LEGO Pig Palooza: No Flies in This Oinkment!

zaterdag, 09 september 2023

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Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published September 22, 2021.

You may be surprised by the number of pigs in the LEGO world; I certainly was! They cross several building systems, multiple decades, colours, and themes both licensed and non. When I was mostly finished my cataloguing, a friend asked me to pick an animal that I had more than 10 examples of and show them off. Well, sagh, I apologise for it taking so long, but I’ve finally got round to writing up ‘Pigs’. I know that you won’t mind me sharing it with the rest of the BrickNerd community!

My happy piggery

Before I Start, a Note on Moulds

In this article I’ll refer to some items being the ‘same mould’. That may not be 100% accurate. There are others who know far more about different moulds than I, including our own Francesco Spreafico. What I mean by the ‘same mould’ is that the items look the same in shape and size, and to the untrained eye would be considered ‘the same’.

These three Duplo piglets are a good example of this. They all look the same size and shape but differ in their decoration and/or colour. However, they all have different numbers printed on the bottom of their feet. I believe – but am happy to be corrected! – that these are different production batch numbers, used by LEGO’s quality team, but I think that they also reference mould numbers and positions in the mould.

If you’re interested in more of the minutiae of moulds, head on over to Francesco and Co’s The Brick Archive for a dose of deep and satisfying nerdery.

Dates

The earliest pig in my collection was released in 1979 and retired in 1993. There were no new moulds in the 2000s, but they have been created in every other decade since the 1970s.

The most recent additions to my collection are from this year:

Winnie the Pooh’s friend piglet in system scale

a new Duplo piglet and

Looney Tune’s Porky Pig (I still need to get a Petunia Pig to accompany him)

Number of new moulds, by decade

The 1979 pig is interesting because it is very similar to the pig released in 1985, but about 5mm shorter in the leg. It shares a design-stable with some early Duplo horses and cows and I find them all naively charming.

Duplo Horses, Cows and Pigs from the late 70s through to the 90s.

Building Systems

There are pigs in System, in Duplo and in Minecraft. I personally treat Minecraft separately (as well as being brick-built as opposed to single-mould), because as New Elementary showed, their uniquely moulded heads are ‘out-of-system’. (As an aside, BrickLink is increasingly listing brick-built animals in its ‘Animals, Air/Dinosaur/Land/Sea’ categories and the Minecraft animals (an incredible 62, to date!) are included in this.)

Building System

Apart from my personal preference, it is one of the reasons I largely omit brick-built animals from my collection, because it can get very messy very quickly depending on how you view items such as Creator 3-in-1 sets of animals vs a Star Wars Dianoga. (As always, the caveats of YMMV and, “My Collection, My Rules” apply.)

Colours

Pigs appear across multiple themes, both licensed and non. This means that there are pigs in a couple of colours you might not immediately consider ‘pig’.

Most of them are however in the Nougat palette, starting at Light Nougat and reaching Nougat itself with a stop at Medium Nougat on the way.

Colours

Licensed Themes

Pigs appear in at least seven licensed themes; from the big hitters of Disney and Warner Brothers to the independents of Angry Birds and Minecraft.

Licensed themes

Angry Birds

It is Angry Birds theme that provides the most obvious deviation from a ‘real-life’ pig colour as they are Lime. This is consistent across all the different characters who made it into the LEGO sets, and is in line with their IP-look. These sets did not do very well in sales, but they added 10 items to my creature collection:

We get Leonard, the main antagonist, in a plain version and as King;

Bad Piggies, 1, 2 & 3, and

Biker, Chef, Foreman, Pilot and Pirate.

I realise that they are not everyone’s cup of tea, but I do like the jauntiness of King Leonard’s ermine-edged cape!

Minecraft Pig 01. Picture credit to BrickLink.com

Minecraft

There are multiple versions of Minecraft pigs. BrickLink catalogues five versions with the specific head piece 19727pb005 all at system-ish scale. In addition, there are a couple of micromobs, a BigFig version from 2020 and, new for this year, a Pig House where the Minecraft pigs live (it’s a little meta, but no more so that minifigs living in houses made from the same material as their bodies I guess!).

