Scanned a bunch of old Lego Catalogs (mid 90s to early 00s, US version)

[EamonnMR]

I just finished another large round of scanning. They haven't made it to Brickset yet as far as I know (the previous scans have thankfully already been posted there.)

TL/DR look at old catalogs here:

https://archive.org/details/@eamonnmr?and[]=lego&sort=-publicdate

The web view is kinda slow because the scans are really large, but I've bundled each one into its own much smaller PDF. The first wave had slightly wonkier PDFs but I've got a process nailed down for making them now, so if anyone wants me to go back and re-upload smaller PDFs I guess I can do that. The older ones have been added to brickset (so you may have already seen them) but the latest batch hasn't been yet as far as I know.

Why do this crazy thing?

Back in the day I spent many hours reading through the lego catalog. I think things like this should be preserved and shared. I also had older catalogs when I was a kid that wore out and fell apart; I was curious about what year I'd seen the Unitron Monorail, for example. Anyway, once I got started I got very well carried away, and I figured I might as well finish what I started. My hope is that if if anyone is as nostalgic as I am for this sort of thing, they enjoy it as much as I did. 

What did you learn?

It's a really interesting way to take in the story of Lego's 20th century themes, how they evolved into a more narrative and tie-in based setup in the late 90s, and licensed themes/Bionicle and Juniorization in the early 00s. Beyond the nostalgia, it's interesting to see the marketing material evolve over time, especially the most cutting-edge stuff which culminates in Bionicle's CGI world. Also what I assume is the better and better technology enabling editors to reuse more and more entire pages (which does make the late 90s/early 00s catalogs get pretty samey.)

What are your favorites?

These are obviously subjective picks because i was a kid dammit but here they are:

1997 Holiday: Carried this one around till the binding fell apart, and kept the Space Monorail and Starhawk II my memory for a while besides: https://archive.org/details/1997HolidayUSLegoShopAtHome

1999 Summer: Rock Raiders featured in a transition period between being all-in on house themes and all in on Star Wars. Oh and it has the last appearance of a bunch of really cool sets: https://archive.org/details/Lego-Shop-At-Home-Summer-1999-Rock-Raiders-Cover/mode/2up

2001 Summer: The introduction of Bionicle: https://archive.org/details/Lego-Shop-At-Home-summer-2001-Bionicle-Cover

[Tierce]

I can’t wait to check this out tomorrow. I remember that I had a old catalogue when I was a kid and would be going through it again and again, thinking of which sets I would have loved to get.

Thanks in advance!

[icm]

Thanks for posting this.  I took a quick look and got all the nostalgia feels. I don't have time to really dig in to these right now, but maybe later!

[MAB]

Good job. It is interesting to note they were using the "hard to find" marketing back in the 1990s.

[koalayummies]

58 minutes ago, EamonnMR said:

Why not do this crazy awesome thing?!

Fixed it for you! This is really cool. Can go back and see what was missed during our 'dark ages'. These are great scans and that site operates very nicely for this. Most excellent work! What a great 3rd post, post more.

[deraven]

Fantastic!  There are a number of Lego-oriented sites out there that have catalog scans, but I'm not sure why I never thought to put some into the Archive.org Collections format.  I wonder how many more are in there that should be consolidated?  I'm going to check these out and enjoy the nostalgia, but then maybe some of us should make an effort to fill in the gaps both from our own collections as well as some of the other resources out there...

[Man with beard]

Thank you for doing this, EamonnMR! You are not the only one who spent many hours reading Lego catalogs as a kid :) For a lot of kids, the pictures of the Lego products they saw in catalogs sparked as many imaginative fantasies as the sets they actually owned. Lego catalogs had a big impact on a lot of people and are definitely worth preserving. Modern Lego catalogs that I have seen don't have the little blurbs that explain the sets, so I wonder whether today's kids are as interested in them.

Also, I love that Exploriens artwork and photography from 1996.

[Peppermint_M]

This is excellent! While we had slightly different format in the UK, it is still a great trip down memory lane for the inserts and catalogues I poured over as a child.

Thanks for doing this!

[MAVERICK26]

This is awesome!

[Calanon]

As Pep said slightly different ones in the UK, but this is definitely a nostalgia hit. I've got a lot of mine in a box somewhere, although quite a few not in good condition. Thanks a lot for this!

[Aanchir]

Thank you so much for scanning and sharing these! I often enjoy looking through LEGO publications from different countries to compare the different ways that LEGO characters and sets were named and described from one country to the next, back before that stuff started to become more standardized in the early 2000s… but despite being from the US and having grown up in the 90s and 2000s, a lot of my own family's catalogs haven't remained in the greatest condition over the years. So it's great to have this sort of stuff archived online for anybody in any part of the world to look up whenever they please! Please know that your efforts are appreciated!

[Modal]

Thank you for this! Was born in 1994 so these are right when I was into my childhood Lego phase. I feel like I’ve seen these exact magazines before

[Chmashdehjare]

Oh my goodness!! Thank you for doing this. Was so enjoyable to look through catalogs that advertised some of my very first Technic sets.

what fun!

 

Edited January 24, 2021 by Chmashdehjare

[Carefree_Dude]

Wow this is so nostalgic!  I've been looking at old commercials too. There is one I've been looking for but can't find. It was an explorien/spyrius one that involved the explorien starship crashing into the big spyrius robot

My bad I suddenly found it

 

 

Edited January 24, 2021 by Carefree_Dude

[EamonnMR]

Glad to see that people are enjoying this!

On 1/23/2021 at 12:53 AM, Man with beard said:

Also, I love that Exploriens artwork and photography from 1996.

Yeah the photography is amazing. The Exploriens art is particularly dramatic but I also love the Trains one (Metroliner and later) with the blue mountain and the tunnel. I've been sort hoping that some day someone who did this art will give an interview, it'd be really interesting to know what was going on. The green terrain for the UFOs was nuts. Christian Faber did a good writeup of how he designed the Aquazone world, but I haven't seen anything similar for space besides an in depth discussion of possible influences.

18 hours ago, Calanon said:

As Pep said slightly different ones in the UK, but this is definitely a nostalgia hit.

Brickset has a good chunk of the UK catalogs up.

7 minutes ago, Carefree_Dude said:

Wow this is so nostalgic!  I've been looking at old commercials too. There is one I've been looking for but can't find. It was an explorien/spyrius one that involved the explorien starship crashing into the big spyrius robot

While on the topic of marketing materials, I wonder if anyone has audio/video of the push-button in-store displays? I remember a jingle with the phrase "lego maniac" in it.

[Man with beard]

On 1/24/2021 at 10:32 AM, EamonnMR said:

While on the topic of marketing materials, I wonder if anyone has audio/video of the push-button in-store displays? I remember a jingle with the phrase "lego maniac" in it.

There are a number of commercials with Lego maniac songs that you can find on YouTube. Not sure if that's the jingle you're thinking of, though.

Also, I kinda want this Lego Maniac hat I found in a '96 catalog...

[doomguy]

The cover art for the Holiday Wish Book from 1995 is horrifying, sheeeeeesh.

[TheBohrokMan]

This is really cool. I love the look of the Bionicle cgi they used for this kind of thing