A Look Back: 1990 LEGO Magazine (Shop at Home - or lots of little sets I wish I had now!)

We've finally reached the end of the 1990 LEGO Magazine.  After going through all of the major themes of the time, we are left with only the Shop at Home portion of the magazine.  While that may not sound super exciting, in some ways it is actually the most interesting part of the magazine since only the final few pages have actual prices on them!

Let's begin with the first of the three Shop at Home pages:

The Builders Club looks like a rather awesome magazine - $7.95 got you four issues of the magazine, a free mini set, a birthday surprise, and the always mysterious "special offers."  This page also has a few building accessories for sale (though no prices).  I actually owned that LEGO Idea Book as a kid and then a year or two ago I found a copy of it on eBay which I bought for myself simply because I wanted my own copy of the book once again.  Maybe someday I'll show off some of my favorite builds from that book.

Moving on to the next page, we finally get our first taste of how expensive LEGO was back in 1990.

There is a lot to unpack here!  I actually own set #6103 (Castle Mini Figures) and my brother had #6703 (Space Mini Figures) as a kid.  I also already mentioned owning the Technic Power Pack (set #8700) but that was the extent to stuff I owned on this page.  My brother had a copy (or maybe two?) of set #6235 as well.  

Nowadays, I look at this page and I wish I could get 62 bricks for $4.50 in specific colors (in my case, I always seem to need more white and gray bricks).  I'd also buy about five or six copies of the Space Mini Figures and the Castle Mini Figures if I could.  Set #5171:  Decorative Bricks always had my interest as a kid...heck, I'd probably fork out the $3.25 right now if someone offered it to me!  One thing I never wanted on this page?  Those weird Technic action figures.  I thought they looked weird/terrible back when I was a kid and my feelings haven't changed 30 years later!

Finally, we end with the last page of the magazine:

Here we get the order form (unfortunately the prices were only good through March 31, 1991 so I can't try and order anything today).  On this page, I always wanted the Road Signs set but I never, ever saw it available for sale in a store back in the day.  The prices are interesting here because now you pay about $8 for a regular sized base plate (but only $4.50 in 1990) and $15 for the large gray (only $8.50 back then).  Road plates have also gone way up in price, a two pack costs about $15 now I think but you could get them for $6 back in 1990!  On the other hand, the Train Station set #7824 is actually a "bad deal" by current standards (10 cents per part is the usual calculation for a "fair" deal in LEGO).  

I hope all of you have enjoyed this (slow) journey through the 1990 LEGO Magazine.  I'm not sure if I still have any other old magazines from my childhood or not.  Maybe if I find another one I can do another series of posts like this in the future.  For now though, we say goodbye to the magazine and we can only wish that current day prices were lower on our favorite building brick toy!