Lego Themes a History - Part II

In my last entry I reviewed the history of the 4 themes which are considered the original "core" of Lego's product line.  In the last 15 years there has been an incredible amount of branching out in Lego's product line from these initial primary categories (Technic and Duplo are considered alternative product lines so I am not including them in this discussion).  Lego has ventured into the depths of the sea, into the world of licensing, dug deep beneath the earth and invented whole new categories of toys.  In this entry I am going to briefly review the history of the 5 longest lasting Lego themes other than the core 4.

Star Wars

Clocking in at 13 years and counting Star Wars has eclipsed Pirate and is well on its way to toppling Space and Castle for a place in the top three of longest running themes. 

The original X-Wing Fighter set from 1999

Fueled by the fandom of adults, the resurgence of interest in kids spawned by the prequels and television series as well as just generally appealing models, the Star Wars line has been phenomenally successful.  It has spawned new pieces, building techniques and price points.  The success of minifigure based sets within the Star Wars theme heavily influenced the shift towards "minifigurecentric" products that now dominate Lego's product line.  The theme has now settled into the general pattern of the core 4 with the revamping of sets every 3-6 years (in town you see it with police stations etc. and now we see it with all the classic ships: Millennium Falcons, X-Wings, etc.).  With the recent announcement that the license has been extended for another 10 years it is a safe bet that we will be seeing sets from the galaxy far far away for long long time.

Bionicle

Second to Star Wars in terms of longevity is the Bionicle line.  These toys were the first in a new genre dubbed by Lego as "constraction" (construction + action).  Relying heavily on Technic type pieces this theme was fueled by an original storyline. 

The original group of Toas from the first Bionicle product line

Bolstering sales during a very weak time in the company's history Bionicle is credited with almost singlehandedly saving Lego from a takeover.  No longer in production (and replaced by the far inferior Hero Factory line) these sets are a niche favorite with AFOL's and one of the defining childhood toys for a whole generation of kids. 

Harry Potter

Though not continuous in its run, Harry Potter has been around almost as long as Star Wars.

The original Hogwart's Castle from 2001

It was Lego's second foray into the world of licensing and is responsible for temporarily displacing castle for a time.  Sets now range across all of the books/movies though with the final installment of the movie franchise having come and gone I am guessing that this theme is now gone for good. 

Adventurers

Before the Indiana Jones license Lego filled the swashbuckling archeologist niche with an original character: Jonny Thunder. 

2003's Dragon Fortress, from the last of the original Adventurer's subthemes

Eventually spanning 4 sub-themes (5 if you count the Pharaoh's Quest theme from last year as a re-boot, which I do), including desert, jungle, dino island and orient.

Aquazone

Originating in the early 90s the Aquazone theme was one of the first major deviations from the core four.  Originally pitting two opposing faction against one another (Aquasharks and Aquanauts) the theme went on to include an additional 3 sub themes (Aquaraiders I, Hydronauts and Stingrays) before being discontinued. 

The massive Neptune Discovery Lab, the Aquanaut's undersea base

Lego made additional forays into the ocean depths with the Divers theme and Mission Deep Sea which was part of the Alpha Team series.  Aquazone was officially rebooted a couple of years ago with Aquaraiders II which saw man face off agains giant sea creatures.  The theme was, however, short lived and no new installments have come out in the last few years. 

Overall the branching out from the core 4 has been, by and large, fantastic.  Lego's product line has included some truly spectacular themes as a result of that deviation and the company has been the better because of it.  Certain themes like the Wild West and Bionicle have achieved revered status and there are many who lament their discontinuation even to this day.  There have definitely been some colossal failures (my older readers will remember Galidor *shudder*) but the good has definitely outweighed the bad!     

4 Collections

I realized the other day that I have 4 separate Lego collections that I do not mix.  They vary in size, but they are all there and each is actively growing. 

The Sets

This first collection is the longest running.  My sets span 3 decades now and constitute not only the oldest but the largest collection comprised of 283 complete sets.  Currently about 50% of them are sorted into bags waiting for assembly when my kids come of an appropriate age.  Alas the other 50% remain, despite my best efforts, parted into a variety of bins arranged in my own sorting method.  I have been trying over the past 3 years to get them all sorted into their respective inventories but 283 is a lot of sets and I have not been able to get them all done. 

