LEGO 2003 / Adventurers / Orient Expedition Sets

The Orient Expedition subtheme of The Adventurers theme was released in 2003 and discontinued in 2005. The theme was about Johnny Thunder, Dr. Kilroy, Pippin Reed, and their new Asian friends going through Asia to find the Golden Dragon of Marco Polo and his three other treasures before the sneaky Lord Sam Sinister and his partners-in-crime did. This is was the last subtheme of Adventurers. Each set with more than 100 pieces came with stat cards and a piece of a game board that could be added to the Orient Expedition Board Game.

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.