Disney

Moana’s friend Pua is represented twice and they differ only in their eye prints. They appear once each in the two waves of Moana sets in 2017 and then 2020 when Moana is correctly listed in the Disney Princess pantheon. Interestingly, these are the only pigs which come in white.

Toy Story

Hamm gets a cracking three versions, which vary by decoration and accessories.

Hamm, then Hamm with dirt splotches, and finally Hamm as Evil Dr Porkchop, with a very cute little bowler hat.

Hamm really functions as the money box he is meant to be, complete with a little rubber stopper in his belly; so if you’ve been looking for somewhere to store all your spare LEGO coins, look no further!

Hamm%2C Showing Belly Hole. Credit To BL

Winnie the Pooh

Piglet has gained a system-sized version this year to add to his existing two Duplo versions from 1999 and 2011. He always appears in his trademark pinks, as you would expect.

Winnie the Pooh has strong nostalgia for me (bearing in mind I grew up with the original books before their Disneyfication) and I’m so glad that we get a new version of Piglet this year. I think he looks adorable in his red scarf, and I can totally picture him walking in the snow with Pooh and singing ‘The More It Snows (Tiddely-Pom)’ on their way to build a house for Eeyore.

Warner Brothers

Harry Potter

Both versions of the Harry Potter set “The Burrow” includes what might be considered the ‘standard, system-sized’ pig, (87621pb01) firstly in Nougat in the 2010 set 4840-1 and then a decade later in bright pink in set 75980-1 (followed another decade later in Pirates of Baracuda Bay).

I seem to remember that when The Burrow is attacked in the LEGO Harry Potter video game, the pig escapes from its pen and runs across the screen. If that is the case, it might explain why it was included in both versions of the set. I honestly don’t remember it being very prevalent in the books, where chickens were mentioned more frequently, but I digress.

Picture credit to BrickLink.com

Looney Tunes

Porky Pig has joined the piggery this year, alongside Petunia Pig (who I still need to get), giving this year three different minifigure-based pig heads. These are quite different in design to the minifigure pig costume characters which I’ll talk about further on.

Petunia Pig Piglet Porky Pig

Picture credits to BrickLink.com

But Wait!

I can already hear the echoes of the Marvel fans out there that I left out Spider-Ham and Pork Grind. They honestly just weird me out for some reason, so I’ve blanked them out of my consciousness. My collection, my rules.

Spider-Ham Pork Grind

Picture credits to BrickLink.com

LEGO Themes

Outside of the licensed themes, there are a large number of pigs, across System, Duplo and Fabuland.

Fabuland

My collection does not currently include any Fabuland figures as I haven’t wandered down that particular rabbit hole (yet), however it would be remiss of me not to include them in this article, and they are a focus and love for many AFOLs.

BrickLink currently catalogues seven versions of ‘Fabuland Pig’. I have seen the pigs referred to as Percy, Peter, Pierre, Patrick and Blondi; I’m afraid I’m not up enough on my lore to know how they’re related or if they are territory-specific names (might be a job better-suited for BrickNerd’s theme history expert Griffin), but they happily live with their friends in Fabuland.

Fabuland spawned a certain amount of associated gear, and I do have a German edition of the lovely 'memory’ game featuring the Fabuland characters. A pig is shown with their tuba, which is itself a great element.

Along that thinking, I love the idea that someone suggested that the Legends of Chima were post-apocalyptic Fabuland. Once you think about it you really can’t unsee it. Sadly, there weren’t any Chima pigs so I can’t directly compare, but I definitely think there is a nerdy article there!

Monkie Kid

LEGO’s sequel to the Monkey King has so far given us three versions of Pigsy, two of which have made into my collection to date. All three share the same head, hat and hands, but have a variety of torsos and legs.

Pigsy with blue vest Pigsy with utility harness Pigsy with white coat

Picture credits to BrickLink.com

Hamletta. Picture credit to BrickLink

Nexo Knights

I have to admit my Nexo Knights lore is not the strongest (boy does writing these articles give you a reason to dig into various fandom sites and increase your nerd knowledge!), but I have discovered that Hamletta the pig is Lance Richmond’s pet. In the cartoons she appears towards the end of Season 1: The Book of Monsters, but she doesn’t come into physical LEGO form until the sets from Season 2: The Books of Power.

