*This article appeared in Coldplay Magazine Issue 19
I believe that many friends have played with LEGO City series sets, and every once in a while a large number of police-themed sets will appear in the City series, which are mainly blue and white, with a variety of equipment and vehicles, shuttling through Lego City.
Today we're going to take a look at the LEGO City series from a different perspective – talk about the bad guys, fugitives, thieves, robbers or other criminal gangs that keep the cops busy in the police suit.
But before we dive into this series of stories full of police and thieves chasing and fleeing, learn a little about the history and background of LEGO City themes.
Tranquil town collection
When the LEGO Town series came out in 1978, the first wave of suits was police. The set during this period consists mainly of police stations, helicopters or a boat, but also a few motorcycles and patrol cars of different shapes. The police seem to have all the equipment and vehicles to be equipped early, except that there are no bad guys to catch.
The quiet life of the Town series passed like this for nearly 20 years, until 1995, a suit 1786 Prison Break Joe, in which a red and black jeep escaped the police. The police send three vehicles to chase him (cars, motorcycles and helicopters), and the escape Joe will not end well, presumably he will be arrested again soon.
1786 Jailbreak Joe
Life in Legoland Town remained peaceful in the following years, and there were no major villains and large-scale arrests in police-themed suits. The serious point is the 1998 road rage fans running wildly on the field, 3314 stadium security This suit shows the police arresting a fan running on a football field during the World Cup.
3314 Stadium Security
By around 2000, the Legoland Town series had slowly declined, with set sales and fans greatly reduced. Then we guess that illegal activity in Lego Town is also increasing with the economic downturn.
In 2001 and 2002, LEGO released the Jack Stone series – which, by the way, was also the time when the LEGO Group almost bankrupted itself.
4608 Bank breakout
A wider series of world cities
The 2003 Woril City series replaced the town-themed series, a very short-lived theme that only 20 sets exclude plastic bag building bags and promotional sets.
Many of these suits are police-themed, and they look more like the FBI than regular police officers. The World City-themed set may not have been a lasting success, but it has some interesting scenes. In the 7035 police headquarters in 2003, there was an escaped prisoner wearing an orange prison uniform, the only time this prisoner was used to print parts of clothing.
7035 Police Headquarters
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A one-of-a-kind kit, the 7045 Hovercraft Hideout, was also launched in 2003. This is a set without any police figures and all badass minifigures. For the first time, there are only bad guys in a police-themed suit.
7045 Hovercraft Hideout
Some police sets from the 2003 World City series, many templates were created for later Legoland City series.
For example, the 7033 Armored Car Operation is a seemingly less striking set, which contains an armored car and tricycle that they pull on a safe by rope, and later other suits have used this combination, with vehicles pulling out a section of wall to free prisoners or towing bank ATMs.
Operation 7033 armored vehicles
A series of cities where trouble appears
In 2005 the series was revived and renamed again, this time as CITY, and remains in use today. It seems that it is in this series that the lives of the citizens of Lego City begin to become "dangerous".
In the early days of the LEGO City series, there was a fairly clear pattern of set releases: the first year was a wave of fire brigade sets, the second year was a wave of police-themed sets, and the third year was a wave of other themed sets, such as mining or the Arctic. The police-themed suits in the City series are rotated every three years.
Later, there were additional police themes such as the Forest Police, Coast Police, Sky Police, and Prison Island Police, among others. Since then, police suits have also started to appear outside of the three-year release mode, so it feels like there is now a steady stream of police suits coming out every year.
60167 Coast Guard Headquarters
Use Brickset to see a list of all the police-themed suits in the City series, and below is a chart made after stripping out magazines, unreleased sets, merchandise, and more.
Blue is the number of suits containing cops, and red is the number of sets containing villains
It now seems like there are some police suits every year, but you can still see a triennial circular release pattern. Something must have gone wrong with Lego City around 2011, though, when the number of badass suits exploded.
The first female villain appeared in the 60042 highway police chase, which was released in 2014. She has flowing brown hair and rides a black motorcycle. It seems that since the sudden mass appearance of bad guys in 2011, it took them three years to recruit a single woman.
Since then, of course, there have been more and more ladies among the badass. Except for a brief decrease in numbers in 2018, their ranks have been growing. Until 2022, more than 50% of LEGO City criminals will be women.
3648 Police chase
A few years ago, the first female police officer appeared in another police chase scene in 2011, 3648, in Police Chase. Interestingly, her hair is the same as that of the first female villain who appeared in 2014.
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Vehicles for the runaway of the villains
After the Towns series and the World Cities series, it is enough to tell the history and stories about the police in the city series. But when we set out to analyze the bad guys' vehicles, the really interesting story begins.
One surprising thing is that in the first two waves of police suits in the LEGO City series, the bad guys don't have any vehicles to use to escape. The most common police vehicle in LEGO City is a car, and I'm sure everyone knows this.
But it is obvious that they also have a lot of motorcycles or ATVs. But since 2011 the villains have been equipped with some of the more unusual vehicles: hot air balloons, hovercraft, submarines, speedboats and jet skis, rafts and even tires.
When these villains appear in large numbers, they are equipped with a variety of vehicles, and some of them even look funny, and in the face of the well-equipped vehicles of the police, the villains seem to have no turning back.
It may be that the LEGO Group discovered that kids love the ability to scroll and push to play. Since 2011, more than half of the bad guys have been equipped with some kind of transportation, as shown in the image below:
Why red?
More noteworthy than what kind of vehicle the villain chooses is the color. More than 60% of the baddies use vehicles that are red. If you include different shades of red, such as dark red, this proportion will exceed 75%. As we can see from the picture below, even the trolleys are red.
60046
In the early years, the bad guys in the LEGO City series had some yellow cars, orange motorcycles or olive green rubber boats, but since 2011, these different colored vehicles seem to have been replaced with red.
In the real world, if a person is to escape, the more low-key and inconspicuous the vehicle used, the better. As it says in the movie "Drive": "This is her, as unpretentious as possible, California's most popular car, the Chevrolet Impala." No one will look at you. ”
As if in Lego bricks, the rule is quite the opposite.
The vehicle color used by the City series villains
Not only did the baddies not use low-key colors, but they became redder, and the villains in the City series started using more crimson vehicles. If you collect the vehicle images of all the city series villains and put them together, you will find that the results are even more extreme than you think.
Maybe they're all on the same team and have agreed on the color of their vehicles, or maybe there's a car tuning shop with a robber red paint deal. Red is a red flag, and the LEGO Group intends to tell children what is good and what is bad with strong color contrasts.
Maybe the bad guys don't like red either, and liking red cars feels more of a poignant excuse. But in any case, they definitely love the thrill of being chased.
The trend of bad guys using red has only changed a bit over the past year. In 2022, white ice cream trucks appeared. We'll also be waiting to see if the next bad guys will use more colors, and maybe we'll see more colorful escape vehicles.
*This article was translated from bricknerd, originally by Ronald Vallenduuk