I haven’t mentioned it in a while, but I’m a big LEGO fan. A short while ago, I came back to LEGO with a vengeance – well, a moderate vengeance – after years of wandering in what AFOLs (Adult Fans of LEGO) call their “Dark Age.” It was the Café Corner set that brought me back, but since then I’ve immersed myself in the rich and varied Internet LEGO fan community that spans across fascinating sites like Brickshelf.com, MOCPages.com, Bricktowntalk.blogspot.com, Eurobricks.com, Brothers-Brick.com, E-Klocki.com, and well, the Fascinating LEGO Model of the Day site at lmotd.blogspot.com.

Now there’s a new site on the block (Ha, ‘cause you see, “block”…never mind). Neoclassicspace.com is the work of several well-known adult LEGO builders and fans, and it’s a glorious tribute to the first, best era of the classic LEGO Space theme from 1979-1987. This was a time when LEGO spaceships were blue with transparent gold canopies, when grey (real grey, not the fake “bley” the company issues now) rockets propelled cobalt ships through space, leaving streaks of alternating yellow and black as their distinctively marked wings whizzed and whooshed by. Little LEGO spacemen in red and white and yellow and blue suits and helmets would traverse the grey (again, real grey) cratered and pipped surface of the Moon, launch white and black rockets, roll along in grey (you’re with me?) buggies and transports, and sit in control bases with big printed display screens under golden roofs.

Before Blacktron, before Space Police, long before Mars Mission (ugh), there was just Classic Space. And even though we didn’t call it that at the time, we knew it somehow anyway. It was Classic Space. It would always be Classic Space.

The theme is now celebrating its 30th anniversary – 1979, how did you get so far away – and at Neoclassicspace.com you can see daily models built by some of the best and brightest in the LEGO fan community, all paying homage to the ships and bases that were such a big part of our childhood. I marvel at these new additions to the Classic Space legacy, and I urge anyone that remembers afternoons spent building blue ships and sending them out into the stars to visit the site and travel back in time, if only for a few minutes.