I used to play with them when I was young about 10.

Anyone misses them?

...childhood memories are great inspiration for moc's, especially space re-launches.

*raises hand*

I still got them but with many missing parts due to playtime as a child.

I got a few Futurons, a few Blacktron IIs, a few Space Police IIs, a few M-Trons and a Spyrius. All disassembled.

My favorite was Space Police II. I went through and re-bought many of the sets after I got my first real job, and for a while I had shelf after shelf of them on display. LEGO and I had a falling out when all of the sets started having non-human adversaries. Aliens and skeletons and mythical monsters are neat, but I liked the idea that there were different space factions, like Blacktron and M-Tron, rather than a unified humanity.

i miss these as well. My favourites were m-tron and blacktron. i guess this is what moc are for as i doubt lego will bring back any of those factions.

I miss those particular space sub-themes too! Some of mine are still put together, and I'm on a mission this summer to rebuild those that are not (Blacktron, Space Police I, and M-tron).

You can build MOCs around those themes like I do. Blacktron and Space Police are still very much alive for me.

I was already in my dark ages when these space themes were in production, but I have a similar feeling for Classic Space.

You can of course still get these sets second hand or even MISB if you're willing to pay a lot.

I got the first Space Police and the great black and yellow blacktron when I was a kid. Loved them. I also really liked the M-tron sets. The magnets were cool.

At a toy show in Pittsburgh a couple years back someone had the 6895 Spy-Trak 1 set for $10. I swooped it up. I always liked the classic Blacktron. I would pretend the chest was Darth Vader.

I made a Classic Vader

I made a Classic Vader

Haha, I made him like that when i was a kid. But only with one of those knight helmets and an oxygen tank.

I feel your pain OP but like others said, MOCs can keep the love alive. I'm slowly acquiring parts again and replacing old broken ones to begin MOCing up more Blacktron love.

All the space sets from that late 80s to early 90s block of time are my absolute favorite memories of LEGO, especially Blacktron/M-Tron/Ice Planet and while I'm loving the newer series like Mars Mission and Alien Conquest, I definitely will spend most of my MOCing time creating new Blacktron stuff for now.

I wouldn't rule out the return either - it feels like sometimes they are teasing us for certain sets when they do things like slap Blacktron icons on the uniforms of Rench from SP3 or the Space Villain minifig from Series 3. Who knows what lies ahead for us Spacers. I just wish they wouldn't put Space on hiatus as much. Star Wars completely eclipsed it for a few years and it really feels like they're still feeling their way around how to really make Space a solidified theme.

I love all the old Blacktron I and Space Police I sets. But I think Space Police III has been a good line too. But it would have been a much better idea to bring Blacktron back, instead of those alien criminals. I've collected a lot of those space villain mini figures to build a Blacktron III line later on. When I saw the first pics of the Alien Conquest line, I was really disapointed. I like the new minifigs, but I'm not the biggest fan of those new color schemes and this new style. I'm not sure what kind of line I would do, if I was a Lego designer.

Honestly, I think LEGO should take Space along the lines of what they do with City. City IMO is the most well setup theme they have. While you have the overarching City brand, they have then split up and created sub-factions that all can integrate with each other. Police, Fire, Transport, etc. If you applied this to Space, you have the overarching theme and then you can easily continue to support and generate new waves for all the sub factions. Space Police as the protection, while you have some new civvie sub-factions or refresh old ones which then square off against Blacktron/Spyrius and whatever other new villains emerge like the Black Hole gang.

It would let them continually add to the Space theme w/o feeling like they have to devote an entire year/two year rotation to one particular faction and can just keep adding as they develop across the board. Just my thoughts on it though.

And I agree - SPIII was great, but the "throwback" uniforms on characters like Rench just made me miss Blacktron all the more, even if I really do like the Black Hole gang. Brick Daddy's Limo is pretty kickass haha ;)

I was already in my dark ages when these space themes were in production, but I have a similar feeling for Classic Space.

