One of the most commonly asked questions by LEGO collectors is why aren’t there representations of Force Ghosts available to buy. The recent LEGO Fan Media event gave Brick Fanatics the chance to pose that question to Creative Lead Jens Kronvold Frederiksen and Design Director Michael Lee Stockwell, and they laid out the very practical reason for these figures not being available – yet.
“The reason for not doing it was that the minifigures are made out of many different types of plastic, because they need to have different abilities and characteristics,” Jens explains.
“Some have to be flexible, some need to use clutch power and whatnot,” adds Design Director Michael Lee Stockwell. “So the hands are different material than the heads, for example.”
“Yeah, that had prevented us from making all the bits from the minifigures consistently transparent,” Jens continues. “We thought it will look bad if you had a Force Ghost with a solid-colour hip element and hands or whatever. So we simply went away, because we didn’t think it was the right quality.”
That perhaps puts a dampener on speculation that the trans-blue legs in this summer’s LEGO VIDIYO 43111 Candy Castle Stage could open the door to Force Ghost minifigures, because they’re still connected by a solid-colour hip element, which wouldn’t cut the mustard for the Star Wars design team. But it’s not the only thing standing in the way of a completely translucent minifigure.
“The other thing to think about is, if you look up underneath in the receiving end of the torso, there’s a lot of webbing that’s used to clutch on to the hips,” Michael explains. “All that becomes visible to a certain extent when you make the torso transparent.
“And so the question is, is that going to be perceived as good quality or not? Because it’s not just going to be an open, see-through window. How do we achieve the right clutch between the hips and the torso if we don’t have all that?”
So perhaps one day we’ll see those Force ghost figures, when the right material is found and the aesthetic satisfies the exacting standards of the LEGO creators.
