What Is The Best LEGO Snowman? A Deep Dive Into Frosty Figures
LEGO has been building minifig-scale snowmen with varying levels of success for decades. I’ve seen some people speculate in online communities that perhaps LEGO has never seen an actual snowman before (even though it has been snowing in Billund, Denmark this last week!). I certainly won’t go that far, but I will say that some of their designs align with what I would consider to be the ideal of a snowman far more closely than others.
This thought process led me to wonder: is there a “best” LEGO snowman? If so, how would I find it? Well, this is BrickNerd, so the answer to me was clear: by spending way too much time looking for and judging every minifig-scale snowman LEGO has yet made.
Do You Want to Build a Snowman?
(I promised myself I wasn’t going to use that song title in this article and already I failed… sigh.) Let’s set some parameters for what we will be looking at in this LEGO snowmen review. I’m only interested in minifig-scale snowmen for the purpose of this article, as expanding the scope to include larger-scale builds kind of harms any comparative value we might find. It gets a little too apples and oranges otherwise.
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Additionally, I’m not considering any snowmen that are just straight-up minifigures. I’m interested in brick-built approaches only! Finally, I’m not going to include licensed theme snowmen that are just derivatives of the designs I did include. Again, it feels too outside the scope of a “classic snowman” to me.
Scoring Snowmen
The “perfect snowman” by James HInd via USA Today
So, how do we constitute what exactly makes a snowman? In North America, there is a particular set of features that are often associated with the stereotypical snowman: a body made of two or three differently-sized balls of snow, a face with stones or coal for eyes, a carrot as a nose, and sticks for arms. Additional features, such as stones or coal on the torso to represent buttons or clothing (traditionally a scarf, top hat or mittens) may be added as well. The snowman is also often associated with a broom as an accessory, perhaps in reference to the song Frosty the Snowman, wherein the eponymous snowman Frosty is depicted as carrying around a broomstick.
If our goal is to judge LEGO’s attempts at snowmen in terms of completeness relative to this prototypical ideal, then we can assign a point value system to the following list of features, with each desired feature counting for one point out of a possible 5 points total:
Two to three balls of snow
Stick arms
Clothing (a hat and/or scarf)
A representation of a face (eyes and/or a carrot nose)
Additional detail or accessories (buttons, a broomstick, etc.)
Of course, just ticking a list of features isn’t enough to judge how GOOD a snowman is, only how fully featured it is. Thus, the other half of our rubric will judge its appearance based on proportions, scale, realism, parts usage, and technique. This section will be a little bit more arbitrary since “I think this looks terrible” may just be all the explanation some of these attempts at snowmen need.
Speaking of arbitrary, I will also assign a third score, which is my personal score for that snowman. This score is really more of a “vibe check” and is not necessarily dependent on the feature or build scores—it’s simply my personal take on the snowman and how much I happen to enjoy it.
With our criteria established, let’s start considering snowmen. I’ve decided to group these based on their build approach, in broad strokes. The categories are as follows:
A. Cone Snowmen, built on a 4 x 4 x 2 cone.
B. Dome Brick Snowmen, built on a Brick, 2 x 2 Round with Dome Top (or similar).
C. Brick Snowmen, built on a brick (or similar).
D. Sphere Snowmen, built on a 2 x 2 sphere with a stud.
E. Other Snowmen, built in a fashion unlike any of the above.
Finally, I apologize if I missed some snowmen. I spent a good amount of time scouring LEGO’s catalog of sets looking for every minifig-scale snowman I could find, but I probably missed some, and I know some new ones have been revealed since I started on this article. Please feel free to mention or nominate your favorite snowman that didn’t make it into this article in the comments!
A: Cone Snowmen
There are only a few of these type of snowmen which are built with a 4 x 4 x 2 cone as their base. This is a pretty huge element relative to a minifig, and I’ll tell you right now, none of these are winning any points for scale or proportions. I’ll go so far as to say that, as a whole, in my opinion, this entire category sucks.
A.1 7724: Advent Calendar 2008, City
Well, okay. It’s massive, and the shape is really weird with the elongated cylindrical torso. The arms appear to be made of snow and look out-of-place, plus they appear to be balled up in fists. This snowman looks a bit threatening. The head is comically tiny. All of the exposed studs look sloppy.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 0.5 / 5. My Score: 0.5 / 5.
