2011 brought Lego Space to a bold new location it had never visited before: Earth. This was Alien Conquest, where the little green men decided to turn the tables on those imperialist Mars Mission miners and see how we liked a taste of our own medicine.

Like Mars Mission and Space Police before it, Alien Conquest consisted of two factions with two very unique aesthetics. The Alien vessels leaned hard into retro 50s B-Movie designs, with green and purple highlights jazzing up gray and black machinery on flying saucers and a teetering tripod. They wouldn’t look out of place being driven by the Metaluna Mutant.

The human faction, meanwhile, was a paramilitary force called the ADU, the Alien Defense Unit. Their vehicles had a chunky, rugged near future military aesthetic in a bright blue, yellow, and gray livery that almost recalls Classic Space, albeit with different ratios of the colors involved. Their suits were an eye-catching azure.

A novelty of the Alien Conquest theme is its inclusion of terrestrial civilians for the ADU to protect. One mid-sized flying saucer set even had a light-up “tractor beam” that, if it descended onto an included farmer minifigure, would pick him up between four rubbery spikes to carry him off for some unknown sinister purpose.

The B-Movie vibes of Alien Conquest were a very fun aesthetic swing from the Lego designers, but unfortunately it was not to last – the theme only made it for a single wave in 2011. With Lego Star Wars rolling into its 13th year more popular than ever, and ever more action-heavy licensed themes like Marvel and Batman taking up shelf space, there was some question of how long Lego Space could hold on as a going concern at all.