Which parts are produced in the most colours?

I would have guessed 1x2 brick up front.
A while back, I was looking for a part to buy in lots of colours as a visual colour reference (a sot of Lego colour wheel). I landed on the 1x2 brick as the one I could readily got in lots of colours. Didn't get 39, though. Time to search for missing colours.

umm the picture used of light nogut to show color example includes the piece you say doesnt exisit. 1x2 plate can clearly be seen in the picture.

Is it bigfoot? or Goats?

Is it clandestine piece? I had a few of those...(they had a box that contained random floor sweeps a few decades back)
Now more common with PAB and nonpublic pieces (why I spend so long to go through the random bin)

That was a fun search! I think I figured out the color but I don't want to spoil it for anyone else.

It looks like set 76393 is introducing a lot of parts in light nougat, it is hard to tell what is in there exactly but I am really hoping we finally get that 1x2 plate in an official set.

No guesses on the missing colour yet? I would say opalescent on the top of my head (wait, even the glitters have a 1x2?)

I was naïvely going to guess coral (it's not) but as an aside...

Pointless fact that trawling the database has revealed: 70828 Pop-Up Party Bus contains THIRTY-TWO of 3023 Plate 1x2 in Vibrant Coral.

The more you know.

@Huw said:
" @milflinn said:
"umm the picture used of light nogut to show color example includes the piece you say doesnt exisit. 1x2 plate can clearly be seen in the picture."

It does not exist in sets made this year, and in fact has never appeared in any set. Those listed at BrickLink, and in the photo, must be escapees from LEGOLAND model shops.

"

I thought so
"Floor Sweeps" or "Exclusives" for VIPs before VIP program ;-)

I ran across "Exclusive Colors" in a PAB wall (They knew I was coming and hid them in random parts drawer it was fun to go "fishing for them" gave away some to young kids... sold an exclusive piece for $37 once on Bricklink)

Usually AFOL clubs get private events in states sometimes appear.

I think I also reported the exclusives on Pick A Figure (before it was known as a source of exclusives - hopefully they do pab/paf as a s @h thing for us who have to go a huge distance just for a $16 cup or $10 mf set)
Hope they again take my suggestions into account along with the others in the VIP survey THEY DO read them & Listen

exclusive mf
Mikey Hat in Dark Blue etal
Not as rare as cupcake blonde or "Rumored 200" R2-KT / George Lucus minifigures (promo unsure reliability on that one)

I started out making a color chart with 2x4 bricks (3001), but as I played around with how to lay it out I used 1x2 bricks as substitutes until I could find my missing colors in 3001. It wasn't long until I had a nearly-complete 1x2 color palate and even tracked down a non-production trans orange tubeless 1x2 to round out the transparent category.
I'd still like to get the 3001 chart complete someday but it's more of a here-and-there project now. If I need a color reference the 1x2 chart is always close at hand.

A small issue with the "8,100 different parts" using localhost:8080.
The correct link shall be https://brickset.com/parts/yearto-2021

"For the purposes of this analysis I have excluded transparent, metallic and other 'odd' colours."

Why weren't the transparent and metallic colors included? Does this have any particular reason?

I Think that the Classic 2 x 4 brick is produced in the most colours. I collect those myself and I have the 2 x 4 brick in 63 different colours. Some of them have never been in a official set, but they are all original LEGO Bricks.

@Huw said:
"They have different design IDs to their solid counterparts."

I presume that's because the moulds are different - transparent doesn't have the tubes/pillars and metallic pieces have to be made slightly smaller so they're within tolerance after the coating is added?

Dare I say that the 2x4 brick isn't that useful? I would guess that the sets it turns up in most are the Classic boxes. Even the mini builds in the Classic instructions don't use the 2x4 bricks that much.

1xn bricks are much more useful for building walls because they leave more space for interiors.

Could the other missing 1x2 plate colour be light royal blue?

