EamonnMR

Like that it's modular, like the Intruder vibes, overall shape is great. Like the mix of smooth sections and vents too.

Digging how smooth this is.

Nexo knights was the closest thing to the neon-era space we've gotten for a while. Transparent orange and transparent green stuff. Cybervampires. Almost a warhammer 40k vibe. I thought it was pretty neat. But it was almost all vehicles! So I can see how it didn't scratch the same itch.

Make sure you scan them and upload them to https://www.backoftheboxbuilds.com/

Love the shape especially the front end.

If you add up the 90s space theme votes, you get 20579, which beats classic space. I know they where all different themes, but they all shared a similar bright colors, high contrast, neon lasers and canopies aesthetic. I like classic space but I'd like to see that neon scifi (I guess nowdays it's cool to call it "cyberpunk" even though it hardly evokes Bladerunner or Ghost in the Shell) look. I am happy to see Bionicle at the top even though I didn't vote for it; Bionicle was the first original theme to truly stick and paved the way for original themes to continue into the 21st century rather than being entirely replaced by licensed themes.

Glad to see that people are enjoying this! 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. Brickset has a good chunk of the UK catalogs up. 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.

My picks: Ice Planet, Aquazone, Rock Raiders Thoughts: I prefer the neon-colored 90s space to classic (that's probably a hot take) but I can't see Mtron or Ice Planet winning out over Classic Space which has a loyal following. I love me some neon spaceships or rovers with space's visual language. I wonder if they'll count Pirate-verse/castle-verse/90s-space-verse votes together or if the split will mean themes with a single entry like Trains or Bionicle will have a leg up.

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

I like the details here-the roof, the rover, the antenna thing on the right...

There are many sellers on ebay and such that sell parts by the pound. However, I'm generally focused on older parts/colors. Are there any rules of thumb that can be used to try and determine what era the pound lots are drawn from, or is it always a roll of the dice?