The economy of LEGO City
Posted by CapnRex101,
LEGO City, formerly known as LEGO Town, reflects many aspects of reality. An enormous range of different brands offer various services in our everyday lives and this is also true in the lives of minifigures who require many of the same amenities and products that we do.
A greater number of companies and brands exist in LEGO City today than ever before and these cover all facets of society from energy suppliers and newspaper publishers to car manufacturers and airliners. You can discover just a selection of these after the break...
Oil prices are integral to economic systems and it is therefore appropriate that Octan is by far the most prevalent brand in LEGO City today. However, the famed energy company only emerged in 1992 and was preceded by real-world enterprises including Esso which dominated the fuel market between 1955 and 1966. Exxon later began business operations in 1979 but never achieved a foothold and abandoned its efforts just five years later, having opened only a single petrol station.
While those companies enjoyed only relatively brief periods of prosperity in LEGO City, Shell maintained a presence for several decades. It began in 1966 and over fifty transport vehicles, service stations and convenience stores have sprung up across the city since then. The company was advertised extensively at sporting events during the 1990s but left LEGO City in 1999, perhaps due to the rapid expansion of Octan in the region.
Octan emerged in 1992 and has supplied fuel to the population of LEGO City since then. Shell provided competition initially but was not able to provide fuel to boats and aircraft unlike Octan which supplies all areas of the market and has recently expanded to encompass renewable energy resources as well, rebranding itself as Octan Energy.
The company apparently reduced its presence in 2003 as it was relegated to just two 4 Juniors sets and did not appear again until 2007. Since then it has grown once again to secure its position as LEGO City's premier energy company, resulting in the opening of three more petrol stations as well as the sponsorship of various motor racing teams.
While the majority of racing vehicles feature some kind of Octan sponsorship, other companies manufacture certain parts of each car. Airborne Spoilers is one such manufacturer and its logo has appeared on several racing cars and monster trucks since 2013. Presumably it will continue to do so in future.
Meanwhile, City dominates the market for the majority of everyday vehicles and recently opened a car showroom in the city square alongside a service centre. However, the brand is most prevalent on trucks and has appeared on the radiator grille of almost every van and lorry since the start of 2012. The manufacturer offers a wide range of vehicles, from single seat cars and people carriers to enormous transporters for mining equipment!
24/7 Service runs alongside City and a couple of recovery vehicles in its fleet have recently arrived in LEGO City. This brand was first licensed to an independent company in 2014 when a blue tow truck was introduced, but the green and white colour scheme we know today did not come into being until 2015. Another brand ran between 2009 and 2013, with several bright orange trucks of various sizes which brought stranded vehicles to a large garage for repair and servicing.
Citizens of LEGO City often travel beyond the city limits and into the wilderness. The first camper caravans emerged in the early 1970s and caravanning remained a popular pastime throughout subsequent decades. However, it is more popular than ever today and a company dedicated to manufacturing camper vans and caravans has recently arrived in LEGO City with a unique logo which features a stylised river and a mountain. This has since been updated to show a forest, reflecting the enormously varied environments which surround the city.
While Octan is the most famous brand in LEGO City, it is not the longest running. That honour belongs to a cargo company which began trading in 1990 with a small cargo plane and now transports a wide range of goods using a huge fleet of trucks and aircraft. A similar logo appeared on several cargo vehicles in the 1980s, perhaps indicating that the company has its origins as far back as 1983!
Specialist goods are often transported using other carriers and a mining equipment firm arrived when a mine was opened in LEGO City in 2012. However, that enterprise left with the mine and the more established cargo service is now the only remaining service.
Commercial aviation is not limited to transporting cargo in LEGO City as passenger flights have also been available from airports since 1985. Multiple carriers have dominated airports since then, the first of which ran until 1991. This unnamed company was represented by a uniquely colourful logo and evidently met with significant financial success as a spectacular monorail was installed at the airport in 1990.
