The first Halloween set
Posted by Huw,
What came first, the Halloween set or orange bricks?
Nowadays, with a bulging colour palette in our LEGO sets it's hard to imagine a time when you could count the available solid colours on two hands.
It wasn't until the late 1990's that green, brown, tan and dark grey bricks and plates started to become more prevalent, and although orange may have been used in a Dacta Duplo set in 1993, we had to wait until 1998 for the first orange System parts to appear.
The first set to contain them was 3047 Halloween Bucket, which was available in North America only. It introduced 3 different sized bricks, 2 plates and 6 slopes in orange, along with bricks printed with scary eyes and mouth, perfect for making two-dimensional pumpkins. You can view the set's inventory at BrickLink.
The following year Star Wars was introduced and along with it more orange parts, notably in 7130 Snowspeeder. However, they remained rare and highly sought after. At the time LEGO was starting to tune in to the desires of the community and as a result polybag set 3731 Pumpkin Pack, aka 'orange parts pack' was released in 2000.
It was sold at Shop at Home (as it was called back then), which finally made orange bricks accessible to all. It contained 87 parts, of which all but 9 were orange and was the first set that contained 2x3, 2x4 and 2x6 bricks in the colour.
In the years that followed more and more parts were introduced in orange, along with another bucket, 7836 Halloween in 2003, but seasonal Halloween sets did not become a regular fixture in the annual release schedule until 2010. Nowadays we take them, and orange parts, for granted.
So, what came first, the Halloween set or orange bricks? They both arrived at the same time...
This article was first published in October 2017.
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24 comments on this article
Well, you said it yourself. Technically DUPLO bricks are still bricks. So...
Anyway, great article! Throwback articles are the best!
Yep, I remember seeing 3731 online as a kid. All I could think of was "if only I had enough orange bricks to build that myself". Because this set wasn't quite "accessible to all"; it was only accessible to places Shop at Home shipped to. I got my first orange basic bricks in 7832 instead.
No orange bricks but they had a lot of Trans-Neon Orange parts, like in the Ice planet 2002 series (6879)
@fede0184 said:
"No orange bricks but they had a lot of Trans-Neon Orange parts, like in the Ice planet 2002 series ( 6879 )"
I think Duplo set 2660 from 1991 might be the first ever LEGO set to have any orange colored parts in it, although it's a fig, not a brick.
Perhaps you could even count the Fabuland set 140 from 1979 as the first, although I'm not entirely sure that fox figure would be considered as pure orange or more of a brownish orange.
Unironicly I wish Lego had less colors nowadays...
@ToysFromTheAttic said:
" @fede0184 said:
"No orange bricks but they had a lot of Trans-Neon Orange parts, like in the Ice planet 2002 series ( 6879 )"
I think Duplo set 2660 from 1991 might be the first ever LEGO set to have any orange colored parts in it, although it's a fig, not a brick.
Perhaps you could even count the Fabuland set 140 from 1979 as the first, although I'm not entirely sure that fox figure would be considered as pure orange or more of a brownish orange."
I think it's called Fabuland orange.
Wait... that doesn't help describe it at all.
@Binnekamp said:
"I think it's called Fabuland orange.
Wait... that doesn't help describe it at all."
Haha! Well, if it has orange in the name, I guess it still counts, doesn't it?
@lordofdragonss said:
"Unironicly I wish Lego had less colors nowadays..."
Said nobody ever.
@monkyby87 said:
" @lordofdragonss said:
"Unironicly I wish Lego had less colors nowadays..."
Said nobody ever. "
Well, @lordofdragonss just did. And I also agree. Especially with all the colorful filler pieces inside the models, it can be hard to make an alternate build nowadays (which some of us enjoy doing).
@monkyby87 said:
" @lordofdragonss said:
"Unironicly I wish Lego had less colors nowadays..."
Said nobody ever. "
Maybe nobody said it but the likes show they’re thinking it
If you combined two copies of 3731 you could make a much nicer 3D pumpkin. I don't see any evidence of this in the database, but I could find some pictures on google "LEGO pumpkin".
Edited: correct set number.
I remember the excitement within my LUG for the pumpkin, and that you could build a 3D version with the parts from at least two copies of the set. I never bought a copy myself, though.
