LEGO Space: A History of Tyranny
A couple of months ago I was surfing Lugnet, a Lego web community mostly dedicated to showcasing the personal works of builders. As a lifelong Lego aficionado, I’m always fascinated and amazed by the creations that some of the more dedicated builders out there construct, so looking at JPEGs of other people’s Lego creations is for me the equivalent of going to an art museum and wandering around with one of those ridiculous cassette player surrogate tour guides.
However, Lugnet also contains a catalog of all the Lego Space kits ever made, which is like porn to me having been obsessed with the earlier Space themes since childhood. As I shuffled through images, mouth agape and drool collecting on my desktop, I made an odd connection within the Lego Space universe that led me to conclude that it was a universe of hegemony and arbitrary authority. Now, a brief history of Lego Space is in order. The very first Space series was simply called “Space” and ran from 1978-1979. Like most other Legos at the time, the kits, spaceships and land vehicles in this case, were very rudimentary and minimalist. After “Space,” came the very first Lego “subseries” ever, Blacktron. Blacktron appeared in 1987 and the vehicles featured black trim and transparent yellow window pieces. These transparent pieces of varying colors became a signature part of Space Legos after that and each series has a unique combination of trim and window colors. My favorite series was “Futuron” which debuted later in 1987 and featured predominately white with some black trim, with blue and red transparent windows, antennae, visors on the figures, etc. Ahhh, that vibrant yet oh so gaudy color scheme of childhood.
These years, prior to 1989, were truly the halcyon days of Lego Space. For within the Lego Space universe in those days there was peace. No morality, good or evil, no conflict, no war, no factions, no greater cause, and no loyalties. All this changed with the introduction of the Space Police in 1989, Blue and Black trim with red transparent pieces. Wikipedia’s Lego Space page sums it up best:
In 1989, Lego made a storyline decision. Blacktron, previously operating in a moral void, were now declared the “bad guys” of Lego Space; opposing them and defending Futuron from them were the Space Police, a series of brave individuals whose spacecraft were black and blue with red transparent elements. (This would be a continuing theme of space, having “bad guy” races, “good guy” races and “civilian” races between them.)
While the Space Police were aesthetically badass, they were for all intents and purposes imperialists. The Blacktrons, who had just two years prior lived as freemen exploring the final frontier without ulterior motives, were now marketed as the “bad guys” of the Lego Space universe and the opponents of the Space Police, with at least one of the Space Police kits showing a Blacktron figure locked up on the front. In a way, the schism in the Lego universe was created by the Space Police whose policing was previously unnecessary.
Go directly to jail!
I myself was born in 1987, so the only access I had to these series were from my very first bag of Lego pieces given to me by my uncle when I was four years old (in 1991). However, second series of the Blacktrons and Space Police were introduced in 1991 and 1992 respectively so these series were what I would buy with my meager five-year-old allowance and thus the first Space series I was conceptually familiar with. The second edition Blacktrons featured a similar color scheme but with chartreuse-tinted windows. The second edition Space Police featured predominantly gray and black trim with some red, and green window pieces. I apologize for the excessive description of the color schemes but what can I say? I love pretty colors and see-through things, you put them together and I may as well be five years old again.
Anyway, in the second edition, the cops and robbers motif of the Blacktrons and Space Police continued. The names of the individual kits in Space Police II are notable: Starion Patrol, Sonar Security, Galactic Mediator. Clearly newspeak terms to cover up the fact that these self-appointed Space Police are persecuting the Blacktrons on the pretense of maintaining law and order in Futuron (the Space homeworld). This is apparent when contrasted with the names of a couple other kits: Solar Snooper and Rebel Hunter. Epsionage is justified as a means to combat the Blacktron “rebels”. To conjecture, I believe that the Space Police hegemony is parallel to the real-life State. A metahistorical perspective informs us that prior to the establishment of the Space Police, the Blacktrons coexisted peacefully with the Futurians on Futoron and a narrative approach to these series was unnecessary. Being despotic opportunists, a group of thugs calling themselves the Space Police decided to build armed ships and jails and set out to imprison the “bad guys” under the guise of providing a service. Most likely this “service” was provided in exchange for monetary compensation or privilege thus allowing the Space Police to expand and replace the previously socialized (in the 19th century sense of the word) institutions of Futuron with their own, impersonal, bureaucracy. After a generation, the neutral Futuron people (later the M-Trons) had simply forgotten their old way of life and assumed the legitimacy of the government—errrr—I mean Space Police authority. They assumed that the Blacktrons were “rebels” who had set out to destroy their society and that they *needed* the Space Police to protect them and if this sense of “security” required some “snooping” into their private lives, well that was justified. They had become completely dependent on the Space Police for all of their “security” needs and for “mediating” disputes between individuals. Does this sound familiar? The Space Police = The State, and if you don’t want to be a part of mainstream Futuron society, a well-oiled cog in the machine, then you are a Blacktron (a la the anarchist black flag?), a radical who must be put in Space Jail.
It all seemed perfectly innocent at the time, but in retrospect these Legos (and probably a lot of other toys I played with) carried all of these implicit assumptions about the world we live in. Don’t resist authority, the powers that be are there to protect you, your freedom is restricted for your own good, and of course the greatest myth of all: without the State there is chaos. You NEED the State to blow up and/or jail your arbitrarily defined enemies! You NEED the State to protect you! And of course there is no context in which the “good” and “bad” labels are assigned. The Blacktrons were called bad simply because the Space Police didn’t like them, the Space Police were called good simply because they were the “police”. And the “Futuron” people? Well they’re considered neutral even though they’re being robbed (i.e. “taxed”) to fund this senseless campaign of violence. Fucking bullshit, man!!
P.S.
Space Police III is coming out soon! Very badass! It’s like a return to the aesthetics of Space Police I but with much sleeker designs. No Blacktron III though 
I guess they ended up loving Big Brother after all.
