Lego is making an Atari 2600 to celebrate the console’s anniversary

The Atari 2600 – in its familiar, wood-paneled, super fun late 1970s incarnation – will get a celebratory Lego-style build this August in recognition of the console’s 40/45th anniversary controller (see below), according to German Lego fan site Promotions.

According to Promobricks (translated via Google), the player will feature a buildable Atari VCS deck, with a scene from Activision’s first hit Trap!. Trap!, by David Crane, is the first third-party blockbuster for consoles.

Trap! launched in 1982, the same year that Atari rebranded VCS (so have your 40th anniversary) to 2600. The console originally came out in 1977 (got 45th). That happened 5 years after Allan Alcorn and Nolan Bushnell installed PONG Coin-operated cabinets at a bar in Sunnyvale, California (celebrating 50 years, for good measure).

Promobricks proposes that the first-screen scene of Trap! can be moved using the transmitter joystick replica. In 2020, Lego released a set of puzzles celebrating the Nintendo Entertainment System, which included a near-life-size representation of the console, a Super Mario Bros. Game Pak, and a lovely, wooden legged TV (with analog dial and notch antenna) as displays. Builders can roll Mario over a World 1-1 representation by turning the crank on the side of the assembled TV.

The Lego Atari 2600 has model number 10306 (Atari 50th Anniversary Gaming Console) and will sell for $199.99 (€169.99), Promobricks said. Interestingly, that price (US) is about $10 more, in full dollars, than the original Atari VCS MSRP when it came out in 1977. $189.95 in Jimmy money, of course. Carter’s is about $900 today.