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I love ready your posts, since I'm both a Lego and history buff Thanks for doing all of this research, it's all very interesting.

Ridiculous. I blame the parents just as much as the children for not teaching them respect. I've had my home vandalized by neighborhood kids, who I luckily caught in the act. The parents weren't home and the kids were just roaming the neighborhood looking to cause trouble. Teach your kids to respect other people's property!!!

Oh that beautiful box of classic space parts very nice. Looks like you have at least one classic Technic set too, I have that 4.5v motor in one of my universal sets.

When I recovered my Lego from my parent's basement, my box of pirate LEGO reeked of smoke as my parents used to smoke down there. All of my bricks were stored in sealed plastic bins, but the pirate bin must not have been shut tightly enough. The sails were all yellow from smoke, and everything stunk. I soaked the the sails in water and a bit of oxyclean for a few hours, and soaked the bricks in water and dish soap overnight. I let the sails air dry a bit, and then ironed them underneath an old t-shirt. The bricks I let air dry next to a fan overnight. Everything looks brand new and clean, with no smoke smell.

Out of all my old parts (mostly from the 80's), only the white, light gray, and blue parts are discolored. White gets a yellow tinge, light grey gets a less noticeable yellow tinge, and blue starts to get a slight green tinge (due to the brown/yellow bromine color mixing with blue). Retr0bright has restored most of these bricks to their original colors. Some parts did not clear up with retr0bright however. My white flexible tubes (only the flexible part) http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/73590a , and white rack pieces http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/2428 stayed yellowed. They seem to be made from a different type of plastic.

I was surprised that the hoses and rubber bands from my technic sets are in perfect condition, nothing deteriorated. They were stored in a cool basement in a plastic bin for over 20 years.

That is a great set on it's own. Lot's of great features, and the merchant ship is nice. However, IMO, it doesn't work very well when you add in other ships like the Black Seas Barracuda, or even the (original) Imperial Flagship. The ships dwarf the port and make it seem very tiny. Also, the merchant ship looks very small in comparison. I know it's a cost issue, but I wish they would have made the harbor bigger so these ships could dock. I also wish they would have made the merchant ship out of the regular Lego ship hulls so it isn't so small compared to the rest of the Lego fleet. If Lego ever decides to bring back Pirates, I hope they do more civilian oriented sets like the trading post. Having a stand alone, large merchantman ship would be awesome.

Do you know what kind of environment this set was stored in? If it was in a hot place, some kind of glue from the box might have melted.

All you need is the recipe from the website I linked to, and also be sure to read the pitfalls. Don't use this technique on any parts that contain metal, as the oxyclean will rust them. I've also read that the solution will eat away at the gold portions of the classic space logo, so I left those alone. However, I've retr0brighted other printed parts (like the walls of Eldorado Fortress) and it hasn't taken any of the printing off.

1) Throwing an unneeded piece back into a big tub, only to find out that you need it 5 minutes later. Then you spend the next 30 minutes looking for it in said tub. 2) Needing a special printed brick for a model, and realizing you accidentally buried it in the construction of another MOC as a "normal" brick. Now you have to disassemble it and inspect each piece to see if it's the printed one. 3) Realizing you don't have room to permanently display all of your Lego models in your home. Then you spend the afternoon disassembling and bagging them up for storage, because *someday* you'll have the space

31003 Red Rotors: http://lego.wikia.co...1003_Red_Rotors I bought this for my stepson as a gift. He had played with Lego before, but never owned his own set. I got hooked again when I helped him build it. Within a few months I had all of my old Lego sets dusted off and setup in my office, now dubbed "Legoland." The set that got me collecting new Lego for the first time post dark ages was 10210 Imperial Flagship http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/10210_Imperial_Flagship

I'd just leave it up to the girls to tell you what sets they like, if any. My stepson is just getting into Lego, and I started him on some of the smaller Creator sets. Now he has things circled in the Lego catalog, and has picked things out at the Lego Store that grabbed his attention. His sister is a few years behind him, but when she gets old enough to start playing with Lego, I'm going to just bring her to the Lego Store to see what she gravitates towards. I can totally see girls being into the castle themes, especially Kingdoms, with the princesses, kings, and knights in shining armor.

