LEGO might have made too many Doctor Strange minifigures – but that’s okay

The next issue of the official LEGO Marvel magazine tells us one thing: the LEGO Group might have produced too many Doctor Strange minifigures.

Once upon a time, Stephen Strange was pretty hard to come by in LEGO, only available in maybe one or two sets at a time. Our first Supreme Sorcerer minifigure arrived in 2016’s 76060 Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, while the same character returned in 2018’s 76108 Sanctum Sanctorum Showdown. In 2023, you can’t turn the corner without ending up with a Doc Strange minifigure in your collection.

Two new LEGO Marvel sets in 2022 featured the Supreme Sorcerer, 76205 Gargantos Showdown and 76218 Sanctum Sanctorum, which both debuted on shelves while 2021’s 76185 Spider-Man at the Sanctum Workshop was still available. That was three standard Stranges (we won’t get into the multiverse variants) all available concurrently, each using the new moulded cape element.

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Two of those sets have now retired, leaving only 76218 Sanctum Sanctorum still in production. But the LEGO Group has clearly manufactured way too many Doctor Strange minifigures to sell through in just that one set, because the Marvel superhero is now popping up pretty much everywhere, like he’s in his own little LEGO multiverse.

That’s not only in this year’s first Marvel polybag, 30652 Doctor Strange’s Interdimensional Portal, but also in the summer issue of the LEGO Marvel magazine – which according to Hoth Bricks will include the same Doctor Strange minifigure. The LEGO Group is seemingly using every avenue it can to shift its Stephen Stranges, and in doing so is quietly showing it’s agile enough to cope with what may well be excess inventory.

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That puts the company in stark contrast to Funko, which recently announced it’s sending $30 million of its dead-eyed collectibles to landfill, having ramped up production too quickly during the pandemic. The LEGO Group is similarly expanding its factories as sales continue to climb, but should at least be better-equipped to respond if trends start to swing the other way.

Pieces and minifigures can always be reused in other sets, and if the worst-case scenario is that they’re sent off to publishers to include in magazines, that’s not so bad at all. It’s presumably how we’ve ended up with a Mandalorian Loyalist and Bo-Katan Kryze in the LEGO Star Wars magazine, after all…

The latest issue of the LEGO Marvel magazine includes a Black Panther minifigure. The Doctor Strange issue will apparently arrive on shelves in Europe in June, so may hit UK shores by July.

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