ThrowbackThursday: 2001
Posted by Huw,
Our first Throwback Thursday article looking at a year from the current century has been written by shima55, once a regular Brickset contributor. (Welcome back!)
For this week's Throwback Thursday, we are going back to 2001, which was a very big year for me, as this was the first year I stopped playing on the sidelines and started to collect LEGO sets for myself. Even though the sets released that year were not "classic" themes (Town, Castle, Space, Pirates), it was more than enough to get me hooked for good, and the amount of time my brother and I spent pouring over the catalog that year no doubt helped.
So let's have a look, shall we?
Life on Mars
Probably the closest to a "classic" theme released in 2001 was Life on Mars. According to the storyline, apparently this wasn't humans vs. Martians, but rather, humans AND Martians vs. a rebel Martian faction, I think? Honestly, all my brother and I cared about was the Martian minifigures and the mecha. The tubular base was also an object of fascination for us, but at $89.99 USD, way out of our price range!
Alpha Team
Another theme that was a huge hit with me was Alpha Team. Six named agents, a robot, an evil supervillian with a cool design, and a super secret base? It doesn't get any better than this. The picture in the catalog more so focuses on the minifigs, and not so much on the sets.
I don't know about today, but back then this approach worked, as I bought 6775 without even really knowing what the set inside looked like (the box picture wasn't very descriptive), all I cared about was that I couldn't complete my team without Charge and Crunch! Also, in terms of diversity, this theme was an anomaly. In 2001, of the six human agents, two were female!
Dinosaurs
It was perhaps surprising that given kids' fascination with dinosaurs, that it took until 2000 for LEGO to produce sets with dinosaurs in them. A year after they first appeared in Adventurers sets, a Dinosaurs theme was launched, consisting of four large beasts in canisters and four smaller ones in boxes. They consisted almost entirely of large specialized parts so didn't offer much of a building experience, but as a result they looked pretty good.
Star Wars
Ah, Star Wars. A staple since 1999, this year we got podracers, Imperial Shuttles, and for the first time, a Stormtrooper! Also, the TIE Fighter was $19.99 USD. It was much cheaper to build a fleet back then. Those were the days...
BIONICLE
Right at the back on the catalog, still under the Technic banner, was BIONICLE. I don't know if LEGO could have ever predicted just how huge this theme would become, and it's fun to see the humble beginnings here, with only six sets pictured. Interestingly, Tahu, the leader, isn't the featured player! Instead, Onua, the Toa of Earth, gets top billing.
Software
Also in the back, we see LEGO Software. Regardless of how you feel about the games, there's no denying it was a massive undertaking for LEGO to try and be their own video game publisher. It was a bold risk and one that history has shown, was partially responsible for their downfall in the forthcoming years.
So, 2001. Some may say it was a bad year for the company, what with BIONICLE, video games, and Jack Stone which I couldn't bear to include above. But hey, it got me on board for good, and I suspect I'm not the only one. Rose tinted glasses or not, 2001 was definitely influential on what we see today.
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So you missed out Jack Stone because you don't like it? I didn't realise 'Throwback Thursday' had now become 'Throwback Thursday, but only the bits I liked' :/
Surely the point is for us to be able to see what Lego was like back then, good AND bad?
Wait a minute, where's Harry Potter? I thought it was a big thing in 2001. :/
U must admit, that I did not like the production from that era. That time I almost entered the dark age, only early StarWars set saved me. I have the first Millenium Falcon!
I was searching for Falcon desperately, because I had no idea, that some newer generation of SW models will be released every other year.
Actually I added the bit about not being able to bear to include JS, not shima55.
Yes, it is 'Throwback Thursday, but only the bits I liked' or rather 'Throwback Thursday, but only the bits I liked and other significant releases'
We have no obligation to cover everything, and never have done :-)
Good point about Harry Potter. In 2000 LEGO started producing two catalogues a year and the US one I scanned is 1HY which has just a teaser for HP, which was released later in the year. I'm guessing shima55 overlooked it for the same reason.
We haven't started scanning this millennium's UK catalogues for the repository because they are too large and not as interesting generally as those from the 1980s and 1990s.
Ah, Bionicle: The Video Game. Alas for the game that never was.
So a pretty bad year over all....
Not one of the best, no!
