I have a theory: Creator 3in1 sets and Collectable minifigures are the last bastion of the classic themes that we would love to see the LEGO Group bring back. Some of the August release Creator 3in1 sets – 31167 Haunted Mansion and 31168 The Medieval Horse Knight Castle – both seem to serve my point to a certain extent, calling back to Monster Fighters and Classic Castle, respectively.

In this review, we will look at the new Creator 3in1 31167 Haunted Mansion. This was released on August 1, and comes with 736 pieces and five unique minifigures. It is priced at $AUD149.99/ $USD89.99 / €89.99 / £79.99.

As I set out to review this set, I may have become distracted and started looking at other ‘Haunted Themes’ that we have seen across the years…

The Elements:

At first glance, you get a feel for the palete of this set: a lot of sand green – particularly manonary bricks and plates, along with light grey pillars and black roof slopes and window frames.

The sand green masonry elements are common enough, but there are 47 included in this set, as well as 11 of the 1×4 variety. Combine these with more plates, as well as the vintage castle panel, and this is a great parts pack – perhaps not as strong as the 10228 Haunted house, but certainly a starting point. We have a number of black roof slope – the 2x2x3 sorner slope, as well as the spire. These steep sloped elements have been relatively rare in recent years, and their return will be welcome to many.

We have a few 4×1 rounded plates, as well as a few larger plates, including a couple of 10 x 10 octaganon plate in dark tan. there are a few, relatively new, elemts in olive green, including some printed tiles, bricks with studs on the side and more. A couple of small ‘splat’ gears leave me wondering if there are some mechanisms afoot…

The Minifigures

This set comes with 5 minifigures. This is one of the highest counts ever seen in Creator 3in1 set, surpassed only by the 31141 Main Street from 2023, and this year’s 31168 Medieval Horse Knight’s Castle.

We have a Vampire bride, Frankenstein’s monster, a Wolfman, skeleton and a ghost. While the skeleton has been seen before, the other characters are, to some extent, derivative of figures seen before.

The figures are in some respects, updates of those seen previously, in the Monster Fighters Haunted House; or Collectable minifigures from over the years.

Lets take a look at their lineage…

The Lady Vampire looks more friendly than the 2012 counterpart. Her dress looks more elegant, and her thirst for blood is not as obvious as previously. The hair piece is based on a mould from Vidyo, and unlike the earlier version, her head does not glow in the dark.

Her face is double-sided, but neither looks as grumpy as the woman on the left. I appreciate the benefits of the newish arch used for her updated dress. *It turns out that I might have performed an accidental headswap at the time I built the haunted house. In my defence, I was recovering from an injury and focus was difficult at the time .

The monster appears in sand green (right), and is very similar to the figure from CMF series 4 (centre) – really, the eye print has been updated, and some small details on the artwork, including new printing on the back. His eyes are not as sunken as the earlier version. In comparison, the figure from 10228 Haunted house was light bluish grey.

Compared to the version in Series 14 of the minifigures, our werewolf appears much more buffed up, with a new 8 pack, along with more shredded trousers. He is lacking the tail element and dual printed legs of the original, while his jeans are more shredded.

This is the third mold for the ghost shroud: originally, it smiled. In 10228, it has a sad face. In this set, it is just…Confused? Anxious? It is certainly intriguing. The shroud is intended at the base to allow it to fit between studs on a plate, and appears to be less wrinkled than its predecessors.

The current ‘glow in the dark’ white is relatively green, particularly when compared to the original version from 30 years ago.

The Build:

This set brings a choice of 3 builds: the Haunted Mansion; a Ghost ship and a Ghost train.

The Haunted Mansion

We start by building up a front gate, with weathered pillars on either side, a chain and lock complete the look. Next up is a somewhat sinister tree, with limbs in all directions and somewhat hungry eyes. This sits on the plate that makes up part of the first wall section we build. This model uses the ‘non brick’ side of the masonry bricks to convey the feeling of panelled wood.Inside our first part of the building is a shelf, holding the skeleton’s spare hats. This initial part of the build feels somewhat limited, until you realise that the hinged brick at the base is going to have to connect to something.

