Generation 04 - Dogbone era

Summary

The forth MoldGeneration is characterized by bricks with the Dogbone-logo underneath. This era introduced the first 1x6 and 1x8 bricks, as well as the first 4x4 corner bricks toghether with 2x12 and 2x14 bricks.

Bricks from 04a and 04b can be hard to destinguish in some cases, but based on brick colors, slot positions, pip positions and mold positioning numbers I'm quite confident that the current Mold structures are correct.

Relationships between the 04c-04f-molds

Based on the typical layout of other Molds of this era, I believe it's most quite likely that the actual molds being used consisted of a mix of different brick types. Since I have yet to conclude on the mold layout for these bricks, they are instead structured here in separate Mold definitions based on brick types:

*1: There are no dark green samples in my possession, but green 2x14 bricks are being sold on Bricklink.

In addition to the common dogbone-logo, the bricks from these four Molds share another significant feature: Large rings underneath. (The rings are ejector pin marks, caused by the pins that pushed the bricks out of the mold at the end of the molding process.)

Mold 04e and 04f are very closely related, as both top- and bottom-parts of all MoldMembers match across the two Molds. At some point, the 04e mold was being re-designed into creating slot-less bricks. For the 2x12 and 2x14 bricks, there are no signs of re-design. All brick samples are slotted. As for the 2x2 bricks, the findings are quite inconclusive:

There are som clear signs of Mold-redesign:

• 2x2-04d-1 has three different evolution stages
• 2x2-04d-2 has a variant where it appears that a previous slot has been removed

But at the same time, no similar pattern to what was found for the 4x4 bricks. There are a very low number of brick samples available for these 2x2 bricks with circles, so currently I believe I haven't gotten the full picture of the structure and evolution of these bricks.

The following list shows some possible compositions of molds for these brick types:

Theory 1: One large mold

One large mold with 14 different MoldMembers can't be disqualified as a theory, but when you think of all the large bricks included, I find it hard to imagine that they would find room for all the bricks within the Mold area. After all, the 04f Mold only contains 10 MoldMembers, even when those bricks require a much smaller area than the bricks in the c-f molds.

Theory 2: Two parallell molds

The idea of there being two parallell molds with identical layout has it's origin in the fact that both the 2x12, 2x14 and 4x4 MoldMembers come in pairs. One such mold would then consist of the following brick types:

• 2x12
• 2x14
• 4x4 left slot
• 4x4 right slot
• 4x4 double slots
• [2x2???]

This would make the number of MoldMembers much more probable, but with the scarse number of brick samples for the 2x2 MoldMembers, I have not identified more than one different MoldMember for the following brick types:

• 2x2 one slot
• 2x2 two slots across

So until new MoldMembers are identified this theory is rather thin. (One could suggest that the two molds had identical layout, but not on slot-level. In this case the current set of brick samples could match a twin-mold theory.)

Theory 3: Separate 4x4 mold

If the 4x4 bricks are made in a separate mold, the there would be a plausible mold size. The following points further supports such a theory:

• The 4x4 bricks are the only samples that show a clear evolution from slotted to un-slotted bricks. Why are there no un-slotted 2x2, 2x12 or 2x14 bricks if they were part of a mold that was being re-designed into slot-less variants?
• The unique Norwegian color "Ice Blue" can be found among the slotted 4x4 bricks, but if the other brick types shared mold with the 4x4 bricks, there should have been samples with Ice Blue color among the 2x2, 2x12 and 2x14 bricks as well.

I believe more brick samples need to come available before concluding with this theory, as the number of 2x2, 2x12 and 2x14 samples are quite few at the moment. If the 4x4 bricks were created in a separate mold, what then with the other brick types?

Theory 3.1: Common mold for 2x2, 2x12 and 2x14

Considering the number of MoldMembers (8), it makes sense with a common mold for these bricks, but one thing that seems very strange in that case is the fact that there are no signs of mold evolution within the 2x12/2x14 bricks, while even a very small number of brick samples show at least three stages in mold evolution for the 2x2 bricks.

Theory 3.2: Separate 2x2 mold

This theory is supported by the following facts:

• 2x2 bricks have several evolution steps not found within the other brick types.
• The brick samples contain three samples of 2x2-04d-1 with a uniqe color not found in onther brick types. But, until more 2x2 MoldMembers can be identified, I belive that the number of MoldMembers currently identified (4) are way too few to justify a separate mold.