Is it just me, or is Orange and Purple not represented as much as the

[Iysk]

other colors?" Title got cut off...

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Original Post:

Err, maybe Lime too, but I'm primary talking about the ROYGBIV + B&W + Brown + Gray. I dunno, it just seems that it's shafted a bit. I'm assuming that the primary colors (light = RGB / pigments = RYB) and neutrals work better overall. Why is this? have to do with them being more 'auxiliary', something not normally used except for wallpaper, clothing, etc, or that they may be too intense. You don't see too many purple or orange cars...

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm just coming out of the dark ages (which I assume is a break from Legos, otherwise I'm use this terminology wrong).

I think I answered my own question while typing this but I'm interested in what others think.

EDIT #2: ROYGBIV = Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo (I think of dark blue for this), and purple, Black & White = B&W.

Edited January 23, 2011 by Iysk

[Siegfried]

I believe it's due to the cost of the colours.

[Henchmen4Hire]

I don't know what like 10 of those words mean, but I'm always happy to hear more support for orange and purple!

[Jargo]

Briefly:

As light goes in theatre, purple is associated with mental instability and green with physical illness.

In general terms Purple is associated with wealth or luxury. Excesses. Power. Also madness and effeminacy.

Orange is a colour of submission. It can also be a colour of passion. Or danger.

Lime is a warning colour. Acidic. Danger.

All three are associated with negative connotations in some way. They're colours that usually get watered down to pastels or darkened so they aren't garish. People have an inate distrust of these colours owing to either psychological conditioning through life experience and absorbed social prejudice or primal instinct. Many poisonous flora and fauna have lime/orange/purple colours.

Used sparingly, all three colours can be very effective and striking in contrast to more muted or contrasting colours. Though in large blocks they seem strange and alien. Overwhelming.

They're difficult colours to use and place.

[Henchmen4Hire]

Excellent explanation, though pretty ridiculous if that's really why those bricks aren't made so much.

Thank Mitra that Megabloks makes crazy purple Halo vehicles so I can get my purple fix!

Madness and effeminacy, that's me!

...I should really stop sharing these things xD

Edited January 23, 2011 by DrNightmare

[Ralph_S]

I have no notion of the significance or psychology attached to colours, but if I look at the world around me, I don't see all that much orange and purple or lime. So, are they underrepresented in LEGO? I don't think so. They are fine as accent colours, but I reckon few builders require large quantities of these colours to use them as the predominant colour in their MOCs.

I do like to use some of the rarer colours to build cars with. I have a lime green Lamborghini Miura and an orange Porsche 911 and there are a few other LEGO car builders out there who may use orange or lime as the main colour for some of their MOCs, but I think we may be exceptions. On these cars, of course, the colours are specifically chosen to make the car stand out.

Cheers,

Ralph

[AndyC]

If you go back just a little over a year ago you could barely move for orange sets, what with all the coastguards, garage sets and even an orange recycling truck still on the shelves. If anything, orange seemed rather over-represented.

The problem with purple, I believe, is that it is difficult to produce a consistent colour, making it difficult and expensive to produce large amounts of purple parts without models looking horribly patchy. As a result it tends to be avoided except where absolutely necessary, such as in the Toy Story Zurg model.

[Jargo]

Personally I love Purple and orange Lego. Lime not so much but in certain instances it really adds impact. I'm planning on changing my city breakdown recovery vehicles from orange to lime and making all my city maintainance vehicles orange. I've been assembling a collection of purple parts for a city shop and masses of orange to build the interior walls of my supervillain secret underground base. Which will be orange, trans orange, trans neon orange, black and various silvers.

I think it would be interesting to have a colours poll to see which come out as favourites. allow for multiple choices and have an 'all colours' option but just see where the balance lies between primary, secondary and tertiary colours.

[brickbuilder]

Well, all the Mars Mission sets (which I used to collect) had a lot of orange. But you're right, purple is pretty rare.

[Brickdoctor]

It's simple:

As Siegfried said, they cost more to make.

[Cpt Smileyface]

While cost is probably part of it, I don't think it's everything. Lego models are mostly things like buildings and vehicles. Look at the real world: how often do you see a purple building or a lime green car? Not too often. We do see greens and orange cars in themes like racers, which is exactly where we see cars like that in real life. I do wish they'd use colors like that as accent colors in more sets, though.

[Iysk]

Is it really the cost? I didn't think some dye/pigment/ink (not sure what they use) would cost so much. Only brought this up because of Toy's Story, got Buzz's Spaceship and it was the first time I ever got purple.

As I recall, I did think about this, seeing how rare they are in life. But not in organics (flowers, fruits), sucks that they aren't represented in that way.

Also, thanks for that psyche mention. Interesting, I though about Purple/Violet being effeminate, but the rest was unknown to me.

[Brickdoctor]

Is it really the cost? I didn't think some dye/pigment/ink (not sure what they use) would cost so much. Only brought this up because of Toy's Story, got Buzz's Spaceship and it was the first time I ever got purple.

I'm not sure about orange and lime, but I know for sure that purple is the hardest color to manufacture consistently.

[brickmack]

Well orange has been shown alot in the last few years (coast guard stuff, a few city vehicles, and some parts of the power miners stuff, plus occasionally in other sets), lime has been a bit (power miners, racers a little bit, and a few other random uses in other sets), but purple is very rare. The only set I have with purple in it is the Smash & Grab set from SP3. Perhaps purple is difficult to make, like it requires certain temperatures to mould? That's my only idea.

[davee123]

If I remember correctly, I recall Jamie Berard saying that RED was the most expensive color, actually. As has been said, I'm pretty sure it's NOT the cost that's the issue-- it's the color consistency of purple.

