It’s December 26th, 1988, and your parents and extended family apparently love you way more than you can possibly appreciate. Between the grandparents, mom and dad, “Santa Claus” and uncle Norv, you have received the complete Lego Space collection for that entire year. After hours of assembly you finally begin to play, and immediately notice that Futuron is hilariously outgunned. Fortunately, the guys in white are already working on a plan.
The following year saw the release of the Space Police,
who apparently serve as the military arm for the Futuron forces. Their uniforms
are identical to Futuron’s in design, but with black instead of the customary
yellow, blue or red. However, their visors are red instead of blue, and their aesthetic
is a far cry from Futuron’s passive white, rounded models. Space Police use a
narrow, elongated construction with black bricks, blue trim, and cockpits
tinted red. Most of their vehicles are equipped with a tiny holding cell, and each
is armed to the teeth. The Space Police are clearly not messing around.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the Space Police is their
name. The Marines and the Air Force are military branches that engage with foreign
enemies, but police deal in domestic troubles, inside of a nation. Another
interesting detail is that Blacktron’s largest ship is called the “Renegade.”
Could it be that Blacktron was intended to be a breakaway faction from the
Futuron Empire? Are they really bad guys? Then again, Blacktron are obviously interested
in fighting Futuron, not merely leaving them.
The forces appeared to be balanced once more, but Lego
still had a problem. Futuron are boring. It’s easy to sell bad guys; just load
them up with a passel of weaponry and watch them go. Good guys are a harder
sell. With the exception of police, they need to have a mission separate from “fight
the bad guys,” otherwise, what are the bad guys going to disrupt? They also
have to have some kind of flair as they go about their constructive mission, otherwise
the bad guys are more fun to play with. Futuron are alright, but they lack pizzazz,
panache, and pulchritude. Lego needed their white hats to have a good gimmick
to go along with their good intentions. Rather than revamp Futuron, Lego chose
to develop a whole new faction to throw in the Space universe. Enter M-Tron.
M-Tron have a distinct look all their own, with models
made of black and red with glowing green trim. Their surface vehicles all have
oversized tires for rough terrain, and their space ships have multiple
horizontal fins, perhaps for better lift in atmo. Their minifigures are
immediately recognizable in their transparent green visors and the “M” logo
emblazoned on their chests. The “M” stands for “Magnets,” which they use to haul
around their boxes of unidentified MacGuffins. The “tron” stands for futurism,
I think. Their release saw a nice balance of space and surface vehicles, so M-Tron
was fully prepared to enter the galactic fray from the beginning. The
surface/space hybrid vehicle offered the following year made an outstanding
addition, giving them some of the most interesting models in the Space theme to
date.
Lego’s development of the Space theme was both clever and
calculated. They could have easily fixed Futuron’s deficiencies by militarizing
their basic designs, but instead they added the Space Police. Likewise, they
could have kept releasing Futuron models and simply added the magnet trick, but
again, they chose to introduce a new faction. Just as Lego provides a variety
of blocks for us to assemble into different shapes, they gave a variety of factions
to assemble into different narratives. Space Police default as working for
Futuron, but they could defect, or take bribes, or be selective in who they
apprehend and when. Do they help keep M-Tron safe as well? What about that
fourth faction, do they help support the good guys, or do they sell to the
highest bidder? The beautiful thing about Lego is that they allow you to
decide. Again, the limiting factor is not the toy, it’s your imagination.
Continued in Part III…
No comments:
Post a Comment