The Lego Space Saga Part I: Heroes and Villains

My brother-in-law enjoyed Legos as a kid. Maybe that’s a bit of an understatement. He memorized the names and box numbers of the sets he wanted. He knows all of the best sets and the pieces that are included in them. When you say “Anaheim California” he doesn’t think “Disneyland!” it’s “Lego Store!” He once took gross advantage of their “cup full of bricks” policy by building a cone shaped block that not only perfectly fit into the container, it also included as many of the rarest parts that he could find. Now that he is a responsible adult with adult responsibilities, well, he also has an adult income, and his adult, responsible wife encourages him in his obsession. Now he is free to not only buy all the brand new sets that he wants, but he can backtrack and buy all of the sets that he wanted before, and could never persuade his mother to buy.

While filling up the gaps in his Space collection, he realized that he had never really understood Lego’s intent with the story. Several factions have been introduced and it is clear that they exist in the same galaxy and are meant to interact, but he wasn’t certain as to their interfactional dynamics. Since I’m a story kind of guy, he provided me with some basic information and asked my opinion. I did a little more research myself, and this is what I came up with.

Before we proceed with this fun, in-depth analysis of Lego and their Space theme, I offer one massive caveat; I am wholly unqualified to make this presentation. I am not a toy historian, a sociologist, or even a Lego enthusiast. I am only an English undergraduate who loves to speculate. Please do not cite this blog post in your doctoral thesis on marketing trends because, as much sense as some of this may make to you, I have no idea what I am talking about. That said, please come in and enjoy.

In idyllic bygone days when attendants pumped leaded gas for you at 30 cents a gallon and you could get unpasteurized milk delivered to your door, toys were sold based on their intrinsic value. Then Star Wars came and blew toy manufacturers’ minds with how many boring toys they were able to sell, just because people liked the story behind them. The late 1980s saw a mad rush to attach a storyline to every toy, like the Care Bears, and a toy to every storyline, as exemplified by GI Joe, TMNT, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, etc. Amidst the mass marketing of dolls action figures, one toy company was being left behind. Lego needed a change in business model.

Lego has never been a company to cling to atrophying nostalgia in the face of innovation. They were among the first companies to switch from classic wooden toys to plastic, after all. However, the trend toward story based marketing presented Lego with a particularly difficult challenge. Storylines are restrictive. They tell you who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, and when and how the inevitable defeat of said bad guys at the hand of the unlikely-yet-plucky good guys occurs. There is no room for flexibility, no room for hypotheticals. The point with other toy companies was to force the kids’ parents to buy the complete set, so the kid could reenact the storyline without having to imagine anything at all. Lego, on the other hand, is all about imagination. Sure, it pretty much goes without saying that the first thing you build with a Lego set is the thing on the box. After that, you break it apart and build your own creation. Most kids don’t even keep their sets separate, they just have a big ol’ Lego box with every piece in every color and every theme just jumbled up like OCD hell. They can build anything and everything they want. The limiting factor with Lego is not the toy, it’s your own imagination. Thus, restriction is the antithesis of Lego’s ethos. How was Lego going to survive as a toy company and jump on the storyline bandwagon, yet still be Lego?

Lego already had a few different themes going on, and they had been doing the space theme since 1979. This made sense, as people around the globe of all ages had been obsessed with space since Sputnik launched in October of ’57. Given the continued real live Space Race/Cold War with the U.S.S.R., it made sense to turn the space theme into a story with good and bad guys. In 1987 Lego released the same old space theme that they had been doing for nearly ten years, with the same aesthetic, the same blue, yellow and red uniforms, and one small exception; they were renamed as “Futuron.” Additionally Lego Space offered a new faction called “Blacktron.” There was and is no story accompanying either faction, so kids can do anything they want with them. However, there are a few clues given to help us figure out who the good and bad guys are.

First, Futuron was obviously there first. Kids likely already had some of these sets, so there was inborn loyalty from the outset. Blacktron was the new, the unfamiliar, the “other,” the makings of a bad guy.

Second, Futuron bases and vehicles are made up of white bricks trimmed mostly with blue, whereas Blacktron is made of black (duh) with yellow and red accents. We tend to associate white with good and black with evil, and this shows repeatedly in storylines. Think of Darth Vader (black outfit, red lightsaber) fighting Obi-wan (white and earth tones, blue lightsaber), or the color of the cowboy hats in westerns. I could belabor this point to death, but I like you so I won’t.

Third, the visors of Futuron spacemen are transparent, but Blacktron visors are opaque. This means that you can’t see a Blacktron’s smiling face, which is important because everyone knows that bad guys only smile when they are doing something evil, and even then it isn’t with the carefree joy that all Lego people had in 1987, and mostly still have to this day. Additionally, hiding facial features dehumanizes a character, thus making him less sympathetic. Think about the Footmen in TMNT. The turtles murdered the crap out of those guys and you never blinked an eye because, I mean, it’s not like they were people, even though they were clearly 100% more human than the turtles.

Fourth, the aesthetic of Futuron buildings and vehicles is smooth, with a lot of rounded features, like the Federation ships from Star Trek and good guys everywhere. Blacktron has fins and angles, with visible hoses hanging out. You can see this sharp look in the Romulan ships, or even Reaver structure from the movie Serenity.

Fifth and finally, the names of the sets give a clue. Futuron “debuted” with the benign “Areo Module,” the “Orion II Hyperspace,” “Cosmic Laser Launcher” and “Monorail Transport System.” The only nod to military application they have is the “Stardefender 200” (emphasis mine). All the Futurons want to do is launch a few lasers and transport some stuff. They’re not above defending their stars if they have to, but they definitely aren’t going to be the ones starting anything untoward. Blacktron, however, came out with the innocuous “Battrax,” the decidedly aggressive “Invader,” and the rebellious “Renegade.” The following year they would release the “Alienator” and “Message Intercept Base” (1988), revealing an interest in espionage.

The open ended storyline in Lego Space had begun with a minimum of information; Futuron are good, Blacktron are bad. But was this enough information to get Lego into the storyline craze? Or was it too much, compromising their freewheeling, “anything can happen” mentality?

To Be Continued…