The MOCing Pieces

This collection is the runner up in terms of size.  It consists of my extra pieces which are not associated with any of my recognized sets.  This collection came into being first through extra parts left over from Bricklink purchases and then was added to intentionally by purchasing Lego lots on eBay by the pound (for the record there is no more satisfying way to buy Lego than by weight!). 

A past by the pound Lego purchase!

These are the parts I use for MOCing.  When I MOC I like to keep my creations permanently so I don’t want to use parts from sets.  Ergo I have another whole set of bins, sorted in my same system, which I never mix with anything else so I know all those parts are extra.  Yes, I have a lot of plastic bins.  And yes my wife is a saint!

The Spare Parts

This is the smallest collection and also the most exclusive.  Through the years I have learned which parts are prone to breaking, wearing out (hinges!) or which ones would be disastrous to lose (whether due to exclusativity or importance).  So I have set about storing extras of these parts away in a special box that is off limits for MOCing.  A perfect example of the type of piece you can find in this collection is the door for 6195 Neptune Discovery Lab.

Photo credit: bricklink.com

Those beautiful blue doors are exclusive to this set alone and have been discontinued now for almost 15 years.  Should one of the clips which holds the door to the station break I would be up a creek without a paddle should I have to rely on The Lego Company to replace it as that part stopped being produced before many of today’s young Lego fans were born.  I have a wanted list on Bricklink that is populated entirely of pieces that I want to have extras of.  Every purchase I do I check for these parts before completing and add them to the order whenever possible.  Hopefully I will never need them, but in the event that I do I have a decent little bank of extra parts that I can call on. 

The Office

No I am not referring to the TV show.  My final collection is the small ensemble of sets that I keep at the office.  Technically this rotating display is counted as part of The Sets collection but since I don’t keep any other sets together outside of the three to four models I put on display on top of my bookshelf at work I think of them as their own category.  As I work at an engineering office much envy is expressed when my coworkers see certain sets.  More than once I get the response of: “You have that set!  Not fair I sooooo wanted that as a kid!”

My current office display, several M:Tron sets

My Top 5 Sets...

The other day I was asked what my top five favorite sets in my collection were.  The following were my choices. 

6769 Fort Legoredo – 1996

When this set came out the internet was still in its infancy and I don’t think Lego even had a website yet.  Back then you found out about new sets and themes when the Lego catalogue came at the beginning of the year or in the little fold outs that used to come with sets.  I remember, vividly, the first time I saw a picture of this set in a copy of the Lego Club Magazine (called Mania Magazine back then).  My little heart just about stopped.  I wanted it bad.  The problem was so did every other 8-12 year old boy that year.  Come Christmas 1996 you could not find this set on any store shelf to save your life.  God bless my mother, she searched high and low to make my Christmas dream come true eventually driving over 100 miles to a Wal-Mart that agreed to hold it for her.  Her efforts were not in vain.  This set saw more use by me and my siblings than any other bar none.  To this day I do not think that any set in any theme has equaled its excellence.  It is huge, has incredible pieces, and above all endless playability.  It saw years of use and never got old.  As far as I am concerned Fort Legoredo is as close to a perfect set as Lego has ever gotten. 

6285 Black Seas Barracuda – 1989

Although Fort Legoredo is my favorite set that I own my favorite genre is the large Lego sailing ships.  Lego is a fantastic medium for scaling down vehicles and buildings into toys but I feel it is especially well suited for ships.   I now have 5 ships in my collection (and will make it 6 when the Black Pearl comes out later this year) but of those the Black Seas Barracuda edges out the rest to claim the top spot, mostly because of nostalgia.  Back in 1989 when this set was released I was only 5 years old and my parents could not justify spending the amount of money it cost, especially on someone as young as me.  I might after all lose interest in Legos the next year or something (I feel we have put that question to rest; over 25 years and counting…).  But oh how I wanted it!  When it was released as a Lego legend in 2001 my mom sent it to me as a birthday present and it proudly sat on a corner of my desk through 4 years of school.  Since that time it has been joined by both the Imperial Flagship and Queen Anne’s Revenge (which I modified to what I feel is near perfection, see this earlier post) but the Barracuda remains my favorite due to our long history together.  It did after all see me through 8 semesters of engineering studies!  