There was a lawsuit over the Bionicle names. These 2001 names in the above catalogue were deemed OK but the 2002 versions caused some concern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BionicleM.C4.81ori_language_controversy
Why was 2001 a particularly bad year? I'm not seeing it.
Smack-bang in the middle of my dark ages.
I'm not a Life on Mars fan, I'm not a Bionicle fan, I'm not a Dinosaurs fan, and I've never even heard of Alpha Team. Those pages make me shudder with contempt.
Although, I definitely AM a Star Wars fan. I bought one set that year, the Imperial AT-ST featuring Chewie. It would be 10 years before I started buying Lego in any hectic (fully HEKTIK bro) fashion again.
It might not have been a particularly good year, but it's very special to me as it was the year I got my first few LEGO sets (I got McDonald's LEGO toys in '99, but this was the first time I got a "real" set).
I own one or two (or maybe three?) of the smaller 'Life on Mars' sets. They are not bad at all and come with parts in some interesting colors.
The Alpha Team sets on the other hand look fairly terrible :)
I'm not sure how BIONICLE, one of LEGO's most successful ever themes, contributed to "a bad year for the company"... personal opinions on it aside, it was one of the themes along with Star Wars that led to LEGO turning their fortunes around in the early 2000s. With that said, 2001 wasn't my favourite year, still in the midst of the late 90s juniorised period, with little representation from LEGO's "core themes". I did quite like Life on Mars in spite of its shortcomings, it was nice to have a space theme that wasn't centred around combat and blended vaguely "realistic" human craft with alien ones. And the Aero Tube Hanger is something of an underrated classic for its scale and ambition, IMO...
I guess it's easy to look at older set design and compare them to the standards of today. As much as this stuff doesn't have the nostalgic charm of 'classic' themes such as Castle or Pirates to me, I can see how perhaps things like Bionicle and Star Wars were laying foundations for future successes. And that Mars air pump thingy looks quite fun.
As much I hate JS asa theme I LOVED the figures. They had better scale and everything. Shame they werent customizable!
Personaly I thing Mars mission was one of the best Lego themes. It had modularity, weird models that I find creative even with specialised pieces, and new minifigures (that were horrible as they were too easy to break)!
Huw, I was going to suggest you add a link to the catalogues to the bottom of this article, but the library page ( http://brickset.com/library/catalogues) only covers the years 1966-1999. Where can I see for myself the glories of Jack Stone or the early Harry Potter sets?
I have to agree with a few of the posters upthread, I definitely think that 2001 was not a good year ('98, which was the subject of a recent throwback Thursday was really the last good year Lego had for a while, because there was a lot not to like for a long period in the 00s).
I thought Alpha Team was interesting (odd, but interesting), and I did love the dinosaurs. As simplistic as the dinosaurs were, I had waited for years to be able to have a T-Rex rampaging down my Lego city, and I really liked that.
OTOH, the "Star Wars" range was better than it had been (but still wasn't great), while the first few Harry Potter sets bounced between average and just ... awful. "Life on Mars" was another odd one (I admit I liked the mecha, particularly the red robot, but that was about it) and it just felt like they had no idea where they were going with the theme. I was not a fan of "Jack Stone", and I can still remember looking at the catalogue pictures thinking, what the heck are they doing? But then there was an entire range of Creator sets with those larger-than-normal minifigs, and they weren't around very long and disappeared soon after. Also, "Racers" -- what the heck was going on there? Was that even Lego?
I did like the soccer subtheme for introducing another aspect of Lego City, and I quite liked the Studios sets, particularly the smaller ones ... because some of those were quite useful for your basic town setting.
"Bionicle" was a theme I liked *at first*, but it was another theme I really didn't quite get, and in a couple of years, the whole thing had lost me. But I bought a few of them for novelty value, if nothing else.
Oh my. This had to be one of the worst years ever for Lego.
Looking back, I'm glad I was in DA at the time - if I ever had to enter. Unfortunately, I "came back" too late for many past UCS, modular, Harry Potter and LotR sets among others :/
Awful. Just awful!
Aero Tube Hanger looks pretty cool, but pretty much everything else is really bad, in my opinion. I was well into my Dark Ages at this point and I can't say I regret missing any of this, tbh.