"So, I ran some SQL queries to find out..."
Ah, my kinda guy ;-)

Very interesting........ Slightly off subject but can you run ANY SQL query on the site or just ones on the query builder......are you using the back-end database for this info? I ask as I wanted to run a query to see which minifigure has the most varients.... but without typing the names of ones i suspect.....
So in my non technical, non SQL speak show all minifigures where no. of varients > 8 for example would list the top xx

A most interesting article. Thanks @Huw .

How many parts have appeared in colours in mould-colour combinations that have never appeared in a set? For example, the minifigure wizard’s hat in red.

How many parts in sets have only ever appeared in one colour? Are any surprising?

Perhaps all the above could be the subject of an article on the least common parts/colours.

I think the second colour might be Yellowish Green?

The link you gave for current 1x2 plates includes White Glow among the 39, so there are actually three solid, in-production colors that are missing. I figured out which two additional ones are missing on my own. I will give their color ID numbers below in order to prove that I found them without spoiling it for most other readers (since I am sure few people want to read the comments, want to avoid spoilers, and actually have every color ID number memorized).

326
212

I feel like the 1x1 round plate (4073) is missing in the list.
I could be totally wrong about the different colors but I'm a little surprised :-)

How many unique colours are there between the top 3 (3437,3020,3004)?

Brickset had such a wide variety of Lego related articles that if I skip an article it won't be too long until I see one I'm interested in, like this one.

This is good "original content".

In terms of production parts, I would have figured it was the 1x1 round plate, as my LEGO Store MOC has a PaB wall filled with 40 different colors, a few colors that existed in 2014 didn't make the cut, and several others have been released since then. If you open the field to non-production parts, it's absolutely 2x2 tiles. They use those for their in-house color palette, so theoretically every color they've ever used should have existed as a 2x2 tile at some point. I've even seen one in trans-clear at Brickworld Chicago.

@oldfan:
https://brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2696316
^ This guy agrees with you. A few years after building this, he decided to stop buying bricks in all different sizes, and start building exclusively with 1x2 bricks where possible.

https://brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=6182501
^ This is one of the first results. I think he said it has about 80,000pcs total, of which about 40,000 are dark-orange 1x2 bricks. So, if you can build a skyscraper taller than, and heavier than, most people on this planet, it's hard to argue the versatility of the 1x2. 2x4 may be the basis for the entire LEGO System, but there are too many things that it can't due for no reason other than sheer size. Some of my earlier cars had at most 1 2x4 brick inside, but it's been years since I had room to accommodate one of those.

@Casper_van_hobbes:
Only two opaque colors have been skipped this year, according to @Huw. Opalescent is a treatment to a transparent color.

@Glacier_Phoenix:
Only if you exclude minifig parts, as one of the TLM2 CMF minifigs had a lot of eye-shredding coral.

@Huw:
The notable distinction is that, for a part like the 1x1 round plate, different design IDs are meant to allow transparent colors (different material with a different shrink factor) and chromed colors (where you have to factor in the thickness of the added layers) to be functionally the same as opaque colors. The hollow 1x2 brick was created that way to serve as a window, where the pinned version in opaque was given a more functional design. They may be basically the same size, but it's pretty debatable that they should be considered the same part.

@tyarador:
Because the list only includes opaque colors, and that accounts for a significant chunk of the 1x1 round plate colors, it falls off the list with under 40 total opaque colors.

It would be interesting to know color variety as well. Not only how many different parts are in each color, but how many colors per part category.

I started a project awhile ago to get as many Lego colors as possible. I decided on the 1x2 plates because they were available in the most colors and I liked the aesthetic of 1x2 tiles instead of other parts. Here is the result:

https://i.imgur.com/1yw2Ajc.jpg

Took awhile to get. I started with the 1x2 tiles. I started getting other parts as well as long as they fit in the space of a 1x2 tile. I finally got the 1x2 tile in Sky Blue and that was extremely difficult to find. It came in a single set about 20 years ago. I continue to add parts to this as they come up. I added the Coral tile about a year ago. Also, light nougat came in round 1x1 tiles, but I removed those and added a 1x2 tile since it just came out in that color.

