.
(2) Going through catalogs by a brand. There are several setlists by Downtheblocks, where you can look up existing minifigures, the first minifigures are usually the oldest (just remember that).
Xinh: https://downtheblocks.wordpress.com/xinh-minifigure-set-list-database/
Koruit and KDL: https://downtheblocks.wordpress.com/koruit-minifigure-set-list-database/
World Minifigures: https://downtheblocks.wordpress.com/wm-minifigure-set-list-database/
Pogo: https://downtheblocks.wordpress.com/pogo-minifigure-set-list-database/
(3). Some minifigure sets are shown on brick4.com (which is the biggest sets database):
Xinh, Koruit, KDL, WM (this one is problematic as there are plenty of unrelated results).
(4) Check stores directly. Since AE stores are using mostly head/torso pics instead of full minifiure, the easiet way is to use external stores that display full minifigures:
https://www.wmmocbricks.cn/ (requires registration to look at the assortment)
http://kopftoy.com/
Some AE sellers might give you access to minifigures catalogues by request.
Extra tips for minifigure lookup:
Pretty much your only way to find minifigures you want is to check all sources above – allthough some tips might help in your search.
If your minifigure is a Lego clone, you can use Google picture search to learn the original minifigure code, which might help you to look it up on https://www.herobloks.com/. You just paste the original code, pick the minifigure and scroll down for “Other versions of this minifigures”.
You can also learn the original code if you look up the set that contains the minifigure on bricklink and browse the inventory to get the minifigure code.
The same applies if you have alt bricks number -> go to herobloks and look up for this minifigure.
What we really need to know is the release year of a clone minifigure. Is it older than 3 years? If the answer is yes, then it’s highly likely it’ll be pretty problematic to find.
You can also look for certain characters on brick4. Though it’s hard to find a specific character as they all are listed in Chinese, we can try to use google translate to translate the name and then do a google search to make sure we got the right name. For example it worked with Orochimaru. Got the translation 大蛇丸 that seems to be correct and search on brick4 now works: http://brick4.com/search/set/?s=%E5%A4%A7%E8%9B%87%E4%B8%B8
For civilians look for “City minifigures” or “City minifigs” on AliExpress.
Where to buy minifigures:
1) Look at recommended brick stores in the starter guide, some of them sell minifigures.
2) Second option is AliExpress.
Aliexpress minifigure sellers are being pursued by Lego so they have to hide the images. You’ll see heads only or torsos only. You either have to check the websites below to learn how sets look or request catalogs from these sellers. Also not all of them use minifigure codes which makes it much harder to find specific figures (since image search is not working).
I suggest to add several AE stores with good assortment and rating to favorites and check new items they add.
3) The third option are webstores below
So far there are 2 web stores from ex-AliExpress minifigure sellers and to be honest they were good some time ago, but are not the best options these days as they have tricky payment methods. Their assortment is not exclusive, at least new branded minifigs (WM and Kopf brand) can be found on AliExpress from other sellers.
Kopf Store: http://kopftoy.com/ (previous store removed all the minifigures from it and is closed now (most likely caught by Lego).
World Minifigures store: https://www.wmmocbricks.cn/ their previous site was shutdown and their Paypal account was suspended.
4) Warning! Do not overpay for alt. minifigures
Be aware that ko minifigures sometimes are sold on different websites that claim these are customs minifigs, which is not true. Of course custom minifigs exist, but they are made from real Lego minifigs usually, that’s why the real custom minifigs are expensive.
And some shady resellers try to sell Chinese minifigures as custom minifigures for a much higher price. You can find them on Ebay or Etsy, for example. The real price of Chinese minifigs is about 1-1.5 USD. The price of a fake custom minifigures is about 4-5 USD which is too little for a custom Lego fig and too much for a ko minifigure.