A.2 7687: Advent Calendar 2009, City
LEGO took another stab at the 4 x 4 x 2 cone-based snowman, this time abandoning any attempt at a round torso and throwing in some contrast colored jumper plates, which I guess in context represent stone slabs? The broom jammed through the center of the torso is just an amazing touch. At least this one is finished more cleanly than the previous one, but it’s just so clumsy. It makes me laugh, though, so I’m scoring it higher.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 1 / 5. My Score: 1 / 5.
A.3 2824: Advent Calendar 2010, City
Hey, a carrot nose! That’s something! And it’s a good thing that it is, because this snowman is really plumbing the depths otherwise. With the overall form factor of a shuttlecock and some truly gravity-defying thin snow arms, it’s so bad that the only other praise I can find here is that, hey, at least it doesn’t have random colors thrown in.
Features: 4 / 5. Build: 1 / 5. My Score: 1 / 5.
B: Dome Brick Snowmen
This is by far the largest group of snowmen. This general style originated in 2009 with the snowman in 10199: Winter Toy Shop. These snowmen are based around the 2 x 2 round brick with dome top, sometimes with a plate or brick underneath for height.
This category starts with a bang! The 10199 snowman has tons of the features we’re looking for, and its proportions and size are excellent. It is exactly the same height as a minifig, and the usage of a clip plate for the scarf is genius. To get nitpicky, the torso ball shouldn’t be visually larger than the base one, but this is honestly really nice and feels very complete.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 4.5 / 5. My Score: 4 / 5.
B.2 3316: Advent Calendar 2012, Friends
It would be three years before LEGO attempted another snowman in this same basic style, and it was a bit of a downgrade—perhaps understandably, given it was made for an advent calendar. The use of carrot tops for arms is nice, and LEGO must have agreed because we’re gonna be seeing that a lot going forward. I do like the flower used as a button, but it’s definitely too short.
Features: 4 / 5. Build: 3 / 5. My Score: 2.5 / 5.
B.3 41016: Advent Calendar, 2013, Friends
One year after the former, we get a surprisingly stylish snowman in the 2013 Friends advent calendar. The use of clips for arms is certainly less realistic than the carrot top twigs, but it does allow the implementation of the broomstick. It’s also more thoroughly clothed, and the build overall is just more interesting and unique. What it loses in realism, it gains in style.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 4 / 5. My Score: 3.5 / 5.
B.4 60063: Advent Calendar 2014, City
Well, let’s start with the positives: this is a successful-ish minimalist approach, as there’s little doubt of what this is supposed to be. It communicates a lot with very few pieces, and the black bowler hat is actually quite nice to use and receive here. That said, the headlight brick is a pretty awful choice for the torso as its form isn’t hidden at all, and the 4L bar makes these arms quite non-functional and fake-looking.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 1.5 / 5. My Score: 1 / 5.
B.5 60099: Advent Calendar 2015, City
Another advent calendar, another snowman. Now, this one actually looks pretty good to me! It’s just about the right height, well featured, and has the fairly unique approach of adding a black 1 x 1 plate to the torso, perhaps representing a belt or button. This does make the torso feel skinnier than it should, but the uniqueness of the effect is welcome.
Features: 4 / 5. Build: 3 / 5. My Score: 3.5 / 5.
B.6 41102: Advent Calendar 2015, Friends
I feel like this one’s really close to being something special. It feels like a mixture of features from B.1 and B.2. I like the combination of the rounded torso and the flower button, and the top hat/carrot stem is tried and true at this point. Where it stumbles is in only having a 2 x 2 dish on the front of the torso, rather than both sides, making it feel incomplete. I’m also not a fan of the tan studs used in the torso—they stand out in a bad way.
Features: 4 / 5. Build: 2.5 / 5. My Score: 3 / 5.
B.7 41131: Advent Calendar 2016, Friends
This one really takes a swing and tries some new ideas! The skeleton leg arms are actually very interesting, though sadly the wrong color. I love the return of the clip scarf, and that combined with that hat gives this a lot of personality. I also really like the 1 x 1 round tile to hide the blockiness of the SNOT brick. I like this one perhaps more than I should!
