If you happened to drop by a Build a Mini station in a LEGO® Store during the run up to Christmas in 2025, you may well have found the parts for a Golden Santa Claus. If you were lucky, the staff had already assembled them for you. If you have been following some of the long-running minifigure play sets, you have probably seen the tendency of golden minifigures to turn up in commemorative sets during anniversary years, in both Ninjago (10 years, 2022) and Harry Potter sets (20 years,2021).
While golden Santa appears very similar to the current Santa minifigure, which debuted in 2024, he didn’t always look so fine. Read on to find out more.
The Characters in LEGO DREAMZZz travel from Brooklyn, to Fantasy worlds, to Villages to castle, to worlds made entirely out of Candy. But this is not the first time that being able to travel between different LEGO Themes has been used as a framing device for a LEGO narrative. Last time, we looked at the 6000 IDEAs book and followed the adventures of Mary and Bill as they traveled from Town to Space to Castle.
Today, we meet Max Timebuster, a miscreant who jumps between pages of the LEGO Catalog, gathering bits and pieces as he goes.
Joins us for a healthy bit of 90s nostalgia as we continue our survey of ways that LEGO Media have encouraged creative play by having characters Cross the Themes
This year’s City Space subtheme brings us a huge variety of sets, from the small one man flyer, to small to medium space ships, to a fully fledged base and a space station. These sets are united through a common colour scheme and the use of modules used in various sets, incorporating the docking linkage element and appear throughout the City, Friends and Technic space themed sets.
When we compare the variety of sets in the LEGO City Space (2024) range, it compares pretty favourably with Vintage space ranges as Classic Space, Ice Planet and Exploriens: We have a small flyer, space ships of various sizes, as well as both small and large rovers, and a large, planet-bound base. The Modular Space Station could be considered to be the equivalent of a base or a larger spaceship.
It is one thing, however, to have an equivalent product range, but how do they compare with sets from the olden days? Today I thought we might take a look at a couple of ‘Large Rover’ sets with a few decades between them: The City Space range is blessed with the 60432 Command Rover and Crane Loader and I thought it might be interesting to compare it with one of the largest rovers ever: 9689 M-Tron Mega Core Magnetizer. If nothing else, it gave me an excuse to unpack this 503 piece bohemoth from 1990. It was the largest set in the M-Tron range. Unlike virtually every other Space range released over the years, M-Tron lacked a fixed base. To make up for this intrinsic defect, the Mega Core Magnetizer travelled the planet’s surface, carrying cargo, dispatching buggies and flyers, and embarking on a world of exploration and logistical management.
If you have been following the Rambling Brick for a while, you might know I have a penchant for nostalgia. If you have seen my Instagram stories looking at market finds, perhaps it becomes more obvious that 80s and 90s LEGO fascinates me now more than it did at the time. Perhaps I am seeking something more than a nostalgia fuelled dopamine kick: also looking for a feeling of relaxed contemplation while living in an increasingly complicated world. During that period of LEGO History, the typical LEGO sets maintained a degree of simplicity while still being able to produce some substantial models with relatively few elements.