Bionicle - I'm grateful it existed as it played a huge role in saving the company from what I understand, but I've personally never been a fan. Alpha Team just looks like a mess to me. Dinosaurs - great idea, poor execution. And if Jack Stone was too bad to be lumped in with this sorry lot, I shudder to think how bad it was! Even Star Wars, which eventually brought me back (sadly later than I now would have liked) was pretty terrible back then.
And no Town, Space, Pirates OR Castle? That's hard to believe! I know Space has sadly fallen by the wayside and we don't always have Castle or Pirates these days, but at least there's always City to rely on!
Yeah - not sorry I missed this year at all, and I can't say I'm surprised that the company's struggles were right around the corner if this was what they were coming up with!
Dinosaurs aren't looking too good, I must say. Alpha Team is pretty cool, Life on Mars... some of the sets (like the mechs) are cool and others (like that butt-ugly space shuttle) are definitely not. The Star Wars sets are pretty ugly as well, although I do like the Imperial Shuttle.
Gotta love those first Bionicles though!
Why the hatred for Jack Stone? It was a nice bridge between Duplo and Lego for four year-olds and was perfect for my son at the time. He and I to this day still have fond memories of those times. It was the precursor to today's Junior theme, which I imagine we're also supposed to hate? Not me. I can honestly say I love all Lego sets and would have every single one if I could. Even Primo (or whatever it's called now).
To be fair, if it wasn't for Jack Stone we wouldn't have this VHS masterpiece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR004a8TCMo&feature=youtu.be
(and yes, this was an official thing TLG made. really)
I actually have several sets from 2001. The best part about the year was Bionicle, hands-down.
Ah... BIONICLE nostalgia...
Bionicle. <3 I remember being absolutely enthralled with Onua's design, especially the claws, as a young kid. Those things were COOL.
I miss those $20 Tie Figther (that I still have assembled) and the AT-ST (sadly not assembled) hope the new one is both cheap and highly detailed (please have generic characters so it serves as a BP).
Kind of odd to single the dinosaurs out for their lack of building value. Even though their parts were large and specialized, their parts were a lot more versatile than any previous or subsequent dinos, besides the brick-built ones from LEGO Creator. Each dinosaur set was designed so you could build four different dinosaurs with its parts, and later many of the parts found other uses such as the elephants from Orient Expedition or the original Dewback from LEGO Star Wars. The dino tail elements are finding new uses in sets to this day! The dinosaur parts from the more recent Dino and Jurassic World can't boast that level of versatility.
Granted, the dinosaurs from 2001 also weren't very realistic, in part due to using so many "one size fits all" parts instead of body parts scaled and sculpted to represent each individual species. But then, it's not as though the more specialized dinosaurs from later themes have been very realistic either.
The Star Wars sets from 2001 may have been cheaper than their counterparts today, but IMO there's no doubt that today's sets are much better designs. I can never shake the feeling that I got into LEGO Star Wars at the wrong time. One nice set that stands out in this catalog is Watto's Junkyard. I'm a big fan of podracers, and this set basically had the parts for two of them that haven't been re-released since (Aldar Beedo's and Mawhonic's). Even though the designs are rudimentary by today's standards, they were a fairly good likeness of those podracers for their time, and I can't help but wish we could get as much variety of podracer designs today as we did back then!
I liked the Alpha Team game for Game Boy Color and the comics and activities I saw in the LEGO Club Magazine and on LEGO.com, but I never really got into the theme too much. My family had maybe one or two Alpha Team sets from each year. On the other hand, I greatly enjoyed Life on Mars, especially how the Martian vehicles could dock at the Aero Tube Hangar and combine with one another! Like you, I was considerably less interested in the human astronauts and their vehicles.
Starting in 2001 Bionicle became one of my chief passions. The 2001 Toa sets are not so excellent in hindsight — their posability was very limited, their builds simplistic, and many of their parts highly specialized — but the colorful character designs and mysterious, otherworldly story did a great job firing up my imagination. The Bionicle PC game advertised in this leaflet ended up getting cancelled, but the Mata Nui Online Adventure Game (http://biomediaproject.com/bmp/files/gms/online/MataNuiOnlineGame/) more than picked up the slack.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
@Space:1979, we haven't begun on the >2000 catalogues yet. It's a momentous task given there are two a year to do and some have 100 pages or more.