@CCC:
Back in the mid 00’s, my LUG did a project for Kellogg’s Cereal City Museum (which has since gone out of business). One of the pieces we built was a 6’ tall Tony the Tiger statue, which may have been the largest orange LEGO model in the world at the time. Only one Bricklink store had sufficient stock for our needs, and the guy who was managing this model ended up with tons of leftover orange parts. When it came time to ballast our club track, a lot of 2x plates got buried underneath, just to use them up, and because they were technically free.
@CC said:
"If you combined two copies of 3731 you could make a much nicer 3D pumpkin. I don't see any evidence of this in the database, but I could find some pictures on google "LEGO pumpkin".
Edited: correct set number."
Yep, you could order a bundle of two with the set number K3731, and it has an entry on Rebrickable and BrickLink.
"The following year Star Wars was introduced and along with it more orange parts, notably in 7130 Snowspeeder. However, they remained rare and highly sought after."
Not much to note on the Snowspeeder, it's more gray than orange, they're just highlights. That same year also saw 7171 Mos Espa Podrace, which came with Sebulba's Podracer, with plenty more Orange in different shapes and sizes to show off.
@MCLegoboy said:
"That same year also saw 7171 Mos Espa Podrace, which came with Sebulba's Podracer, with plenty more Orange in different shapes and sizes to show off."
6 months or so after the Snowspeeder...
@Huw:
It wasn’t quite that long, at least by official street date. OT sets released in 1999, so no earlier than January 1st (although stores almost certainly put them on shelves a few weeks early). Ep1 sets had a strict street date of May 4, with the movie’s wide release in the US on the 19th.
I don't think the Duplo set 9090-1 had those orange pieces back in 1993. In the Bricklink description it says that the set changed its contents throughout the years it was available. And the Bricklink inventory is from 2009. It was a DACTA set, so quite a different release than a normal Duplo set.
@gaiathedj said:
"I don't think the Duplo set 9090-1 had those orange pieces back in 1993. In the Bricklink description it says that the set changed its contents throughout the years it was available. And the Bricklink inventory is from 2009. It was a DACTA set, so quite a different release than a normal Duplo set."
Or maybe it did (I honestly don't know). It just seems odd to me that a set like this had a new colour such a long time before an offical (non DACTA set) would include it. The instruction scan on Bricklink does appear to be a very early release of the set (as it uses the old Duplo figures unlike the set pictures) and it has orange pieces in the frame.
Now that I think about it DACTA is actually known to introduce new pieces before they would be included in official sets. So I could very well have assumed wrong here :)
@gaiathedj, we may never know, but I suspect you are right about them only appearing in a later version of the set.
There is no snot.
When orange bricks were an event in itself.
I remember being as wowed by those few orange bricks in the Snowspeeder as by the appearance of Yellow Spacemen back in 1982. They pretty much had to bring in orange for the flight suits, but wasn't the Snowspeeder Luke was in actually the one with dark grey markings, not orange?
I also remember the 'Pumpkin Packs' and being a little disappointed there weren't any 1-wide bricks in them. There was a build-and-take session at LEGOLand too, where you could make custom pumpkin faces to take home.
For a while ASDA in the UK had the huge Podracer set down to £20 (a quarter of the RRP), four of which gave me just enough orange to pull off the grand total of one saltbox train car in orange!
https://brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1218038
Looks like orange was introduced about the same time I was getting invested with Lego in the late 90s. I know I had a bunch of the Arctic and Construction sets from 2000, which has a lot of orange, and then it became a common secondary color in Bionicle in 2001. Didn't realize as a kid that it wasn't a common color prior to that. Also looks like one of the first figs to wear an orange jumpsuit was from Rock Raiders; just another reason to appreciate that theme!
@Joefish:
Yes, in the film, Luke’s Snowspeeder has darker grey accents on a lighter grey body, while the accents on other Snowspeeders was orange. However, the first four models had orange accents. The first to be released without any orange trim was from 7666. Other standalone versions include 75014, 75049, and 75259, plus it showed up in Advent Calendar 7958. 40333 is currently the only time they’ve paired an orange Snowspeeder with Luke’s grey one.