The Danes make huge exports of pork products and I do wonder how much this influences their creation of lots of pig characters.

The LEGO Movie

The Rescue Reinforcements set (70813-1) from The LEGO Movie saw a second outing for the system-sized pig with black spots. Previously this colour and decoration combination for this mould, had only appeared in the now much sought-after Mill Village Raid (set 7189-1), released three years earlier in 2011.

This pig doesn’t demand quite the same bounty as a goat, but they are not cheap either!

Holiday & Event, and Collectible Minifigures

This leads us neatly into the Holiday & Event sets, which have several instances of pigs.

Advent

The standard pig appeared in plain nougat in the Castle Kingdoms Advent Calendar in 2010, which fits with it having been in that year’s farming sets.

It came paired with a green apple, whether for it to snack on or for it to be stuffed in its mouth when it was served for a feast I leave entirely up to your own storytelling!

Chinese New Year

As one of the animals in the Chinese Zodiac, there have been several sets with pigs in for Chinese New Year.

The most recent Year of the Pig was 2019 and it was celebrated with a brick-built pig, (Set 40186-1). With Asia being such a strong emerging market for LEGO, it will be interesting to see what the 2031 Year of the Pig set will look like.

Picture Credit to Bricklink.com

The territory-specific Dragon Dance set (80102-1) released in 2019 included a Dragon Dance performer in a Pig Costume. This is almost identical to the pig costume in the Collectible Minifigures Series 12 (2014) Piggy Guy. The only differences are that they have different heads, and Piggy Guy has a tail printed on the back of his torso (and another green apple!?), whereas the Dragon Dance Performer’s torso is plain.

The Farmer in Series 15 of the Collectible Minifigures Series (2016) gifted us another variation of the nougat standard system-sized pig, this time with dark brown spots. This is the only set with this version.

That wraps up the System pigs, but let’s look a bit more broadly at LEGO’s past.

Duplo

In addition to the 1979 pig I started this article with, there are quite a few other Duplo pigs and piglets. As I noted above, the 1985 pig is almost identical to the 1979 version, but a few millimetres longer in the leg, and the eyes are black and white, rather than just black.

The 1990s gave us a pig who has obviously been working out a lot (pig02pb01) and a slim piglet who is permanently attached to a 2x2 Duplo base (75726c01pb01).

All three versions of the Duplo piglet I used to illustrate the ‘same mould’ caveat were released in the 2010s. In this instance the change in eye pattern must have happened around 2013 as the LEGO Serious Play Identity and Landscape set (2000430-1) of that year lists them both as alternative parts.

I jokingly refer to the third version (pig03pb02) as ‘streaky bacon’ in reference to the stripes on their side. These and their unique colouring of medium nougat are due to the fact that they represent more of a wild pig breed, having been released as part of Duplo’s 2015 Forest sets. And, as we’ve seen with so many pigs that have come before, they only appear in one set.

Wild pig Squared-off eyes Semicircular eyes

Picture credits to BrickLink.com

This year has seen a new Duplo piglet mould and the first Duplo pig to appear in light nougat. This new edition returns to the squared-off eye design of the 2010 version.

Rares

Beyond all these, I am lucky enough to have a couple of more unusual items in my collection: an unprinted version of the 1985 Duplo pig and an unprinted & unmounted version of the slim Duplo piglet of the same vintage. Both of these were acquired at the much-missed Loplet (a sort of LEGO antiques and oddities store that closed recently in Billund), and special thanks go to my friend Trevor for noticing one of the sellers socking up her shelf with these and grabbing them for me!

That about rounds up my porcine collection of LEGO pigs. (Don’t ask me why I’m all of a sudden craving bacon…)

So, as Porky Pig likes to say, “That’s all Folks!”

What is your favorite LEGO pig? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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Original link

Original author: Teresa Elsmore

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LEGO news

LEGO Pig Palooza: No Flies in This Oinkment!

Before I Start, a Note on Moulds

Dates

Number of new moulds, by decade

Building Systems

Building System

Colours

Colours

Licensed Themes