Problem Minifigs: More on Johnny Thunder

Over a year ago, I posted (linkie!) about Johnny Thunder as a minifig, calling him a "problem minifig." The particular definition that I was going for was that, although he's an attractive minifig by himself, he's a difficult fig to assimilate in multiple copies to one's collection. This is a problem with hero, villain, or other "character" minifigs because they've been designed to stand out, unlike "soldier figs," who are conducive to army-building by their very nature. As far as problem minifigs go, Johnny Thunder is by no means the most problematic. The post from last year showed how I've incorporated the five Johnny Thunders of my collection into new forms; this post will go further and deal with other "Johnnies" I've had to deal with. These other Johnnies come from two sources: Soccer sets (3420 and 3406) and the Knights' Kingdom (2) chess set, 678. Before I get to the fates of these eleven minifigs, however, I'll deal briefly with a duplicate Johnny head that entered my collection via Bricklink last summer. It may be wondered why I ordered a Johnny head at all, when these posts show that I have more Johnny heads than I need; the answer is an illustration in the economy of Bricklink: in order to replace a minifig that was part of a stolen bag last summer, I needed a Johnny torso, and it was more expedient for me to buy the whole fig than just the head. The discarded extra head, however, did not stay discarded long, and soon found a job on the police force:

It will be noted, at least, that this redundant Johnny is at least a Johnny 2.0, of which there are fewer in my collection--not least because the 11 Johnnies-that-did-come-as-a-Johnny are all the original versions. Eight came as Shadow Knight pawns in the chess set; the other three are members of soccer teams. Here is a group shot of the 11 duplicates, in their new roles:

It is easy to see here how Johnny-heads are not useless, despite being something of a "problem." Four of them--the four in the back--retain, more or less, the identities they possessed when they arrived in my collection: three soccer players and a Shadow Knight--though there have been some trades in the Soccer league. The major difference is that I did not keep the other seven Shadow Knights as they were. Three have joined other Castle armies: Dragon Master, Royal Knight, and Shadow Knight. Two more have joined other historical themes, Imperial Guard and Wild West cavalry. Joined with three of the extra Johnnies in last year's post who were added to historical (Castle and Pirate) themes, this shows an overwhelming preference for using Johnny's be-follicled face for minifigs who predate modern razors. They don't work uniformly well--I don't think the Dragon Master wears his mustache quite so well as the Imperial Guard, for example, but they do work. In much the same way, Johnny's face can be used in science fiction settings, such as the Aquanaut and Blacktron (1) figs shown here. I don't think Johnny works quite as well in a futuristic setting, but it isn't completely incongruous, possibly because Johnny's facial hair is well-kept and not overly lurid--though maybe more lurid would work better, if one went for more of a "large ham" and less of a "Starfleet" sort of look. Meanwhile, what does the Shadow Knight army look like these days?

Well, in keeping with the original Shadow Knight and with the Johnny-Shadow Knights of the Chess Set, there is a strong tendency towards facial hair among this newer, more diverse cast of soldiers. Nor is this quite the entire army--just the eight soldiers who more or less take their origins from the Chess Set pawns. Coming someday... what about Johnny's shirts? Johnny's hats? Other Shadow Knight heads? The list of Problem Minifig examples are endless, and I'm sure will be discussed again.

Minifigs: Harry Cane

Just a short post today--most of my "blogging time" has been spent taking pictures to use this week (and for the next batch of Aquazone Breakfast News), and I have a few non-blog projects on the go.

However, while this post may be minor, this minifig isn't--at least not in my LEGO-verses.



Harry Cane was one of the Adventurer gang released originally in 1998 in Egypt, and he stuck around for their second year, 1999, in the Amazon. As his pilot hat with goggles and bomber jacket indicate, he was the team pilot, and each set he came with in the original two Adventurer lines included an aircraft for him to fly. My Harry Cane came with the balloon in 5988 Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins, and his inclusion was a *big* part of why I wanted that set. I already had the three other "good guy" adventurers, both of their "bad guy" rivals, and the even-badder Pharaoh in my first Adventurer set, 5978 Sphinx Secret Surprise.

To judge by his abbreviated backstory--Harry had none in the 1999 issue of the Mania Magazine, although the other returning Adventurers did--and by the fact that he was not back with the three others in 2000 when they discovered the Dinosaurs. In fact, his slot on the Adventurer team seems to have been taken by Mike (who because was not a popular character in my LEGO-verse, I assure you), the "token cool kid" character. Nor did Harry reappear in 2003 when Johnny Thunder, Dr. Lightning, and Gail Storm were rebooted (albeit the latter two had different names) in the Orient Expedition line.