The next octagonal plate adds on the front entrance. There are two printed tiles on the wall here: Lady Vampyre and a picture of this haunted mansion. This connects onto the first section, and will eventually be secured with another hinge at the top. The front porch has railings made of black telescopes, topped with ingots.

We add another hinged section to the ground floor, bringing us a clock on the wall, with a pendulum that can be swung using a gear on the outside wall. A sunken arch creates a mouse hole – unfortunately, none were included. An external graveyard completes the look.

From hear, we add the roof: there are a few black 33º slopes, including a couple of corners, as well as 45º slopes. We build up the top story, with more boarded windows. On the inside, we add some brass candlesticks and a small pipe organ.

With the final bag, we build up tower. Along the way we add another play feature: a couple of small ‘splat’ gears which rotate a ghost into view, either through the window, or within the tower. And could that possibly be the Re-Gou Ruby on display, opening a portal to the netherworld?

Its great to see the steep sided black slopes – the corner elemen in particular appears to be frequently used for sinister houses, classic castles and Gotham City venues.

The final model opens up to double the overall facade and reveal the mischief within.

Overall, there is not much space with which to actively maneuver the figures inside the building, despite the doll house functionality, and there is a relative paucity of the furniture which you might find within a haunted house.

The alternate builds

The alternate builds are relatively small compared to the hero build, but serve to conjure up appropriately spooky images

We have a Ghost ship, taking advantage of the inverse slopes to form the hull, while the skeleton serves as a figurehead, in his bicorn hat. The lattice gates work well as tattered sails.

Our other build is a ghost train, levitating on transparent bicks as it passes by the railway platform. A good thing, too, as the wheels don’t freely turn. The use of tree trunks and branss elements as pipes on the side of the engine, as well as the refashioning of the castle-panels are make for an interesting build.

Compared to the 10228 Haunted house, this set is quite small, but given that it is half the price (unadjusted) of that set, and containing 736 rather than just over 2000 pieces, I don’t have a problem with this. This is, after all, a kid’s playset. With 5 clearly distinctive minifigures, this is a relative rarity in Creator 3in1 sets, where most figures will get rearranged between alternate builds.

Sure, it’s one floor shorter, the shutters are missing, and it lacks the same level of internal detailing, but it looks good on its own or, with a little forced perspective, adds a bit of spookiness to the outskirts of LEGO City.

I have my final thoughts on this set at the end of the post. You can click here to skip ahead.

A Brief History of Haunted Themes

I’ve been developing a theory over the past few years that the classic themes continue to live on in Creator 3in1 sets, as well as Collectable Minifigures. In the past 5 years we have seen space, castle and pirates all represented here, but this is the first time that we have had a theme from after the turn of the century represented here. The set provides a fitting homage to 2012’s Monster Fighters, in a world where we haven’t had a proper ‘haunted things’ theme since the demise of Hidden side in 2020. But where have we seen these things before?

1990-2005: Castle, Adventurers and More.

The first LEGO Ghost was seen back in 1990 – the 6034 Black Monarch’s Ghost . The Ghost was happy to smile, and was one of the earliest glow in the dark minifigures. Ghosts cropped up from time to time in Castle and Time Cruisers throughout the 1990’s, with a special guest appearance in the Legends range of 2005. LEGO Skeletons had cropped up in the Pirates range, before they started languashing in the occasional dungeon.

Mummies and Skeletons became a feature of the Adventurers theme, where Johnny Thunder and the team explored Egypt, where the undead remains of the Pharaoh Hotep guarded the Re-Gou Ruby.

The remainder of the Classic Monsters – Vampires, Reanimated Monsters and Werewolves (and perhaps the most terrifying of all, the Nesquik bunny) made their debut in the Studios range, appearing in playsets consistent with their well-worn traditional tropes. This curious range, which I have been delaying an overview of for over a year, also covered Spiderman and Jurassic Park 3.

