Everyone's Favorite Building Toy: Lego

[ScorpionClaw]

As a kid I loved Lego, hours and hours of fun!

As an Adult I have mixed feelings about it - great for my kids to have the same fun I did when I was their age, not so great for the fact that they 'forget' to put it away meaning I end up finding it around the house - particularly painful when coming downstairs barefooted and you put your full weight on one of those 2*2 blocks....

 

[Triple AD]

Aaaah takes me back to the days I used to love BIONICLE and Lego Star Wars infact I still am remotely

 

[Sev72]

I'm going to go see if I can find the old Legos again... Probably in a closet somewhere.
This does bring back memories...

 

[Anarchemitis]

Great review, it brings back many memories.

By the way Anarchemitis, I swear you did another review. One on a 2D side-scrolling Team Fortress 2, if I recall?

Gang Garrison 2.
That game is actually finished now.

 

[Lord Krunk]

Great review, it brings back many memories.

By the way Anarchemitis, I swear you did another review. One on a 2D side-scrolling Team Fortress 2, if I recall?

Gang Garrison 2.
That game is actually finished now.

I'll remember that and try it out sometime.

 

[deathless14]

i love legos. espisaly the starwars legos those are cool

 

[dirk45]

I filled up half our aparment with Lego space (which was long before Lego Star Wars, at the time of the original Star Wars Films (yes, I saw them in Cinema when they came out originally )). Now I'm very happy that my son is old enough to play with Lego. Only my wife has some problems with it. Unfortunately my son prefers Playmobil over Lego grrr.

 

[vultureX21]

I have a massive collection of only the Lego Castle and Pirate sets which I proceeded to make a board/D&D style game out of using what I learned from playing D&D, Hero Quest, and Dragon Strike. The single greatest toy ever invented. I still play the board game with some of my friends, always wanted to haul my whole setup to a table top gaming event and play with people but I never was sure how they would react to the homebrew I love so much.

 

[vultureX21]

I used to love lego castles and taking all my sets and building all my own buildings and vehicles.

The grey ones, or the yellow castle set?

I had the Lego Castle made of yellow bricks. It came with four knights (complete with the first ever Lego horses, swords, shields, lances, medieval helm flip-ups, and tabards), ten little castle guards (with coppergate helmets, tabards and a mixture of bows, swords, shields and poleaxes). I freaking loved that set.
http://www.classic-castle.com/sets/archives/0375.html

When the grey castle set came out, it was like Christmas all over again, only the walls were better looking and supported better parapet blocks. And the weapons, helms and other stuff were all shiney.
http://www.classic-castle.com/sets/archives/6081.html

And now, there's the new Castle set. With Ogres, orcs, dwarves and dragons! And ships! And did I mention DWARVES AND OGRES?
http://castle.lego.com/en-US/default.aspx

Oh, Lego, how I absolutely love how you feed my medieval play addiction.

Oh dear friend I have been steadily purchasing the newest Castle gear... it's really amazing to see them still turning out really wonderful designs. Love the addition of Ogres and Trolls, now if they would only add Elves...

And the new Pirate stuff looks fantastic. Think about a fight between the Pirate command ship and the Troll longship!

Man I wish I had more money for it all.

 

[Anarchemitis]

The original BIONICLE line was far from 'idiotic'. It introduced younger LEGO fans to the considerably complicated Technic range. With their fairly original design and back-story and their intriguing mechanisms, BIONICLE is what inspired a 4-year-old me to build bigger and better models. Last year, for example, my dad bought me a 1:10 scale model of a Ferrari F1 car, and I hope to get the larger, 1:8 version in the near future. The newer (post-2003) models, however, have shown a clear decline in quality. The storyline has become too complexed, with more and more characters, species and even worlds being introduced every season. The models no longer have the 'spark' that the original Toa Mata and Nuva had, with their designs being based more and more on a futuristic aesthetic than interesting and fun-to-build mechanisms and moving parts.

I could go on for hours about this. Perhaps I should make a vlog.

Well yes, I agree. The idea of Bionicle to introduce kids to Technic is a fantastic idea, but the story becoming more and more convoluted is what just annoyed me the most.
[img_inline width=300 caption="Figure 2: Phantoka Toa Kopaka Nuva Bohrok Whatever-
Uncool as a painting by Victor Antonov being given to children"]http://www.yogee.com.au/images/LEGO-BIONICLE-Toa-Kopaka.jpg[/img_inline]
[img_inline width=300 caption="Figure 1: Kopaka-
Cool as Ice"]http://www.ixbt.com/short/2k3-05/kopaka.jpg[/img_inline]

 

[Shapsters]

Good review, I love a good write-up about the best toy ever invented. I defy anyone to say anything bad about Lego, it isn't possible. It promotes imagination, building skills, educational. Lego is truly awesome!

 

[Nemorov]

Great review... it brings back memories. I used to have a bunch of them, but one dark day my mother impaled her foot on one and that was the end of my Legos.

 

[Joens]

Always loved Lego's, especially loved the Bionicles, though it's been a while...

 

[Trace2010]

Extremely well-written...but um...where's the props to CONSTRUX??

 

[Pm0n3y]

ah lego. those were the days. even though the sets that you were bashing (i.e Star Wars, Bionicle) were the only sets i had.

 

[Zer_]

Lego has seemingly given up on the classic toys that made them what they are. All this high-tech licensed junk obscures the true purpose of the toy, which was my cousin Brian's room back in the 1980s, a Lego city complete with those awesome "street plate" playsets, which he connected underneath with flat 2x4 spacers which meshed perfectly into the pile of his carpet to keep everything else level. By the time we all got to high school Brian's Lego metropolis had managed to worm its way out of his bedroom, down the hall, and around a corner into the main living area of the house, and my uncle Jerry was awesome enough to continue to nurture his son's talent for building (Brian went to college and is now a civil engineer).

Would my cousin Brian have discovered a lucrative career in engineering had it not been for those Danish bricks? Who knows? But he's got money out the ass, in-demand job skills, and a buttload of awesome childhood memories, plus a great relationship with his dad to boot. Let's see G.I. Joe do that.

I have to agree with you for the most part. Some licensed Legos are pretty cool, but the cool sets of old were the bees knees.

I do really like the Lego Mindstorms, though.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/c192/