Still, Harry Cane was never a secondary character in my LEGO games. Admittedly, he was the co-star and Johnny was the star of the Adventurer games, but Harry was no second fiddle. The fact that he was the Adventurers' pilot somehow morphed into him being among my most proficient pilots of... well... anything. Stick him in an X-wing, and he'd fly as well as my Luke Skywalker; stick him in a race car and he'd take first; stick him in a seaplane and he could take off and land on the desert sands.

Nor were these heroic feats the limit of his awesomeness. In many respects, Harry became the "voice of reason" character among the Adventurers, while Johnny was the rash optimist, Gail Storm the dour pessimist, and Dr. Lightning the timid worrier (we'll not speak of Mike).

As a final note regarding Harry's "awesomeness," it certainly didn't hurt that while I have 5 Johnnys (see this post), 5 Gails, and 3 Dr. Lightnings, I only ever had one Harry Cane. I did eventually acquire a second head on Bricklink, but he serves in my Unitron fleet away with my Space and that was long after the Great Take-Apart.

Some Statistics

Unfortunately, Boston has been cloudy since I've been home, so today's post may be a bit more boring than it might have been in the weather had felt cheerier. Of course, I'm talking about statistics today, so it's possible that no amount of pictures would make that better. On the other hand, I don't think I would have decided to talk about some statistics if I had pictures...

Anyway, you've been duly warned.

I've been using Excel to keep a record of my LEGO collection for some years now. I had a paper record ca. 2000 that listed when I acquired all of my older sets, which remained current until about 2003-4ish (just before the Great Take Apart), and the current Excel document was started in 2007, so it's a mostly accurate record of when I acquired my sets, a completely accurate record of what sets I have, and has also developed into a bit of a statistical chart, as I keep track of the "ratings" my sets get.

Each set is evaluated on five criteria (developed on Classic-Castle in the course of reviewing Castle sets on the official review threads): Parts, Playability, Figs and their Accessories, Design, and "Nostalgia." Obviously, these are all open to subjectivity, and since the point of the whole exercise is more or less to figure which sets are my favourites, that's not really problematic. It's been interesting to compare where sets line up with Lugnet's rating system, and it would seem that (for the most part) once you average out my five criteria, you end up with fairly standard assessments. "Nostalgia" is the trickiest of the five, because while the other four aim for objectivity (while admitting it's a biased process), Nostalgia is there specifically to provide a category to account for sets that I really like (or dislike)... and can't give any good reason for.

On the basis of these statistics, I've also calculated the averages for each subtheme. The numbers are less fair here, since I've only evaluated sets that I own, so a theme with two small (and often mediocre) sets in my collection will probably not rate as well as a theme with 15 sets ranging from small to large, which in turn will not rate as well as a set with only one or two of the largest sets (which often get the best ratings from me). However, as a measure of "favourite," I think this list is fairly accurate, and it's as good a way as any of listing them.

Some other day I might go into a discussion of my favourite or least favourite sets, but for today we'll just look at the favourite and least favourite themes in my collection. Starting at the top, my favourite themes according to this criteria are:

1. Adventurers-the Egyptian Subtheme from 1998, with a 9.85 rating
2. Black Knights, ca. 1992, with a 9.3 rating
3. Designer (the large house sets from the 2000s-2010s), with a 9.25 rating
4. Imperial Guards, 1992-5, with a 9.0 rating
5. Legoland Castle, ca. late 1980s, with a 8.94 rating

The interesting thing about this list, is that the only theme from the 3rd Millennium is the Designer line, probably reflecting the fact that the earlier sets have a higher nostalgic quotient. Indeed, both the Black Knight and the Imperial Guards have been looked at as "Ones That Got Away," and Legoland Castle and the Egyptian Adventurer line would have counted as the same if I had not, in fact, caught them.

At the bottom of the list (of 86 distinctly considered themes--not including Bionicle, Technic, or Duplo) are the following:

82. Alpha Team-Mission Deep Sea, from 2002, with a 7.35 rating
83. Soccer, from the early 2000s, with a 7.25 rating
84. Aquasharks, from 1995-8, with a 7.25 rating (technically a tie with Soccer)
85. Xtreme Island Stunts, from the early 2000s, with a 7.15 rating
86. Junior Pirates, also from the early 2000s, with a 6.4 rating

I do not think it is coincidental that the bottom bunch of sets tends to hail from the early part of the 2000s, nor that Junior Pirates is so abysmally below the rest--Jack Stone would probably be there too, if I'd ever got a set from that line. The Aquasharks are perhaps unfairly in the bottom five, mostly due to the fact that I have only got two sets, and one of them is the abysmal Super Sub, also know as The Aquashark Dart, which has a 6.6 rating.

