A Top Ten List!
Normally, I like to shy away from these types of lists. I just find them lazy and pointless, touching on a few generic details about each of the things in the list in some attempt to sort the items in ascending or descending order, without much to back up their claims. Anyone who's checked out my blog knows I like to go into painstaking detail about pretty much everything I feature, so doing brief summaries isn't quite what I'm all about. ...But, I do recognize that I need to get SOMETHING out there while I'm working on bigger stuff, and I do have a subject I've been wanting to tackle for quite some time, so let's break tradition for at least one day.
We're all familiar with Lego's many, MANY licensed sets based on popular franchises. ...To the point that people like to complain that that's now all they do(completely passing over the Lego City and Lego Friends lines...) Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Marvel, DC, Minecraft, Disney Princess, Harry Potter, Spongebob, Scooby-Doo, The Simpsons, Indiana Jones, Toy Story, Cars, Angry Birds, the list goes on and on of all the licensed sets they currently produce and have produced in the past.
And that's not counting the one-off Lego Ideas sets like The Beatles, The Big Bang Theory, and Adventure Time!
There's so much made by Lego, it's almost surprising to know that the first intellectual property to be licensed to Lego was Star Wars back in 1999, only 18 years ago! And seeing as how Lego bricks have been around roughly since 1949, that means it took them FIFTY YEARS to finally snatch up a license!
Lego's, of course, not the only major building brick company to produce sets based on intellectual properties. Mega Bloks(or Mega Construx as they're now going under), also has its share of licenses with Call of Duty, Destiny, Halo, Pokemon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Barbie, Power Rangers, Monster High(as seen with the advent calendar I'm currently featuring), etc.
Even Kre-O, the (arguably)Bronze Medalist of the market, has managed to snatch up the rights to Transformers, Battleship, GI Joe, CityVille, Trolls, and so on. All further proving that, if something's profitable, everyone wants a shot at a slice of the pie.
However, for all the sets known and loved by casual and avid brick set collectors alike, there have also been a few licenses that have snuck under the radar, almost completely unnoticed by general consumers, for various reasons. Maybe what was licensed wasn't popular enough for any staying power. Maybe it was produced(or is still BEING produced) by a little-known brick company that doesn't usually market through major retailers. Maybe it's aimed at a specific niche audience and the general public just hasn't noticed. Or maybe it was going to be produced, but was outright canceled at the last minute. There may be other reasons, but bottom line, not all brick sets based on intellectual properties have made an impact in the building brick market.
And that friends, is why today, I'm going to be featuring:
Ten Franchises You Didn't Know Had Licensed Brick Sets!
...Yes, I know it's not the most flowing title, but it gets the point across and is nice and clickbaity.
Now some quick rules before I start. Everything featured here has to be OFFICIALLY licensed. There are a LOT of unofficial sets and lines of minifigures out there that have been produced illegally by overseas knockoff manufacturers(and I should know, I've featured several of them on this blog.) Not only would there be too many to go through and feature here, but I don't think it's fair to compare cheap knockoff sets somebody copied some Google images to base the design off of with actual sets a company probably paid through the nose to get the licenses for. Maybe I'll go through some unofficial stuff in another Top 10 list(if I do another one), but for the sake of this list, I want to keep everything decidedly OFFICIAL.
That said, the sets listed here just have to be licensed. They don't have to have a huge line of different sets, still be produced, or even have ever been released. As long as there's an actual company behind the creation and it moved past the design phase of production with intention and announcement of release, it counts here. So even if they never made it to market, they qualify for this list.
Finally, I'm focusing this list on American franchises, or franchises that are familiar to the majority of the American public. I don't know if there are any brick sets based on shows, movies, or games only well known in a certain country(or a certain group of countries), so for the sake of this list, the obscure brick sets have to be based on popular American or global properties. ...Though if there are any brick sets based on shows that only France or Denmark or Germany or China, etc. would know about, please let me know. I'm always looking to add the obscure to my collection.
Alright. Let's get this Lego boulder rolling with
#10: Religious Brick Sets
I'm kind of cheating with this first one, since I'm not talking about a specific line nor are they technically licensed(with the Bible being public domain and all), but when else am I going to point out that there are actually quite a few companies that have produced brick sets with a religious connotation to them?
