LEGO Series 26 walkthrough: M-Tron Powerlifter and Flying Saucer Costume Fan
Find out why one LEGO Series 26 Space minifigure has been 15 years in the making – and it’s not one of the four inspired by retro LEGO Space themes…
Our final entry in our minifigure-by-minifigure walkthrough of Series 26 with LEGO Minifigures Creative Lead Esa Petteri Nousiainen and LEGO graphic designer Tore Magelund Harmark-Alexandersen sees the design duo take a deep dive into the Flying Saucer Costume Fan and M-Tron Powerlifter, two characters who share one key trait: their origins can be traced back more than a decade.
From hidden M-Tron details to early concepts for the Flying Saucer Costume Fan’s torso and legs, here’s everything the LEGO Group’s designers told us about these two 71046 Series 26 Space characters.
Flying Saucer Costume Fan
While some characters in Series 26 required serious thought during the initial brainstorming phase, and only arrived at their final incarnation after a lot of back and forth – the Alien Tourist, for example – the Flying Saucer Costume Fan has been on Tore’s list for a good long while.
“We always have a big bank of ideas, and some designers will come to [group] brainstorms and pitch the same character every year, because that’s the one they wanted for 10 years,” says Tore. “I personally had one, the UFO costume, [which] was quite an early idea based on the first LEGO out-of-work Halloween party I joined 15 years ago.
“There were three designers dressed up exactly like that UFO costume with little hands inside their own head painted green, and it just stuck with me for all those years. So that one came earlier.”
“As a character artist and graphic designer Tore does sketches of all the characters, but this is one he’d sketched many years ago,” Esa confirms. “I’d seen it before and was just trying to find the right time to include it in the line-up. And I really liked the bold approach – it is just the black minifigure [with] a starry sky, and then the whole focus is on the UFO.
“On top of that simplicity we knew from the beginning that we wanted to make the flying saucer disc metallised, so it has a shiny effect, and I think it really adds to this classic hubcap UFO design.”
The green head, silver flying saucer and trans-clear dome were all fairly straightforward to lock in, but the team did end up spending some time finetuning the design of the minifigure’s body.
“At first it was just this blank universe, but then Esa and I had a conversation on whether it would be fun to add something,” Tore says. “I think having the little shooting star on the front breaks it up a bit, and the Moon and Earth on the back almost tie into [the story]: this guy came in this vessel and he saw Earth. As an adult, I would not mind it being super simple; just stars. But as a kid, I would love these extra little stories and details. You know, as a kid, more is more. As an adult you can settle with less.”
The same starry pattern can also be found across each and every one of the 4×3 plates included as stands for the Series 26 minifigures, but it’s with the Flying Saucer Costume Fan that it really comes into its own, acting as an extension of the minifigure torso and legs.
“[The printed baseplates] were an idea from the beginning,” Esa says. “We really wanted to tie them into space. But then of course when we have this character, we wanted the starfield to be exactly the same, so it really blends in and creates this floating UFO feeling.”
The Flying Saucer Costume Fan is relatively unique in this series in that he doesn’t include any accessories. That wasn’t for a lack of ideas, though: according to Tore, it was a deliberate artistic decision intended to keep the focus entirely on the minifigure itself.
“We talked about accessories for him,” he reveals. “It could be the coffee cup in silver and then a little transparent dome on top. But it was so important for us for the bottom part of the figure to be as anonymous as possible and just blend into the background, so the intention with his costume would really fit in.”
M-Tron Powerlifter
Like so many Series 26 minifigures, the M-Tron Powerlifter represents the coming together of two great ideas: a deep pull from LEGO Space lore and a classic sci-fi archetype. In this case, 1990s theme M-Tron is married with the trope of an exoskeleton, which regularly pops up in this genre. But which of those came into the picture initially is a little fuzzier.
“Sometimes it’s not that easy to say which was first,” Esa says. “It’s a bit like the chicken and the egg; we’ve had M-Tron on our list [of characters] that could be cool to put in there, because we have never done M-Tron in Collectible Minifigures. And then we had another list with these archetypes, and then it’s almost like, ‘Which ones match?’
“We wanted a character with some kind of exoskeleton and then through some concepting we ended up with this configuration. And like with the Blacktron Mutant, we really wanted to break the silhouette of the character, and do something that we don’t do that often, where we would have a soft and hard material in one piece. And we were able to also connect it to the backpack, so that it really looks like it’s getting the power out of somewhere.
“That was the starting point for this character. And then it was putting it together with M-Tron. They had the cranes and stuff, so we were like, ‘Okay, how can we [include] M-Tron?’ And our exoskeleton fit into that.”
Just like the team had to find a workaround for the absence of trans-neon orange in the modern LEGO portfolio for Series 26’s Ice Planet Explorer, so too did the M-Tron Powerlifter require a similarly creative approach to the lack of trans-neon green – another retired Classic Space colour that was originally used for M-Tron helmet visors. The minifigure here swaps out the classic helmet for a more modern iteration, then prints the visor straight on to one side of the head.
“We made that decoration so that you can choose to have it turned on or off, like a heads-up display,” Tore explains. “We also debated whether the legs should have that printing on the side. Would it be enough to just print it? We went back and forth. And then we saw it physically, and it just looks great. When you have such a large silhouette change, such as with the claw, it could easily make it feel off balance. But having some more red on the legs really enhances the story – in the original, the legs were just white with black hips.”
Where characters like the Flying Saucer Costume Fan are devoid of accessories, others – like the Spacewalking Astronaut and M-Tron Powerlifter – almost offer a tiny yet rewarding building experience within a single Collectible Minifigures box. And this ode to retro space is easily one of the most detailed in the entire series, with plenty of fun things to spot for fans of a certain vintage. That includes the printed 1×2 tile atop the grey brick, which recreates classic M-Tron imagery.
“The 1×2 tile was quite important for me because I love these little elements for fan building,” Tore says. “And it makes a lot of sense, because they had this design on the mailbox originally, and those big shell pieces had that kind of paint on it. So we thought that was a good idea.”
“That tile especially is a good example of including some call-backs to the past,” Esa adds. “This guy obviously needs something to lift, because it would be boring to have this claw and there’s nothing he can lift. And when we want to show something on that thing that he’s lifting, then of course, it can be something from the past. It’s not away from our younger audience, but it adds something extra for the older audience.”
The M-Tron Powerlifter is also another minifigure that includes bonus details on the back, not unlike the Robot Butler’s reference to the classic 1×2 tape print tile. In this case, it’s black and yellow stripes printed on to the side of a 1×2 plate at the base of the minifigure’s backpack.
“It’s the cherry on top,” Esa says. “It ties it into a construction warning sign, and also adds that extra colour. Otherwise it would just be black, white and red, and then it’s this little slit of yellow. I think it’s a nice detail.”
“That’s also something that makes me so happy when we prioritise it,” Tore adds. “Of course, everything is balanced – we would love to make all characters filled with detail, but it also needs to be justified. From the marketing perspective, when you have a picture from the front, that’s all you see. But when you get it in your hands and you realise these little details on the back of the characters, I think that is something really nice.”
Check out the rest of our Series 26 walkthroughs using the links below.
- Alien Tourist and Blacktron Mutant
- Alien Beetlezoid and Imposter
- Ice Planet Explorer and Orion
- Nurse Android and Retro Space Heroine
- Robot Butler and Spacewalking Astronaut
71046 Series 26 Space is available at LEGO.com, in LEGO Stores and through all good third-party retailers now. Don’t forget to download the Brick Search app on iOS or Android to scan the codes on the bottom of boxes and instantly find the minifigures you’re after.
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