But even if they perfect the method, I still don't think purple will be used all that much. It's just not a commonly seen color in real life. How many purple cars do you see compared to other colors? It's just generally a rare color, so I don't expect it'll be seen terribly much in LEGO, even if they figure out how to do a better job with it.

DaveE

[Brickdoctor]

If I remember correctly, I recall Jamie Berard saying that RED was the most expensive color, actually. As has been said, I'm pretty sure it's NOT the cost that's the issue-- it's the color consistency of purple.

Yes, I remember that too. But purple is the hardest to make consistently. I think the raw material going into red is more expensive initially, but it takes more work to make purple. Red you can just do it over and over and over without problems.

[Iysk]

Interesting, so it's difficult? That explains why PAB has none. Guess if I need purple, I'll have to get Zerg or some Ninjago sets.

Interesting, so it's difficult? That explains why PAB has none. Guess if I need purple, I'll have to get Zerg or some Ninjago sets.

[ziljin]

Interesting, so it's difficult? That explains why PAB has none. Guess if I need purple, I'll have to get Zerg or some Ninjago sets.

Zerg is probably better. You barely get any purplepeices in Ninjago sets. Barely any pieces in general.

Edited January 24, 2011 by lego40k

[TenorPenny]

The Harry Potter Night Bus is coming out later this year, yes? Lots of purple there. Will be interesting to see the price.

[davee123]

I think the raw material going into red is more expensive initially, but it takes more work to make purple. Red you can just do it over and over and over without problems.

My interpretation was that the red material costs are the highest, and purple is just difficult and/or impossible to get consistently within a given mold. Hence, it may take more fine tuning to set up the mold for a purple element, or it simply may not be possible to set up a given mold in purple without getting color variation. But admittedly, the quote I remember was merely that red was "the most expensive", which could mean the whole process, or simply the material costs. Hard to say.

My guess would be that for larger elements, purple would be worse. IE, if you've got a small element, there's less room for color variation, whereas large elements are more likely to contain mistakes. So, a 1x1 purple brick is probably fine, but a 2x10 purple brick is likely to have color problems. That'd be my guess anyway.

DaveE

[Arigomi]

Color consistency has little to do with element size. If the elements come out patchy, it just means that the batch needs more mixing so that the pigment is evenly distributed.

Color consistency refers to how well you can reproduce a certain color from one batch to the next. The goal is to have a purple brick from one batch look like a purple brick from another batch.

Base colors like red, yellow, and blue are made using stock pigment. Thus, one batch of red bricks with look like another batch of red bricks. Purple and other specialty colors have to be mixed from stock pigments into the ABS. Purple tends to appear in sets as small elements because you can produce a lot of purple elements from a single batch of purple ABS. This helps to reduce the number of purple ABS batches that have to be mixed and checked for color consistency.

[fred67]

Very interesting...

Both:

In general terms Purple is associated with wealth or luxury. Excesses. Power. Also madness and effeminacy.

and

Purple tends to appear in sets as small elements because you can produce a lot of purple elements from a single batch of purple ABS. This helps to reduce the number of purple ABS batches that have to be mixed and checked for color consistency.

are perfectly exemplified in Diagon Alley, where Borgen and Burkes has a sprinkling of 1x1 round tiles.

[Mirandir]

I think we should be lucky we're getting purple at all. I do recall that not long ago LEGO said they would stop making purple parts period! Just because they were unable to get a consistant color tone.

But I guess they've fixed the issue as we are seeing purple parts and the parts I have are pretty much identical in color.

Edited January 25, 2011 by Mirandir

[Aanchir]

I think we should be lucky we're getting purple at all. I do recall that not long ago LEGO said they would stop making purple parts period! Just because they were unable to get a consistant color tone.

But I guess they've fixed the issue as we are seeing purple parts and the parts I have are pretty much identical in color.

As I heard it, this was a misstatement. What LEGO was trying to say was that there would be no more purple sets-- that is to say, some sets would have purple parts, but there would be nothing to the extent of the Knight Bus or the 2004 Danju set from Knights' Kingdom.

Indeed, the "news" about purple parts disappearing came from the 2008 Brickfair event, and at the 2009 one I made a point of asking about this (since by that time the Indiana Jones Cairo set had appeared with a purple awning, news of the Toy Story theme had been leaked, and people had assumed that either LEGO had gone back on their word or had yet to follow through with purple's "retirement").

It's worth noting that purple sets since then have used far fewer purple parts. The Smash 'n' Grab probably serves as an example of the most purple we can expect to see in any one set.

As for orange, I don't see how it's very rare in retrospect. The Coast Guard theme used it prolifically, as have several other City sets. It's obviously not as common as red, blue, white, grey, black, or yellow, but then again neither are lime green, sand green, sand blue, medium blue, bright green, or pink. There's nothing to imply that LEGO is using it particularly sparingly compared to these colors.

[Nabii]

The colour guys at LEGO told me LEGO purple is no harder to get consistent then any other colour, but the human eye is used to Earths atmosphere which tints everything blue and apparently this gives us excellent vision for differentiating purples. Differences in red or grey LEGO bricks are therefore hard to see, purple turned out to be very easy to see, and the bricks all being right next to each other caused the big problem with the Knightbus.

So yes currently the Smash n Grab spacecraft is about as purple as LEGO sets can be, (though to help negate the problems caused by human eyesight I've been told the purple colour is much more consistent now then it was before). I pushed the limits by putting several purple elements next to each other in Smash n Grab, but with black bricks between most of them it wasn't considered a major issue.

I love LEGO purple - I used it in Exo-Force and Space Police and I'll use it whenever I can in future!