Saturday, October 04, 2008

Legos

You know what I miss? Legos.

Technically, plural for Lego is still Lego, but in 33 years of my life, I think I've pulled that off, maybe, five times. So, we shall refer to lots of Lego as Legos.

The Admiral made a comment to me not too long ago that I played with Legos right up through high school, and I was all "oh, that's crazy, no I didn't."

But, everytime KareBear had kids in the house, she'd haul out my Legos, and I'd find myself sitting on the ground assembling Legos into space ships right through graduation.

I understand there are adult collectors of Legos who make magnificent Lego sculptures, but I find them sort of cost-prohibitive, and I threw in with Action Figures v. Legos long ago (I have shelves and shelves of Super Friends, for those of you who don't know). And moving Legos is a total pain. But I sort of miss sitting on the floor and trying to build an intergalactic star cruiser.



We never had Legos like some other families who would roll out these amazing piles of pieces, but we had a pretty good set up. I would make whatever the kit suggested once or twice, and then make my own stuff. That always seemed the point to me... to follow the basic instructions so you could understand how it fit together, and then go off and do your own thing with the parts.

With Star Wars, Batman and Indiana Jones Legos out there these days, I bet kids have a field day. Add in the standard moon-scapes, rockets ships, airports, etc... Well, it's a slippery slope before you're living in a house constructed on tiny pieces of plastic.

And some of the other options... I mean, look... Build the Taj Mahal from Lego. How cool is that? Or the Death Star?

This set called "Star Justice" is pretty close to the kind of stuff I liked as a kid. But, look how totally expensive that is... Man, I feel for you parents trying to properly outfit your kids with Legos. No wonder The Admiral and KareBear were always working so hard... to keep us knee deep in Legos, it seems.

Anyway, no Legos for me. I don't think Jamie wants a million plastic pieces scattered everywhere. But whenever I see ads in print or on TV, I do start thinking of what you could build with the pieces to the new sets...

6 comments:

Michael Corley said...

Clear to me are sleep overs (birthday ones, if memory serves right) where JAL and others would construct lego dreadnaughts with one purpose... to drop them on your opponents! The last one to have his lego man disloged would be the winner.

My finest voice acting moment, as we recorded the event.

mcsteans said...

I do love the Legos, but yeah, I'd hate to find out how many little plastic pieces Lucy would ingest before we'd have to cart her to the doggy ER.

J.S. said...

If you guys start adding bookshelves for Lego stuff now, I'm getting Jamie a Tinkerbell outfit.

The League said...

I don't think we need to worry about that. (a) I can't afford Legos. (b) The fun isn't in building them and leaving them assembled. It's in building bigger and cooler stuff all the time with your pieces.

But, I don't want Lucy and Jeff choking on Legos, so we're not buying any, anyway.

Simon MacDonald said...

I love lego! I probably had thousands of dollars of lego when I was a child. I think I ended up donating them to charity when I was in university. On one hand I'm happy with that decision but on the other hand my daughter is about to turn 4 and I'd love to have them back right about now.

Recently announced is that TwoMorrow's publishing is starting up a new lego magazine, Brick Journal in February.

Also, Boing Boing is always posting some cool lego stories.

Anonymous said...

I love Lego too, but my bare feet never did.