6195 Neptune Discovery Lab (Aquanaut Station) – 1995

This set is second only to Fort Legoredo in terms of hours played with.  It entered the collection at the height of my years of playing with Legos (as opposed to later years when I switched to modeling and collecting) and was the crown jewel of my Aquazone collection.  My most distinctive memory pertaining to this set was the disappointment I felt waking up Christmas morning and seeing no box under the tree that was large enough to contain it.  My spirits were restored though when a small package produced a treasure map leading me to its hiding place elsewhere in the house.  I loved the Aquazone theme and spent many happy hours defending this base from Aquashark attacks.  It is also the only underwater base that Lego has made any effort to enclose.  The large specialty door pieces on the front are balanced by two large windows on the back which you cannot see very easily in the picture.  With two baseplates, the working conveyor belt and the large crane this set is truly an undersea treasure (bad pun completely intended).     

5988 Pharaoh’s Forbidden Ruins/Temple of Anubis – 1998

The story of this set starts a lot like Fort Legoredo’s.  We were returning from a Christmas with out of town relatives and ended up stopping at a mall for dinner (food courts in malls were my dad’s solution to all of us wanting different things to eat when traveling, kudos for the good idea dad).  As it was the time of year when the new sets hit shelves I swung through a toy store, was confronted with this set and immediately knew I had to have it.  Acquiring it turned out to be easier and faster than I thought it would be because days later we were informed that my little brother was one of 10 worldwide winners in Lego’s Christmas contest that year and his prize was a $1000 gift certificate to Lego shop at home.  My parents allotted a portion of that prize to both me and my sister and this was the second set I got (after the monorail which I had wanted for years but ended up not liking all that much unfortunately).  It did not disappoint.  Many hours of happy Indiana Jones style play were had with this set at the sunset of my “playing with Lego” years.  Very glad this one made it into the collection.   

7094 King’s Castle Siege – 2007

The inclusion of this set is more for the idea that it represents as I have never actually played with it having only added it to the collection a year ago.  Growing up I faced a dual dilemma: Christmas coming around only once a year and my allowance being of such a miniscule amount so as to actually teach me about responsible budgeting.  As the tradition of Christmas was established several millennia before I was born and my parents maintained their crusade to teach me responsible spending throughout my childhood I was unable to alter my circumstances and therefore did not acquire all the Legos I wanted from year to year.  The Castle theme, more than any other, never quite made the cutoff and as a result almost all of the sets from that genre that I possessed up until a few years ago were inherited and that satisfied me for the most part.  However, there was one I regretted missing for years: Royal Knight’s Castle from 1995.  As the years went by Lego released many more castles and then for a time replaced the whole theme with Harry Potter but none of the offerings ever, in my mind, lived up to bar which had been set by that stately set.  Then came the King’s Castle Siege and for the first time I saw a fortress that was on par with that 1995 benchmark.  Not wanting to miss another opportunity (and potentially have to wait an additional 12 years!) I added this set to fill the hole which had for so long been empty for lack of a truly great castle.  I was not disappointed.     

HONORABLE MENTIONS

A few of my other favorites in no particular order: 

10184 Town Plan – 2008

I was thrilled with this set because it brought an incredibly rich level of detail to my town.  To date this is the only cinema and town hall ever produced by Lego and the retro gas station is fantastic.  It adds a sense of completeness to my town layout that is very satisfying. 

All My Sailing Ships – Various Years

Currently the fleet stands at 5.  Sailing with the Barracuda is the Armada Flagship, Brickbeard’s Bounty, Imperial Flagship and Queen Anne’s Revenge.

6975 Alien Avenger – 1997

I loved this ship as kid.  Heavily armed, swooshable and just all around menacing in appearance this was my favorite capital ship.

6396 International Jetport – 1990

Hailing from the days when Lego airports included runway baseplates this set was the centerpiece of my Lego city as a kid. 

6766 Rapid River Village – 1997

The largest of the Indian sets which followed the initial wave of Wild West offerings.  My brother and I combined it with his copy of Boulder Cliff Canyon for the ultimate Indian village.  

6380 Emergency Treatment Center – 1987

Lego has produced only two hospital sets to date and I was fortunate enough to have one of them.  This was one of my first sets and saw a lot of use treating casualties from my numerous daring adventure stories.