LEGO: Classic Space

 

Above is a picture of what I referred to in my previous post in this series and shows a number of completed sets of the Space LEGO series, which is what I grew up with as a child. When the first sets of these came out in the late 70's, man had already stepped on the moon but the reusable space shuttle was still a number of years away from reality. Talk in all the magazine of the time was of future colonies on the moon and even on other planets such as Mars. LEGO decided to capitalize on that by coming up with the Space LEGO series.

After doing some initial research, I discovered a website www.bricklink.com that is geared towards people like me, who have never really let go of LEGOs. On one of it's many pages, they have one dedicated towards all the sets produced so one can get an idea of what the scope is if collecting is the goal. While I'm not sure collecting will be my goal as I don't have the room to required to store these things, it did provide some scale and definition for what I am attempting to undertake.

According to BrickLink, LEGO made 343 space themed sets of LEGO and this is accounting movie franchise themes like Star Wars sets of which 1012 more sets were made. In the space theme sets, there are 20 subcategories but the one I am most interested in is called the "Classic Space" series which is what you see above and what my parents got me as a child. According to the website, there are 96 sets that fall into that series. Just guessing, I likely only had maybe two or three dozen total of those sets and it is unclear to me how many still remain in the box of LEGOs I showed on my previous post in the series. I know four of my sets are shown above, possible five just going off memory alone. The build instructions for the most part have been lost with time. I have a small handful of them that are in rough shape that have survived the nearly five decades of intervening time. 

Fortunately, BrickLink has me covered as I can download the build instructions for all 96 sets along with handy brick inventory sheets for each set so I can actually sort through the LEGOs inventory style, and sort off all the bricks that should be in each set before building them. But before I get to that part of this project, I think I will make a preliminary sort by going through the box and trying to separate out most of the Space themed LEGO just using my memory alone. Looking at the picture above, it shouldn't be too hard as back them, the sets were in only a few colors, mainly blue, gray along with some white and black pieces. If I can get them separated out, I can likely fine the pieces needed to complete a set much easier using the BrickLink inventory sheets that I will print off.