Same here!

You can of course still get these sets second hand or even MISB if you're willing to pay a lot.

Alas, it's just not an option for me...

Honestly, I think LEGO should take Space along the lines of what they do with City. City IMO is the most well setup theme they have. While you have the overarching City brand, they have then split up and created sub-factions that all can integrate with each other. Police, Fire, Transport, etc. If you applied this to Space, you have the overarching theme and then you can easily continue to support and generate new waves for all the sub factions. Space Police as the protection, while you have some new civvie sub-factions or refresh old ones which then square off against Blacktron/Spyrius and whatever other new villains emerge like the Black Hole gang.

It would let them continually add to the Space theme w/o feeling like they have to devote an entire year/two year rotation to one particular faction and can just keep adding as they develop across the board. Just my thoughts on it though.

And I agree - SPIII was great, but the "throwback" uniforms on characters like Rench just made me miss Blacktron all the more, even if I really do like the Black Hole gang. Brick Daddy's Limo is pretty kickass haha ;)

The problem with doing Space the way LEGO does City is that nowadays single-faction themes are just a no-no. Yes, there are different sub-themes to City, most of which don't include any other sub-themes in their sets. However, in the Police sub-theme it's long been the standard that you don't have sets that have crooks and no police officers to pursue them. Any theme that deals with conflict between opposing factions has to have both factions in all sets (besides, of course, impulse sets which tend to include only one minifigure at most). And civilian factions probably wouldn't exist independent of "good-vs.-evil" factions, since most sci-fi stories people are familiar with tend to have a strong focus on space warfare or at least these sorts of good-vs.-evil conflicts.

The old Space theme that dealt with interaction between factions was certainly intriguing. But unfortunately, it lacked one thing Space Police III had: immediate, out-of-the-box play. Besides the Space Police sets which tended to have one Blacktron minifigure for each prison pod, all the sets included only a single faction. This means that you can't role-play a conflict between the two factions unless you've bought more than one set. And unfortunately, people aren't as likely to buy a second set unless they've already had fun playing with the first.

My own personal hope for Space Police III was a new "sub-theme" of it similar to Agents 2.0 which would deal with the Blacktron faction. Some of my brainstorms for this theme can be seen here, here, and here.

Overall, I missed most of the classic Space themes. I caught the tail end of Space Police II, Ice Planet, and Spyrius as a kid, and Spyrius in particular has a special place in my heart with its classic flying-saucer- and robot-based fleet. However, I have a deep-seated respect for Blacktron as the quintessential Space villain faction, and the most iconic rival of Space Police. I do not expect a return of the Blacktron theme anytime soon (probably not unless Space Police, Classic Space, or Futuron makes a re-appearance in some form), but I'm glad that through Rench and the Space Villain collectible minifigure LEGO has acknowledged the faction's importance to AFOLs and to the history of LEGO Space.

I love all the old Blacktron I and Space Police I sets. But I think Space Police III has been a good line too. But it would have been a much better idea to bring Blacktron back, instead of those alien criminals. I've collected a lot of those space villain mini figures to build a Blacktron III line later on.

I thought I already posted in this topic without knowing!

I got out of the LEGO thing by the time Ice Planet and Spyrius came around, but I loved the original Blacktron and Space Police. Blacktron was just SUCH a cool departure from everything that had come before it. It looked like Knight Rider (which was also a childhood favorite) in space. The nods to Blacktron in the aliens of SP3 were a major part of my emerging from my two-decade long dark age.

Honestly, I think LEGO should take Space along the lines of what they do with City. ... Police, Fire, Transport, etc. If you applied this to Space, you have the overarching theme and then you can easily continue to support and generate new waves for all the sub factions. Space Police as the protection, while you have some new civvie sub-factions or refresh old ones which then square off against Blacktron/Spyrius and whatever other new villains emerge like the Black Hole gang.

