If you’ve been on social media at all over the course of the last few months, you’ve undoubtedly seen the ads for The Periodic Table of LEGO Colors. Last month, our friends from We Love What You Build sent us one of the periodic tables to check out. This is version 2.0 that’s been updated with some new colours and notations.
The periodic table itself comes very carefully and securely wrapped, so there’s little chance of the periodic table getting damaged in shipping. The table itself is composed of genuine LEGO pieces is a multitude of colours, We by colour in the same form of the chemical periodic table. For each element, the number of sets it’s located in, the LEGO ID, the Bricklink ID, and the years of production are included.
In the lower right there’s a legend that tells you specifically about the information provided for each “element”.
On the right there’s a table listing all the colours, sorted by Bricklink name that cross references the LEGO name and the Bricklink ID. If I had any quibbles on the calendar it’s that the print on this is rather faint and is difficult to read from any distance away.
If you’re looking to frame the table, you’d definitely be best off with a memory box style, as the pieces provided included bricks as well as tiles and plates.
We shared the table with a WBI member who also happens to run a Bricklink store, and these were her thoughts:
There a good balance between imitating the chemical periodic table and adjusting it to fit the colors and quantity of LEGO bricks. I like the inclusion of the old light and dark gray, but there are not any other old colours. For it to be complete, it would have been nice to have other older colours. However, many of those older colours are obscure and mostly irrelevant old colors, so the designers made the right choice considering space limitations.
The progression from warm to cool colors is a bit confusing. I would have preferred it be more in progressive rainbow colors, rather than red/orange yellow from the left and green/blue/purple from the right. A warm/cool split would still have worked, just with slightly more understandable progression to make finding what you are looking for easier.
While the text is big enough to be visible, although the text could be a higher contrast. Any larger text would require a larger table. As it is the table is a great size as it doesn’t take up too much space on a wall or shelf, as that tends to be at a premium in most building spaces.
We found this very useful for our Bricklink store! We were pulling some parts and couldn’t tell in the storage area (which had less than optimal lighting) if it was trans bright green or trans neon green. We pulled out our handy chart, which was also in a better lit room, and it was easy to tell which one was which.
There have been some rumours is errors in the data presented on the periodic table. We did not check the data, but if there are errors, it would be nice to have some access to a list of corrections – perhaps something that could be printed and taped to the back of the periodic table for easy access.
Overall, the periodic table is quite striking and would look very cool mounted on the wall and ready at hand in your LEGO space. It’s useful, practical, nicely formatted and sized.
Interested in getting a periodic table of your own? Through May 11, when you order on their website, entering WBI10 at checkout will get you 10 percent off your order.
We’ll also be giving away a periodic table to one of our members through a drawing. If you’d like to enter the contest, please feel out the form here.
Many thanks to our friends at We Love What You Build for a copy of the periodic table for review. All opinions expressed are mine.