What Discontinued Colors Would You Like to See Return?

[Lego David]

Throughout the history of LEGO, we've had a lot of different colors that aren't produced anymore today... Chrome, Sand Purple, Sand Red, just to name a few. So, I was wondering, what discontinued colors would you like to see return? We already had the return of Teal a few years ago (which is now used quite a lot in the current sets), so some of those older discontinued colors returning isn't impossible. 

[Mylenium]

Check older color-related discussions like e.g. when Coral was introduced last year or the general color discussion. You will find that there's a lot of vying for Sand Red for instance due to its obvious uses for architectural stuff. Other than that it's the same old "Anything can happen" debate, but I would like to exclude things like Chrome completely from it to begin with. No point in obsessing about specialty items which we all know LEGO with a 99% likelihood will never produce again for technical and quality reasons, even it seems an obvious thing. Personally I have three (or four) top demands/ wishes:

• A decent plant green, because currently none of the existing colors actually qualifies as being representative of genuine plants.
• A curry-ish yellow with a slightly green tint that fits somewhere inbetween all the brown and tan tones.
• A genuine apricot. Given, that there's all those Bright Pink/ Dark Pink, Lavender/ Medium Lavender and so on combinations I'm quite surprised that in all these years it doesn't appear to have occured to anyone how this would nicely fit into these color sets used for Friends, Elves and so on...
• Perhaps bring back Maersk Blue (or a close match to it). It so nicely complements all existing blues and greys and as well matches with Sand Blue.

Aside from that I would also like to see some colors simply being used and produced more. I find it just baffling how hard it is to e.g. hunt for elements in Bright Light Blue or why LEGO isn't using more Trans Medium Blue for ice and water when it would be a more adequate "cold" color for these things instead of the turqoise-ish Trans Light Blue.

Mylenium

[Lego David]

18 minutes ago, Mylenium said:

but I would like to exclude things like Chrome completely from it to begin with. No point in obsessing about specialty items which we all know LEGO with a 99% likelihood will never produce again for technical and quality reasons, even it seems an obvious thing.

 What exactly are those technical and quality reasons that prevent Chrome from returning?

[MAB]

We could do with one or two shades of red. We have multiple pinks, oranges, greens, blues, etc so red variations would be welcome. However, I wouldn't care if they were old or new. New is fine, as they likely wouldn't match the old anyway.

 

Plus I wouldn't mind them cutting back on the number of aqua / turquoise / blue shades, pinks, yellows / oranges to make some room in the pallette. I prefer to see wider range of bricks in important colours rather than sporadic bricks in many shades.

[Mylenium]

7 hours ago, Lego David said:

 What exactly are those technical and quality reasons that prevent Chrome from returning?

Chrome is poisonous in certain forms and it's hyper sensitive to scratching and flaking. I'm pretty certain this raises a ton of red flags at LEGO these days with them trying to be all kids-friendly and environmentally responsible plus of course the potential annoyances of customers asking for replacements of their scratched parts. The best we can hope for may be an even shinier version than the glossy silver and gold stuff we have currently or some other such coating-based approach.

Mylenium

6 hours ago, MAB said:

Plus I wouldn't mind them cutting back on the number of aqua / turquoise / blue shades, pinks, yellows / oranges to make some room in the pallette. I prefer to see wider range of bricks in important colours rather than sporadic bricks in many shades.

Begging your pardon?! Those colors you want to cull are important. Just look at Friends, Disney Princess, Trolls or even the latest Creator 3in1 Toy Store set. It all depends on your personal preferences and tastes.

Mylenium

[Lyichir]

Bright Violet (Purple on Bricklink) is the main one that comes to mind off the top of my head. Currently on the purple end of the spectrum, the colors jump straight from the soft lightness of Lavender and Medium Lavender to the dark richness of Medium Lilac/Dark Purple, with very few mid-tones in between (except for the much more red-skewing Bright Reddish Violet/Magenta). If they were to bring back a previously existing color to fill that space (as opposed to just creating an entirely new color), I feel like Bright Violet would be the best choice, both because of its color quality as well as it being one of the more widely used purple colors of that era (meaning it would be more useful to collectors and MOCists who already had parts in that color).

[Digger of Bricks]

15 hours ago, Lego David said:

Throughout the history of LEGO, we've had a lot of different colors that aren't produced anymore today... Chrome, Sand Purple, Sand Red, just to name a few. So, I was wondering, what discontinued colors would you like to see return?