Most notably, a company known as Trinity Toyz has produced several sets based on scenes from the Bible, such as The Last Supper, Noah's Ark, The Nativity, and The Ten Commandments. ...Sadly, we're still waiting on the Lot & his two daughters set.
More recently, the Polish company Cobi has released a line of "blind bag" Bible Characters(three of which I've been able to track down and I'll feature one day.) I say "blind bags", because you can clearly see what you're getting through the window on the front, which does make collecting easier.
Even those wacky Mormons have joined the party with their Brick 'Em Young line of LDS temples and missionary figures, all of which can be found and purchased at their official site. And yes, they also made their own version of the Nativity scene. I guess their reasoning is that if you can't go to the temple, have the temple come to you!
On a side note, the Christian education publisher B&H Publishing Group also distributes brick sets based on the animated version of the Bibleman series. ...And that just leaves me wishing that building sets based on Veggietales existed...
And before you think I've forgotten, yes, there's also The Brick Bible, where practically the entire Old and New Testaments are recreated in Lego. However, they're unofficial fan projects, so they really shouldn't even be mentioned here. ...Probably the most entertaining of the lot though...
#9: Pokémon
Again, I'm sort of cheating, because we all know about Pokémon brick sets, right? Ever since they were added to the Mega Construx line this year, they've become some of the hottest selling and most popular brick sets ever made! ...Well, at least you know of THIS incarnation.
There have actually been several attempts at producing Pokémon brick sets in the past, including by Mega Bloks themselves, when they released the Pokémon Build 'n Battle sets back in the early 2000s during the Ruby/Sapphire days. Remember those? I don't either...
There were probably other sets released by Mega Bloks, but information is so scant about this particular release, that I can't find a comprehensive list of sets nor a time frame when they were released. However, from what I can tell, most of the later releases were Japan-exclusive. ...And they had a habit of not actually producing Pokémon figures and instead painting them on bricks...
Meanwhile, back in the States, the license was then picked up by Ionix, who also produced sets based on Tenkai Knights and How To Train Your Dragon. ...And as someone who has bought and featured these certain sets, I can say that this was one of the most miserable attempts at producing a licensed brick set I've ever come across... I couldn't be happier that Mega Bloks has reacquired the license if this was the alternative...
But for anyone looking for more of a challenge and who likes to build with bricks and keep the models intact, the Japanese company Kawada has been producing Pokémon models for its Nanoblock line(which I've also [sort of] featured before)
And full Pokémon sets for its more Lego-ish Nanoblock+ line since 2014. ...Unfortunately for American collectors, while the former is distributed in America by Ohio Art Company, the latter seems to be Japan-exclusive. So I guess we're stuck paying a few hundred for shipping if we ever want to get our hands on these sets.
#8: The Emoji Movie(i LOVE FiGZ)
Ok, last time I cheat with one of these placements, since they're technically not licensed from The Emoji Movie. ...Or are they? It's a little hard to tell.
These come to us from the Canadian company Brictek. I've also previously featured this line before, and while they seem to have removed most of their promotional material at this point, I still have a screenshot of their front page of The Emoji Movie, so it was clear they were trying to make a connection between their product and the movie. So either these were meant to be officially licensed Emoji Movie figures and the licensing fell through or they decided they didn't want to be affiliated with such a terrible movie, or they were always intended to be original figures and they wanted a connection with the movie to promote their idea. Either way, I'm glad they went with the more generic direction instead of specific designs of the movie's absolutely unlikable cast...
Still, as obscure figures go, I think these are a hidden gem. They're creative, they're compatible with most other building bricks, they come with a number of accessories to stick them anywhere, and Bric Tek's minifigure design is one of the most flexible I've ever seen. I don't kid when I say that these are ALMOST better than regular Lego figures! I've already gone into great detail about this line, you can check it out here, and they're probably the most creative and highest quality line featured in this list.
#7: Prince of Persia/The Lone Ranger
In 2010, Disney released a movie based on the hit game series "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time." ...It was boring, stupid, and not a hit.
In 2013, Disney released a movie based on the iconic radio & TV series "The Lone Ranger." ...It was less boring, but much more stupid and less of a hit.
