Lent Day 5 - Legos

People who know me know that I love Legos. I really really love Legos. My dream job would be to somehow work for Lego. The creativity and ingenuity they exhibit on a regular basis. And, from my point of view, they are a pretty good company. They are trying to change their packaging and products to be more environmentally friendly. They have a lot of different initiatives to help others. They try to be thoughtful about their products to represent a lot of people. It’s one of those companies that it feels good to support. I’m sure there are skeletons in their closets - which would, of course, be the official Lego skeleton that pops up all the time in sets and video games. But from the perspective of an outsider, they are cool. There aren’t scandals in the news all the time. They don’t slaughter, like, baby quokkas to make their pieces. I like them so much that I refuse to purchase sets by the knock-off companies who poached their trademarks. I’ve never really talked too much about Legos, and why I’m drawn like a magnet to them. And, since I needed something to write today, and I happened to look over at the sofa table with several sets on it, here we go. 

When I was a kid, I didn’t have Legos. That was one of the things we didn’t dabble in. Well, one of the things that I didn’t dabble in. My brother had some Legos. I don’t know where or how he got them. But it was the equivalent of a set’s worth. We had a playroom in our house, and there was a big set of build-in bookshelves. The shelf way up at the top was Chris’s shelf. It was because we couldn’t reach it, although if we moved the rocking llama over and stood on it, we could reach it. I was always a tall kid, so I could easily reach things on that shelf. That’s where I found the book that explained what happens when a man and woman love each other very much complete with cartoon versions of anatomy - a book that terrified and confused me and that I never mentioned to my parents.  And a book that my parents never used to talk to me about anything. And the whole time I wondered why that book was even in our house, if no one was going to use it. Looking back, I still don’t understand. But I digress… That shelf. That was where Chris’s Legos were.  He had built a red fire station building, but kind of made that into a box. All of the Lego pieces were contained inside the box. A few times I had watched him building with them, enraptured by the way the pieces connected and then disconnected. I remember being allowed to play with it once. I wanted to use it so badly. But I wasn’t allowed. It just sat up on that shelf, mocking me. Even once Chris had gone away to college, I still wasn’t allowed to use it - and I was a teenager by that point. I finally was allowed to use it when I was in high school, and it was disappointing. There wasn’t any book or guide to use, so it was just building rudimentary shapes. I used to go over to friends’ houses to play from time to time. One friend, Matt, had Star Wars Legos. These were doubly banned. We weren’t allowed to watch Star Wars. This was a thing when I was growing up. Movies. My mom was very conservative and restrictive. So we were not allowed to watch a LOT of things that other kids my age watched. There is a massive gap in my entertainment knowledge that covers the entire 1980s. We only watched The Cosby Show on network television (yeeeeah, that didn't age well). We watched some things like Garfield and Muppets and 3-2-1 Contact and Looney Tunes. But most television shows were no-nos. Most popular music was banned. And movies were a wasteland. By the time I was in high school, I had seen four movies: Black Stallion Returns, Muppet Movie, Great Muppet Caper, and The Great Chipmunk Adventure. The first REAL movie I saw was Batman in 1989, and I kind of backed my mom into a corner to get to see that. Oh my gosh, I fell in love with that movie. It still is in my Top 10. (And yes, I did scream at the Super Bowl Flash trailer when Michael Keaton showed up and they whipped the cover off the greatest Batmobile ever.) Anyway, movies were a no-go. And Star Wars was the most banned of them all. My mom just had a hatred of that series. She said it was due to the magic or whatever. I think someone told her something, or she read some panicked article in one of her religious magazines. I really can’t explain it.  I didn’t see the Original Trilogy until I went away to college in 1992. I wasn’t that impressed. Of course, Terminator 2 had come out the year before, so the pew pew Atari looking special effects were kind of stupid in Episode 4. So Star Wars was restricted ground, which meant Star Wars Legos were uber-restricted. I messed around with them a little bit at Matt’s house. I felt guilty the whole time. And he and his mom didn’t want me ruining anything. So it was a frustrating experience.

Until I was about 30, Legos were something I looked at and appreciated, but never did anything with. Even after I was old enough to buy things for myself, I didn’t buy them. I would go to Lego stores and wander around amazed. I would walk slowly through the Lego aisles at Target and Toys R Us (RIP Geoffrey). I just couldn’t bring myself to buy them. I couldn’t justify the cost. I had nowhere to put them. I didn’t want them to break when we moved - which we did a lot. But all of that changed when the greatest thing to happen in my Lego quest occurred. I had a kid. 

