posted August 25, 2008 10:58 PM               

The Lego minifigure was first manufactured and packed into a LEGO set the morning of August 25, 1978. Children of all ages and Lego employees around the world today commemorated the milestone by kicking off Go Miniman Go!, a movement that aims to inspire generations of LEGO children to reconnect with the adventures their minifigures enabled them to live through creative, constructive Lego play.

In 1973, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, son of the company founder, challenged designers to add a new dimension of play to the Lego building experience, leading to the first Lego figures - a family created from a combination of Lego bricks and special elements to build people. A smaller figure, a simple head on an unmoving body, was introduced in 1975. Godtfred's son, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, introduced play themes to the Lego System of building toys, signaling a need for a more realistic, moving figure that had more role play ability for children. Sketch after sketch led to the design of nearly 50 different prototypes and crude models before company executives chose the contemporary minifigure. A patent was filed in 1977, and the first minifigures were manufactured and put into sets for the world to enjoy -- in time for the holiday season of 1978 -- in the Town, Space and Castle themes.

The very first minifigure was a police officer, followed by a fireman, a
nurse, astronauts, medieval knights, a gas station attendant and a
construction worker.

Various changes to the basic design followed, but the first to appear with a NASA logo and to be modeled after a real spacesuit came in 2003 with the limited release Lunar Lander (10029). The two included figures wore Apollo-style spacesuits, consistent with the set's NASA-approved theme.

Lego astronaut minifigures have flown on the space shuttle and in 2004, landed on Mars with the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

In the past three decades, over four billion minifigures -- astronauts included -- have been produced; that's more than 12 times the population of the United States. Every second, 3.9 minifigures are sold around the world.

posted July 01, 2010 08:30 AM               

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Originally posted by GoesTo11:
Aaaaand... I feel old.

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You ain't the only one. I remember those being the first minifigs to not only have faces, but movable arms.

I briefly toyed - pardon the pun - of building a Lego city, getting some of the sets I used to have from way back when and combining them with the newer sets that looked neat. It would have been a strange city, with the new minifigs, those with arms and faces and driving six-stud wide cars, mixing in with the faceless and handless, driving four-stud wide cars.

posted July 01, 2010 12:20 PM               

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Originally posted by Jay Chladek:
I think my Legos from childhood are still in storage, including a couple of the space sets from circa 1979-80. As such, I grew up with the space man figures and spent many hours playing with them

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I had most of the LEGO space sets from that era. My favorite thing was to mix them up and build "replicas" of actual spacecraft like Ranger, Viking, and Voyager... Or I'd just make up a ship as I built it.

posted July 04, 2010 05:42 PM               

We built our own house in the country just west of D.C. so I had plenty of real building blocks to make forts, dog houses and chicken coops.

After the moon kit Legos were now my favorite and I begged my parents for a new kit each time the chance arose.

When I saw the 487 Space Cruiser I had to get it. Till then, the shapes were very basic and building an airplane was near impossible, but that kit had a whole bunch of great new shapes and it kepy me busy a long time.

Since I was an only child in the country with ony a few families with kids my age nearby I plated with Legos, built models and drew a lot of spacecraft like my new hero Joe Johnston, the Star Wars designer.

In '78 and '79 Lego made a few more space kits and I bought them all and set up different layouts and vehicles. I did a BSG Land Ram using the new tracks and motors offered in set 404, which was my favorite Xmas present of '79.

Here's the kits in the catalogs, note the layouts: 1 | 2 | 3

Back in '99 I bought a huge collection of Lego space kits from '77 to '85. When I was young I really only got the pre '80 kits.

By 1980 I was 13 and by then I was good enough to build nice models, but they ended up taking too long. My dad had moved to California and I'd stay there for Xmas and the summer.

My interests also shifted from models and space toys to cars and Playboys. When I moved to California in '82, I was in Santa Barbara, the nicest place I've ever lived and I really want to move back there.

I designed a coffee table with a clear glass top and the 2x4 baseplate layout with all those first space kits. I used thin acrylic panels on the underside to keep the cats and Annie Frank, our ferret out of the spaceport.

I lost the pictures of it, but if I can get Lego Digital Designer working, I can do the layout and table in CAD and put it up for sale. I have enough sets to do a couple!