The History of LEGO® Minifigures

The company that makes LEGO® bricks started almost 100 years ago. The first LEGO sets did not have any people! They only had bricks to make buildings. 

Fifty years ago, the LEGO company made its first toy people. That was in 1975. These LEGO people were simple. Their arms and legs did not move. They did not have faces. 

The company kept working to improve its people. It wanted to make them better. In 1978, it came out with a new kind of people. 

These little people were called LEGO minifigures. Their arms and legs moved. Their hands could grip things. They had smiling faces. 

The faces of the minifigures were all the same, but they had different clothes and accessories, like hats. There was a knight, an astronaut, a police officer, and more. 

Over the next few years, the minifigures became more elaborate, or complicated. The company made a pirate minifigure set. It came with a LEGO parrot. The company even made a glow-in-the-dark ghost minifigure.

About 25 years ago, the LEGO company started making sets to go with movies. Minifigures of Star Wars characters came out in 1999. A few years later, Harry Potter, Batman, and many more kinds of LEGO minifigures came out.