Category:Lego Maxifigures

Lego's first figures were designed as a subsequent add-on to go with the 1974 Lego Homemaker dollhouse rooms and furniture, and were much larger than modern minifigures ... perhaps more like the Playmobil figures that they had a passing resemblance to. They are sometimes known as Homemaker figures or Maxifigures to distinguish them from the current smaller Minifigures.

Homemaker was originally launched without figures, which started being retrofitted to some of the sets later on – early publicity pictures of the sets suggested that owners might like to add their own smaller dolls .

Playmobil was launched, somewhat coincidentally, at the Nuremburg Toy Fair in ... 1974. So it's quite possible that Lego, launching a set of dollhouse sets without dolls, may have seen the Playmobil figures and decided that this was exactly what was missing from their own range.

Form

These first Lego figures were based on a 2×2 square body cross-section. Heads were large and round, with a top-stud for securing clip-on hair and two side-studs representing ears. The head then clipped onto an upper-body piece that either had short simple jointed arms (for a child) or longer and more complex jointed arms (for an adult). The rest of the body had to be made from standard Lego bricks.

The result was more awkward and clunky than the Playmobil figures, which had jointed arms and legs, and which looked like actual figures rather than stacks of blocks with a head and arms attached.

Overall, the Lego design looked somewhat alien, especially when looking at a disconnected spherical "bald" head with three studs and long exposed neck. The recurring description of the figures was "creepy".

Longevity

While the Playmobil figures survived and flourished, their Lego relatives did not, and when the Homemaker series was discontinued, the Homemaker people disappeared too.