Division of Labor in Space Lego

Here's a thing: It's no doubt because I used to watch so much Star Trek, but very early on, I discovered that the color of the spacesuits worn by my LEGO astronauts was, in fact, an identifier for their jobs.

The Red guys were all technicians and engineers. They built and repaired stuff, sort of like in Star Trek, except they didn't die all the time. I don't think any of my dudes ever died, because then you'd have to set them aside, and what kid in his right mind would voluntarily decide that he now had fewer toys to play with? They did lose hands, though. Kind of a lot. Space is dangerous, and large fragments from ships breaking up can shear your hand right the hell off.

The White guys were pilots. If I remember right, this was because I really paid a lot of attention to the brick color I used in the small, 1-2 man fighters I used to build. With space stations and planetary bases, you want to go big, so you're kind of at the mercy of your collection. For small ships, though, I really paid attention to the colors, sticking to white and gray and black; the natural colors of the materials I imagined I was using. You wouldn't paint a spaceship blue. That would indicate quite a bit of vanity, which my LEGO space explorers were certainly lacking. They were professionals. Anyway, the White-suited pilots looked pretty sharp in their sleek, minimalist fighters.

The Blue guys were in command. They stayed at the bases and gave orders, only going on missions when they were totally important. They got this job because I only had a very small number of Blue guys (This was before I learn how a real hierarchical organization actually works, with twenty-five managers giving orders to two workers).

When the Yellow guys came out, many months into the whole space lego thing, the whole division of labor thing kind of fell apart. At first, they were the Blue guys' bosses; admirals and generals visiting from Earth. Then I got more, and they stuck around, and I demoted them, deciding that they were actually ground troops; soldiers. Of course, with no one to really fight, this didn't make a whole lot of sense either. In fact, the biggest obstacle to my LEGO space explorers up until that point had been cataclysmic malfunctions and unfortunate accidents. Exciting, I know.

I think I toyed with the idea of making the Yellow guys the bad guys, maybe some breakaway faction who wanted to explore space... differently... or something. That idea never really got out of the gate. Pretty soon the whole system broke down, and I decided that suit color didn't have anything to do with their jobs any more. Everyone was kind of doing everything, and I guess if you liked blue, you could wear blue. Or maybe you were from a different ship.

And anyway, around this time, some wise-guy gave me some castle LEGO, and all of my reasoning about who was doing what had to go out the damn window, because why was that guy wearing a pointy helmet and carrying a sword anyway?