On a recent trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, I made a stop at the Butterfly Conservatory. I’m a sucker for a butterfly exhibit and this not only offered beautiful butterflies, but also some much-appreciated warmth on a stunning-but-freezing February afternoon. Amongst the inhabitants were some stunning Blue Morphos, which reminded me that they were one of the newish printed butterflies that came in the Friends Botanical Garden set (41757).
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We have been especially spoiled recently with new butterflies, and for the first time ever, decorated moulded butterflies. And, wonderful and abundant as they are, these are by no means LEGO’s first foray into moulded butterflies, so I thought we’d take a stroll through the virtual butterfly house that is LEGO’s love affair with these beautiful creatures and their many and their varied connection points.
System, unprinted
First up, the most recent mould (80674)), which is also the baseline for the lovely new decorated moulded butterflies. This first appeared in the three Encanto sets released in 2021; the Madrigal House (43202), and both Isabela’s (43201) and Anotnio’s (43200) magical doors. It arrived in true-to-movie colours of bright light yellow and bright light orange. The butterfly was a key movie plot point and so it’s not surprising that it showed up in the sets, but it was lovely to get a new mould *and* new colours to increase our lepidotera options.
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Since then, this unprinted mould has spread its wings to invade an impressive 19 other sets, across themes you’d expect, like Disney - Princesses (43206 & 43211) & Disney 100 (43221 & 43215), Friends and City (60346 & 30639). But also to others somewhat less obvious - Gabby’s Dollhouse (10787), Super Mario (71403 & 30509) and Creator. The last of those was 2023’s Tiny Plants (10329) which gave us our first recolour, a glorious dark purple.
System, decorated
Once we start including the new decorated versions of this mould we can include at least another 6 sets – maybe the Botanicals theme really is producing a pollinator-friendly LEGO world!
I’ve already noted the Morpho Blue. This was joined in the Friends Botanical Garden set by the Chitoria ulupi which first appeared in the 2023 Lunar New Year Display set (80110). The Ideas A-Frame Cabin (21338) gave us the ever-so-pretty Emperor Moth (yes, you got me, this one’s a moth, not a butterfly). In her interview for Blocks Magazine Issue 101, LEGO Graphic Designer Kenza Statoya says of the design: “We wanted something that was native to northern areas, so I found this beautiful emperor moth that has its home territory in the UK and Europe, and it just fit in with this autumn feel that the model has.” And the Series 25 collectible minifigure Mushroom Sprite came with the enchanting blue-and-green-print-on-black version. I’m not sure if it a representative of a real butterfly or not, but it’s beautiful either way.
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The most recent addition – although I can’t help feeling that there are going to be many more of these – is this fabulous white-on-black version representing the stunning Graphium idaeoides, native to the Family Tree (21346) Fan Designer’s home, the Philippines. In the instruction booklet, he explains that “In Philippine culture, seeing a butterfly flying around the house represents an ancestor visiting their loved ones. A beautiful symbol for keeping memories of family alive,” and I wholeheartedly agree with him.
This mould has an anti-stud for its only connection point. This is probably the most straightforward type of connection there is, and it makes perfect sense as it allows them to be placed on pretty much anything and still show off their shape and decoration. But, as a collector, it made me think about all the different connections that I’ve come across on LEGO butterflies over the years.
Friends
The mould preceding 80674 was 93081a which arrived with the first year of Friends in 2012. This version - which is undecorated and comes in red and bright light orange - also has an anti-stud on its bottom, but in addition, it has a pinhole on its upper side.
There is a second butterfly mould that appeared at the same time, 93080i and its only connection point is a pin; so it’s possible to double-up your butterflies, but it was never done in an official set. In fact *nothing* was ever put in the pin holes of any of the butterflies in the nine sets they came in, so I’m not sure what LEGO’s original plans for it were, but they never made it into the wild.
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The pin connection butterflies came as part of a multipack of Friends hair accessories and so were designed for dressing Minidolls, rather than doubling up. The Friends party hats (24131) came later, in 2016, and seemed as ridiculous a combo as I could think of for an illustrative photo! These tiniest of butterflies came in six Friends colours and appeared in 12 sets across the first four years of Friends.
Scala
Staying with pure LEGO System, there were also butterflies that started life in the Scala sets of the very late 1990s. These were undecorated but had surprisingly detailed moulded shapes for their time and came in red, yellow and, less commonly, white.
These had yet another different set of connection points; a bar with a pinhole, on their underside. This gave them versatility of placement, and, unlike the Friends one, both of these options were exploited in several of the 18 sets they appeared in.
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I love putting these, and their ladybird counterparts (sc003c), in my garden MOCs, and their dual-connection options are really useful.
Clikits
For only the second time in one of my creature articles, I get to cover some Clikits! And in true early 2000s style (2005 in this case), we not only have a batch of almost single-appearance elements, but a whole new connection system.
As far as I know, the Clikits connections are unique in the LEGOverse, and to be quite honest I wasn’t sure how best to describe them. So I dug around to see how others had tackled it and was reminded of this great article - LEGO NPU: Clikits Edition - from 2021, by BrickNerd’s very own Will Hafner, and this very comprehensive 2019 article – Connecting Clikits and System Parts Together - by Huw Millington, from Brickset. Both these do a great job of explaining the both-in-and-out-of-system connections of these parts, so there is no need for me to reinvent the wheel.
Suffice it to say, we have ‘male’ and ‘female’ connectors on these somewhat fringe elements, which, when combined with the jelly strings, give us one of the Clikits’ primary set functions: jewelry. This gives us a host of over-and-under style Clikits Icons, including our butterflies.
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And what butterflies! Four, count ‘em, four different coloured, and decorated top- style butterflies, (51677pb01-04) split evenly between trans and solid colours. (By the way Clikits has at least one theme-ringfenced colour – Clikits Lavender - but I digress.) And all four of these butterflies appear in one set each. Three of them in the appropriately-named Blooms & Butterflies (7557) and the pink-on-pink version in the Totally Tropical Decor Set (7549). Their under counterpart (51676) joins them in both sets and comes in three matching trans colours.
Duplo
Moving into other facets of the LEGO building system, DUPLO gives us a version that allows us to switch between the larval caterpillar stage to the adult butterfly stage. These fabulous wings (31223pb01) can be added to this curved-and-segmented body (31227pb02) to make a beautiful specimen. The connection points here are your plain vanilla DUPLO studs/anti-studs, but they work perfectly to attach the wings to the body, and the anti-studs on the underside of the body let you place it on other parts of your DUPLO build.
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I love the decoration on the wings, and the eyelashes are giving me major disco vibes!
Primo
Primo (or, strictly speaking, its reincarnations Baby and/or Explore Being Me) continues the insect life cycle vein with this lovely fella (5427-1) A mix of a hard plastic body (pri039) and soft fabric wings (pri040), it’s definitely part of the somewhat out-there early 2000s period. It even has light-up antenna, although sadly, the ones on my version don’t work anymore.
The body has regular Primo studs - so you can add other Primo elements to it – but the body connects to the wings with that well-known LEGO connection…Velcro. That might expand the palette of the purists amongst you a little. ;-)
Belville
Stepping out into some gear, Belville Fairy Tales gave us these butterfly hair clips (human-scale). I find them strangely loveable and so have collected the full set of five. I’m not sure what the reasons for these were, but the wings are a seriously trippy mix of stained-glass designs ranging from hearts and flowers through cats and mice, to… cake. And the medium green one even has a pair of glasses. Make of them what you will; I love them, but as always, your mileage may vary.
There are loads of brick-built butterflies (like in the new Insects Collection) and many decorated/stickered items too, but I wanted to concentrate on exploring the connections this most ephemeral of beings has been gifted by LEGO over the decades. I hope you’ve enjoyed the tour through our LEGO lepidopterarium!
Do you have a favourite LEGO butterfly? What real-life butterfly would you like LEGO to make next? Did we cover some you weren’t aware of before?
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