It would let them continually add to the Space theme w/o feeling like they have to devote an entire year/two year rotation to one particular faction and can just keep adding as they develop across the board.

Yes, that's exactly what I've thought for several years now. And they should make it really simple by just branding the sets "Space City" year in, year out. They don't re-brand City every year. A Space City line means it wouldn't be limited to just violence-oriented sets, there would be explorers like the Ice Planet team, Space Police, a Space Hospital, a Space Hotel, Blacktron spies, another wave of Space Police, Space Miners, Space Traders, another wave of Space Police...

I think TLG are doing fine. What I would like to see one day is more of the old themes to be remade in a spin-off kind of way with fresher designs and a different story yet providing good tools to MoC and adapt the new sets to the old themes. Like it has happened Life on Mars, Space police and UFO.

Edited May 5, 201113 yr by vexorian

I understand the counterpoint Annchir, but I believe if they were following the City mold that concern would be moot. If you have Space following the lines of City, you can simply adjust the sub themes to not be "supportive" sub factions as much as you can actually release 2 opposing sub-factions or more per year. Every year we tend to see new releases in each of the City subthemes, which all generally play nice together but IMO, Space and Castle have always been interesting because they are inherently sporting factions who are at each other's throats. This would play in very well with turning Space to what City does. SP becomes the protection subfaction while you see the Blacktron faction also getting new releases - with how TLG tends to develop small to big sets, it wouldn't be difficult to purchase 2 opposing sets for great out of the box play for kids/parents or collecting for AFOLs.

To use an example to help further clarify my point, let's say we took some older set examples - if Space was themed like the above suggests, you could easily have had the Space Police II Sonar Security releasing alongside M-Tron's Vector Detector, opposed by a release of say Blacktron's Tri-Wheeled Tyrax and Spyrius's Saucer Scout. It would mirror the way LEGO drops new sets every year in multiple factions for City. All of the above sets aren't pricy and even if you only picked two, you would still be getting out of the box play if you wanted to kick off an interstellar war ;)

And even if we wanted to mirror their desire to release a villain/opposing force in each set, throwing in a minifig/small vehicle for each set to help provide more fodder isn't entirely out of the question either. Sonar Security releasing with a Blacktron Scout or Tri-Wheeled Tyrax coming with an SP II officer on a Starion Patrol craft...there's lots of ways to do it! :D I just don't want to see Space float in and out like it has been - I blame Star Wars for that though >.>

Edited May 6, 201113 yr by Crackseed

Hello!

Yes, I miss them, too.

When I came in the right age for real playing with sets and realising what they are, Classic Space had already been over, some rests of Futurons were still available, but a new theme with fancy neon green glasses was then available.

So I grew up with M:Tron, Blacktron II and Ice Planet.

Cheers,

~ Christopher

Personally I haven't given up hope that Blacktron III is coming. First there's the little hints they've dropped with the collectible mini-fig and one of the aliens in the SP III set. Those kinds of hints aren't unusual for Lego to drop well in advance. I think it was well over a year ago that they had the Captain Jack figure hidden in with their Prince of Persia display at a toy convention and now we've got PotC.

I think they probably floated the idea of bringing back Blacktron sometime around when they started developing Space Police III. Remember though that they set their lineups at least a year in advance; they could very well be putting the finishing touches on Blacktron III for 2012 and we wouldn't know about it yet. I'm not entirely sure of the sales success or failure of Space Police III but I can't imagine that it was so bad that they would completely preclude a shot at Blacktron III.

I too would like to see a return to genuine human vs human space themes (instead of human vs alien as is the case in UFO, Insectoids, Life On Mars, Mars Mission, Space Police III and Alien Conquest)

Also I would love to see a return to some spaceships along the lines of classic ships from the golden age of LEGO space (the Deep Freeze Defender is my favorite ship of all time)

i liked ice planet.