Archive of adverts added to our library
Posted by Huw,
You may recall that last month LEGO sent us a load of digital material related to the 40th anniversary of the minifigure.
Among it was a collection of scans of LEGO adverts from 1972 to 2000, some 280 of them, which I've now had a chance to add to our document library.
They are interesting in many ways: not only to see old products and how they were marketed, but also from a photographic point of view, given the majority were created before digital cameras and Photoshop.
You can view them all here, and see a few of my favourites after the break.
One of a series of kids and their chaotic creations from the 1970s:
Introducing the arrival of the first minifigures in 1978:
A busy 12v trains scene from 1981:
A directory of Fabuland figures, 1984
A castle under siege, 1988:
Anyway, take a look at them all yourself and let us know if you find any that you have fond memories of.
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31 comments on this article
Excellent! Thank you!
That’s awesome!
Heads up the first two pics in the gallery are mislabeled 1972 but the pics are copyrighted 1977.
Fantastic assortment! Hopefully we can get translations of everything.
So many cypress trees in the castle photo!
I love that in the 1980 train adverts, they show alternative builds of the 7822 train station instead of the main one! They were also shown on the back of the box back then. I wish Lego would still do that...
PS: Huw, how would you feel about including back-of-the-box-inspiration-pics to the set's details?
Lol, my adblocker is blocking them :)
There are a lot of more old adverts known, it would be great if we could complete the collection!
Yep - possibly a mistake to label everything /ads/adxxx.jpg as ad-blockers jump on them and wipe them all out!
Huw - could you add hard links to the images as at the moment you can only view them as pop-outs on the page; you can't zoom in.
Also, I know we're supposed to love 'classic' Classic Space, but this shot is one of pure beauty:
https://images.brickset.com/library/ads/Ad%201981_47.jpg
^ Click on the arrows icon at the bottom right of the expanded images to zoom in.
Love this, can't wait to have a proper look at them all later. Thanks.
Wow! Thanks for that. Born in 1972, I perfectly remember looking some of them for hours, dreaming of what adventures I could have created with this or that set. I really liked city displays, photographed at a minifig height. I still remember the way they were designed, pictured, and I loved looking closely at every little detail on them, until I knew them on the tip of the fingers. It drives me back long ago, when I was a kid and that my completely unbridled imagination helped me to create scenarios and adventures all day long, without an ounce of boring while playing for hours, and hours.
Brings back so many good memories. Does anyone know what the photo team used for the lunar terrain in the early classic space photos? It looks too solid and tidy for sand.
There seem to be a few of these that are listed under the wrong year — just noticed a 1993 Dragon Masters ad listed under 1983.
I'm amused for the random cross-promotions for Arnold Schwartzenegger's "Jingle All The Way" on the German Exploriens and Trains pages from 1996, and the contest/sweepstakes to win a Florida vacation on the French Launch Command and Aquazone ads from 1995. :P Both feel rather strange compared to more LEGO-related prizes and cross-promotions that we tend to see today.
My nostalgia for a lot of these pre-2000s themes is generally not as strong as for, say, Bionicle, and it's a bit of a bummer to see so few ads for Adventurers since it's one of the themes that really started the trend towards character-driven adventure storytelling, paving the way for so many of my later favorites like Bionicle, Ninjago, and Elves. But it's still always neat to see how sets were advertised differently in different countries: how character and set names were localized, which Space themes were described in a straightforward manner and which leaned harder into the technobabble, whether particular Castle factions were framed as good or evil, how restrained LEGO was with language and concepts that might be perceived as dark or violent, etc.
If I had to pick a theme on these pages that holds the most memories for me, it's got to be Aquazone.
The image filenames, which includes the year of publication, are as provided by LEGO, so it's disappointing that there are so many anomalies!
This collection is fantastic! So interesting and beautiful to look at. Thanks for sharing it Huw.
These look great! Lots of fun to check out.
That Duplo brick with the baby pram seems very much like a modern ad today.
Thanks for putting these together Huw.
sorry but it doesn't work in my firefox browser, it does the trick in edge :-(
The castle is not under siege--the German text says that there is a joust happening! ("Let the tournament begin! Who's the mightiest knight? The castle's inhabitants are eagerly awaiting a decision. LEGOLAND Castle - build, play and collect adventures from yesteryear. For children aged 5-12.")
Awesome! Can't wait to look through these!
Images aren't showing for me on Chrome - any way to fix, beyond going to a different browser?
Nice! Another misplacement: In 1984 the folder with 10159: City Airport should be 2004 I suppose.
Scary to think that some of the kids in those ads could be (young) grandparents by now.
^^^ Ad-blocker?
Some amazing backgrounds for my phone! These photos are amazing! Didn’t grow up in this era but they are much more visually attractive than the new catalogs.
^^ who'd have thought running an adblocker would break a page full of... ads :)
Wish those minifigure accessories from Fabuland would make a return.
Wow fantastic^^ Thanks a lot :)
EDIT:
So Majisto's original Danish name is 'Trollkarlen'?
It also seems confirmed that the 'red' Forestman is supposed to be Little John, interesting...
The four Italian adverts labelled 1977 are all wrong. We are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the minifigure this year, so 2018 minus 40 ... wait, must be a BTTF-thing of some kind.
Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin under Firefox 61.0.1 eat up all images. I had to turn them of for Brickset in order to see them.
Wow, what a treasure trove! The little notes telling where and when they were published are so valuable. It would take years of looking through old magazines to amass that amount of information. I love the wide selection of themes and languages, too. Thanks for adding these to the database!
I just realised I've been using adblock on this site.