Analysing the colour codes of Lego

July 23, 2016 10:20 AM

67 Years of Lego Sets

I started to wonder how Legos evolved from the sets I remember from my childhood to what they are today. As an analyst, I turned to data for answers. I used Plotly and Mode Python Notebooks to explore the data.

posted by infini (6 comments total)

This is really neat. Though, I'd love to hear more about where the raw data comes from. Is lego itself supplying it to rebrickable? If so, that's very cool. If not, there's a really beautiful data-gathering obsession hiding in the background.

As someone who loved lego as a kid, doesn't happen to geek out on this particular topic as an adult, and never received them in any form other than plastic bags full of scattered second hand parts, I'm shocked to learn there were sets with titles going back to the 1950s. I'm also amazed to learn that "Star Wars / M&M mosaic" is not only a real thing, but an outlier in the numbers of bricks plot. It sounds like a sketch comedy send up of lego co-branding: a set so large it needs TWO marketing partnerships.

Is there no data on the number of triangular flat airplane-wing parts per set? 'cause that was the only notable scarcity among my classmates in the 80s.
posted by eotvos at 11:28 AM on July 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

You can thank the Star Wars series for the overall graying of sets. I buy for parts much more that the set itself, which is why most Star Wars ships like the various Star Destroyers bore me to tears. Although I can easily argue that I bought this set for my daughter's birthday because she loves the Elves series, I also bought it because it's flippin gorgeous.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 12:21 PM on July 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

eotvos: there is.
posted by Dadoes at 1:57 PM on July 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

The gradual colour change is really interesting. I remember reading about how cautious they are with regards to introducing new shapes, and I'd assumed the colour palette was similarly curtailed. I'd love to see how the general bucket composition has changed in comparison to the sets — the freeform, mixed-media, length of gutter for a train tunnel possibility of of Lego is the best side of it to me.

Also if it bothers you: document.body.innerHTML = document.body.innerHTML.replace(/Legos/g, 'Lego bricks');
posted by lucidium at 4:51 PM on July 23, 2016

This I like. I take gradual color change every day over Lego apparently becoming more inclined to depict violence.
posted by bigendian at 4:55 AM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I bet they are more careful with pieces due to having to make and maintain new molds: Wasn't too many bits a large part of the problems they had in the 2000s? Whereas colours you just pour a different coloured mix into the mold.
posted by Canageek at 5:34 PM on July 24, 2016