It'd have to be Sand Purple for me, though I don't know much need there is for it given that we already have a few different "lilac" shades in the current spectrum now. Beside that though, it'd also be cool if they reintroduced short-lived "Metallic" colors such as Metallic Green or Metal Blue, though I'd imagine those would be even less likely to ever be reintroduced.

[Robert8]

Sand Red

[Grover]

I second sand red.  Super useful for buildings and off-colors of old walls, quarries, etc.

Pipe dream, but I prefer the old brown instead of the reddish brown immensely.  The light bley and dark bley I can live with (although still don't prefer), but the reddish brown looks terrible to me.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Grover

[MAB]

15 hours ago, Mylenium said:

 

Begging your pardon?! Those colors you want to cull are important. Just look at Friends, Disney Princess, Trolls or even the latest Creator 3in1 Toy Store set. It all depends on your personal preferences and tastes.

Mylenium

I would class colours that are very similar to others as unimportant. I have nothing against individual colours but when you put them side by side and there are many similar colours in one region of the colour table, then to me some of those are unimportant.

[Mylenium]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

I would class colours that are very similar to others as unimportant. I have nothing against individual colours but when you put them side by side and there are many similar colours in one region of the colour table, then to me some of those are unimportant.

Whoa... Perhaps we need to start a building challenge where only those colors are actually allowed to bring their value to the attention of the public. Obviously I 1000 percent disagree with any such statements.

Mylenium

[Toastie]

On 3/17/2020 at 7:49 AM, Mylenium said:

A curry-ish yellow with a slightly green tint that fits somewhere inbetween all the brown and tan tones

Heehee. I can't distinguish any of those from each other ... see, I usually put pinkish or whatever color that is into the grey bin - and just notice that something is weird/funny, wehn people look and me and ask whether "it " is on purpose. I am getting the "it" bit quite swiftly nowadays.

Cool that you guys can see all that.

I am fin with the bold colors.

Best - and enjoy the curry-ish yellow with a slightly tint of ... !
Thorsten 

[Masked Mini]

I need a few more shades of black, vanta and black 3.0 for instance.
Trans yellow, trans dark green, trans lime?, trans dark red and blue, old brown and grey need to come back.
I need more dark red, dark green brick availability as well - they are very useful accent colors. 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Masked Mini

[meliander]

I would like to have old grey colors (light and dark) come back in addition to modern greys, or at least some more variations of it other than bluish.

The rest of the colors seem fine to me but I wish they did something to minimize the yellowing of the bricks.

[Peppermint_M]

Sand Red and a Sand Purple would be lovely additions, as would a Sand Grey kind of shade, local stone is a grey sandstone so many buildings use that. Some darker purples (favourite colour) and more transparents. Pearl White/Cream would be delightful.

However, what I mostly want is there to be production of every hair piece in every colour. I love variety in hair and am far from conservative about styles and colouration!

On 3/18/2020 at 1:51 PM, Masked Mini said:

old brown and grey need to come back.

The old grey shades cannot ever return (sadly or not to some) as the dye that made them has lead in it. Of course, the rules now rightfully ban lead from anything that would be around children, even if they would probably have to have the brick lodged in them for decades for any lead to cause problems. 

 

On 3/18/2020 at 8:08 AM, Mylenium said:

Perhaps we need to start a building challenge where only those colors are actually allowed

Can you imagine something made solely out of Coral? The fluorescence would be dreadfully magnificent and possible summon some Lovecraftian Elder-God!

[Mylenium]

29 minutes ago, Peppermint_M said:

Can you imagine something made solely out of Coral?

In my designer way of thinking I sure could, but yes, it would not necessarily be enjoyable to look at without sunglasses. ;-)

Mylenium

[Masked Mini]

On 3/22/2020 at 4:37 AM, Peppermint_M said:

The old grey shades cannot ever return (sadly or not to some) as the dye that made them has lead in it.

Are you saying that they can't approximate those grey shades with a different, non-toxic dye? That's a bit hard to believe.

[zux]

I find hard reading that graph - there are multiples of same color for past 17 years, like Black, LBG and DBG. Why some years have negative valued colors?

As a System builder I'd like to have Sand Red and Dark Gray back.

