LEGO History - Space

05 juli 2022

It was 1978 when Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen had a new idea to add themes to the LEGO® system. One of these is the LEGO® Space theme. The other two were the Castle theme and the Town theme. The theme is inspired by existing space technology as it was in the '60 and '70. Because they looked a lot at these techniques the first LEGO® Space sets in the beginning mainly consisted of spaceships, rockets, moonlanding vehicles and space stations. The release of these sets means for LEGO® that they also have to add a lot of new elements to their assortment. For example, they bring out saucers and antennas for the first time. For the space theme LEGO® uses a recognisable colour scheme, namely light grey, blue and the then new colour transparent yellow.

Classic space minifigs

From the beginning there were two colours of minifigure astronauts in red and white. They wore a helmet without a visor on their head and an oxygen tank on their back. Later, the minifigure astronauts were also released in yellow, blue and black. On their chests the astronauts wear the well known LEGO® Space logo of a spaceship flying around the moon.

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Blacktron / Futuron

The first sub-themes of LEGO Space were the Blacktron and Futuron themes. In these space sets the "good" Futurons with white and blue as their main colour competed with the Blacktron astronauts. They were mainly black and had yellow accents. They were labeled as the bad guys in space.

Space police 1

Apparently the Futurons couldn't fight the Blacktrons alone, because LEGO figured out in 1989 that the Blacktrons should also fight the Space Police. The Space Police were brave individuals who flew around in black and blue vehicles with transparent red accents. Each vehicle released also came with a jail cell featuring a Blacktron villain.

M-Tron

In 1990 LEGO® released a new series in the Space theme. This time it was M-Tron which was a kind of rescue team in space. The red and black vehicles with neon green accents had almost all grabbers with a magnet with which they could lift boxes with tools and other stuff. In America, M-Tron was marketed more as a space mining company. Because of this, the sets were given different names than in the rest of the world. For example, the Rescue Star Cruiser (6956) was called the Stellar Recon Voyager in the United States.

Blacktron future generation

It was time for a makeover of the Blacktron theme in 1991. Of course, a lot of new sets were released but the colour scheme of the Blacktron sets was also changed. This time there was more white in the minifigures and vehicles. But the biggest difference was in the transparent parts which went from transparent yellow to transparent neon green.

Space police 2

After the Blacktron makeover, the Space Police makeover couldn't stay behind. The Space Police in 1992 got green and red accents in addition to the black and white they already had. The Space Police also had a first, as for the first time custom heads were included in these sets. It was a head with a printed microphone, hair and eyebrows and no longer just two dots as eyes and a curved line as a smiling mouth.

Ice Planet 2002

In 1993 it was time to go to another planet. It was the ice planet Krysto where a civilian space association was secretly researching rocket science. The vehicles on the cold and slippery planet drove mainly on the ground and had tools to get through the ice. In the striking transparent neon orange colour, various parts for the Ice Planet inhabitants were manufactured, such as chainsaws and visors for their helmets. Ice Planet 2002 also received a modified logo of a snowy planet with a circling rocket.

Unitron / Spyrius

From 1994 until 1996 LEGO® released the Unitron and Spyrius sub-themes within the Space theme. The Unitron theme was actually only released in the USA and was a more military group. Unfortunately LEGO® (for many fans) never developed this theme further. The Spyrius sub-theme was released all over the world. It concerned a group of space residents who hunted for valuables on other planets, stole them and brought them back to their own planet Spyrius at the outer edge of the galaxy. There, their giant robots ensured that the catches were well protected. The Spyrius also had minifigure-sized robots at their disposal, also known as the Spyrius droid. This was the first time LEGO® had released a robot figure as a minifigure.

Exploriens

In 1996 LEGO® brought back the classic colours of the Futuron. The white and blue was also the basic colour for the Explorians. This group was mainly looking for fossils in space. By going over a special tile with a transparent blue or red "scanner", you could find various secrets which could not be seen with the naked eye.

Roboforce

Although it has not been a big theme but still falls within the LEGO® Space theme, we have to mention Roboforce. With only four sets released in 1997, this was not a great success. The sets consisted of a fantasy robot with a driver. Besides the fact that it also belonged to the LEGO® Space theme, this subtheme didn't really have any common ground with earlier subthemes.

Ufo

The U.F.O. subtheme that was released from 1996 to 1999 contained all minifigures that looked like Aliens and the vehicles looked like flying saucers. By using Fiber-optic parts, this series got an even better "SPACE" feel. The UFO theme also has interesting stickers that were applied to a black 2 by 2 round flat plate. When pressed, the stickers showed a symbol similar to the UFO theme for about 3 seconds.

Insectoids

As last in the classic LEGO® Space theme the subtheme Insectoids was released in 1998 to 1999. In this theme the insect like aliens were looking for energy balls on a planet with large insects. They would have crashed on this planet and with the energy balls they could recharge their spaceships and move on through the galaxy to make life difficult for other factions.

Life on Mars

The Life on Mars theme was the first theme to contain both "good guys" and "bad guys" in one theme, rather than having two different themes each time. The theme was chosen because in 2001 the subject of Mars and possibly life on Mars was very popular in the world. In the story, human astronauts took on the Martians. In the sets, new colours were introduced for the first time, including Sand Green, Sand Blue, Sand Red, and Sand Purple. The basic colour of the human figures was white and blue. The Martians had a much more extensive colour palette for their vehicles.

Mars missions

From 2007 to 2009 the Mars Missions sets were used to explore for energy crystals on mars to power spaceships and space stations. The Mars Mission sets also included a pump system, which was previously featured in Life on Mars. The pump system of this theme was orange and white, which is also the colour scheme of the entire product line. With the pump system, you could, for example, fire rockets or transport minifigures through a pipe system.

Space police 3

There they are again, the Space Police was revived in 2009 after 16 years of absence. This time the Space Police did not fight against "human" minifigures but against aliens. A gang, which included: Kranxx, Snake, the Skull Twins, Slizer and Squidman is the main opponent of the Space Police, but Frenzy and Rench are two independent villains in this universe.

Alien Conquest

Alien Conquest was released in May 2011, and is the first Lego City sub-theme to feature aliens on Earth. Aliens come to Earth to kidnap people for brainpower to power their spaceships. Panic breaks out across the globe, and the Alien Defense Unit takes over. Using their blue vehicles, the Alien Defense Unit fights back and stops the aliens from abducting any more humans. Unlike the earlier Martian themes, this set does not generally belong to Lego Space and is officially considered part of Lego City.

Galaxy Squad

The 2013 space theme Galaxy Squad features a team of intergalactic heroes and robot sidekicks trying to defeat an alien race of space bugs. These space insects want to "cocoon" the galaxy with special 2-piece cocoons that fit exactly around a minifigure. The heroes' vehicles have a remarkable "split function" feature, allowing them to split into two different vehicles.

Lego City Space and NASA sets

Of course in the LEGO® City theme a lot of sets have been released that do deal with space like space shuttles and moon landing vehicles. But strictly speaking this falls under the City theme. Just like the different space sets which are made in cooperation with NASA.

Even more LEGO® history

That was the LEGO® Space history so far and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Would you like to read more about the history of different LEGO® topics? You can, we already wrote about the History of LEGO® and the History of the Minifigure.

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