Lego Space
| Sub‑themes |
|
|---|---|
| Subject | |
| Availability | 1978–2013 |
| Official website | |
The Lego Space is a theme that features astronauts, spaceships, and extraterrestrial life. Originally introduced in 1978, it is one of the oldest and most expansive themes in Lego history, and contains over 200 individual sets. It was marketed under the Legoland banner until it became Lego System in 1992.
At least three Lego sets were released prior to so-called "Classic" Space theme, pre-dating the standard Lego minifigure. The early Space sets were limited by color selection and more specialized pieces had not yet been developed with most Lego sets of this era were composed of colorful stacked bricks. Once Lego began making individual themes in the 1970s, many new parts were created and older parts began appearing in new colors.
The first Lego Space sets began an era of more complicated and less colorful designs with a heavy emphasis on space exploration. Much of the early Space sets consisted of blue, grey, white, and transparent yellow. Designs began using more stacked plates instead of stacked bricks in order to make sleeker spaceship profiles. In its earliest stages, Space sets consisted only of ships and basic wheeled vehicles. But as science-fiction designs grew, the basic pattern of ground-buggies, walking robots, small and large spaceships, and bases developed. With the limited parts selection at the time, sets were still fairly simplistic with designs including: minifigure pilots steering their spacecraft with steering wheels, rocket engines could be simple transparent cones affixed to fence pieces, and visor-less helmets and often no in-flight pilot protection other than a spacesuit. The first minifigures released in this theme in 1978 wore either a red or white spacesuit with yellow spacemen debuting a year later. By the mid-1980s, the color palette had shifted to predominantly white with transparent blue theme, later used extensively in the Futuron theme, and two new colors of spacemen were introduced in blue and black uniforms.
In 1987, Lego added "factions" to its space theme with the introduction of Blacktron and the new subtheme based on space exploration was given the name "Futuron". The new line kept the white and blue color scheme used in the later years of "Classic" Space but redesigned its minifigures. They came in four colors (red, blue, yellow and black), but had a new design with a zipper crossing from hip to shoulder and the color on top with white below, as well as utilizing a newly redesigned helmet that had a transparent light blue visor. Instead of a large spaceship, the theme centered around the Monorail Transport System, which featured a battery-powered train system and some twenty linear feet of track.
...
Wikipedia