New Hashima takeover week on BrickNerd continues with an article by guest contributor Meredith Najewicz who will be examining the rare and unusual colors found throughout the massive cyberpunk collaboration.

Moths To A Flame (aka Translucent Orange)

When people are drawn to a LEGO creation, there can be varying reasons as to what attracts them, whether it is the size, scale or content of the build. For myself, I have been having a long love affair with builds that incorporate color, especially rare or underused LEGO colors.

When I saw Stefan Formento’s New Hashima build in its first iteration at BrickFair Alabama in the early winter of 2020, I was mesmerized. It felt like the build was a beacon of color sitting on the floor of a concrete convention hall. Sadly a few weeks later, the world went into lockdown with COVID, and nearly all conventions were canceled.

When Brickfair returned to Alabama again in 2022, Stefan, along with co-builder Peter Bradberry, brought out the next iteration of the build. The beacon that used to be New Hashima was now a riot of color which your eye just couldn’t stop looking at. At this event, I learned that Stefan’s dream of creating a collaborative build of epic proportions (and epic colors) would be something special.

The LEGO Colors

Before we start diving into the craziness that is the range of colors used in New Hashima, let’s level set on LEGO colors first. Chris Clark wrote an excellent piece several weeks ago explaining the current range and scope of colors currently in production. For looking at New Hashima, the color palette has to be expanded due to the many collaborator’s heavy use of out-of-production elements. Using BrickLink’s information, a fellow New Hashima collaborator tracked down the total counts of colors available and used in the MOC. If a person used every available color LEGO, it would total 161 colors (excluding Modulex). Thanks to fellow New Hashima builder Michael Willhoit for helping me create this list.

    BrickLink Colors
  
    Solid Colors
    89
  
    Transparent Colors
    23
  
    Chrome-finish Colors
    17
  
    Pearl-finish Colors
    7
  
    Satin-finish Colors
    7
  
    Glitter Colors
    6
  
    Metalic-finish Colors
    4
  
    Milky Colors
    4
  
    Speckle Colors
    4
  
    Total BrickLink   Colors - 161

The Grays

When most people, especially AFOLs, think of futuristic and dystopian genres, drab grays will come to mind immediately. I believe this is also a running joke about most LEGO Star Wars sets only being comprised of gray elements. New Hashima incorporates LEGO light bluish gray and dark bluish gray in droves, however these elements are mainly used for more utilitarian builds (sidewalks), the base of the inner city sector, and the technic support cubes in the ‘Docks’ sector. Even though New Hashima is not a natural element, the gray builds and elements seemingly disappear into the build as if they are part of the landscape around the city.

However, many of the New Hashima builds use light bluish and dark bluish gray to good effect. Ted Andes’ brutalist tower in Sector 8 is an imposing dark bluish gray monolith that allows for colorful ads and a custom video screen to pop and draw in viewers to the area.

In the ‘Docks’ sector, Simon Liu’s landing pads are greebling masterpieces in light bluish gray. These pads provide an excellent canvas for the SHIPs and a variety of multicolored cargo bins housed there.

Getting Friendly

When the LEGO Friends theme came out in 2012, it was not a theme most AFOLs connected with. Fast forward to 2023, Friends has brought a litany of dark turquoise, light aqua, azures, light yellow, lime, shades of pink and purple elements in the production catalog. New Hashima has used these colors to good effect in many areas.

The most visible use of Friends colors can be seen in one of Stefan Formentano’s towers in Sector 8. Comprised of a skin clad in Friends/Disney ‘storybooks’ of dark azure and light yellow, Stefan’s tower is a giant pillar of color in the middle of the city.

When creating my sections of New Hashima, I tried to incorporate many of the common Friends colors. Grabbing light aqua, white and dark turquoise plates, I layered them together to create a ‘stone’ like effect on the side of a modern/brutalist building.

Belville, Scala and Paradisa

While Friends is a theme that continues to be popular, themes such as Belville, Scala and Paradisa were all similar in their goal of appealing to young girls, but all had their own unique color palate.

Salmon and its sister, light salmon, were typically only found in the Scala theme. Using panels in this color, Carter Baldwin created a New Hashima tower that looks past its prime but still provides a pop of color in the Inner City sector.

In ‘Old Town’ Sector 4, buildings are peppered with ‘old’ pink that was popularized in Paradisa along with Scala oven covers in ‘very light gray.’ Belville ‘lattice’ panels in various shades of pink are also used frequently in the lower levels of the Inner City.

Lots Of Sand But No Beach

Harry Potter sets have helped sand green become a more easily obtained color, however other colors within the ‘sand’ family have been out of production for a while. Like the salmon of Scala, sand red and sand purple provide an effect of faded color that works perfectly in a cyberpunk City. Within the Old Town sector, nearly every sand color is present, and Tobias Whelan’s tower had sand purple tubing running throughout his build.

Equally rare LEGO color sand red is present in highlights throughout all sectors of New Hashima. (Hey, wait a sec, do those apartments look like Nerdly?)

The Obscure

At first when I saw Will Hafner’s Tori gate build, I assumed it was blue, but when I looked again, I realized I was wrong. Will had gathered many blue violet elements to create a futuristic version of a traditional Japanese building. One must dig into the depths of the 90’s Knights Kingdom theme to find when and where LEGO used this color.

Even more obscure but equally fun colors can be seen at the top of Kevin Murney’s topper in the middle of the Inner City. The translucent aqua elements at the top of the build are from the Clickits theme, and the color is rarely seen outside the theme. Clickits transparent elements are also used in my capsule hotel in Inner City which again is a unique transparent dark pink color.

An additional obscure transparent color from the Life on Mars theme, transparent brown, can be seen in the tubing providing ‘Old Town’ with what is certainly provides their high speed internet.

To Sum it Up

Returning to the historical LEGO color listing, the scope of colors the group brought to New Hashima is astonishing. When looking at the estimated total of 161 total colors from BrickLink, we counted that New Hashima had 97 of those colors present— just over 60%. The wide range of colors used not only adds to the spectacle that was one of the coolest collaborations ever but makes the build a love letter to all the historical themes and colors of LEGO.

    BrickLink   Colors
    New Hashima Colors
  
    Solid Colors
    89
    66
  
    Transparent Colors
    23
    15
  
    Chrome-finish Colors
    17
    3
  
    Pearl-finish Colors
    7
    5
  
    Satin-finish Colors
    7
    2
  
    Glitter Colors
    6
    1
  
    Metalic-finish Colors
    4
    2
  
    Milky Colors
    4
    3
  
    Speckle Colors
    4
    0
  
    Total BrickLink   Colors - 161
    Total New Hashima Colors - 97

Read more about New Hashima in our series of takeover articles, and stay tuned for more to come soon!

Do you go out of your way to use rare or unusual LEGO colors? Let us know in the comments below.

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