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 4 / 5. My Score: 3.5 / 5.
B.8 41326: Advent Calendar 2017, Friends
I don’t know about this one. Dressing the snowman up as Santa is a fun and unique approach, but making that SNOT brick red really draws your eye to how blocky its form is. This also doesn’t do anything to differentiate itself or push the snowman formula forward.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 2 / 5. My Score: 2 / 5.
B.9 60155: Advent Calendar 2017, City
Well… it’s different. The proportions of those arms are terrible. The scarf is cute I suppose, but the hat is now missing. The black stud works pretty well for a button, though.
Features: 4 / 5. Build: 2 / 5. My Score: 1.5 / 5.
B.10 10263: Winter Village Fire Station
Hey, it’s our first snowman with a carrot nose! In fact, it’s our first snowman that technically has every feature we outlined above. The proportions on this are absolutely wild, though. The arms don’t look like arms and they’re in the wrong spot. The bottom snowball is just a cylinder. This is right on the border of not even reading as a snowman anymore. The more stylized top hat is a nice touch, though.
Features: 5 / 5. Build: 1.5 / 5. My Score: 1.5 / 5.
B.11 40368: Christmas Accessories Polybag
This is just about the most standard form of a build we’ve seen many times before now. The most typical snowman in this style, for sure.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 2 / 5. My Score: 2 / 5.
B.12 60235: Advent Calendar 2019, City
Another tall one. You can’t fool me, LEGO: this is just the typical snowman with an extra round brick. I guess it looks a little better at this height, though.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 2.5 / 5. My Score: 2.5 / 5.
B.13 41706: Advent Calendar 2022, Friends
Okay, we get it.
Features: 4 / 5. Build: 2 / 5. My Score: 2 / 5.
B.14 60381: Advent Calendar 2023, City
Hey, this version is kinda fresh! We’ve got a unique set of accessories including the proper scarf, decent proportions (a bit too tall, perhaps), and a different kind of twig for the arms. It’s nice.
Features: 4 / 5. Build: 3 / 5. My Score: 3 / 5.
C: Brick Snowmen
These are all outliers, but they’re all similar enough to each other that I feel pretty comfortable grouping them together. These all use something that is one brick tall as their base that isn’t a cone or dome element. Incidentally, they’re also all the same height and feature the same style of hat and color of scarf, so they look quite similar.
C.1 60024: Advent Calendar 2013, City
This snowman simply uses an ordinary 1 x 2 brick as its base. In fact, this “snowman” is just a minifig with a brick instead of legs. Also, holding a carrot does not count as a carrot nose. That’s a cop-out right there.
Features: 2 / 5. Build: 0.5 / 5. My Score: 1 / 5.
C.2 60201: Advent Calendar 2018, City
Five years later, LEGO does the exact same thing again, but this time with a 2 x 2 curved slope brick. I suppose that does a slightly better job of obfuscating the fact that this is still just a minifig. Also, I don’t know how it’s supposed to be holding a cup of hot cocoa without melting into a puddle.
Features: 2 / 5. Build: 1 / 5. My Score: 1 / 5.
C.3 76418: Advent Calendar 2023, Harry Potter
Another five years later, the 2023 Harry Potter calendar brings back the 2 x 2 curved slope! At least the thing is fully brick-built this time, though. The clip bars, brand new in reddish brown, work really well as arms. I’m not really convinced by a jumper plate for a scarf, and the whole thing is still very blocky, but it’s certainly the best in this category.
Features: 4 / 5. Build: 2 / 5. My Score: 2.5 / 5.
D: Sphere Snowmen
In 2018, snowman-building technology experienced a rapid shift forward when the BB-8 droid body element, the sphere 2 x 2 with stud, became available as an unprinted element. 2020 and onward contain a great number of snowmen built on this new ball element, plus one using a close facsimile of it.
D.1 43180: Belle’s Castle Winter Celebration
The first snowman to use this sphere doesn’t use a whole lot else. A head with a hat is perched on top and the snowman is complete. It’s hard not to be charmed by the simplicity.