As a Technic builder I'd like TLG to get rid of recent odd colors - Olive, various shades light Blue.

[Blondie-Wan]

On 3/22/2020 at 5:37 AM, Peppermint_M said:

The old grey shades cannot ever return (sadly or not to some) as the dye that made them has lead in it.

Wait, what? I’d heard the color shift had to with something else, like balancing colors in some way. I’ve never before heard that the old grays used lead. Are you sure about this? It seems inconceivable that LEGO would have used lead in bricks as recently as 2002...

[TeriXeri]

I'd rather get less colors in higher quantity.

Unless they start bring back single-color or few-color brick-boxes.

Right now Classic theme boxes have like 15-25 colors, with only a few parts in each type/color, good for kids or creativity, but not so good for bulk-building basic structures.

The old BASIC/Classic theme had less colors and more basic parts to build houses with etc, like roof slopes.

The more recent Classic theme has had Door/Windows/Wheel themed sets, but nothing like a big box with just bricks and slopes.

Creator 3-in-1 had those large houses with sloped roofs, but they stopped making those years ago, and they are not the same as Modulars.

 

Edited March 23, 2020 by TeriXeri

[Peppermint_M]

As bad as it sounds, I can't find where I first read about the dyes.

Maybe it was only hearsay? 

On a personal note, the old greys look so grim even when fresh, that I do not really miss them?

[Toastie]

3 minutes ago, Peppermint_M said:

On a personal note, the old greys look so grim even when fresh

Well grey is grey and thus grim but more like "real". Bley is bley and not grim and thus not like real. Never saw not grim bare concrete, did you?

Best
Thorsten

Merde - forgot:

Lead and grey - Lead can do bright white, orange-yellow and some weird mixtures. So it may be tough to make grey with Lead.

 

[AmperZand]

On 3/18/2020 at 1:02 PM, Toastie said:

Heehee. I can't distinguish any of those from each other ... see, I usually put pinkish or whatever color that is into the grey bin - and just notice that something is weird/funny, wehn people look and me and ask whether "it " is on purpose. I am getting the "it" bit quite swiftly nowadays.

Cool that you guys can see all that.

I am fin with the bold colors.

Best - and enjoy the curry-ish yellow with a slightly tint of ... !
Thorsten 

Have you taken a colour acuity test? It sounds like you have a form of colour blindness.

[Toastie]

Just now, AmperZand said:

Have you taken a colour acuity test? It sounds like you have a form of colour blindness.

I think I said that already either here or somewhere else. I'm not sort of color-blind. I am color-blind. Red, blue, yellow, green are all good. But don't mix them. Well no bright light present and green is red and vice versa. It can be fun, really.

Tests? Oh yes. When they were drawing me for the armed forces of Germany four decades ago, I tried to join the folks doing electronics (radar and RF stuff) - because that was my hobby back then. And I didn't like dirt that much. They said yes, cool, don't have enough of you guys, but we need a color test (for identifying e.g. the color coded resistors or wires). They showed me the bubbly pictures (http://dezan.vachnganviet.co/eye-test-colour-chart/) and there were - well - bubbles in a circle. I needed to go to a doctor - he asked me after the test, what I was planning to do after the army. I said: Becoming a chemist, maybe? He said forget it, it will never ever work; they have all sorts of analytical methods relying on colors. Well - I am a chemist, teaching chemistry for more than 30 years and running a 40+ people research group at a university ... the thing is: Be creative!!! In the olden days there were color changes in chemistry that indicated an "endpoint" - e.g. form red to pinkish. Or brown to brown purplish. I never saw anything changing, of course. With a little research though there were equivalent methods, which go from colorless to deep red - or yellow to blue. Now that is what I call a change. Needed to buy extra chemicals (did some extra jobbing for that - that was cool as well: We were building booths for exhibitions in the town I lived then), but hey - it worked well. And today, a machine tells me: It is so and so much, and of that kind.

So summing up a long boring story: I like the colors of LEGO from 1965 - 1970

You guys just do all colors of the world - must be fun. But it is not too bad to live in a less complex world.

All the best and watch the virus! Stay home.

Thorsten

     

[dr_spock]

1 hour ago, Toastie said:

So summing up a long boring story: I like the colors of LEGO from 1965 - 1970

     

As long as they don't discontinue them, then all is good.