Lego Minifigures -- Space Miner (Series 12)

Series 12 of the Minifigures has brought us the Space Miner – the latest addition to the once-massive Lego Space theme – and he looks pretty darn cool!

The tampoing on the main body is surprisingly intricate, especially considering most of it will go completely unseen for most of the time. A blank chest would have been absolutely fine, but this has instead been decorated with a chest harness, a zip and lots of little fabric crease marks. It’s nice attention to detail, and means you can display him fully suited up or in his civvies.   

    

The chestpiece is one we’ve seen a few times now, both in and outside of the Minifigures theme – It’s a nice generic “spacey” piece that works well in many different colourways. This one’s distinguishing feature is that it has a modified Space logo on the left shoulderpad, with the rocket replaced by a drill.

He's got one new piece – a helmet. It’s much more industrial in its look, rather than the military/police look of the Galaxy Patrol guy from series 7. Thanks to a surprising number of paint apps, it even features a light above the eyes, just like a “real” miner’s helmet would. I suspect we’ll see a lot of this piece in future Space sets too, and I'll be quite happy with that.

The drill is made up of two different pieces; the ray gun, which is endemic to just about every Space-related figure that has appeared in this series, and a drillbit. The drillbit is an awesome idea but it doesn’t fit quite as well as it should, and it’s also cast in soft plastic. Understandable, given that this is a kid’s toy, but BACK IN MY DAY (warning: old codger story imminent) all of our plastics were cast as solids, and no-one worried to much about things like eyes getting poked out etc.

Perhaps the Space Miner’s greatest strength is that he’s a good army builder. Though the default face is perfectly fine, swap in another face and you’ve instantly got a whole new figure. He’s definitely one of the coolest figures in the new series, and will fit in nicely as a supplement to many Space sets as a background character. This guy comes highly recommended -- I only have the one at the moment, but could see myself picking up several in the near future.




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