In Harry Potter, Remus Lupin provided an excuse for the occasional werewolf over the next decade, but it was not until 2012 that the monsters would be united in Monster Fighters.

The Rise of the Monsters: 2010-2015

Collectable Minifigures 2010-2013

Meanwhile, over in the World of Collectable Minifigures, all sorts of monstrous figures came into being:

Pirates of the Caribbean

Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is, at its heart, a collection of Ghost Stories. Between the various films represented in 2011’s LEGO sets, we have a number of ghostly skeletons, zombies and pirates. With 2017’s Dead Men Tell No Tales, we saw a fascinating Ghost Ship, the Silent Mary, complete with Zombie Sharks.

Monster Fighters

Monster Fighters arrived in 2012 – by which stage, the first 4 series of CMF’s had already been released. Several moulds were reused, including the Crazy Scientist (hair) and the Monster head piece, as well as the foil, robot arm and cave woman hair (recoloured in dark orange).Still, we saw new moulds including the Ghost’s shroud and the Werewolf’s head.

In this theme, the Monsters, Lord Vampyre is gathering moonstones from around the Monster Realm. This will see the moon permanently eclipse the sun, allowing a monster army to invade the world of minifigures. As far as gimmicks were concernerd, the range featured many elements made of a newly reformulated Glow-in the Dark polymer.

The Monster fighters were led by Rodney Rathborne and included Frank Rock, Ann Lee, Jack McHammer and Major Quinton Steele. They entered the Monster realm to find the Moonstones before Lord Vampyre.

Each set featured a vehicle, a small locale and a selection of monsters and Monster Fighters.

The Largest set in the theme was the 10228 Haunted House – with numbering consistent with the Direct to Consumer sets at the time. If it were released today, it would be released as an Icons set. you can certainly see how the new set bears a remarkable resemblance in shape. Certainly not in size!

Scooby Doo

2015 brought us the single wave of Scooby Doo sets, based on the vintage cartoon series, revisiting some of the best ‘villain in a costume’ characters around:

With only 5 sets (plus a polybag and minibuild) the theme was short lived, but featured plenty of monster minifigures.

Ninjago Possession

The 2015 Series of Ninjago centred around the the Ghost of Morro possessing Lloyd, and brought a new design for ghostly figures: both as a transparent neon green legs, or a mixed trans neon green /dark blue base. This season also introduced the Realm Crystal, a gem that might allow characters to transcend realms.

CMF Series 14: Monsters

2015 was certainly a bumper year for LEGO Monsters and hauntings, with CMF series 14 being dedicated to the theme. Some were riffs on previous minifigures – the zombie businessman and cheerleader, as well as the werewolf all had non-monsterfied counterparts appear in earlier series. Others took earlier moulds and refashioned them with updated artwork – the Monster Rocker and Werewolf both used parts originated in Monster Fighters, while the Spectre and Bashee used recoloured base element from Ninjago Possession.

In subsequent years, these monsters/creepy folks have been relatively few and far between…

In fact, the majority of the classic monsters were released prior to the arrival of monster fighters.

2019-2021: The Last Hoorah of the Home Grown Themes

Hidden Side

The most recent theme dedicated ‘haunting and monsters’, would be the Hidden Side. With an Augmented Reality game and box art that left parents somewhat confused as to exactly what was going on, the theme saw contemporary teenagers and their science teacher hunting down people possessed by ‘gloom’. Most of the sets included in the theme would transform between normal and haunted versions, resulting in dynamic play. While set in a town in the southern USA, the monsters and haunting are of a different nature than typical monsters.

I really appreciated the transformative nature of the sets – converting from a regular location or vehicle to a haunted one. Unfortunately, you needed to work hard to identify this play feature from the packaging, which highlighted the augmented reality/app based play over the real world play features:

Not Quite Creator Expert. Not Quite ICONs: 10273 Haunted House

For a few years, we were gertting regular amusement park sets, aimed at older builders, and the most recent of these was the Haunted House in 2020. Featuring the box style we are now used to seeing with sets aimed at 18+ years, the ride is based on a ‘tower drop’ style of ride, with LEGO Adventurers as a theme – spacifically the Monar of Baron von Barron. Another Doll House build, the set highlighted the baron’s quest for the Re-Gou ruby.

Vidiyo

Finally, we come to Vidiyo – released in 2021, and again getting onto the App powered Hype, with vidiyo, kids had the chance to put together a stage with their minifigures, and then create a music video, in conjunction with a variety of songs from Universal Music. While I found the App to be functional, it was probably a little ahead of its time, requiring hardware beyond the budget of most kids getting hand-me-down phones. Still, we saw some great minifigures across a variety of subthemes including Fairy Folk, Candy Pop, K-Pawp, Pirate punk and Monster Metal. This theme brought us the hairpiece used by Lady Vampyre in 31667

Changing ways: Seasonal sets, Licenses and Build-a-Minifigure

Halloween has changed its significance in my part of the world in recent years – when I was a kid, it was a ‘curious American celebration that involves trying to get floating apples out of a tub full of water using only your mouth’, now its a full on spooky season, with homes decorated in spiderwebs and fake skeletons for the better part of a couple of weeks. Since the time of Hidden Side, we have seen a shift in the ways that LEGO Spooks make their way to market, with Halloween becoming the focus for spooky releases. Essentailly, putting a priority on mood over monsters.

Seasonal Sets

And over the past decade, the LEGO Group have been increasing their ongoing commitment to Halloween. This has been with a variety of brick-built icons, minifigure-scale vignettes, and vehicles. I was delighted to see the 10228 Haunted House commemorated in the form of a small hanging decoration.

But it has not only been through specific Halloween focussed set. We have also had tie-ins to various 3rd party themes, as standalone sets, playthemes such as Wednesday, and successful submissions through LEGO Ideas.

While not, strictly speaking, haunted, the world of the Netflix series ‘Stranger Things‘ is certainly pretty creepy – particularly the first series. I really enjoyed the building experience, bolting the upside down, shadow version of the Byer’s house onto the brightly lit version. The demigorgon, while not previously established in classical cinematic canon, is a suitably scary monster, and you were never sure when it might step out of the shadows to terrify the cast.

LEGO Ideas: The Sanderson Sisters’ Cottage; The Nightmare before Christmas

The LEGO Ideas Platform Has Provided the opportunity for LEGO Fans to submit their concepts to be converted into LEGO Sets. Over the last couple of years, we have seen strangely coincident releases based on successful Disney movies:

21341 Hocus Pocus: The Sanderson Sister’s Cottage

Hocus Pocus was a film that completely skipped my radar when it was released back in 1993: to be fair, I was in Australia, and my mid 20s. Halloween was not my focus so much as my final year exams. Still, the story of the kids that move to Salem, and accidentally reawakening the witches previously executed in the 17th century witch trials seems to have become an annual staple for many families around the world. Coincidently, there was a direct to streaming sequel released around the time that this set was launched.

21351 The Nightmare Before Christmas

There must have been something in the Disney Kool Aid in 1993, with not one, but Spooky Themed movies released. this one, however, I remember seeing in the cinemas, and possibly a couple of times since, but I can understand people’s fascination with the Mayor of Halloween Town attempting to get the citizens to embrace Christmas, for a little variety.

Wednesday

The Addams Family was always billed as being creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky. To say nothing of Altogether Ooky, of course. These traditions are continued in ‘Wednesday,’ the the macabre 60s sitcom becomes an angsty teen drama. There is mystery, foreboding lighting and effervescent roommates. And a disembodied minifigure hand. These are the first ‘spooky sets to be released with minidolls included.The latest sets, to be released in time for Halloween 2025, have just been revealed, and include Thing’s Apartment and Morticia Addam’s cottage. The latter appears to have great potential to be a successor to the haunted mansion, particularly if you have a few ghosts and skeletons with which to fill the home.

