LEGO 2003 / Explore Sets

In 2003 LEGO released 47 Explore sets across 7 subthemes. The largest Explore set from 2003 was 5213 Big Bricks Box with a piece count of 140 and a retail price of $15.99.

The LEGO Explore theme was designed by the LEGO Group with collaboration with experts in child development creating sets designed for discovery using LEGO DUPLO elements to help parents understand the various development steps toddlers go through and what type of play would benefit this development. Explore was released in 2002 and introduced four universes each supporting a certain step in children’s development: Explore Being Me – Discovering who I am and what I can do, Explore Together – Learning to share and interact with others, Explore Imagination – Expressing my personality and creativity and Explore Logic – Understanding how things work.

2003 LEGO Sets

While 2003 proved to be a financial disaster for LEGO we did see a number of signification events that set the tone for future LEGO recovery and investments. Most important, LEGO introduced new realistic minifigure skin tones that affected licensed themes including Star Wars, Harry Potter, Basketball, Ferrari and Spider-Man, but kept yellow skin tones for all other minifigures. In 2003, the LEGO minifigure celebrated its 25th birthday with just under four billion minifigures being produced. LEGO that year introduced a number of new themes including Clikits, Designer, Sports which consisted of hokey, basketball and Gravity Games, World City and 4 Juniors which replaced the Jack Stone theme.