They are also not as visually appealing as earlier ones so the incentive is not there to get them done.
I was getting into Lego as a kid around this time so I remember this era very well! I never got Alpha Team, Dinosaurs, or Studio sets but as a kid I wanted them. But I was enamored with Star Wars and Bionicle back then (still like them 15 years later to!)
What a disappointing year. Star Wars and Alpha Team about the only things that interested me that year. A bunch of themes and subthemes that I liked had been canceled or suspended this year and replaced with junk (I'll looking at you Jack). The Star Wars sets were ok,. Being sort of a gap year and meanly filling in the OT sets that hadn't been covered yet and waiting for AOTC the next year. Alpha Team I have mixed feelings on. Harry Potter was fine, but not being much of a fan I only got a couple to see what they'd be like. 2001 is right in the middle of what was to me one of the worst periods for Lego, 1997-2005.
It wasn't until 2002 that I started collecting in earnest, but we still had catalogs from 2001 around, so I pored over them endlessly, even to the point of memorizing them. Because the 2001 sets were close to being retired, I don't have many of them (just a few Alpha Team and Studios), but they are all extremely familiar.
Regarding Life on Mars: as noted in the article, the astronauts and Martians weren't fighting each other; there wasn't any conflict at all in the theme. The sets could all be classified as Martian sets or astronaut sets. (Side note: the 7317 Aero Tube Hangar was compatible with 7313, 7314, and 7316, so that the tubes could transport each Martian to his mech.)
The Alpha Team sets, similar to Life on Mars, each contained either Alpha Team agents or Ogel and his minions – never both sides. Has any theme done that since?
Must be nostalgia, but I remember liking the set designs from this year in Alpha Team and Life on Mars. Unfortunately, I spent all my savings on Bionicle, and still think 2001 was one of the best years for that theme.
I remember every one of these and had at least two sets from each theme. This was definitely the year that sold me on lego
2010 wasn't that bad - Galidor was yet to come!
Yeah it's sad that the prices of Lego are going up. 7 battle droids for 9.99 plus a relatively compact vehicle??? That would have been INSTANT buy for me. Shame.
Edit: 2001, not 2010 of course!
Fun fact, the PC Bionicle Game never got an official release.
I was the right age to actually like Jack Stone back then. The building was easy and sturdy. I can see why they are hated now as the parts are far too big and specialized. This makes them almost useless outside of their original purpose.
Lego Island 2 and Lego Racers 2 were some of my favorite games during childhood--I need to get the PS2 versions since my new computers no longer run the games.
Think I had a few of the Dinosaurs sets back then.
^ Agreed. Lego Island 2 is a truly great LEGO game!
Certainly not the best from Lego but still a good Throwback Thursday article. Please do keep them coming, and keep up the good work! I do enjoy reading these. 2001 was during my long dark ages so it's nice to see what Lego was doing during that time...
Man, seeing this takes me back. 2001 was the beginning of my Lego obsession, and I can't help but look at all of these sets and pictures with rose tinted glasses. A lot of people might not be the biggest fans of what Lego rolled out that year, but few things give me a better sense of childhood than these images.
Never saw the Dinosaurs theme in shops back then...or was I so unimpressed it passed me by? I feel this was when Lego was going downhill, it didn't feel as imaginative as it used to be. Still, prices were reasonable compared to todays which are extortionate to say the least. Good right up though. Thank you.
2001, my dark ages. Guess I didn't miss much.
**Shudder** These were dark, dark times....
Dark ages were named 'dark' in 2001.
Ah yes, Life on Mars, giving us the interesting phenomena of sand red and sand purple bricks - and a race to build up as much stock as possible until they got canned !
While reading one of those "worst sets of all time" articles, I came across a linked reddit post that explains why all of these themes were so terrible: https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/1x6ldp/lego_franchise_infographic/cf8vdl3
Apparently Lego, in the late 90s, decided to fire their designers and replace them with "new blood". All I can say is, I am very glad I entered my dark ages around circa 1998, and I finally understand exactly why I did.
I'm glad I was still in my semi-Dark Ages period in 2001, as I didn't miss much. I call it a semi-DA period however, as I did pick up a few of the SW sets. Maybe it's the rose tinted glasses, but the classic sets of my youth blow these uninspired creations away.