In 2013, the very same year that the sun set on Lego Space themes with the release of Galaxy Squad, Lego was made to realize just how much love people have for the history of the entire Lego Space concept. The Lego Ideas platform, where fans can submit designs which will go under consideration to become real products should they get 10,000 supporters, was still in its infancy, but already by its seventh product the fans had cried out in one voice: they wanted Classic Space. So Classic Space they got.

This extremely elaborate greeble-covered mech doesn’t quite resemble the Classic Space you may remember from way back at the beginning of this thread series. What it does resemble is the “Neo-Classic Space” fan movement that had arisen in the intervening years, where people took the design language and livery of those old 70s and 80s sets but updated them with new elements, cutting-edge building techniques, and epic scope and scale.

Lego was swift to cash in on this nostalgia market with the 2014 release of 70816 Benny’s Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! as part of the The Lego Movie tie-in line. This was a gonzo, maximalist reinterpretation of every crazy Classic Space spaceship from way back in the day, and Benny himself is a character that represents the pure spaceship-crazed joy that those original sets unleashed on a generation of children like my dad.

After that, things got a little quiet again except for the occasional new Spaceman color. The Lego Movie 2 gave us the adorable Benny’s Space Squad, with the first pink Spaceman.

But things really got interesting in 2022, with the 90th anniversary of the Lego Company (which originally sold wooden toys before pivoting to plastic bricks in the ’50s). To commemorate the occasion, they decided to reimagine a couple of the most iconic sets the company had ever released. One was a big castle. The other was, of course, how could it be otherwise, 497 Galaxy Explorer. Rendered at 1.5x its original size but with its clean lines and elegant color scheme intact, it’s the perfect modern reinterpretation of the ultimate classic.

As if that weren’t enough, a Gift With Purchase released a few months later gave it a Neo-Blacktron companion.

Since then, Lego has continued to expand its nostalgia-baiting with Collectible Minifigures based on Classic Space, and more recently other themes like Blacktron, M-Tron, and Ice Planet 2002, as well as more new colors of Classic Spaceman and, of course, the Spacebabies.

That’s the end of the line for official Lego Space releases so far. But with the 50th anniversary of Classic Space on the horizon and the nostalgia market only growing, perhaps there will be more to come in the future.