What roles did you assign to different colored astronaut minifigs?

[hagridshut]

Classic Space and Futuron minifigs came in many different colors, unlike the more uniform appearance of minifigs in most later themes.  Did you assign roles to particular uniform colors?

For my astronauts:

•  Yellow - Pilots and front line guys.  This was mostly a function of the fact that most of the Classic/Futuron spaceships I owned happened to come with yellow astronauts.  The Twin Starfire, Xenon X-Craft, Stardefender 200, Hovercraft, and Auxiliary Patroller are examples.  Most of my spacemen are of the Yellow color.
•  Blue - Scientists and Medical.  Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy wore blue Starfleet uniforms, so I made blue minifigures assume similar roles to these Star Trek protagonists. 
•  Red - Logistics and operations.  
•  Black - Engineers and designers.
•  White - Admirals.  I used Space Police I minifigures in this role as well.  Grand Admiral Thrawn (Star Wars) wore a white uniform, so I made the white-uniformed spacemen the top brass of the fleet. 

M:Tron, Blacktron, Spyrius, and Unitron were different organizations to me.  Ice Planet guys had a similar planet/spaceship logo to Classic/Futuron, so I assumed they belonged to the same organization, with a specialty in being explorers of places with cold & harsh atmospheric weather rather than hard vacuum.

[icm]

I think of them as:

• Red: pilots
• Yellow: engineers
• Green: heavy equipment operators
• Blue: combat pilots, or command sometimes
• Black: spies
• White: scientists
• Gray: cadets
• Pink: medical staff

Alternatively, in the limited context of 1978-9, the whites are Americans and the reds are Russians.

[Artanis I]

I must've been the only person who used the different colours to signify rank. Not just Space, but also Castle and Pirates (epaulettes & plumes). Typically whatever was the most rare was of the higher rank.

For Classic, blue was my most common minifig, so they were the grunts. Then yellow, red, white & black. Now green & pink complicate things...

For Futuron it was yellow, followed by blue, black & red. Now there's the green that doesn't quite match.

For Castle it was red plumes, then yellow, blue, black/white depending on faction.

For Pirates, red was most common on blue-coats, blue most common on red-coats. After that it was yellow, then brown, black/white depending.

 

Most other Space factions had the same coloured uniform so rank was represented by other differences or by adding epaulettes.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Artanis I

[Lord Insanity]

I used color as rank too.  See I was right in Lego's target age range at the very end of Classic Space into Futuron, Blacktron, Space Police, M-Tron, and Ice Planet.  (I still think the "tron" era is the golden age of Space.)

Classic yellow were the cadets

Classic blue and white were the crewmen. (white used for space police once that came out)

Classic red and black were the ensigns. (black used for space police)

Futuron yellow and Space Police 1 were the lieutenants.  (added regular Ice Planet guys as cold specialists)

Futuron blue and Space Police 2 were the lieutenant commanders.

Futuron black and Space Police 2 chief with no epaulettes were the commanders  (added ice planet chief)

Futuron red and Space Police 2 chief with epaulettes were the captains.  (added ice planet chief with blue epaulettes.)

One red Futuron with yellow epaulettes was the Admiral. (switched those to white when Adventurers came out.  Yes I am one of the few people that never had a "Dark Age")

 

When I was younger all that strict ranking was really important.  I still use that for the commanders, captains, and the admiral but I just sort of added the green and pink figures to the lower ranks without much thought to exactly where they should fit.

[Fenghuang0296]

I remember reading that, officially speaking, the Classic Space astronaut jobs are as follows;

Red: Pilot

Yellow: Explorer

White: Scientist

Blue: Soldier

Black: Spy

Obviously, there was no official designation for the Green, Grey and Pink Classic Spacemen, so I consider the Greens as Mech Pilots, Pink as Medics (as others have said here) and Grey as Mechanics, a classification I found to be a very notable absence from the roster. 

(Also, this is my first post in the Sci-Fi forum, yay!)

[hagridshut]

Interestingly wide array of categorizations! 

 

17 hours ago, icm said:

I think of them as:

Alternatively, in the limited context of 1978-9, the whites are Americans and the reds are Russians.

 

It never occurred to me that the colors could be used to signify different national origin.  Growing up, I and my friends had our own LEGO "nations", but everyone had mini-figs from the same group of themes, so it was impossible to make national categories based on mini-fig colors or prints.  MOC architecture (ships and buildings) was the way we distinguished "nationality", since everyone had their own style of building.

 

8 hours ago, Feng-huang0296 said:

I remember reading that, officially speaking, the Classic Space astronaut jobs are as follows;

Red: Pilot

Yellow: Explorer

White: Scientist

Blue: Soldier

Black: Spy

Obviously, there was no official designation for the Green, Grey and Pink Classic Spacemen, so I consider the Greens as Mech Pilots, Pink as Medics (as others have said here) and Grey as Mechanics, a classification I found to be a very notable absence from the roster. 

(Also, this is my first post in the Sci-Fi forum, yay!)

I never knew that these designations existed.  I had thought that mini-fig colors were randomly selected for each space set.

[Fenghuang0296]

11 hours ago, hagridshut said:

I never knew that these designations existed.  I had thought that mini-fig colors were randomly selected for each space set.

They might have been? Those designations are from Jens Nygaard Knudsen (creator of Classic Space and the LEGO minifigure itself) though they might be retroactive. Sourced from Brickipedia, though it’s usually good about stuff like this. 

[icm]

I think they're mostly retroactive, mostly apocryphal.  Just because Jens Knudsen may have had those colors in mind when he designed the sets doesn't mean that they're hard-and-fast canon in the same way that Bionicle colors are firmly fixed: red for fire, white for ice, and so on.  After all, the entire Classic Space lore is mostly apocryphal and hearsay and that's why we like it so much - it can be whatever you want it to be.

Edit: Post 500! I dub me Sir icm, Knight of the Bricks Euro!

Edited November 27, 2019 by icm

[Fenghuang0296]

23 minutes ago, icm said:

I think they're mostly retroactive, mostly apocryphal.  Just because Jens Knudsen may have had those colors in mind when he designed the sets doesn't mean that they're hard-and-fast canon in the same way that Bionicle colors are firmly fixed: red for fire, white for ice, and so on.  After all, the entire Classic Space lore is mostly apocryphal and hearsay and that's why we like it so much - it can be whatever you want it to be.

Edit: Post 500! I dub me Sir icm, Knight of the Bricks Euro!

On behalf of the estate of Count Fenghuang, I congratuate you, Sir icm. 

And fair. I use them, though. Here’s hoping they do more updated Classic Space figures to go with Benny’s Space Squad. The new Ninjago Gamer’s Market has an un-cracked version of Benny’s helmet, IE the Kenny/Lenny/Jenny helmet in blue, so they obviously haven’t forgotten about it. I’m hoping for grey and green versions of that helmet soon so we can have proper Green/Grey Classic Spacemen. 

[danth]

On 11/26/2019 at 9:31 PM, icm said:

I think they're mostly retroactive, mostly apocryphal.  Just because Jens Knudsen may have had those colors in mind when he designed the sets doesn't mean that they're hard-and-fast canon in the same way that Bionicle colors are firmly fixed: red for fire, white for ice, and so on.  After all, the entire Classic Space lore is mostly apocryphal and hearsay and that's why we like it so much - it can be whatever you want it to be.

I totally agree with this. Those color designations are just the musings of a particular set designer, not official. 

If you look at the official set images, the first few years do tend to have the reds piloting the larger space craft. But even then you still have reds doing ground stuff too.

Also there are many counterexamples where white guys fly spaceships and red guys do ground stuff.

Then when the yellow guys came around, any color designation went out the window. The yellow guys were piloting the flagship in '84.

Edited November 29, 2019 by danth

[AmperZand]

Yellow: Nudist (with a large Classic Space tattoo across the chest)

 

Edited December 7, 2019 by AmperZand
Added picture

[1Panda]

On 12/7/2019 at 4:55 PM, AmperZand said:

Yellow: Nudist (with a large Classic Space tattoo across the chest)

That’s what I thought too