This is a reference I designed for the LEGOs of the 80's!

I’m 53 years old, which means I spent my childhood and early teenage years playing with LEGO – many of those sets are still with me today!

I created this display to honor the four themes I collected back then: Castle, Pirate, City, and Space. At that time, LEGO was all about playing – we built what came in the box, but soon after we would take it apart and combine everything into our own creations.

Since I’m Brazilian, LEGO was still very limited here in those days. Luckily, I had parents, uncles, and friends who traveled abroad and brought me new sets. A big milestone was when I passed my college entrance exam (yes, I was already 17!!) and my mother came back from the US with the famous Space Monorail! She still reminds me that she had to buy an extra suitcase just to fit the box (and the extra tracks, of course).

Of the four themes, Space was probably my favorite, but in the end I had (and still have) a mix of all of them.

When building this model, I tried to capture that era, but I also had to adapt it to today, with new pieces and colors – not to mention sticking to the palette defined for this contest.

For the medieval theme, I used yellow details to pay homage to the very first castle, and I built a drawbridge with a knight protecting the royal crown.

The pirate theme obviously wouldn’t fit a full ship, so I designed a small boat sailing down a stream. Alongside the wildlife, our pirate also carries skeletal remains hidden in a barrel – after all, a pirate model without a skull simply doesn’t exist!

The city theme takes up the largest area, spread over three floors of a building. It includes a car and a minifig, which I tried to make as close as possible to the figures from that time, using the original printed face. Some cats and birds complete the urban look.

For the space theme, a spaceship (let alone the monorail!) wouldn’t fit, so I created a kind of missile launch base, still following the blue and trans-yellow style of the early 80’s.

And finally, I added a small tribute to Legoland! As I mentioned earlier, my parents traveled a lot back then and visited the park in Billund – they brought me brochures, catalogs, and even stickers, which I still keep to this day.

The “80’s” frame was built in a simple style with black bricks and slopes. The structure spells out ‘80’s’, using the apostrophe as it was commonly styled at the time. At first, I had left the back open, but for better stability I rebuilt it with a solid background that supports the entire structure. The apostrophe ‘s’ is held by transparent pieces to create a floating effect.

The depth of the frame is 10 studs (inner part) plus 2 more that form the back wall. The modules follow this depth, but in some cases they stick out. Each of the five modules slides into the frame on smooth tiles. Only the missile launcher is attached separately and then connected by cables.

The model is divided into 8 groups:

The black frame:
1 - “8”
2 - “0”
3 - “’s”

The content modules:
4 - Castle
5 - Pirate
6 - City
7 - Legoland
8 - Space

Within the City group, each floor is also divided into 3 subgroups, but they are interconnected (not removable). The Space group is also made of two parts (the missile launcher is separate).

The model has 2,579 pieces, including 4 minifigs (standard size) and 1 micro minifig at the Legoland entrance. Our animal friends are: 1 bat, 1 horse, 1 monkey, 1 crab, 1 parrot, 1 pigeon, 1 small bird, 2 cats – and probably a dead fish... (Before you ask, the bat is hiding upside down on the ceiling of the castle module.)

There are also some food items such as pizza, a lemon, an orange, a banana, and a donut. As for objects, the knight has a spear and a shield; the astronaut has a radio transmitter, a flashlight, and a flare; the pirate has a sword and an oar; the city resident has several pots, cups, mugs, a sound system, a saxophone, a guitar, a toolbox, scissors, a laptop, an umbrella, a camera, and even a paint palette with a brush.

The Castle and Pirate blocks are the same size, so they can be swapped. Since each structure is separate, the display can also be arranged in a half-moon instead of a straight line. Or, if someone prefers to refer to the year 2008, just reverse the order. :-)

Hope you enjoy this project, and that it brings back some memories from that era.