Throughout this website you may notice multiple recurring terms, such as abbreviations or even slang terms. For future reference, this is a comprehensive guide to any sort of terminology you may see in my site.
AFOL: “Adult Fan of LEGO” – anyone above the intended age demographic of LEGO products. Traditionally AFOLs such as myself were very niche, as the toys were still seen as mere children’s playthings. However as of the late 2010s or so when geek fandom became more mainstream, AFOL subculture gained widespread acceptance.
Heads will roll and MOC tonight.
Brunktöberfest: October 27 of every year, which is the most important holiday of all – my birthday.
A very very un-birthday to me.
LEGO Ideas – Formerly “CUUSOO”: An official LEGO Group website devoted to fan-submissions of LEGO projects, in which website users can vote on submissions for becoming potentially sold as actual retail sets. Many prominent LEGO retail models began as fan submissions on that site, and garnered enough votes to become approved. I personally have made several submissions for potential pitches, but have never reached the required 10,000 amount of votes before the deadlines expired. LEGO Ideas has no restrictions for age, aside from submissions made by children under 13 must be accompanied by adults. Therefore teenagers and even adults like myself frequently submit creations.
LEGO Ideas however is notorious for having extremely strict guidelines for submissions, for a combination of licensing issues as well as for general conduct restrictions. An example of the former: LEGO currently has a line of products with the Nintendo license, which means no fan submissions can involve Nintendo video games. For the latter, it’s due to the company being a children’s toy manufacturer, which means no submissions can contain violence, sex, drugs, alcohol, religious symbols, or politics.
The LEGO Ideas website also has competitions of varying degrees of stakes. Some competitions are merely small exhibition competitions with no prizes aside from social media clout, whereas other competitions have large, valuable prizes and in some instances, winning submissions are chosen to be on display at the LEGO House Gallery in Billund, Denmark. I was personally a winner of two high-stakes competitions from LEGO Ideas in 2022: I was the winner of a 90-Year Anniversary competition where upon my model was displayed in Denmark. A few months later my Rolling Stones-themed LEGO creation came in 2nd place for another contest.
Magnifigure: My personal take on “minifigures”, a magnifigure is a large, articulated LEGO figure custom built, often with minifigure heads on large bodies. I first started tinkering with the concept of magnifigures in 2014 when I created my iconic Amish magnifigure to travel with for photoshoots as a Sigfig. My Amish magnifigure has gone through several revisions in the past decade or so, and in early drafts it appeared almost like he had nipples on his chest! The most recent version of this design is very articulated with better arm joints for holding his scythe, and now wears a large dark brown slouch hat. Previously the figure wore a smaller black cavalier slouch hat and couldn’t move his elbows.
As for other magnifigures, I would create several of these things throughout the subsequent years, for various franchises like pop culture references, but also LEGO-meta creations. I also intended to use these type of figures in my production hell LEGO Alice in Wonderland video.
This is what happens when you skip head day.
Minifigure (or minifig): The standard nomenclature for small LEGO figurines, typically with yellow heads and claw hands.
I’ve got yellow fever.
MOC: “My Own Creation”/”My Original Creation” – Any sort of custom LEGO model that’s made by an individual user, and not sold as a set from the company.
This set is not sold in stores.
Sigfig: “Signature Minifigure” – a personal LEGO minifigure that AFOLs often use on social media, such as in tagging creations or doing travel photography. Due to the creative nature of LEGO products, fans can make custom figurines of themselves, so typically on social media it’s common for builders to make a personal figure of themselves to insert into their MOCs or photo shoots. AFOLs will also travel places and take photos of their Sigfigs at the locales to show they’ve been there.
Since I have an unusual face, unique dress style, and an ever-evolving overall appearance, I always struggled to make accurate traditional sigfigs of myself. Back in the early 2010s I was slightly overweight, balding, had a big beard, and wore glasses – so I didn’t translate well as a traditional LEGO minifigure. I decided to overcome this obstacle to making a custom articulated LEGO figurine that used unusual building methods, and was about three times the size of a regular minifig. I called this creation the Magnifigure, and I use variations of it as my personal sigfig. The official Baron von Brunk sigfig is a vicious Amish man with a slouch hat, suspenders, a pitchfork, and a scythe! The head is an angry minifig with mutton chops, and over top of it is a beard accessory.
Version 1.0 of my Sigfig taken during my travels to my hometown of Lancaster, PA in 2015 – complete with scythe, pitchfork, and nipples.
SNOT: “Studs Not On Top” – LEGO slang term for a building technique in which the studs do not face upwards in the traditional fashion. Typically, LEGO models are assembled by piling pieces on top of each other with the studs facing upwards. A SNOT build would use irregular and unorthodox techniques to have the studs facing in positions that aren’t upwards.
It’s Nick, or it’s SNOT.