Both times, Lego released corresponding sets for those movies. ...They disappeared the same years.
Yeah, it was pretty arrogant of Disney to assume that these movies would be such huge hits. Especially considering the tradition of video game-based movies being critical and commercial flops of legendary status, and the fact that The Lone Ranger lost its mojo back in the 60s and not even a 1981 film could rejuvenate it. I think Disney tries once in a while to give us another Pirates of the Caribbean-level series, but, as seen with these two movies, John Carter, and Pirates of the Caribbean's own sequels, they clearly have no idea what made the first one so good...
As for these sets, I don't have documentation to back this up, but I believe they were made as part of a multi-franchise deal with Disney, which also included Cars and Toy Story. Lego didn't really have a choice to produce these two lines or not, and when the films bombed, they quietly dropped them.
While I'm listing them together since they're similar in situation and notoriety, I guess the Prince of Persia line is the more well known of the two given that the movie is still considered one of the better video game-based movies. ...Still not a crown to wear with honor, but they did manage to squeeze out six different sets(one being a free Brickmaster giveaway) before dropping the line completely.
They even had a promotional movie made for it, featuring Jake Gyllenhaal himself as the narrator, so there was SOME attention given to this line.
The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, despite getting EIGHT sets to its name, has fallen into obscurity to the point where there's not even a Wikipedia page for it! There's a page for freakin' ZNAP, but not this movie! That's how colossal of a failure it was!
Still, while I can't recommend the movies to anyone, the obscurity stemming from the movies' failure has made these sets collector's items. If you ever find one or the other, snatch them up as quickly as you can! With their limited run, they're just going to get harder and harder to find, so in a few years, they might just become the gems of your collection.
#6: Stargate/Terminator
Again I'm bundling these two together because of their similar status, particularly that they're the only media licenses ever held by this company. So here you have two of the greatest sci-fi series of all time: The film series The Terminator and the TV series Stargate SG-1, both very long running and loved by critics and audiences alike. So given the acclaim and success of these two franchises, what's the most logical building brick company to hold the license?
UK-based budget brick set company Best Lock, of course! ...Yes, a company whose tagline is "Build a Lot, Pay a Little" somehow got exclusive rights to develop Terminator and Stargate brick sets... I don't know if they used everything they had to buy these licenses or if they bought them during a particularly slow time for both franchises, but for a while during the early 2010s, they were the sole producers of brick sets for both. ...And, as of this writing, still the only company to produce these certain brick set themes.
Now to be fair, the sets aren't terribly designed. They do bother to mold custom figures and accessories for the sets, such as the T-800s for The Terminator and the Jaffa outfit for Stargate. ...However, it's the designs for the vehicles that's the major turnoff. Being a budget brick company, Best Lock has a much smaller library of bricks to work with, so most of the buildings and vehicles are clearly made mostly of standard lines, plates, and single-stud pieces. So while they form the relative shape of the vehicles, they just can't shake the look of cheapness, like these are one step above building these with your own bricks.
And while the vehicles are competent, they clearly either couldn't or didn't bother to get the rights to the character likenesses. If I hadn't seen the movie, I wouldn't know who any of these characters were. Just that there's a guy with sunglasses and a really bad haircut pointing a shotgun at a guy covered in silver with knives for hands while somebody with bangs in the background just stares with no eyes. ...Actually, come to think of it, I'm still sold.
So these sets are actually not too bad, but given the obscurity of the manufacturer and the mostly regional release, it's pretty unlikely you'll ever come across either of these(unless you know of a crazy-good novelty toy store.)
Mega Bloks recently gained the license to produce Terminator sets(including a few Kubros models), but it's likely this is the last time we'll ever see any Stargate building brick sets.
#5: Fast & Furious
Once again, we have a series that's been around for nearly two decades, with 8 movies and still going, plus countless toys, games, and even theme park attractions. So who scooped up the license this time?
Block Tech, yet another British budget brick company. Though one with much more of a presence in the USA, as a number of their sets and figure collections can usually be found in Big Lots, Dollar Generals, and Toys R Us stores across the States.
However, for this particular line, it's likely these sets were exclusively distributed by Dollar General, given the information on the box, which would greatly add to the obscurity and difficulty of finding these sets.