A new logo was introduced in 1991 but the colour scheme of airport vehicles remained the same, perhaps indicating that this was simply a change in branding rather than the arrival of a new airline. This logo was used for another five years before being retired. Meanwhile, a single Airoline aircraft landed at the Century Skyway in 1994 and the airport itself was run by the same shortlived company.
The next major airline emerged in 2006 and still dominates commercial aviation in LEGO City today. Various colour schemes have been used but the stylised bird which represents the carrier has appeared consistently on passenger aircraft of various sizes, from small jets to enormous airliners.
Media companies are as economically important to LEGO City as many manufacturing and service brands. TV 6+ is the latest news corporation to operate in the city and is more significantly equipped than its predecessors which have been running periodically for over three decades. A TV 6+ transmitter was recently damaged by fire but has since been repaired.
Printed media also enjoys a significant presence with newspapers such as 'The LEGO News' which are found on tables and desks across LEGO City. The newspaper is presumably printed outside the city but there is a newspaper rack found in the main square and the paper is sold at one of the recently opened Octan service stations.
LEGO City contains many children and toys are therefore very popular. The most significant brand is LEGO and trucks began arriving in 1986, with further vehicles in 1997 and 2004. It was not until 2015 though that an official store opened in a prime position in the city square.
However, the LEGO store is not the only toy shop in town as Toys R Us also has a presence with a small store which sells bears, foam weapons and some radio controlled vehicles as well as a couple of LEGO products. Unfortunately the brand has not expanded in LEGO City since 2010.
LEGO City could not function without food and several restaurants and grocery stores have therefore opened which offer a wide range of things to eat and drink. The famous Breezeway Café began trading in 1990 but this was preceded by a small hamburger stall and a snack bar.
Today the most popular restaurant seems to be City Pizza as it can be seen advertised on buses and has also opened some small outlets at train and service stations. The primary location can be found in one of the main squares.
The presence of certain brands continues to grow in LEGO City and one wonders where some of them might turn up next. While some have only recently arrived, others have been established for decades and hopefully they will continue to expand in the coming years.
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53 comments on this article
Nice article Captain, i do like the way you tried to make it seem "real".
Great article!
Great article!
I had not spotted the TV 6+ branding on the transmitter tower included in 60111 Fire Utility Truck. It is nice to see that the graphic designers are paying attention to this kind of thing and that the same brands appear in several different sets. Thanks for a fun article!
Nice article!
Maybe the reason that companies like Shell and Toys R Us have pulled out is due to the high tax rates they have to pay to fund the large police force and the fire service in Lego City?
:)
Love the article, but weren't there also a bunch of bicycle shops in LEGO city?
Fun read. My brothers and I have been using this piece: http://rebrickable.com/parts/3068bp06 since the late 80s as the logo for Triangle Trucking, our made-up company, owned by the Mayor of Legoville, who pretty quickly bought up just about every other business in town.
Great article, very well written and researched!
Maersk could be added to this list. The world's biggest container ship operator appeared in 8 sets, starting way back in 1974: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Maersk
Very nicely narrated history of Lego life in the City. :)
There's also "The Coffee Chain," introduced in The Lego Movie but added to one of those jumbo City sets last year.
And there's been at least one McDonald's. http://brickset.com/sets/3438-1/McDonalds-Restaurant
Fun article!
Great article - there's also the rail company who seem to handle both freight and passenger services, and represented by consistent branding from the launch of the 9v system in 1991...
The coffee chain should make a comeback in the Lego movie 2
or even a cameo in the batman movie
Nice article, as usual
Nice and fun article, we can add the Ingen (Jurassic World) company and Wayne Enterprises to that list as well as Lexcord and the Daily Bulge.
Great article! There were a lot of logos/organizations that weren't mentioned, though, like the postal service, hospitals, railway system, coast guard, and space agency. Or are those being saved for a follow-up article on governmental organizations and public works?
