There are over 244 unique color names from 1949 to present! In 2004, there was a spike in the number of unique color names when LEGO used feedback from focus groups and corporate reorganization to reduce the number of color hues available in sets. Since then, this number has gradually been increasing year over year. While this is interesting, it was clear to me that if I wanted to do an analysis of color changes, I would need to map the color names to general color groups. This brings us to the next data viz.
To track color changes over time, I grouped each individual color name to the 13 separate color groups seen above. This bar chart represents the distribution of colored LEGO pieces from 1949 to 2024. This analysis looks primarly at the pieces and thier colors. However, each record also contains the set the piece is a part of with a url image of the piece and a url of the set. It also tells us how many of a particular piece was in a given set, so some of the analysis will also investigate the part colored pieces play in sets.
Rebrickable.com's LEGO inventory database includes url images to each item number and color. I grouped the data by item number and color, sorted it from greatest to least, pulled the top 10, and pulled the images to display in this grid. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the 10 most common pieces are what we find at the bottom of the LEGO bin!
LEGO started in 1949 with the colors blue, green, red, white and yellow with more color groups being gradually introduced. This heatmap shoes you what color groups were available in LEGO sets for any given year. From this chart, you can see that not all 13 color groups were present in a single year until 1994.4.
As I mapped the unique color names into color groups, I noticed that many of the color names contained the words "glow" or "glitter". There was already a Boolean field called "is_trans" that marked a color as translucent (true) or opaque (false). I added 2 more Boolean columns: Glitter and Glow-in-dark if the color names contained the words "glitter" or "glow" respectively.
This line chart tracks the number of pieces avialable in each of the 13 color groups from 1949 to 2024. As the changes are difficult to track, especially in the early years, I divided the data into four groups: 1949 to 1970, 1970 to 1990, 1990 to 2010 and 2010 to 2024.
I noticed that there was a marked increase in the number of metallic, orange and pink pieces starting in the 1990s. In this graph, these colors are displayed separately to highlight their dramatic increase in recent years, which is expecially true for orange. The number of orange pieces has increased at a higher rate starting around 1999. The large yellow, pink, orange and purple circles in the chart are the first years that the color had 50 or more pieces present accross all sets being manufactured that year.
This graph shows us that white and red where especially common in LEGO sets from 1949 to 1990. Special features in the legend show that the first translucent piece appeared in LEGO sets in 1949 and the first translucent colored piece in 1965.
From 1970 to 1990, white and red continued to be among the most common colors in LEGO sets, closely followed by black.
For this time period, we see that gray and black dominate 1990 to 2010 with white and red becoming less dominating in sets. The yellow circle represents the first glow-in-the-dark piece, introduced in 1993, and the yellow diamond represents the first glitter piece, introduced in 1999.
Finally, we come to the modern LEGO peices. From 2010 to present, gray, black, brown and white are the most common colors.
This chart compares colors across all four time periods. The amount of space taken by the color in the bar represents how common it was compared to all pieces present in sets manufactured that year. In the first time period, white, red, blue and black pieces clearly dominate sets! By 2010 to 2024, red, blue and white have dwindled in comparison to gray, black and brown! In todays LEGO sets there are may more color groups available, with purple, pink, metallic and orange being the most rare. It seems green and yellow have always had lower representation in LEGO boxes!
This is the qualitative portion of my analysis. The Rebrickable.com LEGO database includes a data set called "sets" which includes the set name, year it was manufactured and urls to images of the sets. To clearly point out the changes in LEGO colors over time, I pulled an image from 1949 and an image from 2024 that could be marketed to the same age group. LEGO sets now clearly contain a greater variety of colors, piece types and specialized themes for every age group and hobby. This theme from 2024 is Animal Crossing.
LEGOs has transformed themselves from block building to 3-D puzzle sets. In 2024, there were themes for popular movies, such as Dune and Lord of the Rings, themes for many different hobbies, such as roller skating, reto music, flowers and car racing! This graph clearly shows that the number of pieces per set is increasing exponently since 2012.
The data for this analysis comes from Rebrickable.com. The sets used were colors, inventory_parts, inventories and sets.