This is another line I've featured previously on this blog. ...And unfortunately, these sets are even more generic than the Best Lock-produced properties. Best Lock at least kept the forms of the characters, vehicles, and accessories, and they used the actual names of the locations, so you could tell what you were looking at if you were familiar with the franchises.
With these sets, even knowing the cars and characters from the movies, I can't place a single one! Each car seems to have been given a generic name that doesn't match any of the cars from the series, plus they didn't include any of the character's names and they gave the exact same flavor text to each of the box descriptions. It's like they've gone out of their way to disavow any connection with the franchise so they could claim the designs as their own.
Which seems to be the case, as their license seems to have expired and they now market some of the sets under the name Mean Streets. So even though this is technically still a line that can be found and purchased, just under a different name, I don't recommend you do. This is one of those lines that was kept obscure for a reason. The reason being they're not worth your time to seek out at your local Dollar General.
#4: Ice Age
While the Emoji Movie figures are up for debate, Brictek DOES have an official license under their belt with the Ice Age franchise. ...You know, that film series where the first one was decent and all the sequels and specials are some of the worst animated drek I've ever had to watch?
Thankfully, they decided to NOT produce sets of Sid jerking off a yak(I kid ye not), and instead went for a more generic design for each set, simply placing the characters in forests and icy environments. ...So basically, these are sets where they could have included ANY figures and they wouldn't be that out of place.
Heck, the cheapest set they advertise on their site is a figure of Scrat and an acorn standing on some patches of ice floating in the water. 21 pieces well utilized...
I'll give them credit that I'm impressed they produced figures of Sid, Manny, Diego, and Scrat(even though they're basically lumps of plastic with connectors on the feet that are reused across all the sets), but with the cheapness of the designs and lack of imagination throughout, these are clearly meant only for die-hard fans of the Ice Age. So if you're looking for brick sets that perfectly capture the lack of joy and imaginative the series has given us for over 15 years, Brictek has you covered.
#3: Penguins of Madagascar
Now if you'd like building bricks based on something actually fun and imaginative, Cobi's back with their line of Penguins of Madagascar sets, based on the Dreamworks TV show of the same name(and NOT the god awful movie that also shares a name.)
While I think Dreamworks has lost its mojo after Over the Hedge and a lot of what it produces nowadays is unwatchable, this is possibly the best show they've based on one of their movie franchises. Just take the comedic seriousness of the spy penguins from the movies, put them in a zoo environment with a large cast of eccentric and unpredictable animals, throw in some mystery, advanced tech, and parodies of the spy and action genres, and you have some of the greatest comedy and exciting situations ever produced for a show aimed at kids. Even as an adult, these are a LOT of fun to watch.
And apparently Cobi agrees, since their site promotes TWENTY-SIX different sets based on this series! While they also have a set based on the penguins' secret hideout, most of them are inspired by certain episodes and vehicles/gadgets from the show, including figures of the lead characters and villains!
They even boast their own line of blind bag figures, which has already had several series featuring different characters from the show and the Madagascar franchise as a whole! ...I don't know if the show is much more popular in Poland than its origin country, but it's an absolute crime that these aren't more well known in the USA. I need these in my life! And if you're a fan of the show and/or movie franchise, then you need these too!
Go forth to eBay and let distributors know that we know these exist!
#2: Speed Racer/Avatar The Last Airbender
So while Prince of Persia and The Lone Ranger were flops, they were COLOSSAL flops! Legendary in how they tried to establish themselves as epic film franchises but sank everyone's hopes and expectations almost instantly. It's this notoriety that have given the corresponding Lego sets a bit more fame and attention, despite their obscurity.
...But with these next two franchises, which actually came out BEFORE the first two, I think it's more likely they entered the market with a whimper and left just as quietly, if not more so.
First are sets based on the Wachowski's Speed Racer adaptation, released in 2008. Remember this movie? Neither do I, and I've actually watched it! And with its $30+ million loss, it's no wonder that only FOUR sets were produced based on this stinker! I guess with the success of Lego's previous partnership with Warner Brothers and their Batman and Harry Potter lines, they assumed this was yet another venture that would turn out profitable, but instead crashed and burned right at the starting line... Thank goodness for those Lord of the Rings and Hobbit licenses, am I right?
