Hey all, basically I've been looking into the Town Jr. naming to see where
it originated, and I don't think it exists as a Lego subtheme. The best I
can tell, is that it was a disparaging term coined by AFOLs of the time, to differentiate
the new oversized moulds and juniorized builds of Town in the late 90's from
the stuff they grew up with (to mixed results).
The earliest result I can find online referencing Town Jr. is this 1998 Lugnet
post, outlining the January 1998 S@H catalogue. https://www.lugnet.com/pause/1998.html
(The site talks about Town Jr. as though it's already known in the community,
so I'm sure it was already a coined term, but this is the earliest surviving
example from the era I could find)
Interestingly, this site seems to arbitrarily separate Town and Town Jr. as two
co-existing lines. When looking at the actual catalogue in reference (https://archive.org/details/Lego1998JanuaryUSShopAtHome/page/n17/mode/2up)
we can see that all the sets on this list are on pages labelled Town, Rescue,
or Race. And then a couple on a small-sets promo page with no branding. The Town
logo on this site is official and appears in the magazine, but the Jr. addendum
seems to be fan created, and does not appear in any official media I can find.
Additionally, the lists each fan site comes up with for what is and isn't
Town Jr. varies a lot. For instance, the lugnet list has discrepancies with Bricklink
and Brickipedia, which also disagree with each other. Further enforcing that
this is just a fan moniker and should not be recognized on an official catalogue
like Bricklink.
Curious to know the community's thoughts on this. If anyone can find an official
source (official box art, shop at home catalogue, or Mania magazine) that mentions
or has a logo for Town Jr., please share. And please don't cite the 2009
DK Minifigure or Lego Book as reliable official sources. Those books are infamous
for collating tons of erroneous fan site information and not fact checking any
of it. It baffles me that Lego approved it for release. I'm only interested
in contemporary (1997-2002ish) official accounts.
All this does bring into question Bricklink's method for categorizing Town
sets in general, as I think Classic Town is a similar apocryphal label, and some
of the Town Jr. sets have sub-subthemes of Race, Rescue, etc. But that's
a discussion for another day. Just in regards to Town Jr., I think it's more
accurate to not recognize it as an official branding.
Further enforcing that
this is just a fan moniker and should not be recognized on an official catalogue
like Bricklink.
The Bricklink catalog is user generated, not official. Yes, TLC did buy Bricklink,
but they didn't tinker with the catalog, so it's a crowd sourced compilation
of information that can and does sometimes differ from LEGO's official terminology.
Further enforcing that
this is just a fan moniker and should not be recognized on an official catalogue
like Bricklink.
The Bricklink catalog is user generated, not official. Yes, TLC did buy Bricklink,
but they didn't tinker with the catalog, so it's a crowd sourced compilation
of information that can and does sometimes differ from LEGO's official terminology.
David
Yeah, I'm aware it started as a fan site and that TLG didn't tamper with
the theme sorting after purchasing it. I'm just making the case that the
"Town Jr." grouping should be removed, since it's not a LEGO subtheme
that actually exists. The sets listed under it are simply Town sets. The distinction
made by AFOLs of the time is arbitrary.
Hey all, basically I've been looking into the Town Jr. naming to see where
it originated, and I don't think it exists as a Lego subtheme. The best I
can tell, is that it was a disparaging term coined by AFOLs of the time, to differentiate
the new oversized moulds and juniorized builds of Town in the late 90's from
the stuff they grew up with (to mixed results).
The earliest result I can find online referencing Town Jr. is this 1998 Lugnet
post, outlining the January 1998 S@H catalogue. https://www.lugnet.com/pause/1998.html
(The site talks about Town Jr. as though it's already known in the community,
so I'm sure it was already a coined term, but this is the earliest surviving
example from the era I could find)
Before there was LUGNET, the general LEGO chat group was rec.toys.lego. You may
want to search there.
My impression of Town Jr, is that it contained somewhat different pieces that
had a lower age entry point. It predated Jack Stone and 4-Juniors, and tried
to move System closer to the age where most young adults out-grew Duplo. There
were a couple of themes floating around in that general age-space, notably Belville
and Fabuland, both of which went off in their own special directions. There was
also Toolo in that space, but Toolo was a Technic-like offshoot of Duplo (i.e.
trying to stretch the Duplo age-space a bit higher). One last theme to consider
was ZNAP, which was TLG's attempt to compete with K-nex. ZNAP was a marketplace
failure, and possibly because LEGO never explained clearly how System and Technic
pieces can inter-connect to ZNAP. I'm not sure if ZNAP was ever sold outside
of TRU in the USA.
Nita Rae (who reaped significant quanties of ZNAP, once upon a time, in a galaxy
far far away)
My impression of Town Jr, is that it contained somewhat different pieces that
had a lower age entry point. It predated Jack Stone and 4-Juniors, and tried
to move System closer to the age where most young adults out-grew Duplo.
IIRC there were other themes that also went down the same road (some of the Pirate
sets of the same vintage I think and also things like Insectoids in the Space
line)
USA, Georgia
Australia, Queensland