WE RATE LEGOS

How are Lego emotions changing? Help us find out.

Face value
Face value
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The figures of Legoland run the gamut: yellow, blue, bearded, mustachioed, man, woman, alien, dinosaur, and more. Itā€™s a diverse society. On an emotional level, however, the data on their joy is looking grim.

At just over one and half inches, Lego figurinesā€”ā€œminifiguresā€ as theyā€™re knownā€”serve as a mascot, and business card for the eponymous Danish company. When Lego first produced minifigures in 1974, the cylindrical head had no face. The demure smile was only added four years later in 1978. The Lego minifigure was happy.

Original heads from 1974 (left) and 1978 (right).
Original heads from 1974 (left) and 1978 (right).
Image: Courtesy of Christoph Bartneck

The Minifigure populationĀ has recentlyĀ exploded. Driven by licensing deals to create toy sets based on movie plots and characters, there are more thanĀ 10,000 unique minifigures, each with their own precious expression.

To see how those expressions are changing, we constructed the survey below. It will show you a random Lego head out of a set of about 1,600 released between 1975 and 2016. Select the emotion you see in it and rank the expressionā€™s intensity.

Editorā€™s Note: Due to a change we made in technology providers, the charts above no longer update with every reader response. The charts reflect a limited set of responses we collected in October 2018.

We based our survey on the work ofĀ Dr. Christoph Bartneck, aĀ researcher and AFOL (Adult Fan of Legos). He took 3,655Ā photos of the Lego minifigures and identified 628 unique expressions. With this database, his team asked participants to choose an emotion fromĀ six classic categoriesĀ rating it in intensity from a scale of one to five.

The range of emotions.
The range of emotions.
Image: Courtesy of Christoph Bartneck

Bartneckā€™s study found that over time, happy faces became less common, making way for other many other emotions. Since the 1990s, anger is the fastest growing expression, according to his research. Bartneckā€™s team concluded the shift comes as more Lego kits embrace themes of conflict, be it ā€œthe good knights against the skeleton warriors or the space police against alien criminals.ā€ The facesā€™ emotions do not always map to good and evil. Hermione Granger can be scared, and Batmanā€™s nemesis, The Joker, can be ecstatic.

Denise Lauritsen, a spokesperson for Lego, says that the ā€œbroad variety of minifigure emotions is to help encourage different kinds of role play; adventure, exploration, friendship, action, nurture, storytelling, mission, conflict play and so onā€¦ā€

In other words, the decline of joyous Legos is by design, and the company is happy about it.