Lego fans, generally, all go through a transition.
There is the childhood “Lego is fun!” beginning, the awkward “I’m too old for this” teen years, and then the eager submission and acceptance as adults: “I have money now”/”that looks cool”/”I wanted that when I was younger”. I’m at an age now where the phrase “when I was younger” is becoming more and more common in my daily life, but nonetheless, when I was younger… I was absolutely mad for Lego. Castles, and Pirates, and so many Helicopters. I had other toys but for me, there was always Lego and excitingly buckets and buckets of it. Birthdays and Christmasses were involutarily small-scale Lego events. Trips to hospital would always be rewarded with Lego. Pocket money would mean, of course, Lego. I don’t think I really had many of the big sets of the 90s when I was growing up, but there were hundreds of smaller sets and vehicles, minifigures and adventure bases, and it all massed itself into quite the respectable collection, enough for years of some pretty sweet imagination and building.
When I hit puberty I became susceptible to the same societal cool/lame (AND GREASY) pressures and problems as everyone else, and stopped collecting and playing with Lego outright. This would’ve been around the early 2000s at some point. I suspect computer games, music, and the internet played a huge part in that echoing that entire generation of children, but Lego, and the company itself were struggling at the time, with some bizarre set design choices and very questionable innovations. The Lego Group faltered immensely in the early 00s (and not just because of me, silly) dabbling in CDRoms and Webcam film-making tools, and producing absolutely hundreds of Bionicle sets, very different sets and ideas to the classic, common brick. I still don’t know what the fuck a Bionicle is. I never want to find out.
Lego fans commonly refer to their time away from Lego as “Dark Ages”, and it usually occurs at the same age for all builders. Boys are cool, right? My Lego Dark Ages lasted for several years -mostly High School, (hell) which would then of course gave way to some actual Dark Ages: my own mental health doubt, depression et al for a few years after (actual hell). I wasn’t interested in Lego any more but for years it felt like I wasn’t interested in anything any more. I didn’t do much of anything, creativity was a foreign concept, and I just really moped around for years while studying part-time. There was a lot of late nights, tv repeats and internet scrolling. Sometimes there were family dinners. While I was off The Lego Group were very much still on, and they kept producing and releasing sets throughout the noughties. Up until the early 2000s Lego as a product had only been original themes and in-house IPs, but in the turn of the millenium two franchises dominated the entertainment -and subsequently toy- industries: Star Wars and Harry Potter. I was a fan of both at the time but the actual Lego sets relating to both IP garnered no interest from myself- something something not as good as my childhood etc. Soon after this was exemplified: on a random rainy afternoon’s internet trawling, I stumbled upon LUGNET, The International LEGO Users Group Network.
Mindless internet clicking had led me here, and it was a usernet full of Lego set images, forum posts, and most excitingly, “MOCs”. People the world over we’re deconstructing their sets and building their own creations, uploading and linking images, and truly showing off what they could do with their own bricks. Truly wondrous feats of story, idea, and engineering, the very same stuff I was aspiring to when I was younger, but they were building and uploading as ADULTS. I browsed for hours reading what everyone was saying and browsing set images and catalogues with some of the biggest pangs of nostalgia and subsequent happiness i’ve ever experienced. I had some really horrible years after leaving (read: dropping out of) High School due to absolute shit mental health, and seeing this old-but-new creative world and opportunity open up in front of me was maddening: it was the permission to go and play with Lego that I didn’t know I needed. I ran to the attic straight away.
Everything was all mixed up and in the same boxes as when it “wasn’t cool” and entered the attic all those years ago. I brought them down and rummaged through them, identifying pieces and more crucially memories and began rebuilding some of the sets I’d just seen online. There was a lot here as a child, but looking at it now as a maybe-adult there was nowhere near as much as what everyone else was posting and building with. I can’t remember for the life of me what the set I bought after leaving my Dark Ages was, but I did buy a lot of loose bricks online on places like Ebay and Bricklink, and even locally. In the following months and maybe year after, my initial collection had doubled. I was building and jumping online myself, posting what I’d built, what I thought about sets, and just continually being amazed at what everyone else is doing. Here I was at my desk alone, but crucially i’d never felt more part of a community. I found a *lot* of reassurance and solace on these sites and in building once more, it definitely pushed me forward again in ways I never would have anticipated.
Castles and Pirates were back in, helicopters continued to stay in a million pieces. I was building forts and islands and buying the missing bricks online that I needed to finish projects and designs that i’d come up with myself. My Own Creations (MOCs) weren’t (to be honest) that good, but I enjoyed the building process nonetheless, and there was always a satisfying, reassuring click to the bricks as they built upwards and sideways. There still is: it’s a soothing physical activity for idle hands to distract from a burdened mind. Before long I was back to buying actual new sets, checking the catalogues, and collecting again. I still am today, age 34.
“How many bricks do you have?”/”How much is it all worth?” are common, but impossible questions. I don’t know. For the latter, I’m not sure I want to know. As an Adult Fan of Lego I still build, but so much of it now is just…there. I buy and I collect, and potter, and click. I go to Legoland, I watch The Lego Movie (the sequel was good too, honest), and when I see things and watch films I still wonder how I could build them. I post online, and watch videos of other people talking about Lego. It’s all so enormous, both how big that online AFOL community has gotten, but also my own interest in the plastic brick itself. It’s my big favourite hobby, and one that i’m happy to have.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."
-George Bernard Shaw