Features: 2 / 5. Build: 2 / 5. My Score: 2.5 / 5.
D.2 41420: Advent Calendar 2020, Friends
I’m grouping this in with the ones that use the BB-8 sphere element because this has such a similar resultant form factor, even if it took a different route to get there. This one dons the more traditional top hat, but I am really not convinced by the Ninjago face wrap as a scarf. In fact, I’m surprised this snowman isn’t from a Ninjago set. It’s okay.
Features: 2 / 5. Build: 2 / 5. My Score: 2 / 5.
D.3 10293: Santa’s Visit & 60352: Advent Calendar 2022, City
Both of the above sets use this design for the ultimate minimalist snowman. It’s just a Technic ball on a 2 x 2 sphere. For what it is, it’s perfect. The ball makes for a much nicer shape than a minifig head, though you obviously cannot attach a hat to this one any longer. I really do like it, though.
Features: 1 / 5. Build: 1 / 5. My Score: 3 / 5.
D.4 4002021: 2021 Employee Exclusive: The Temple of Celebrations
This is a very cute, Ninjago-themed spin on the concept, the first to use the 2 x 2 sphere as part of a 3-ball snowman. The SNOT brick has a 1 x 1 plate underneath, which was necessary for there to be enough room for the scarf, but it makes the torso look elongated and square. If only there was some slight improvement that could be made for the very next snowman in this article!
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 3 / 5. My Score: 3 / 5.
This is essentially the same as the previous snowman (although obviously without the hat), but with a couple subtle changes to the torso: the 1 x 1 plate is on top of the SNOT brick instead of underneath, which centers the arms in the torso; and open 1 x 1 round plates are employed to smooth the transition from the torso to the arms. These changes look marvelous! Throw on a hat and we have one of the best yet.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 4.5 / 5. My Score: 4 / 5.
D.6 60303: Advent Calendar 2021, City
Oh no. A snowman with hair is a bridge too far for me. Something about this guy really bothers me. The black studs separating the segments of its body in conjunction with the black droid arms make this feel more like a robot than anything. A robotic snowman with hair. I’m not feeling it. Also, it’s quite tall and thin.
Features: 3.5 / 5. Build: 2.5 / 5. My Score: 2 / 5.
D.7 41758: Advent Calendar 2023, Friends
This, more than any other, strikes the perfect balance of minimalism and detail for me. I love how perfectly four pieces convey this much personality. The little bit of extra height from the clip scarf works very well here. This is lovely!
Features: 2 / 5. Build: 3 / 5. My Score: 3.5 / 5.
E: Other Snowmen
These snowmen more or less defy categorization. Each of them does something so different from the others, that it stands entirely apart from the established archetypes - for better or worse.
E.1 853670: Christmas Ornament Snowman
This one was built as a sculpture to be displayed in a clear ornament, but it’s still about minifig-scale. I really like this LEGO-feeling approach to its shaping! Plus, we get a carrot nose AND a printed tile for the buttons. The ice cream swirl right arm is odd, but I know this was done so the finished model could fit in the opening of the bauble. It’s a pretty dang good snowman and worthy of praise.
Features: 5 / 5. Build: 3.5 / 5. My Score: 4 / 5.
E.2 41690: Advent Calendar 2021, Friends
It’s a robotic snowman! Shout-out for being the first snowman so far with eyes. It’s also only the fourth with a carrot nose, stubby as it is. I also quite like the brick-built top hat! This has a lot of personality and charm, especially for how small it is.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 4 / 5. My Score: 3.5 / 5.
E.3 60133: Advent Calendar 2016, City
Our final snowman is actually two snowmen. These two are built together on day one of the 2016 City Advent Calendar. The small one is a simple yet effective minimalist approach, using the same element for the body and head. The larger one is very similar to the dome snowman style, but uses a wedge slope instead, which makes it appear partially melted to me. It’s pretty decently detailed, too.
Features: 3 / 5. Build: 3 / 5. My Score: 3 / 5.
The Best Of The Best
Those keeping score at home may have noticed that no single snowman ranked better than all the others. In fact, there are a few that I think are just the very best examples of a snowman, and all are ranked approximately equal, so it is time for “personal preference” as a tiebreaker! I do have a favorite among them, however, and my personal pick for LEGO’s best minifig scale snowman is:
The very first Winter Village snowman! I know, I know, it’s missing a face and buttons and a broom. But its approach to the build is really novel and convincing, and the use of levers for arms means it’s more poseable than most, too. The clip plate is really the factor that pushes it over the edge for me. It’s just so cute! Even without considering the limitations of the parts palette at the time, this one is just outstanding and I love it.
Building A Better Snowman
But hey, who am I to judge how good a LEGO snowman is? I think I need to take my own shot at this, utilizing the information that I’ve learned and the techniques I’ve gathered from all of these frozen creations. I also have the additional, significant benefit of being able to use some brand new pieces that didn’t exist when most of these snowmen were designed. So here it is:
I used the general layout of the sphere snowmen for mine. The big issue I encountered was that I wanted both a scarf and some buttons on the torso, and I wanted to use one of the available printed elements for the latter which would have gotten in the way of the scarf element.
Instead, I brick-built the scarf using an “espresso plate” and a plume ribbon element. The other big “advancement” I made was using the swivel SNOT element, brand new in white, to achieve a carrot nose while maintaining a rounded head. Finally, I used a mixture of both a carrot stem and a clip bar (also new in brown) for the arms for what I hope is the ideal compromise of aesthetics and functionality.
Building A Worse Snowman
But hey, who am I to judge how bad a LEGO snowman is? If I’m so sure that I can make a good snowman by combining elements of the great official builds with a little of my own flair, who’s to say I can’t do the same for the less impressive end of the scale? Prepare for the snowman of your nightmares:
Well, it certainly is bad. I combined my least favorite elements from my least favorite builds: the 4 x 4 x 2 cone base, the awkwardly placed, gravity-defying snow arms, a broom jammed into a headlight brick, some out-of-place plates, some unnecessarily exposed studs, and a head with a weird scarf and no hat.
It’s bad, but oddly, it fails to capture the magic of a shoddy snowman. It’s a little too “try-hard,” like it’s very clear that this is a blatant mockery, so it loses the effect of just being a generally poor design. I decided that, for this to work—for me to convincingly design a sub-par snowman—I would have to be a lot lazier about it using only six parts:
Now this is a bad snowman I can be proud of. I kept the part count down, I took shortcuts, and for each problem at hand, I just chose the easiest possible solution. The whole lower half is a single inverted dome. Instead of proper arms, it just has clip plates because that’s simpler. Instead of an actual scarf, I just colored the part under the head red. And a broom? Sure, throw it on there however it’ll go. That’s a snowman!
Well, We Built a Snowman
What did we learn from all of this? One thing that came as a particularly pleasant surprise to me is that LEGO has almost never built the same snowman twice. Slight variations, sure, but almost never a direct copy of a design. Considering that perspective, it becomes impressive that so many different snowman designs exist, and it becomes understandable that some of them are simply not going to be as good as the others. When you have 30-ish minifig-scale snowman designs under your belt, invariably, some of them are just not going to live up to the standards of the others. Plus this analysis doesn’t take into consideration available elements in production, budget and space considerations designers work with, or any directions given in design briefs.
Another thing we learned is that there are multiple approaches that yield great results! Using new pieces and opportunities (such as the unprinted BB-8 sphere and the new brown clip bars) yield great results—but so does a more classic parts palette such as that used for that first Winter Village snowman. It’s great to experiment with all kinds of different pieces and approaches!
As a last thought, I expected to spend more time in this article criticizing LEGO’s designs, but I actually find myself charmed by how endearing some of the more adventurous approaches turned out. The sheer variety and ingenuity is a lot of fun to see, and I’m glad LEGO isn’t afraid to take some wild swings occasionally just to see what happens.
Reviewing all of LEGO’s official snowmen offerings really inspired me to make that attempt of my own, and if I’m being honest, I quite hope it inspires some of you to give it a shot too! I’d love to see some more approaches to the concept from the LEGO community. And who knows what other official snowmen are on their way in Winter Village sets and Advent Calendars to come. I say, bring it on!
Are there any snowmen that we missed? Which is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below.
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