Celebrating 40 years of the LEGO Minifigure - Old minifigures' advertisement (1983-1984)

[WhiteFang]

Dear Eurobricks Community, 

Let's maintain the fire for the celebration of the 40 years anniversary of the LEGO Minifigures. I am now looking at the LEGO promotional advertisement materials from 1983 to 1984 which are provided by TLG (The LEGO Group). The years ahead will set the foundation and tone for the Classic LEGO System. 

The original super detailed high resolution images provided by TLG can be found in this Flickr Album (including some which I had mixed it in by accident). 

I have also included Brickset (excellent database for set catalogue) for links as part of my short article write up as well as my past reviewing images, where applicable. 

Henceforth, allow me to share images from the past which illustrate the humble LEGO origins of 1980s beginning with some these promotional advertisements from 1983-1984. 

I start to get nostalgic and passionate about Classic Town as I continue viewing these advertisements. It slowly bring the keen interest of why I love LEGO in the first place. The simplicity and evergreen of playing these sets altogether. It is not hard to find what are what, if you are into LEGO long enough. More importantly, how many of you are still keeping Classic Town sets from 1983-1984? I have been keeping some and those are some of my decade old reviews back in the heydays of Classic Town.net (no longer in existence). 

Fabulastic Minifigures

We pause a moment and pay a tribute to these fellows. Who could forget these awesome lovable Fabuland Minifigures! Don't you find some of these characters unique in Eurobricks? I suppose you can identify a few. Do also check out Fabuland Builders' Guild if you have not done so. It was a 'medieval' movement by Eurobricks with a bunch of wacky Fabuland lovers, dated in 2008.  

Classic Castle and Classic Space are still ever going so strong !You can still see the classic old space helmet plus those tons of awesomeness space moon craters baseplate in the images and those awesome old grey masonic bricks with great soldiers' minifigures from the Lion Knights. 

WhiteFang

[danth]

That last one, with Kings Castle and the Robot Command Center really tug at the old heart strings. Will LEGO never give us something like those again? Innocent, whimsical, and archetypal themes? 

Also, LEGO could make an AWESOME modern Fabuland theme with the all new Friends/Elves elements.

[icm]

King's Castle + Robot Command Center = Fortrex.  Perhaps not to your liking (nor mine), but certainly innocent and whimsical.

EDIT:

Sorry, I don't mean to start a discussion about Nexo Knights, "classic" themes vs "modern" themes, the current Space and Castle drought, etc.  The line above was just a reflexive response.  Seriously, though, those are fun advertisements and they make me want to track down an affordable 6080 King's Castle or 7946 King's Castle (the closest modern equivalent).  As a kid looking at Brickset, I didn't pay much attention to Classic Town, but as an adult I can see in Classic Town several kinds of vehicles that I wanted as a kid and couldn't get in then-current 90s Town or World City.  I recently ordered a little red Classic Town car from 1984 (I think, don't want to check Brickset right now).  It's great - trim, compact, nicely enclosed, with good-looking lights and even an opening hood.  I've been tempted to get the Classic Town police car and doctor's car pictured above, but they're relatively low priorities on the wanted list.

Edited August 31, 2018 by icm
Added material

[CopMike]

Great stuff @Fangy!

I especially like the swedish Fabuland one !

Here´s a swedish version of the german Police station from my comic magazine (scanned):

and a space one from 1981:

[Grrr]

Love these classic ads. Remember them from european comics in my childhood.

Now that I'm at 80% on my completionist goals; I can re-create a great many of these images.

As someone who routinely searches for these ads on eBay etc, it's awesome to get whole batches like this in good quality.

If only a high resolution copy of this could be found, as I'd love to do a remake at some point (though I might swap cypress for pine trees) :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8w0JzNJwEA

[WhiteFang]

It's interesting to see how you guys revolve around the thoughts of these images and how we would wish to relate to these current sets' releases. Well, it is not possible to see a re-return unless a Legends equivalent come about and TLG had stated not to do it in the future. 

On 9/1/2018 at 3:42 AM, CopMike said:

Great stuff @Fangy!

I especially like the swedish Fabuland one !

Here´s a swedish version of the german Police station from my comic magazine (scanned):

Thanks CopMike for sharing these scanned magazines.