Moulding LEGO® mini-doll legs

We recently came across a new LEGO® element. They look somewhat macabre and perhaps more akin to something from John Carpenter's The Thing than LEGO.

The elements in question appears to be mini-doll legs that are moulded in pairs. The double-ended legs started a discussion here at New Elementary about mini-doll leg moulding processes and the timing of printing. Read on to hear our theories.

LEGO mini-dolls have used a surprising variety of leg moulds over the years. Not all varieties are shown here, but there are many printed and "overmoulded" legs across the theme. So, where do these odd double-ended legs come in?

These images were included in the brick database that used to be bundled with public LEGO® Games packages for Unity – further evidence of the existence double-ended leg element.

Overmoulded or not?

In injection moulding, overmoulding is a process that combines multiple parts together to form one single part. It is a two-part process where one part is moulded and then a second step overmoulds on to the first to create a single piece.

It appears that some mini-doll legs are overmoulded while others look more like a single mould with printing. We don't know for sure of course, but can you spot the differences above that suggest different  processes?

Possible overmoulding process

We are obviously just theorising here but it seems that the double-ended leg element could be the first stage in the process.  

There are some mini-dolls who do not have printing on their legs (eg. Moana and Rapunzel) hence the annotation 'if applicable'.

UPDATE: We took a knife to a poor mini-doll and this shows that the overmoulded legs are indeed separate and not just folded over.  

Has anyone seen LEGO mini-dolls legs being manufactured or have insight? We'd love to know more!

Design IDs

As mentioned, we found a Design ID for each of the double legs from the the brick database that used to be bundled with public LEGO Games packages. As with most elements, there is a Design ID moulded into the elements themselves; one foot on the mini-doll legs has a Design ID.  The problem is, they all seem to be different!

And finally...

There have been quite a few insights into the moulding process for minifigures over the years, including this detailed video LEGO released four years ago. However we had a chat with the team here at New Elementary and no one could remember seeing much information about the moulding process for mini-dolls.

We also found these mini-doll torsos without necks. This seems odd as we expected the torso to be overmoulded to the inner doll neck and torso section. In the image above you can see the light nougat part of the mould underneath the printed torso; surely the torso would be overmoulded and then printed? Perhaps that's another story for another day.

This is the first time we've come across parts of mini-dolls that appear to give insight into their moulding process and we're eager to learn more. If you have mini-doll moulding knowledge to confirm or deny our theories we'd love to hear from you!

READ MORE: LEGO® parts 5533 & 5608: Column of Bubbles and Florence Flask

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