https://sheets.works/data-viz/lego-colors
I pulled color data from Rebrickable and tried to visualize the full history of LEGO’s color palette.
Since 1949, LEGO has produced 228 solid colors (excluding transparent ones). Today only 56 are still active, while the rest have been discontinued over the years.
The visualization shows when each color first appeared, how long it lasted, and when it disappeared.
A few things that surprised me while building it:
- The palette stayed really small for decades
- The late 90s introduced a huge wave of new colors
- Around 2004 LEGO replaced several classic colors like Light Gray and Brown
- Some colours lasted 50+ years while others only appeared briefly
Curious what people here think, especially if you’ve been collecting long enough to remember some of the older colours. --u/Mastbubbles
Copied this thread over with Mastbubble’s thanks. If you’d like to give feedback on the project, he’ll be able to see it here.
Seems like maybe there’s an error[1] in the source data on Rebrickable since it included Trans-Medium Purple but this is not supposed to include transparent colors. That or everyone has decided on a very ironic name for that color.
The colors.csv file has Trans-Medium Purple flagged False under is_trans
↩︎id name rgb is_trans num_parts num_sets y1 y2 1094 Trans-Medium Purple 8D73B3 False 258 92 2003 2006
Thank you. I’ll maybe wait another day in case there’s more feedback, then let OP know.
Cool presentation. My only critique is that the pallet sticks near the bottom on my iphone screen so it gets covered by the new paragraph at the same moment it updates. Can you try to pin it near the top?