I concentrate of the space and pirate theme the most, with regards to classic sets. I never got into town that much, although I do have a few trains. After I got out of my dark age, I don't collect towards a specific theme anymore. I buy sets I think are neat and would make a good display piece, doesn't matter what theme it comes from.

I would guess that most AFOL's were into LEGO to some degree as children. If I discovered LEGO as an adult, I would probably think it was a cool toy, and perhaps buy some sets for my kids. For me, so many childhood memories come back whenever I snap bricks together. I bought my stepson a few sets this past Christmas, and I was hooked again after helping him build them. I went from not thinking about LEGO at all for 20 years to digging through my parents basement for all my old sets. It was great putting them back together and showing the new generation what LEGO used to look like. I don't MOC much. I mostly build official sets on display in my home office, which is slowly becoming a mini LEGO museum. My parents call it Legoland, and the kids love going in there to play with the models. I know my parents think it's a little strange that I still like to build with kid toys, but I think they're also glad that the gifts they gave me back then are still around and still bring me and my family joy to this day. My wife thinks it's cute, and I think it's a good way to bond with the children, something that bridges generations.

My family surprised me with the 9492 TIE Fighter to go with the 9493 X-Wing they got me for my birthday. It's the perfect present, I get to have a great time building it with the kids, and I get another cool decoration for my office!

Yeah, I tend to agree. I always considered the forward pointing antennas to be lasers as well. I think the funniest minifigure accessory ever is this "camera" http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/4360 It's a bazooka to everyone except for the LEGO PR people! Even with this, I never had my space people fighting each other. Even when Blacktron came out, I just thought they were cool looking spacemen from a different civilization, only after becoming an AFOL do I realize that they were supposed to be bad guys (I dropped out of LEGO right before Space Police 1 hit the market, so I missed that narrative). I assumed these ships were armed just in case they happened upon some kind of hostile creature of alien civilization. I recently bought my stepson the 70701 Swarm Interceptor. I must admit, I like the look of the ship, and had fun building it with him. I think it's neat how they made it so the cockpit stays level while the rest of the ship rotates around. However, I'm not impressed with some of the large parts used. For example, the large wings are very limited in their use outside of the main model since they're completely flat. There are no studs or antistuds on them, so you can't customize the look, use in a MOC, etc. All you can do is throw the sticker on it and use it for it's intended purpose. I see a lot of these "unitasker" type parts used in the GS line. I would prefer that they use something like this for the wings: http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/3585 I think it's a much more useful part for general building and customizing.

After going through all of my old Lego, the only bricks that have cracked are the 1x1 headlight bricks: http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/4070 I would say at least half of mine are cracked at the base in the front, right below the front stud where you'd stick a trans piece for a "light." There doesn't seem to be a correlation between having them connected to other parts or just sitting loose in the bin for 20+ years. The cracked ones still clutch fine as far as I can tell, the damage seems to be purely cosmetic.

Thanks for the tip on the roads, I have a pile that could use a good cleaning. I was also unaware that oxy clean took off the gold from the classic space logos. I retr0brighted a bunch of my white Lego, but kept out anything with a space logo just in case. Glad I did since oxyclean is a part of that mixture.

Wow, there's more to these bricks than I thought, that's some great info. Thanks LEGO Historian! Also, thanks for the toothbrush tip. I soaked my parts in water and dishsoap overnight, but there's still crud in between some of the studs.

I saw that thread, which was my inspiration for digging out and restoring my old Lego He didn't really cover this topic though. He mentioned that he had to replace some bricks, and at times used newer bricks. My question is about how this would be seen to collectors down the road (most of the bricks that need replacing are pretty standard, so I wouldn't think it would affect things too much), and if anyone knows of a way to buy bricks that use older molds. Bricklink seems to be a crapshoot. I didn't put this in the space forum because I'm restoring several themes like castle, town, technic, etc. I just happened to start with space.

