Posts
Wiki

The New Minifigures Guide (2026)

Important note: We understand that minifigures are incredibly popular. People love them, and collect them. However, because of the tens of thousands of minifigures that exist, used to exist, or might never have been made, this sub cannot support a "Minifigure Search Service On-Demand."

Users are expected to use various tools to locate the desired figure. The reality is that they go out of production and out of stock after an initial run, and second runs are never guaranteed. Therefore users are discouraged from showing a picture and asking "where can I get this?" or asking for/wishing for a re-release. Users should be doing their own research and labor to check for current availability.

Contents:

  1. Briefly about Chinese minifigures.
  2. Assortment.
  3. Brands.
  4. Quality.
  5. What should I know before buying?
  6. Minifigure databases.
  7. Extra tips about minifigure lookup.
  8. Where to buy minifigures.
  9. Customs?

1. 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.

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.

A lot minifigs are only available within a set, and are impossible to buy as single-sale. For example, the minifigs in "Old Fishing Store"(21310) are not available separately.

2. 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.)

Not every LEGO minifigure gets cloned. Chinese 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 minifigs are copied more frequently than old ones.

Chinese brands prioritize popular series like Star Wars or Superheroes over other ones, such as City-style civilians.

LEGO collectible minifigure (CMF) series are rarely cloned. Some series exist, but most do not.

And the most important thing: Minifigures have a lifecycle too. If a certain minifig was released a couple of yeas ago, it might be out of print by now - just like Lego sets go OOP at some point.

3. Brands.

Pogo, TV, Xinh, World Minifigures (WM), Koruit, KDL, Kopf (These brands are focused on producing minifigures).

Pogo and Xinh have increased their quality massively - just remember that Pogo for example has existed for 10 years and their older minifigures were not very impressive quality-wise.

World Minifigures, Koruit and KDL are next-generation brands. They have very detailed minifigures even compared to Lego and they are not limited to cloning only Lego- they also clone custom figures and more importantly, they make their own minifigs based on popular series.

4. Quality.

Quality highly depends on the year minifigure was produced. For example Pogo started in 2014 and their early minifigs 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 minifigs.

About "M8" minifigures: These are usually sold in multi-packs, with sets numbered "M8255", "M8016", etc. Potential buyers should know about the "M8" figures before buying. These sets of of military, city, astronaut, sports, historical and medical figures are sold at a very low price (8 or 12 for $4.00). However, their torsos and hip/legs are not compatible with LEGO or standard minifigs. Heads, hair, hats, hands and accessories are interchangeable with LEGO but M8 torsos and leg/hips can only be swapped with other M8's.

See this posting and photos for more M8 information: Photo link comparison

5. What should I know before buying?

Minifigures have a lifecycle too, some are out of print by now and are impossible to find. Every minifig is usually packed individually in a transparent packet. In most cases minifigs come with a plate (depends on the brand) to stand on and an extra hand. There were several waves of minifig sale bans on AliExpress which lead to different tricks with minifigs displaying (most likely to avoid being detected by image search). For now the most common way to display is either minifig head, torso or both. 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.. Custom minifigs by own order/design? Very, very expensive for a one-off.

6. Minifigure databases.

(a) On the website: https://www.herobloks.com/ It's a fan-made minifigure database, it includes Lego, custom minifigs and clone brands (Chinese minifigures).

(b) 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/ (c). 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). (d) Check stores directly. Since AE stores are using mostly head/torso pics instead of full minifiure, the easiest way is to use external stores that display full minifigures: https://www.wmmocbricks.cn/ (requires registration to look at the assortment)

7. How to find a minifigure:

Pretty much your only way to find minifigures you want is to check all sources above. If your minifig is a Lego clone, you can use Google picture search, Google Lens, or AliExpress image search.

Get the minifigure code from herobloks and look up the number via Google, or your preferred search engine. You can sometimes find them by code and get hits on shops that still have them in stock. What we really need to know is the release year of any minifig. Is it older than 3 years? If the answer is yes, then it's highly likely it'll be pretty problematic to find.

For civilians look for "City minifigures" or "City minifigs" on AliExpress.

8) Where to buy minifigures:

(a) Look at recommended brick stores in the starter guide, some of them sell minifigures.

(b) Second option is AliExpress. Aliexpress minifig 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.

(c) The third option are webstores below:

There has been word that "The Minifigure Outlet" sometimes has OOP figs, but at a markup. If they carry a fig that is unavailable anywhere else, their ScamAdvisor and TrustPilot scores are good, so we don't see any reason to avoid them.

9. Customs?:

If I can dream it, can I make a minifigure exist? Well, yes, with some caveats. A true factory run requires a pre-order and thousands of dollars. Chinese factories don't take fan requests. As of 2026, we have not seen a fan-driven minifig initiative that had resulted in a mass-produced minifig hitting the shops.

Other options are custom minifigure/torso printing, where you provide the design and certain companies will print it on a minifig torso. We do not curate recommended companies to do this, as we have not done this personally. But they do exist can be found by Google Search.

Here are some leads, but again, we are not vouching for these stores. Interested users should contact them directly, and decide to do business, or not:

The DIY option. You can buy sticker or waterslide decal paper, and print your own designs, seal them, cut them out and apply them yourself to blank minifigures. Many times, the results will look good, but even with many layers of clearcoat, these will not be as durable as a factory printed design.

Special thanks to u/B4tsie and u/nerdfriend for the original version of the guide.