Lego City is a theme under which Lego building sets are released based on city life, with the models depicting city and emergency services, airport, train, construction, and civilian services. Lego Town is one of the three original themes that Lego produced upon its launch of the Lego minifigure in 1978 along with Castle and Space. The Town brand was briefly replaced with Lego World City in 2003 and 2004 before it was simply rebranded as Lego City in 2005.
History
The Lego City theme traces its origins to Lego Town, a theme introduced with the first minifigures in 1978, although Lego sets with city buildings and vehicles were commonplace by the late 1960s. In 1975, a precursor to the minifigure was introduced, in the same scale but without moving parts. These mid-1970s, Town sets had buildings and vehicles functioning more as models, with minifigures unable to ride the vehicles, which continued with the new minifigures until the early 1980s, when buildings and vehicles consistently were designed to be compatible with minifigures. All sets were originally released under the "Legoland" label until it was discontinued and replaced with "Lego System" branding in 1991. Eventually, different subthemes under the "Town" brand were used to tie together related sets, such as police, coast guard, emergency services, airport, road rescue, trains, fire, and harbour. During the Christmas season, a City-themed advent calendar set is sold through the online Lego Shop and at retailers. In June 2020, following the killing of George Floyd by police, Lego made an announcement that they would temporarily stop marketing police-related Lego City sets. Due to misinformation claiming that they removed these sets from being sold that led to backlash, Lego issued a follow-up statement emphasizing that the sets were still for sale and that digital advertising for the sets would just be temporarily haulted.
Subthemes
Outside of Lego City's generic city and town life based sets that are released regularly, the theme has had various subthemes, many of which are recurring. Under the Lego Town theme, the subthemes released during the 1990s and early 2000s also had individualized branding and labeling. In 2003 and 2004, the only town-based sets were released under the "World City" label. Since the launch of City in 2005, they are just labeled as City sets but often have multiple sets based around a single concept released at the same time during Lego's release schedule.
Octan is a fictional oil company that has appeared in multiple Lego sets since 1992. Before that time, logos of the real-world oil companiesEsso, Shell and Exxon were used on sets. The Shell logo continued to be used on promotional sets after that time. In 2014, Lego announced it would not renew its marketing agreement with Shell, under pressure from the environmental groupGreenpeace. Octan first appeared in the 1992 sets "6397 Gas N' Wash Express" and "6594 Gas Transit". Since the release of the Octan name, Lego has not signed any further deals with Shell or other gas corporations. Octan is the Danish word for octane, a component of gasoline. Octan has appeared in a number of Lego video games. Lego Island for example features an Octan gas station and the company sponsors the race track. In The Lego Movie, Octan is the base company of the main antagonist Lord Business. His company is the producer of almost all of the commodities in his dominion. In the Lego set "7747 Wind Turbine Transport", the Octan logo had a new part in it which said Energy, which implies that it now produces renewable energy, not just oil products. Then, in the set 60016 Tanker Truck, the Energy part of it is larger suggesting that Octan is now going green. In a number of Town and City sets it is shown that Octan has a racing team that competes in at least Formula One, GT racing and rallying.
Other media
A video game developed by TT Fusion called Lego City Undercover was released for the Wii U on March 18, 2013; a port of the game was released April 4, 2017 on Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. A was also released for the Nintendo 3DS on April 21, 2013. Lego City content, based on Lego City Undercover, was added to the toys-to-life video game Lego Dimensions on May 9, 2017, via a "fun pack" containing a Chase McCain minifigure and a constructible Police Helicopter. In 2011, short two to five minute films produced by M2 Films and Lego were released on the Lego website. New films have since been released every year.
