LEGO Minifigures Series 26 behind-the-scenes: Alien Tourist and Blacktron Mutant

Learn the secrets behind two of the most anticipated LEGO Series 26 minifigures direct from the designers, from early grey alien concepts to the Blacktron Mutant’s backstory…

71046 Series 26 Space debuts on shelves in May, bringing 12 brand new and exclusive space-themed minifigures to shelves for the first time. Among those are the Alien Tourist and Blacktron Mutant, both highly-anticipated for very different reasons: one is a throwback to a retro LEGO Space faction, while the other is readymade for dotting around your LEGO displays.

Ahead of the new series’ release, Brick Fanatics sat down with LEGO Minifigures Creative Lead Esa Petteri Nousiainen and LEGO graphic designer Tore Magelund Harmark-Alexandersen to learn the ins and outs of all 12 of these colourful characters – including discarded early designs, secret nods to other retro themes and more.

Check back regularly for deep dives into the rest, but for now, here’s everything you need to know about the Alien Tourist and Blacktron Mutant…

Alien Tourist

This isn’t the first time the Collectible Minifigures series has visited the concept of a grey alien: a more generic, less touristy version debuted in Series 6 with a specially-moulded head. And while the Alien Tourist tips its summery blue hat to the design language of its predecessor, its only able to do so because of the specific creative direction for the Series 26 minifigure.

“We knew that the grey alien is such an icon – but we’ve done it already,” Esa recalls. “So how do we do it again? Should we bring back the old grey alien head? But that’s very static. You can’t do anything else with that. And then we decided that we need to decorate it on a minifigure head, so the character can have a hat. Also, you can take this head anywhere and put it in any scene.

“You could take it to your castle or pirate scene, and who’s to say that alien tourists weren’t visiting Earth in pirate times or medieval times? So that was such a fun addition. We’ve been playing around with this guy a lot, putting different wigs and stuff [on him], so it’s super cool.”

Before the team arrived at the concept of a tourist, Tore was throwing around the idea of a very different – but more complicated – direction.

“We had this early concept of an alien with a lawnmower doing crop circles,” he says. “But the crop circle is a very complex adult story. And we were like, ‘Oh, what if he had a 2×2 tile that describes how he will draw [the crop circles]?” But no, it doesn’t really work. And then one day Esa came up with: grey alien tourist. And at first I was like, ‘Okay, he can’t have a laser. He can’t have all this astronaut gear.’

“But then as soon as I started working him out, it just became one of my favourite characters from the line-up, because I think it touched upon something else that is really important. When we talk about robots, AI, aliens, it’s always with this doom and gloom. But I think what we managed with the tourist is that he became this cute, friendly guy who loves Earth and just wants to visit.

“It’s the same thing with the robots and the service droid – they are happy friends with humans. I think that’s a general positive overarching theme.”

Tying into that theme is the Alien Tourist’s t-shirt, emblazoned with an ‘I love Earth’ slogan. “We talked about getting those printed as real t-shirts,” Tore laughs. “The Hawaiian shirt pattern I actually borrowed from one of my good colleagues who works on LEGO City. They have some very cool and very relatable real-life designs. So I changed up the colours, but otherwise it’s a borrow from them.”

Blacktron Mutant

The Blacktron Mutant revisits a forgotten LEGO Space faction in Blacktron II, the second-generation villains that roamed the galaxy stealing technology. But this isn’t any old Blacktron II astronaut: it’s one that’s fallen foul of some grievous mutation. That marriage of two different concepts came early on in the process, as the team looked for ways to integrate classic sci-fi tropes with the LEGO Group’s own history.

“We knew that we wanted mutants, and some kind of radiation that causes mutation,” Esa explains. “That’s an archetype we wanted to have. So we were looking into what haven’t we done very recently, and it was Blacktron. And then Blacktron are like villains, and mutants are villains, and yeah: that hits. That works.”

What that mutation would look like was a different matter, as the Minifigures team didn’t want to settle for something simple.

“[One] overarching idea that we had for this line-up is that because it’s space and sci-fi, we wanted to bring a lot of new ways of doing things as much as possible with the elements,” Esa adds. “With the mutant, you could easily just have a different coloured arm or a different coloured leg, but we wanted to have a different shape – a double arm and a deformed leg. We wanted to show the mutation physically and not just in colour.”

With the concept locked in, the focus shifted from the visual design to the character’s backstory – and how that then informed tiny details in the printing.

“The challenge with a mutant is when this vessel gets infected unwillingly, that’s not a fun story,” Tore says. “That’s why he has this smirk to the side. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got this extra stuff, now I can wield two guns in one hand.’ And on the back of him, there’s this little sign at the top, [which] is actually a sign from Alien Conquest. One of the leaders had it as an emblem.

“The idea was these Blacktron II guys, we’ve never heard of them since they were out, so basically to up their game they bought some technology from these [Alien Conquest] guys and got their body enhancements. So that was kind of the story here. And they did it willingly, of course!”

Beyond the mutated arm and leg, the other major design departure between the original Blacktron II astronauts and the Blacktron Mutant is the absence of a helmet. Esa says that was partly done to better show off the half-mutated face print, but there was another reason too – and it’s linked to the overall colour scheme of this retro character.

“It was a way of getting around us not being able to have trans-neon green,” Tore says, referring to the now-retired colour originally used for Blacktron II helmet visors. “The mutant colour we chose was the colour that would have been represented by the visor. We could have gone purple or pink or anything, but this made it better. And also, when his body enhancement is fully grown, I’m sure he can breathe in space without a helmet!”

71046 Series 26 Space arrives on shelves on May 1, but you might already be able to find the minifigures in a store near you. Make sure to download the Brick Search app before you head out hunting, so you’ll be ready to scan the data matrix codes on each box to reveal the character inside. Head here to find out more about the Brick Search minifigure scanner.

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