Disney Haunted Mansion

If I am going to discuss Haunted and Creepy themes, I am probably obliged to mention the existance of the Disney Haunted Mansion set, based on the rides at the Disney Parks. Since 1969, this ride and its variants have been a crowd favorite, often getting a seasonal spritz up for the spooky season.

Build-A-Minifigure at LEGO Branded Retail Stores

Since After their debut in 2010, we proceeded to see 3 series of CMF produced per year. From 2014 onwards, one or two of those series would be reserved for 3rd party tie in characters. After the monster theme in 2015, we have seen very few spooky or monstrous characters appearing in the CMF range. 

Enter Build-a-Minifigure stations at LEGO Branded retail stores around the world. Since 2019 we have seen new prints and hair colours that were yet to be included in regular sets, and there have been Halloween themed mini figures appearing for much of this time. Elements previously featured in CMFs have also reappeared from time to time.

LEGOLAND Parks

Back in 2012,we visited LEGOLAND park in Windsor. We came across a large haunted house, modeled after 10228 from Monster Fighters. The theme was still on the shelves back then – indeed, it was on this trip that we picked up the Haunted house. It was a walk through ride featuring lots of brick built models and monsters, including the Monster, lord Vampyre and a Wizard.I don’t really remember anything we did once we walked through it. In 2019, the ride received an upgrade, to include a dark ride (I’m yet to experience this).

There is a similar attraction in LEGOLAND Billund, and I believe it has more recently been reopened as a tower ride. There was a prototype of this in the LEGOLAND Billund Hotel, which we happened upon in 2022. I suspect it has become a Tower Drop ride in the meantime.

When I visit the LEGO LAND parks, I often wonder what kids make of some of the rides, given that themes such as Monster Fighters and Adventurers haven’t existed for years. I guess the collectable minifigures help to keep the memory alive, to keep these rides relevant, and this brings me back to 31167: while this set fills a gap in ‘haunted sets’ in recent years, and pays homage to the Monster Fighters Haunted House, does it also exist to keep the idea of a Haunted House ride relevant to kids (or more importantly, give folks something to buy at the end of the ride? Castle has been a mainstay of the LEGOLAND parks since the early days, and I admit that in the late twenty-teens/twenty-twenties, it felt pretty weird seeing attractions based on a theme that is no longer current. Am I being unreasonably cynical?

Full Circle 31167 Haunted Mansion [Conclusions and Final Thoughts]

And this brings us to where we started at the beginning of this article: 31167 Creator 3in1 Haunted Mansion. It’s taken us down a deeper rabbit hole than I was expecting.

With a tribute to the Monster Fighters Haunted House, a ghost ship and ghost train, this set calls back across various haunted themes from over the years. I found the Mansion to be the strongest, most feature-laden build. With Lady Vampyre, the Monster, Werewolf, Ghost, and Skeleton, you have all the creatures you need for a good haunting. The model also gives us a couple of play features, letting us animate the creepiness. I am particularly fond of the disappearing Ghost.

The Ghost ship and Ghost Train both offer interesting building techniques and play opportunities, but I do not feel they bring the same play value as the Haunted Mansion.

The set presents a strong selection of sand green elements, as well as a wide variety of black sloped pieces. The set is not so much a replacement for the 10228 Haunted House but rather a loving homage. I have certainly had some fun putting it together and looking at some of the heritage on which it draws. I’m happy to give this set 3.5 out of five Arbitrary Praise Units.

The set is now available on general release, and can be bought from LEGO.com for $AUD149.99/ $USD89.99 / €89.99 / £79.99.

Did you have a favorite ‘Monster’ set from years gone by? Is the set on your wish list? let us know in the comments below.

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Until Next Time,

Play Well!

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