But even the failure of that property is eclipsed by possibly the most short-lived and obscure line Lego's ever produced: Avatar: The Last Airbender. Unlike Speed Racer, this was a huge hit, and remains to this day as one of the greatest cartoons ever produced, so you'd think this would have been a huge success for Lego as well.
Unfortunately, when Lego signed the partnership with Nickelodeon in 2006 for this show, Spongebob, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Avatar was on its way out and nobody wanted to invest that much time and effort in a show that was about to be canceled. As such, only TWO sets were ever produced! Both based on the first season of the show, which was ancient history to fans, leading to a very short shelf life and a quiet dismissal within a few months of their introduction...
But hey, at least they didn't throw their hat in the ring for the 2010 Shyamalan movie.
Due to their obscurity, low number of different models, and extremely short time on shelves, these are some of the rarest and most sought after Lego sets ever produced, with auctions reaching hundreds of dollars for a new copy. If you have one of these, or ever find one, even if it's opened, you're sitting on a goldmine! Who knows? You might get more out of the sets than Lego originally got out of the deal...
So what's rarer and more obscure than Lego's Speed Racer and Avatar brick sets? ...Well, I'd say it would be the last thing you'd expect from a company that few have even heard of, but I think we've come to expect that by now. So before I reveal the most obscure brick set line I can find, let's quickly look at a few sets that just barely missed being included in this list, whether they were just too popular to be obscure, too obvious to not have a brick set made of them, or didn't quite fit in with the definition of franchises already featured.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Lego Games Phineas & Ferb
Block Tech Animal Planet
Cobi Ben 10
Character Building Doctor Who & Scooby-Doo
Kre-O Battleship
Lego Top Gear
Daron & Best Lock UPS Truck
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for:
#1: Monster Jam
Yeah, it's not as well known as most of the other franchises on this list, but that's sort of the point. In 2014, C3 Construction signed an agreement with monster truck event show Monster Jam to produce brick sets based on its more famous vehicles.
...And that's the entire story, as nothing ever came of it. The reason why this particular line has achieved the Number 1 spot is that it was never released!
I can barely even find any information on it, besides one article at LIMA discussing that the deal did, in fact, go down between the two companies and they were expected to hit shelves back in 2015. If this was all I found, I wouldn't actually count this line since I'm not including rumors and botched deals. HOWEVER, I did find this picture of the Monster Jam prototype sets at the 2014 Toy Fair, so they do match the qualification of being produced and intended for release.
Even the brick company C3 is near impossible to find information on. I mentioned this company when I featured one of their WWE Wrestling sets back in March, and even when I was doing a full review, I was desperate for any scrap of information I could add about them! There's not even a Wikipedia page, something that most of the other brick producers mentioned above have! And yet, I DO find sets with their branding in major toy retailers such as Walmart and Toys R Us, so this is possibly the most obscure mainstream brick company I know of! ...If that phrasing makes any sense in the slightest.
I barely know anything about the set being produced, and I know even less about why it was canceled. Maybe it was over protests from Mattel, who produces Monster Jam Hot Wheels, about the concept and designs looking too similar to their product. Maybe they were unable to secure enough shelf space in major retailers to make stocking them worthwhile. Maybe the costs of their other licensed WWE and NBA sets prohibited them from adding yet another license to their relatively unknown market share. Maybe Monster Jam backed out at the last minute and decided to cancel their agreement since C3 wasn't as big a name as they were hoping for. ...Or maybe both sides had a severe case of apathy and just decided not to do it. Take your pick. There's probably more.
But whatever the reason, it's likely we'll never see any building brick lines based primarily around monster trucks. So if you ever find one of these boxes sitting around on the shelves of a thrift store with a $2 price tag, either you're the victim of a huge practical joke, or you've just found history and an eBay item worth thousands, if not millions! For it will, indeed, be the rarest and most obscure licensed brick set ever made!
Did I miss any particularly obscure and unheard of sets in this list? Do you agree with the ordering or should something have been considered more obscure than another? What other brick or Plug n Play-related Top 10 lists would you like to see in the future? Let me know in the comments below and thanks for reading!
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