New Grey Lego colour?

clundsberg

Anyone else notice the difference in the grey between, oh, say the Land Speeder in set #4501 and oh...perhaps EVERY OTHER GREY LEGO? Aside from 7119's weird red colour bricks - which I have no idea where I stored, this is driving me insane as I dumped them all together in one bin. Is this a Star Wars only thing? They seem to have a bluish tinge to them.

davee123

Are you referring to the color change between grays that happened in 2004?

DaveE

gruetzmacherd

@DaveE, I bet he is referring to the one from 2004. Should we "let him in" on all the gory details? :)

clundsberg

maaaan...where was I in 2004? Seems that I've had greys in sets since then. What happened? Wait - are my old grey pieces full of lead? O_o

clundsberg

p.s. - just looked at all my sets...really haven't had much light grey since '04 and the ones I do were Star Wars. So what happened?

rocao

You can read about it in this 2004 post from LEGO community representative Jake McKee: http://news.lugnet.com/lego/?n=1791

clundsberg

interesting that I'm just realizing this 7 years almost to the date. I was actually hoping for some more dramatic logic especially since I just noticed it in the light greys. Thanks for the info, guys!

davee123

Heh, actually, the fans started noticing in mid November, 2003: http://news.lugnet.com/general/?n=43553

That's when the 2004 sets started hitting the shelves in the lead-up to Christmas that year!

Supposedly, some fans had gotten wind of it a few months earlier when talking to builders in LEGOLAND, but had been asked not to say anything (IIRC, LEGO said something like "it's so subtle, the fans may not even notice").

Of course, what followed was probably the biggest hissy fit in AFOL history-- some people even went so far as to try boycotting LEGO, vowing never to buy another new LEGO set again. For years, whenever a new set was coming out, LEGO designers asked for feedback, which ALWAYS consisted of some AFOLs asking "Will it have old gray?"

DaveE

clundsberg

Honestly, I like the bluish tinged grey legos, I was just frustrated at the fact that I had mixed them with my old greys and thus made it hard to stay true to my rebuilding of sets. Interesteing that Lego decided to reduce colours though. What are your feelings on the change?

Istokg

Don't ask... the uproar on LUGNET alone was pretty ugly... lots of bad blood among AFOLs back then. Some thought it wasn't a big deal... others went almost apoplyctic over it. And the sniping back and forth among AFOLs was also not a pretty sight.

If you were more a space or castle fan it affected you much more than say town folks.

They labeled the new color "bley" (bluish-grey) and among old time AFOLs that name has stuck.... actually the uproar was labeled the "bley wars". Dark grey and brown were also affected.... and the new colours of those are now known (unaffectionately) as dark bluish grey and reddish brown.

And... as has always been the creed of TLG... they never threw anything away... so for many years you would get new and old colours mixed together in the same sets... again pouring more flames onto the proverbial fire.