2002 / Explore

In 2002 LEGO released 65 Explore sets across 4 subthemes. The largest Explore set from 2002 was 4085 Brick Bucket Large with a piece count of 90 and a retail price of $9.99.

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.

2002 LEGO Sets

2002 was an interesting year for LEGO. While there were a couple of highly collectable sets such as the Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer (10030-1) and the Pirates Black Seas Barracuda (10040-1) most sets did not see the kind of growth that previous years had experienced. However, the Star Wars theme carried a lot of the collection's weight, it was the year Star Wars celebrated its 25th Anniversary. The Western theme which included the iconic Fort LEGOredo (6762-1) help the overall investiability of 2002. During 2002 LEGO released a number of new themes including the original Spider-man and Island Xtreme Stunts as well as some prominent subthemes including Episode II: Attack of the Clones for Star Wars, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Mission Deep Sea under Alpha Team.