All of this only goes to show, perhaps, that I am either too much of a nerd or have way too much time on my hands... or both. But I doubt I'm the only one out there who has done anything like this.

Minifigs: Johnny Thunder

I don't know about your LEGO collection, but mine is one is which Johnny Thunder looms large. The "Indiana Jones" of LEGO's Adventurer themes, Johnny came into my LEGO collection thirteen years ago, and has had a commanding presence there since. Part of this is due to the fact that he's the perfect adventuring hero to take on adventures into any theme. Many was the game where Johnny Thunder--sometimes with the other Adventurers, sometimes alone--found himself in the Castle realms, or the Pirate seas, or maybe in Ninja lands, or even beamed away to outer space.

Of course, Johnny also looms large as physical presence in many collections, because he was one of the earlier examples of LEGO releasing "character figs" in mass quantities throughout a line. The original version of Johnny, shown immediately below, was present in great numbers throughout the 1998, 1999, and 2000 Adventurer releases, as well as a couple 2001 LEGO Studios sets. A slightly modified Johnny-head would come in 2003 with the Orient Expedition sets, and that later Johnny would also have different choices of shirts, unlike the original Johnny.



All things considered, I got lucky; my collection only has five sets with Johnny Thunder, and two of those were acquired as the "Great Take Apart" was beginning. However, I also have the KK2 Chess Set, which gives all eight pawns on the Shadow Knight side of the board classic Johnny heads... so they're rather pervasive in my collection.

As a result, Johnny Thunder has become one of those "problem figs" that have to be accommodated to every major LEGO collection. One of the earliest problem figs was Majisto--how many bearded old wizards wearing blue does your Castle realm need?--and wizards have continued to be problem figs in most Castle collections, I daresay. Harry Potter was THE example of a problem fig in the years 2001-2004ish, if you were a Castle fan. After all, you wanted those useful building parts, and there were a lot of nifty pieces... but what were you going to do with a platoon of Harry Potters?

This post isn't going to look at where all 8 of those Chess Set heads ended up (perhaps another post will), but it *will* examine where the True-Johnny Five have ended up.



Having already mentioned that Johnny Thunder, as a character, looms large in my collection, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I have an actual Johnny Thunder, built to be a Johnny Thunder, present in my collection. I consider the original Johnny head to be more "Johnny" than the Orient Expedition re-cast, and after five years as "Johnny," I wasn't about to make the fig I acquired in 1998 as a part of Sphinx Secret Surprise be disrobed of his title. However, I was quite happy in 2003 to give him a more colourful shirt--or perhaps it's a vest, since the arms are a different colour?--and a couple years later I decided to give him some dark blue "jeans." The result is a slightly more colourful, but still completely recognisable Johnny.

(As a sidenote, it may be interesting for me to point out that although both Sphinx Secret Surprise and Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins are among my top 5 all time sets in my collection, I have not rebuilt either of them in the course my "great rebuild" over the past few years. I think the adventuring nature of the Adventurers--able to adventure into any theme--has a lot to do with this anomaly.)

Since none of my Adventurer sets are built, the four remaining Johnnies do not have to be Johnnies at all. Here is a picture of the "True-Johnny Five" reunited:



One will recognize the regarbed Johnny Thunder himself at the centre of the photo, and may wonder why there's another apparently unmodified Johnny standing to his left. It should be noted that this Johnny (who hails from Passage of the Jun-Chi) carries a musket, not a rifle, and has an Orient Expedition head. Actually, he *is* Johnny Thunder, meaning that I do have two legitimately Johnny Thundered Johnnies in my collection. He belongs to an "alternate reality/history" where instead of being a 20th century explorer/archaeologist, Johnny was an explorer/hunter who fought with a band of stalwart rebels in an Alamo-like situation in the late 18th/early 19th century.

Directly connected to this alternate-reality Johnny is Johnny #3, at the viewer's left, wearing the brown tricorne, and also holding a black musket. His stickered torso is his own, and he is part of "tan" regiment that is besieging the "Alamo". He is an actor by trade, coming from LEGO Studios set Temple of Gloom, so perhaps it is appropriate that he (and his torso) "play another part."

Johnny #4, who is between Actor-Johnny(#3) and the "real" Johnny, is a member of my Wild West "blackcoat" regiment, which (as you can see) wears Lord Sinister torsos from the Orient Expedition sets. Johnny #4 comes from Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins.

And that only leaves Johnny #5, who is a Royal Knight with shiny new "Castle 2007" era silver armour, and a handsome Little Armory axe. He is the original owner of the green shirt that the "real" Johnny wears, and comes from Jungle River.

So... that's my collection of Johnny Thunders, and it is far more manageable than some. What about you? What do you do with these problem figs?