@stoffer70 said:
"I Think that the Classic 2 x 4 brick is produced in the most colours. I collect those myself and I have the 2 x 4 brick in 63 different colours. Some of them have never been in a official set, but they are all original LEGO Bricks."
I tried the same with 1x2 bricks, as they are generally much cheaper in rare colours than 2x4s, but I am not up to 63 yet. I think I have somewhere between 50 and 55.

Just imagine if you’d counted as unique all the shades of dark red and dark blue that have come off their respective production lines ...

I would have put my money on round plate 1x1 6141, as nearly ever city set and Lego game includes these. Checking on brickowl there are 73 colours of which 18 are transparent, 3 Chrome and 2 glow in the dark still leaves 50. Assuming you where you able to account for different releases like 30057. They are probably also the most produced piece in 12907 sets.

@ambr:
Are you going by what people are claiming to be selling, or what has been identified in set inventories? Bricklink only lists 59 “known” colors, of which 15 are transparent, three chrome, and two GitD. But they list 83 for sale, of which 20 are transparent, four are chrome, and two GitD. The problem with going by sale listings is that people misidentify colors all the time.

@PurpleDave, I can attest to Bricklink sellers not always knowing what colours they have. On a few occasions, I have received parts sellers thought were one colour when they were actually another.

@Zander:
Yeah, I've received at least three colors that were not dark-purple when I ordered dark-purple 2x4 bricks, including regular purple. One that was really annoying is when I paid through the nose to get tan 6x8 plates from multiple sellers and kept getting dark-tan ones. I only needed three of them for the trim line on my Routemaster!

The best one was when I ordered some trans-light blue 8x8 plates and, when someone sent me trans-medium blue instead, I got a full refund even though they were worth about the same amount. I had plenty of use for TMB plates as well, so bonus for me. I really did need at least one or two in TLB, though, so I started asking for photographic proof (and a lot of them confirmed that they had it listed wrong).

The weirdest is that I had a need for the click barrel hinges in old light grey, in all three styles. Two existed, and I threw the third on my Want List. I still get notifications _all_the_time_ that someone has finally listed them in old light-grey, even though they never made that part in light-grey until after 2004.

Loved this article! Thanks Huw.

Having finally got some time to look at my bricks, it turns out I have all the 1x2s (3004) except nougat (haven't received my NC Gardens yet) and Pink/Medium Green (both Belleville exclusives, and now on the wanted list). However, I don't understand the number "49" for colors available. Bricklink lists 52 known colors (including trans clear which exists with and without tube). Even if it's not included that's 51 not 49. Can you please clarify?

@kelloucq:
I slogged through both lists and did a bunch of color-matching. Here's what I found:

Brickset lists 52 different colors, but has two listings each for Bright Blueish Green, Dark Brown, and Sand Blue, for a true total of 49 colors.

Bricklink also lists 52 different colors, including Transparent Clear (not recognized by Bricklink), Sand Red, and Pink. Sand Red was only available in 10003, a bulk pack of Sand Red 1x2 bricks. Brickset doesn't have a set inventory stored locally, so it doesn't show up at all. Pink was only available in 5880 and 5890. Again, Brickset doesn't have local inventories stored for those sets, so that color doesn't show up either.

Further complicating things, Rebrickable lists _53_ colors, but that was a lot easier to track down. 50 of them are exact matches for the color names used on Bricklink. Two are Flesh or Nougat colors, depending on which site you use. The final color is Pastel Blue, which appears to have half of the Maersk Blue inventory (the other half is under Maersk Blue where you'd expect it).

So, 52 unique, identifiable colors if you include the Transparent Clear w/ post.