Other recurring businesses that might be worth mentioning:
X Treme: Presumably manufactures the high-performance watercraft in 60058 SUV with Watercraft and 60085 4x4 with Powerboat, which also features the sub-brand XU Trans Trailers. The logo features an X made out of two-way arrows.
City Bank: Debuted in 3661 Bank & Money Transfer and featured as a sponsor on 60084 Racing Bike Transporter. The logo features the initials "CB" in a square.
Many of these and the brands in the article are also featured in the video game Lego City: Undercover!
Great article!
Maybe it's too off-topic as it is more of a classic town thing, but there has been a certain prevalent colour scheme in the 80s and 90s that appeared so often it feels as uniform as a space faction. Seriously, when I was younger I thought they are some modern-day kind of blacktron or something. It doesn't help that some of the sets such as 6563-1 Gator landing, 6679-1 Dark Shark and 1687-1 Midnight Transport have an air of criminality or smuggling to them, as is evident in the transport of money and the more sinister alternate names for some of the sets. The other sets are racing vehicles mostly.
I am reffering to the sets with a black red and yellow colour scheme in town. Maybe it's a faction, maybe it's a common supplier for all those vehicles or maybe it's just an effective colour scheme and it's all just coincidence.
A list of these vehicles has been provided by user mxtp: http://brickset.com/sets/list-3412
This news article brought a big smile to my face.
Loved this article.
I could love to see something similar about the public-owned companies, like Classic Space and the railroad company. How about other brands like Maersk and Ferrari?
Funny and interesting reading! Hope there`ll be a part 2 of this ;)
Be fun to see a Brickset List or lists of these sets.
You neglected one major recurring LEGO City brand: the rail line! They don't have a name that I know of, but their iconic logo (a circle flanked by left and right arrows) has been used for passenger rail, freight rail, and rail service vehicles since the initial introduction of 9-volt trains in 1991.
Great article overall though!
That was a fun article to read. I've long been saying that I would love to see more firmly established branding within Lego City. It would be best, too, if they were the IP of TLG - such as Octan. Like "Really Expensive Coffee" or "City Motor Vehicles." City Pizza seems to be heading that way, as is the aforementioned automaker. The occasional foray of real world brands, such as Shell, McDonald's and Toys 'R' Us (as much as I hate them), is welcome, too. It adds a layer of play realism that I find immensely enjoyable... just like this article.
Nice to see a very different article show up every once in awhile. Would love to see a complete collection of all the different fake brands that have shown up in various different LEGO sets, including those from the Racers and Technic lines. It's a shame that the amount of effort that goes into these designs are often only used on a handful of sets.
Wait what about the space program???
That was a great read :). Like Aanchir, I was waiting for the section devoted to Lego city's railway networks, but maybe next time :).
@joedapoboy: I brought that up in the earlier version of my comment that apparently didn't go through, but I'd excuse the omission of the space program since this is an article about trade/commerce and it's not clear whether the space program is government-run (like NASA) or commercial (like SpaceX).
Very fun article!
That was a fun article to read! Great work! :)
I loved this article! It definitely makes me want to expand on my city. I have a long way to go from where it is now to where I want it to be, but definitely have big plans! If Lego would quit releasing so many good sets in other genres I could focus on my city for once!
Quality article sir!
It's nice to see an article highlight that there are other aspects of Lego City / Town than the various police forces, 'cause you really need both a forest AND swamp police, oh, and Prison Island, 'cause everyone knows how much fun prison is! I always felt like the size and extent (multiple stake-out trucks with high tech surveillance equipment!) of the police forces in Lego City / Town approached that of a totalitarian country, and I really enjoyed how The Lego Movie took that concept to its logical conclusion!
That being said, they must have some data that indicates the only people buying hospitals and pizza parlors are 40 year old AFOLs, so I suggest Prarie Police: "hey, drop that corn!"
When City introduces medicine brands (if ever), the Hippie from CMF Series 7 is going to come up with some Big Pharma nonsense...
Great read! We want more!
