1998 saw the debut of a high-concept Lego Space theme that holds a special place in my heart: Insectoids. These creepy-crawly guys mark a major turning point in the history of Lego Space – the were the first Space subtheme to have a truly elaborate and ‘canonical’ backstory meant to inform play scenarios directly, while also being the last one to consist of only a single faction’s vehicles. They represent the end of one 20-year paradigm and the beginning of another.

The Insectoids have more than just a snazzy grey and blue livery with transparent green windscreens and transparent neon green highlights. They have a narrative, a mission: they, it turns out, are the Zotaxians from the previous year’s UFO theme, forced into becoming interstellar refugees to the planet Holox, which has a barren exterior but a hollow, fertile interior. The only problem: the interior is dominated by gigantic, aggressive bugs. The only way around this was for the Zotaxions to ditch the whole flying saucer thing and embrace biomimesis in all of their vehicles, designing each one to blend in with the giant bugs so that they could prosper inside the planet. Did you catch all that? It’ll be on the test.

It’s a far cry from previous bare bones story premises like “we went to an ice planet to study ice”, but it lends the Insectoids sets a pleasing unity of design. They don’t just all share colors, they don’t just all share a gimmick (somehow, magnets returned), they don’t even just share a printed design identity like last year’s UFO sets (though those cybernetic circuitboard prints on the wing pieces are pretty sweet). They also share a philosophy of construction – every vehicle must, in its fundamental plan, resemble an insect. If you swapped the colors of almost any previous Lego Space set, it could pretty easily blend in with almost any other subtheme. Not so with Insectoids. You could spot them a mile off, no matter their colors.

Unfortunately, the very qualities that made Insectoids so unique (tons of interesting new elements, tons of printing, new colors) were also contributing to Lego’s ongoing financial woes. For the first time in the history of Lego Space, when the Insectoids ended in 1999 they did not have an immediate successor. The next original Space theme didn’t come until 2001, and kicks off the modern era of Lego Space.