It’s been quite awhile since I wrote here. I could dive into my life updates since my last blog, but right now I’d rather dive into a random topic: lego bricks. I still have some of my old collection; a small collection, but more than I realized I had. Sure, as I looked upon certain pieces I remembered some old and weird sets I really liked as a kid, but some of these I don’t ever recall having! Such is the brain?
I should point out that currently my surroundings are quite.. dense. In addition to going through all these Lego toys, I was also digging up other stuff for sorting or selling. In my defense, the dining room table is full of other peoples’ stuff. Easier to just turn the study room into a temporary workshop. The Lego bricks themselves used to be all discombobulated, but a few years ago my partner and I organized them somewhat. All the red bricks in one zip bag, black in another, yellow in another. Arms in one bag, hands in another, heads in another; you get the idea.
The first thing I noticed when opening the box this time, is that I had apparently re-assembled my Star Wars X-Wing most of the way. I found a few of the missing parts in the bags; I set it on top of my desk hutch for now. I always gave Luke’s lightsaber to Biggs because I wished he had more screentime and survived to Empire or beyond. Maybe I felt that way as a kid, too.
I should note that part of the reason I am digging these up and assembling them. is to see if I have all the parts. I also plan to see about selling them or putting them on display for Youtube videos I’d like to produce. I don’t consider myself a “large” fan of Lego bricks, but they were a big part of my childhood and I don’t exactly have a lot of physical merch to work with. But I do have one set I’m sentimental about, because it’s a topic I obsess over (and still don’t exactly know why).
Next up, podracing! I had nearly forgotten that I was given Anakin Skywalker’s Podracer set. Comes with a pit droid and Padmé. The set itself is a tad bit underwhelming to me these days, but for 1999 it’s decent enough. The yellow fender things really help the design stand out. I still haven’t found a few key parts that I need to finish building it, but I hope I can run into them as I rummage through all the bags.
Speaking of parts, apparently Lego lets you buy parts for these ancient sets at varying price points. I dunno the details of the program yet, but if it’s helping a lot of people complete old sets then I’d be happy about that. I’m an archivist, after all, and one of the biggest issues is that companies usually don’t offer old replacement parts for various reasons. Maybe when I’ve got spare money again, I can bring these sets to completion! Besides, even if I didn’t have any missing parts, some of these bricks are a bit discolored or have 25-year-old teethmarks on them..
There are a lot of other random bricks in these bags. I dunno if I was ever bought a “general” set of parts, but I know I was given multiple specific sets. At least three for Star Wars, soccer field, minis from McDonald’s, and a lot of obscure stuff I don’t know the name of yet. There are also some Mega Bloks parts I’ll have to parse through – a skatepark and some kind of snow vehicle with purple wheels and an accompanying yeti. Re-assembling the sets will be quite the project, but it’ll come with the benefits of being set pieces, temporary cashflow, and of course the nostalgia. Thankfully there are many websites I can use to try and identify what sets all these parts go to. And, while I have a decent amount of these things, it was for a very brief window of time. I really wonder what sets I missed out on, and might have liked to build had I known about them at the time of release.
Bit of a tangent before I end this blog. Last week my roommates were talking about Lego – I think we saw a history-of or something on Youtube. It came up in conversation that Lego used to be about just selling lots of bricks and leaving specific designs up to our imaginations, with almost no guidance. Over time sets became a thing, especially licensed sets. I’m sure it helped rake in a lot of money, but my roommates made a valid point about the downsides of that transition. That being, it turned into just following instructions almost all the time, and people built less and less of their own custom designs. Something to think about. Anywho, more musings to come!
Update: There ended up being too little space to feasibly reconstruct the sets, so I made an executive decision to clear half the dining table. Sometimes no amount of perseverance can avoid the reality of needing more space to work with.