Did you know that octan also exist in Ninjago? 9441 kai's blade cycle runs on their fuel!
nice article! But Shell has not left because of Octan but it was forced by Greenpeace
[quote]Lego will not renew its marketing contract with Shell after coming under sustained pressure from Greenpeace to end a partnership that dates to the 1960s.
The environmental campaign group, protesting about the oil giant’s plans to drill in the Arctic, had targeted the world’s biggest toy maker with a YouTube video that attracted nearly 6m views for its depiction of a pristine Arctic, built from 120kg of Lego, being covered in oil.
Initially Lego had resisted Greenpeace, arguing that it ought to deal directly with Shell, but on Thursday it will relent. Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, the toy maker’s chief -executive, said Lego would honour its existing deal with Shell, which began in 2011, but “as things currently stand we will not renew the contract with Shell when the present contract ends”.
[/quote]
Great article, I do sometimes wonder about about the wider economy, although they clearly have large businesses, nobody ever seems all that rich in lego city, they all live in fairly same houses, there seems to be no higher class of person living in a mansion, etc.
Also add the Vestas wind turbine and the Ramboll oil platform.
Thanks for your comments everyone. I have left quite a few companies out of this article with a view to writing a second part and there certainly seems to be demand for that so I will get started on that shortly.
I am aware that there are a couple of inconsistencies between reality and the fictionalised LEGO City presented in this article, as in the case of Esso/Exxon and Shell. I omitted some of these complicating factors in order to better suit the tone of the article and maintain the fictional interpretation of the various companies in LEGO City.
Great article, I never realized there were so many fictional brands in the LEGO City universe (both those mentioned here and those not mentioned here)
Suggestion for an article: City-like sets that are in non-City lines. The Lego Movie line, Super Heroes, and TMNT are all examples of lines that have had parts or even vehicles/buildings which could supplement a city setup nicely. I'm curious if someone would want to make a feature about it.
Absolutely love the article....can't wait for the next one, especially now that you have dangled the carrot.
I also didn't realise how many different companies had featured throughout the Town/City over the years.
Great work.
Thank you.
Great article, deserves a part 2 for sure!
@Legoist61: Lego stopped partnering with Shell because of Greenpeace recently, but that was long, long after Shell stopped being included in any Town/City sets. The Greenpeace protests were related to Shell/Ferrari promotional sets in 2014 that were released exclusively at Shell service stations. But the last actual Town/City sets to feature Shell branding were 15 years earlier in 1999. Blaming Greenpeace for Shell's disappearance from City is like blaming Jack Stone for the cancellation of Fabuland
To be fair, Shell still exist in the LEGO universe, since its still the official sponsor of Ferrari Scuderia/Racing, their LEGO models will always need to carry the Shell logo...
Even though Greenpeace are on their offensive with LEGO about that, since Shell still has a lot grey-areas in the business they do in the real world... But never mind that - in the LEGO Universe - Octan is the massive oil and energy player nowadays indeed...
AND, according to The Lego Movie - Octan has a foot in EVERYTHING ELSE as well! ;)
*Applause!!!*
Fun story tying together different aspects of Town/city that we usually view separately. Octan has been a favorite in our home since my son started building their sets 25 years ago. Their car wash has always been my favorite Octan set. I do so hope that there is not an Octan Company in real life!
When is President Business going to report to Octan stockholders on Q2 results?
what can i say, im impressed!
Great historical look back at company links within Town/city
As others have said, this is a fun read and I hope for a second part where you cover the space program, the postal service, Trash/Recycling service, and anything else you left out. I know this article focuses on the City theme, but it might also be worth mentioning the future of the Lego economy, such as the presence of Octan and the Cargo Company in the far future of Space Police III.
Very enjoyable read; I'm looking forward to Part 2!
Loved this article Capn! You seem to come up with all the best subject matter that deserves multiple articles - first Star Wars What's Missing and now Lego city economy... I await your 17 part essay on tyre shapes, sizes and colours with great interest! :-)