A LEGO notebook ·
The floor
Most LEGO sets now carry something you can't get anywhere else: a new shape, a part in a colour it never came in, a new print, a new minifigure. Call that the floor, the bar a set clears by bringing something of its own. What does each theme use to clear it?
"Anywhere else" means in no other set within three years either way, so the last three years can't be judged yet. Each set counts once, by its most novel exclusive: a new shape beats a new colour, which beats a new print, which beats a new minifigure.
Step 1 · The floor rises
Seven sets in ten have a word of their own
In the 1980s, about half of all sets cleared the floor. Since 2016 it has been about seven in ten. What changed is how. New shapes were never the usual way: about one set in twenty, apart from a jump to one in eight in 2005 and 2006. Colour has always done the most work, a quarter to a third of sets. The growth came from paint and people. New prints went from about 3% of sets in the late 2000s to around 20% since 2016, and new minifigures from a few percent in the early 2000s to between 14% and 25%.
1aEach year's sets, stacked by what they have that no other set has. Tap a year.
That's the average. Split it by theme and the averages come apart.
Step 2 · Every theme
Four ways to be the only one
Sort the themes four ways and four families appear. Hero Factory clears the floor with new shapes: more than half its sets had a shape no other set shared. City does it with minifigures, Brickheadz and Dimensions with print. Belville, Juniors, Disney and Harry Potter do it with colour. And Creator, the theme built to be rebuilt, mostly doesn't bother: barely a third of its sets clear the floor.
2aEvery theme with 60 or more sets. Sort by a kind; the families named above are marked in yellow. Tap a theme.
2bThat theme year by year, stacked the same way as Fig. 1.
Licences don't share one recipe. Star Wars and City lean on minifigures, but Disney and Harry Potter lean on colour: about half their sets have a part in a colour no other set has. Even the shape themes do more with colour than with moulds. Technic: 8% new shapes, 31% new colours. Bionicle: 19% and 38%. Only Hero Factory put new shapes first.
So what does a set bring that no other has? Mostly paint, people and plastic in a new colour. A new shape is the rarest thing a set can offer.
More LEGO notebooks
Sources and method
Rebrickable database, pulled Oct 24, 2026. Sets with 20+ pieces, excluding Duplo, Primo, Quatro, Gear, books, bulk bricks, service packs, education, collectible minifigures and Clikits. Parts from each set's own inventory, without minifigure parts or stickers; minifigures counted as whole figures.
A new mould is a building shape (prints and mould revisions merged) whose first set is this one and which no other set uses within three years. A new colour is a shape in a colour it had never come in, unprinted, exclusive the same way. A new print is a printed part exclusive the same way. A new minifigure is a figure in no other set within three years. Each set is counted once, by the first of these it has.
These match the main essay's Fig. 9 to within a few points in recent years; small differences come from the later pull.
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