New LEGO Ideas sets offer more brick-built nostalgia – but not like we’ve seen before

15/08/202415/08/2024 Rachael Davies 421 Views 0 Comments

The LEGO Ideas team is leaning into nostalgia, which is nothing new to the LEGO Group – but it does highlight a new way of thinking for the company.

Returning to LEGO sets from the past is a tried and tested technique for the LEGO Group – and with good reason. For a company that’s had a strong and loyal fanbase for years and even decades for some, there’s a huge amount to fall back on. Having celebrated its 90th anniversary in 2022, recent years have seen the company embracing the fact that some of its earliest young fans of LEGO are now adults and have their own budget to spend – making nostalgic sets on classic themes a fun and likely lucrative pursuit.

Now, with the two winners of a LEGO Ideas competition based around IPs from the ’80s, the LEGO Group is once again tapping into blasts from the past but, instead of focusing on classic LEGO themes and sets, it’s gone straight to the source and asked fan designers what non-LEGO-related nostalgic memories might make for good sets.

We’ve taken a look at how nostalgic LEGO sets have grown and evolved over the years – and how it’s led to two LEGO Ideas sets that capitalise on people’s sentiments about the past.

Trips down brick-built memory lane

The LEGO Group’s focus on nostalgia in recent years has resulted in sets like 10332 Medieval Town Square and 10305 Lion Knight’s Castle, both harking back to LEGO Castle, one of the LEGO Group’s most popular classic themes, while also offering something new to expand that brick-built world of knights and castles. In other cases, like 10320 Eldorado Fortress and 40601 Majisto’s Magical Workshop, the older sets are recreated virtually one-to-one, offering a second chance to return to an older, beloved build.

Of course, it’s not as simple as bringing back something from the past and slapping a new price tag on it. There’s a fine art to identifying what areas of the past will resonate with people, as noted by LEGO designer Henrik Rubin Saaby, who worked on 10332 Medieval Town Square and has been involved with other LEGO themes from start to finish.

“It’s important that it’s something that people can recognise from the past, either from old LEGO sets but also from their own pasts,” he told us in an interview published back in February. “You can feel that there is the same sort of vibe to it and then, of course, it should still have the same feeling as those older sets.”

Building something new out of something old

In 2024, another way that the LEGO Group played with the idea of nostalgia is by returning to LEGO Space, using the same classic Space branding and logo but bringing out a number of entirely new LEGO sets. That included sets that wouldn’t have looked out of place a couple of decades ago in LEGO Technic and City, for example, but also expanded to include fresh new creations, such as LEGO Art 31212 The Milky Way Galaxy and fantastical space-themed builds in LEGO DREAMZzz.

The LEGO Space collection of 2024 highlights how nostalgia doesn’t just need to mean recreating old favourites but can be found through inspiration from older LEGO sets and themes. In 71046 Series 26 Space, there were references to LEGO classic Space lore, like Ice Planet and Blacktron, but they were reimagined with new designs and characters. Part of that was practical (not having access to trans-neon orange, for example; however, it also highlights the importance of keeping even nostalgic design fresh.

LEGO designer Chris Perron, who worked on the Ice Planet Explorer’s helmet in 71046 Series 26 Space, touched on this very point while discussing the minifigure on Instagram, writing: “My main goal when working on this helmet and figuring out the story [was] making something that isn’t replacing the old figures but rather fits alongside them as a new unit. I like to imagine this heavily-armoured helmet with the narrow eye slit (compared to the original helmet) is made for more extreme cold and dangerous conditions.”

His logic demonstrates how even these long-running themes are still growing and evolving as the LEGO Group returns to them once again.

LEGO Ideas is doing something different

In the case of the two upcoming LEGO Ideas sets, we’re seeing slightly different happening. Instead of returning to past LEGO sets or themes, the LEGO Ideas team has gone straight to the source, in a way, asking fan builders to suggest and design around IPs themselves. The fact that the 1980s was chosen as a time period suggests that the LEGO Group is specifically looking to appeal to younger Generation X and older millennials – those who grew up in the ’80s – with these sets.

The LEGO Group hasn’t made it secret that adults continue to be a priority for the company as a demographic, alongside children of course. Indeed, the LEGO Group’s CEO just recently touched on how the adult LEGO market is changing, underlining how trying out these different ways of using nostalgia to appeal to people remains so important.

That’s not to say that no one else will be interested in these sets; both Gremlins and The Goonies are still iconic franchises that kids today know and love. However, it’s highly likely that this LEGO Ideas competition was designed from the start to find and develop sets that would tug on those nostalgic heartstrings in the way that has proven so successful for the LEGO Group in the past.

While the LEGO Group has paid homage to non-LEGO legacies before (2023 was a big year for LEGO Disney with celebrating 100 years of the iconic brand), it’s interesting to see the LEGO Ideas being the home for these ’80s-inspired builds. LEGO Ideas is, by its very nature, fan-driven, demonstrating the point still further that these sets are designed to recapture what fans themselves want to return to.

All in all, it’s another cornerstone for brick-built nostalgia and an interesting new direction for this type of LEGO set. With the LEGO Castle and Space throwbacks generally going down a treat with fans, here’s hoping the duo of LEGO Ideas sets can do the same.

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Rachael Davies

I write about all the very best fandoms – and that means LEGO, of course. Spending so much time looking at and talking about LEGO sets is dangerous for my bank balance, but the LEGO shelves are thriving. You win some, you lose some.