Lego Homemaker
Lego Homemaker was a Lego theme produced between 1971 and 1982.
Just as the Town Plan theme was based around buildings' exteriors, the larger-scale Homemaker theme was based around their interiors. This made a lot of sense: dollhouses were popular, and essentially were simply another form of miniature models, so it wasn't a particularly big leap for The Lego Group to make.
Homemaker embraced two important things in the world of Lego:
- It popularised the smooth plate-sized tiles, which had previously been largely overlooked. These were excellent at hiding those unsightly studs, giving the furniture a glossy veneer.
- It introduced figures, finally populating the models with miniature people.
Sure, these were blocky, stylised people. Their lower halves were simply made of regular bricks and plates. Still, they were posable, and could pick up other pieces, which was more than some dolls could claim. They also looked at home in their Lego worlds.
These little plastic people eventually miniaturised into the more familiar Lego minifigures.[1] With the introduction of the three initial Legoland themes in 1978, the minifig scale was standardised, somewhere between the Town Plan and Homemaker scales. Even then, the original larger Homemaker figures' supple arms found a new use as robot arms in the Space theme, and eventually Aquazone.
In summary, The Lego Group's brief foray into the dollhouse market popularised tiles, and introduced figures, which in turn led to minifigures and a unified scale across all their subsequent themes.
References
- The Secret Life of Lego Bricks Daniel Konstanski, 2022, ISBN 978-1-80018-196-0, pp. 113—115
Lego themes: Lego Basic | Lego Creator | Lego Homemaker | Lego Technic | Legoland | Universal Building Set