I'm currently in the process of piecing together my old childhood sets. All of my Lego was stored in a big plastic bins, which kept them in fairly good condition but finding parts was akin to a needle in a haystack. I took the time to sort everything by color, separate the minifigure parts, etc. At this point I have most of my space sets together, which include Classic Space, Futuron, Blacktron, and a few small M-Tron and Ice Planet sets. The sets that are in the roughest shape or the older ones, since I was younger, played rougher, etc. Either some parts are missing, or the bricks are heavily chewed or scratched (when you're 5, teeth are a perfectly viable option for separating small 1x2 plates ). I ordered some replacements from bricklink, and have noticed that they're a bit different in terms of the mold. The picture below illustrates this. The posts that click between the studs are hollow on the blue brick. There may be other differences but I haven't noticed. I'm sure this isn't new to some of you brick veterans, but I didn't realize that there were different molds for bricks. All of mine look like the white one, and I stopped collecting around 1990. My question is, does it really matter if replacement bricks are of the newer mold? I'm not planning on selling these sets any time soon, but if I do down the road I want to know if I should go through the effort now to collect the right type of brick. The bricks I need to replace are pretty standard, nothing rare. Mostly plate bricks since they were hard to separate and were pried off with teeth and whatever other objects were at hand. Is there a way to guarantee a certain type of brick with buying from bricklink, other than contacting each individual seller? Maybe a store that specializes in vintage bricks? Am I being entirely too anal??? Thanks in advance!

As an adult, I look for sets that make nice display pieces. For example, I am interested in 79003 An Unexpected Gathering (the hobbit hole set), since it has nice architectural features, interesting interior details, and will look nice on my shelf. Sets like 79010 Goblin King Battle don't interest me since they're more of a playset intended for kids to play out the battle from the movie. I usually don't buy sets just to get parts. If I want to MOC, I'll buy the parts I need from bricklink or PAB at the Lego Store.

Yes, I realize this. I just was making a comparison of Galaxy Squad vs. older space themes. I would enjoy seeing space sets along the lines what we had years ago, with space explorers as opposed to the humans vs aliens battle type theme.

Sorry for digging up an old thread, I was browsing the forum and found this discussion interesting. Maybe it should be renamed "Where is Space 2013?" Ironically, I think Space was big in the 80's because of Star Wars. The original movies were relatively new at the time, and changed the face of what sci fi looks like. I think the Lego models of that era reflect this with their utilitarian "used future" look as opposed to the 50's and 60's round disc UFO style sci fi. Personally, I prefer these older space sets. I liked the design of them, the look of the Classic and Futuron space figures, and the fact that they actually looked like Lego. They had that Lego blockiness to them, while still having a pretty sleek sci fi futuristic look. The Galaxy Squad line, for example, has a lot of specialty parts that make the models look like any number of generic humans vs aliens toy. They just don't look like Lego to me. The conflict aspect also doesn't appeal to me, but it seems like Lego wants to incorporate conflict into every theme. Even town/city has the whole cops and robbers thing going right now. I prefer my peaceful space explorers. Of course, my opinion might be biased since I grew up in the Classic Space era .

I think it's inevitable that some of the focus is on the minifigures for the licensed sets. People will always want to collect their favorite figures, and it's smart marketing to include limited edition figures in only a few sets so that people will buy them. If all of the popular minifigures are available in a single set, or in a figure pack, sales of the sets will go down. I don't think this is the case with Lego's own IP, it seems like those are more focused on design and less on minifigures. I agree that some of the set designs are lacking. The escape pod is an iconic scene, but it just seems a bit boring here. I think if they depicted the pod buried in the sand, it would come off a lot better (and probably have some interesting build techniques showcased). It would be nice if they offered plain old stormtroopers, droids, rebel troops, etc as battle packs though in case you want to build an army. I think there's some licensing issue though, as they can't sell "action figures."