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas to me. Josiah would ask for Legos, and I - being a benevolent father - delivered. I remember one year for Christmas, I saw that Toys R Us was running a Black Friday deal on the Star Wars MTT Lego set. Not one of those ten bucks off, either. A really good discount. So I ran by and snagged it. And then I “helped him build it.” And by helped him, I mean let him sit at the table and watch me build it. He was too young. He didn’t understand all of the instructions. It was an advanced set for such a little guy. Unfortunately, he was very mechanically inclined, so I was rapidly removed from the process. Soon he was building Ninjago dragons and Millennium Falcons. And I was thinking of how I could accidentally knock them over and have to “fix them.” Then, we had a second son. (I skip our daughter in this story because the one knock against Lego is that they often skip daughters in their creations as well. Well, they used to. Now there is a lot of stuff that appeals to girls. They have really branched out in their offerings. Plus Natalie is more like Heather when it comes to Legos. They like them, but they kind of run out of steam and don’t always finish their projects. Then we hover over them like vultures because we already built all of ours.) Gabe loved Legos too. He was into Toy Storyones and DC Comics ones. And I had to help him fix the sets because - and this is where it is tough for Lego lovers - he wanted to PLAY with the sets. He would run the train around his room and have it crash. He would let the Cars characters flip all over and lose pieces. AAAAAAGGGHHHH. Soon those sets were smashed all over and hopelessly mixed in with other stuff.  Then we just toted big containers of busted up, mixed up Lego sets. 

I’m not sure where exactly things switched to where I just started buying my own sets. It was probably Harry Potter. We all loved Harry Potter - well, except Gabe. Weirdo. But he loved building Legos and didn’t care what franchise they were from. One year, we decided to have a Harry Potter building night. We got a bunch of the new sets and watched the movies while we built the sets. It was one of our best family memories. Lego would release new Harry Potter sets every year, so we started doing an annual event. And, we all got to build! Yay! I got into the Brickheadz line of characters, which was definitely part of the process. They were larger buildable characters from different lines. I have dozens of them. So cool to see how they adapt that layout to different characters. I even have a personalized one. I use it as my avatar at work; students love it. Also, Lego has had a very long relationship with Batman - who, if you remember, I fell in love with. So this was the primo piece of synergy for me. I got into the Architecture sets that let you build city skylines. I got the different space items - the Saturn V rocket, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station. I got the massive 1989 Batmobile and Batplane sets. During the Covid nightmare, Lego became a kind of therapy for me. I bought used sets and built them, then resold them. I found a rental company where you could get big sets to build and then return. When we had our vacation cancelled due to Covid, we bought a bunch of the big sets and all built them together. As Lego has created more sets for adults, I have been able to get a Taj Mahal, Great Pyramid, Home Alone house, Jurassic Park movie scene, and Thor’s hammer. My office is decorated with Legos everywhere. For Christmas, we have a ton of Lego decorations: gingerbread houses, elf play land, Santa’s sleigh, Christmas tree. It has become a part of our family. Everybody has their own line they create. Heather has several sets of flowers that we keep out instead of live flowers. She also loves the Friends sets. Natalie has Stranger Things. Gabe and Josiah both have Star Wars and Marvel sets. We frequently gift Legos to my nieces and nephews - because they know it is from us. Two of my favorite sets will actually be on the wall. Lego has branched into creating art masterpieces. I have Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Housaki’s The Great Wave as hangable recreations. 

I also really got into the Lego video games. They are right up my alley. Video games have gotten to be so complicated now, that I feel like I can’t do anything with the games that look cool. I got Injustice a while back. It came with a giant book on the moves. Not a magazine or a little paper book either - a huge hardback several hundred page book. I never did get very far in it. But the Lego games are very accessible. You bust things up, follow clues, build stuff.  They recreate movies and franchises I love. And they have a TON of content in them, so they aren’t a quick disappointing romp. You can take forever to beat everything, but it is fun the entire time. I am a completionist when it comes to games, trying to hit 100% on them. I’ve been able to do that on at least a half dozen of the Lego games. 

I am always impressed by creative people. And Lego has such a creative group of designers. It is mind-blowing to me how they can make blocks go together to create a giant spaceship or race car. How do they utilize the same pieces to make a movie-accurate house and then also a painting masterpiece? I also love that they allow fans to submit ideas. The entire Ideas line was created by fans. Someone will make a proposal for a set. Then Lego will post it on the Ideas site. If it gets 10,000 votes, it will be up for possible release. There are just regular people out there who came up with a Lego set, who now get to see it on the shelf! How awesome is that? I gravitate towards those sets now. Some of my favorite ones are Ideas sets: the Saturn V rocket, The Office and Friends sets, Home Alone house, actual Globe, and Starry Night. 
A few years back, I decided to tackle that giant bucket of Legos I mentioned. It was 80 pounds worth of Legos. I broke down all of our old sets that had been mixed up. Then I separated all of the pieces into colors. It took weeks, but it was such a cool endeavor. Once that was all done, we were able to start “reclaiming” old sets. Josiah spent a good chunk of his summer sifting through buckets to reconstruct his old Star Wars sets. I actually like taking sets apart. We will do that with the Christmas sets. I’ll break them all up and store them for the next year - except the Home Alone set. That one never gets broken up. The nice thing is, I get to build them again! 

So that’s 2200 words on Legos. More than you’ve probably ever wanted to read. It is definitely something I love. It’s my hobby - like someone else’s golf or sporting events or eating healthy or exercising. If anyone wants pics of anything, I’m always willing to send them out. And if you have any sets just laying around, you know who to talk to.