My Evolving LEGO Story

When I was a child, I was a big Lego fan. I used to love creating large and complicated Lego creations. I have fond memories of sunny weekend afternoons spent in my room creating new inventions. I created medieval battle scenes, suburban villages, rocket ships and more.

As I grew older, I got interested in Lego Technics and Robotics.

However, by the time I had moved out of my parents home I had pretty much stopped playing with Lego.

A couple of years ago I started to get back into Lego again. Specifically – I started to get into the new 12+ kits that are available these days. I started out with a number of the Star Wars Lego kits. My personal highlight here was the AT ST Walker:

One of the things that I liked most about these kits was the hidden complexity. It would be very easy to take something like the AT ST walker and just fill the empty space with nothing, or plain bricks. But that is not what Lego does. Instead, the entire model is full of interesting details – many of which will only be seen by the person who puts them together. In the case of the AT ST walker – I can tell you that the inside of the feet is actually quite complicated. You would never know that from looking at the outside.

Over time I started to fall out of love with the Star Wars Lego kits. This was primarily because they are mostly ships and vehicles of one kind or another – and once you have four of them on a shelf, the fifth one does not really standout compared to the others.

After Star Wars Lego I started getting into the new town house series that Lego have been doing. I absolutely love these things!

They are big and complicated, and they are beautiful when on display. Here is my current Lego street (that sits on a shelf above my computer desk):

On top of this – these houses were designed to be played with.

Let me explain. My eldest two children have shown a mild to moderate interest in Lego. They have always admired my Lego – but not really been interested in playing extensively with them.

Kai is different. He loves Lego, and he loves playing with it. He often comes and points to something on my shelf and asks if he can play with it.

Given this situation, I have come to have a solid appreciation for how hard it is to break each of my Lego creations, and how easy it is to fix if it is broken. For example: pre-Kai I would have told you that my AT ST Walker was the best Star Wars Lego model I had. It is striking and complex. Unfortunately, it will also break if you look at it really hard. In comparison my X-Wing fighter is quite robust, and is easy to fix when it breaks. For these reasons I would recommend the X-Wing over the AT ST Walker any day.

So how do the town houses stack up? Fantastically.

They are actually designed to come apart at each floor, and reassemble easily. So if Kai asks to play with one of the houses, I pull it down onto the floor and split it out into the pieces for him:

He can then play with the figurines and have them explore the building.

It is funny. While I genuinely appreciate the process of creating these buildings, and am happy to have them on display for their pure aesthetic value, it is also great to have someone who can play with them in ways that I won’t.

As a result – I now find my interest in Lego kits changing. I still love the town house kits, and want to get any that I do not have yet, but I find myself eyeing off some of the vehicle kits – like the large VW Van: