What made you get out of your LEGO dark age?

[funkybrick]

The release of the Taj Mahal! I didn't get it though...

Anyway, I'm probably destined to love Lego

[gotoAndLego]

I just thought I'd add that while I stopped playing with them I did hang on to them, in only the way a kid who collects things can. My brother kept all the space and what not we "shared", but I hung onto my Expert Builder sets. After buying that Midi-scale Falcon I broke these out, sorted them and began building. Most of those Castle figs are from the first batch of sets like the Yellow castle and joust where the horses were built from bricks.

Edited March 5, 2010 by gotoAndLego

[Kheldar]

reviving an old thread FTW? Someone can feel free to slap me if it's a faux pas, because I really like the idea of this thread, as at its core it is celebrating the hobby and the fact that a hobby that brings as much joy as Lego ought not have age boundaries.

I started playing with and collecting Lego when I was about 5, in 1989. My very first set was 3682-1: the Fabuland Fire Station (http://brickset.com/sets/3682-1/Fire-Station), and then 4010 Police Rescue Boat (http://brickset.com/sets/4010-1/Police-Rescue-Boat). The boat especially peaked my interest, and I still have vague memories of my parents buying it for me in Buffalo on a family trip across the border. My folks saw I loved it, and soon I had Lego sets arriving each Birthday or Christmas. I gravitated toward two main themes back then, Castle and Pirates. Especially pirates. I was so proud of my collection:

6245: Harbor Sentry (http://brickset.com/sets/6245-1/Harbor-Sentry) - I loved the Sentry boat!

6270-1: Forbidden Island (http://brickset.com/sets/6270-1/Forbidden-Island) - I don't know why but I really found this set immersive, and I really enjoyed the trap door!

6274-1: Caribbean Clipper (http://brickset.com/sets/6274-1/Caribbean-Clipper) - Ships are awesome!

It should be immediately clear that I lacked two main pieces: 6276: Eldorado Fortress and 6285: Black Seas Barracuda. Boy, did I ever know it. I wanted 6285 SOOO badly. Every Christmas or Birthday, I found myself examining boxes addressed to me, gauging them for size and dimensions, etc., guessing, hoping, that it would finally be 'it'. Of course, I also understood that our family was not exactly well off, and my parents did they best. Nonetheless, as time went on and the set was discontinued, my heart sank--though I'd still find myself checking box sizes for years, oddly.

Through the 90s I kept playing and collecting, moving on to themes like Town, other Castle and Pirate stuff, some space themes, and my favourite of the time: Aquazone. But, around the closing years of the decade, three things happened. First, TLG began experiencing some economically troubling times, as we know, and underwent some dramatic changes, producing some...interesting designs in sets. It's entirely subjective, and to each their own: I personally began losing interest in the aesthetic of Lego sets of that period. Second, being 13/14 in 97/98, I began feeling a bit silly playing with toys like Lego, and didn't feel I could ask for it any longer as gifts (and I was still too young for a job). So, same story as many folks, there. Third, my peer group's interests changed a bit - though if I was concerned with looking childish, I laugh at my prepubescent self now, since my group started playing Warhammer. I think I convinced myself it was more grown up because of the required assembly and painting of models...hey, wait a minute... ;) I was a silly child. So I veered away from Lego for quite some time. Fortunately, my sizable collection remained: it was just in the attic somewhere.

My (first) return to Lego resulted from a rather odd impetus: sometime during Undergrad, and the release of Batman Begins (2005). Bear with me: I watched that movie and immediately found my interest in Comic Books reignited. I pulled out my old collection, re-read tons of stuff, and then, of course, needed MORE. The local comic shop was great, but I remembered that my dad had used Ebay for years as a great source for electronic parts and such for work. I experimented, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy and fun it was. I started buying comics, warhammer stuff, etc., ...and then one day, I stumbled upon a listing for a Lego set. That got me thinking....and with a quick search, I saw a whole list of offerings for -you guessed it - 6285, Black Seas Barracuda (http://brickset.com/sets/6285-1/Black-Seas-Barracuda). It was NOT cheap...and I was disheartened, but, being a good budding historian, did the thing I was studying to do well: research! Over the next year, I watched countless auctions and buy it now listings for 6285, until I knew exactly what I should expect to pay, what was a deal, etc. and then one day...it happened. An auction listing for the set, at $30 Canadian, with $15 shipping within Canada. Contacting the seller, I explained my childhood dream of owning the set, and asked what they expected/hoped to get for it, and when they said $130, shipping in, I was overjoyed - I'd spent a year watching sets go for no less than $200. They relisted it as a buy it now and I grabbed it. When I got home the day it arrived, my parents had the huge box waiting on the kitchen table, brown paper wrapping and all. They knew. I ran tot he living room, ran upstairs and grabbed my old lego, and, at age 23, spent the next few nights building the set, as well as all my other pirate stuff. It was glorious. In fact--the seller included the ORIGINAL BOX AND INSTRUCTIONS...half the bags hadn't even been opened yet! I couldn't believe it!!! Heck - it still had the original Eaton's PRICE TAG on it! It's like this person found it in their attic. I didn't even know what to think.

But that soon faded again, since no one else played with Lego that I knew, and I still felt a bit silly. So I put it all away again (though 6285 remained in my room, on display). It wasn't until THIS year, now at age 29, in a Doctoral program, that I actually escaped my dark ages. I went with colleagues to see the Lego Movie, and all of us were overjoyed by the thing. Some of the guys started talking about their collections, and when we realized we still had ours, we all brought them back with us on our next trips home. So Iv'e been back at it, collecting like crazy sinec March of this year (perhaps a bit too much...I shudder to think what I've already spent!)

One thing remains though: 6285 Black Seas Barracuda is still with me, and has never been disassembled since that day in 2006. It is "the" magic set for me, and will always remain that way. Also that was a lengthy post. Whoops.

[TWO2SEVEN]

Just something I was thinking about the other day...

I loved LEGO as a kid, but when I got to be around 13 or 14 I stopped buying LEGO because I thought I had outgrown it and I was a little ashamed of asking for it as a present.

I know the feeling. After going through my old sets it seems that I stopped with the Western theme that came out in 1996. I was 12 at the time. I had always wanted to get back in to it, but I felt that I was too old. I had no idea that the AFOL community even existed.

My son was born in February of this year. I am really excited to share my hobby with him, if he is interested of course.

The set that got me back in was the Ecto-1. When I was younger two of my biggest toy collections were Lego and Ghostbusters (TMNT being the third), once I saw that they combined Lego and GB I couldn't resist. :) Since then I have started rebuilidng my old sets to check them for completion. Once they are done I take them apart, bag and box them up, and put them away for my son to enjoy in a few years. I have also jumped in to the modulars as I can afford them. It has been really cool to see the new parts/pieces and building techniques that have come up since I entered my dark age.

[fred67]

It's not a faux pas, in this case, new people join all the time - if the topic was interesting then, there's no reason new posts shouldn't be interesting now.

[EvilBlackSheep]

I just got out of my dark age myself ( even if I got the winter toy shop a few years ago as a xmas decoration, and have been buying legos to my niece since she's 3yo) by buying myself the VW minivan and the seaside creator house. I'm looking into the modular series and I'm so mad at myself for missing on the CC and GG when they were still affordable.

The lego movie helped making me cave in again I'm sure.

I'm now in the process of cleaning and sorting my legos from my childhood before trying to reconstitute the sets i can. The cleaning in particular is taking forever.

[Kierna]

I was 17 and hadn't touched lego for 5 years when I saw the 8420 Technic Street Bike.

I liked it so much I bought it instead of my motorcycle licence test which got potponed for another week

[Slobey]

Lord of the Rings..... I was always a Castle Lego and Tolkien fan but having it combined was too much to resist

[Robert8]

I think I didn't have "Dark Ages" strictly talking, but the discontinuation of Adventures on 2003 was kind of the end of an era to me. After that I bought just some small sets (like 4 or 5) and then I fell in love with the Fantasy Era line and bought Dwarves' Mine in 2008. Later, CMF S1 brought me back fully into Lego again.

[rollermonkey]

Architecture line.

Bought the Space Needle when I moved to the Seattle area, and realized that most of the rest at the time were places I'd been and quickly bought the whole line.

[DarthBrickus]

My (now) wife used to ask me why, if i love Star Wars (i was mostly collecting the old kenner-toys back then), and used to be a big fan of Lego, i never considered buying a Lego Star Wars Set.

While the older sets just didn't seem aesthetically pleasing to me, in 2010 something was released that changed the game for me:

Since then I've been hooked, to put it mildly

[obsidianheart]

Exo-Force tried to coax me out of my Dark Age, with my love of mechs and robots. I had been in my Dark Ages since the third wave of Alpha Team stuff came out, and while I really liked that line, I just wasn't feeling it anymore. Anyway, Exo-Force hit, and I bought a few middling sets, built them, put them on a shelf, and went back to other things.

Then Agents came out. I can't really explain exactly why, but when I saw Sawfist's newly-molded cybernetic arm, I had to find pictures of all the sets. And I thought the villains were totally '80s Weekday Afternoon Cartoon awesome. So I bought the whole line twice over (except the car/helicopter set). Then I bought the second wave. Then I started MOCing stuff for it. Then I was buying unrelated sets as parts packs, and even though the line was ended, I was still planning, buying, and building LEGO.

And then Monster Fighters came out and that all happened again. So I usually collect one or two (in this year's case) themes a year, and if I'm not buying a theme I'm Bricklinking a ton of parts for LDD-designed MOCs.

After all that, my son got really into LEGO Trains. So, now I have to budget those (often expensive) sets into the equation somewhere. YAY!

[Toa of Gallifrey]

I bought a lot less Lego sets after Bionicle ended and only got a couple sets I liked from Hero Factory or Cars on birthdays and Christmas. Recently I took a shine to CCBS and started buying more HF sets from BA and IfB. I plan on buying all the Bionicle sets next year! :D

[BirdOPrey5]

Way back in the early/mid 90's I was in Jr. High School and brought a Lego Ghost into school and I got made fun of for still playing with Lego, so it wasn't long before I stopped- and I had a basement with a giant custom made table dedicated to my Lego "city" which was made up of sets from all the various themes- space, vikings, castle, pirate, whatever there was, I had them all. Also the Monorail and train setup.

A few years later I tried to get my younger cousin into Lego by giving him all my old ones... We had a little fun playing with them a few times but he was never as into Lego as I was.

That was pretty much it- I hadn't really touched a Lego until late last year when my sister bought me a small set for Christmas- Red Rotors - 31003. That was all it took... Right after Christmas I ordered the Architecture Empire State Building and the big Space Shuttle - 10231. Since then I've purchased about 30 various Lego and non-Lego brick sets and don't expect to slow down. Some sets are small mind you. $15 or $20... not all are huge. Most fun has been the Creator sets.

Edited September 6, 2014 by BirdOPrey5

[klinton]

I suppose it was the Superheroes sets? Not really though. I was buying the sets that featured minifigs of favorite characters, but the builds themselves never really excited me (all of which live disassembled in ziploc bags now).

This year's LEGO Movie sets though really got my attention and dragged me back into collecting and (more importanly) enjoying LEGO.

I started with the Cloud Cuckoo Palace set, as it was pretty cheap and featured the characters you saw in all the adverts. After seeing the film I grabbed a few more to get some more favorite characters, and realized that I was really enjoying the actual sets (right?). They have fun, diverse builds and finished models that I couldn't stop picking up and 'playing' with.

Once the film was released on Blu-ray, I kinda went off and decided I had to have them all. I bought a couple sets every Friday until I ran out of movie sets to buy.

I'd gotten so accustomed to my weekend LEGO building now (in the space of a couple of months, hahaha) that I decided to keep going.

I'm currently collecting the Ultra Agents line (also amazing!), but am fast running out of sets to get. I'm actually kind of worried about what I'll do when I've run out of Agents sets to get. Chima looks to have some interesting, imaginative builds...but I have no love for the little animal people.

[TR3K]

For me it was buying LEGO for my nephew, I have had several dark ages though

Edited September 18, 2014 by TR3K

[CADScott]

My dark age lasted from 16 years old, when I gave my entire LEGO collection to some younger relatives . I got back into Lego about 2 years ago (23 years later) after my son started getting interested in more complex models.

The set that pulled me out was the Uni-Mog, and since then I have tried to reacquire all the classic technic that I lost in my original purge, and have purchase a large amount of new technic and creator sets.

Also had to have all the Monster Fighters sets, they were just too cool!

[Gatthekid]

The LEGO Movie! I was so excited when I saw the commercial for the first time. I went to see it two days after it came out and soon enough I bought the Melting Room/Chamber set. Later on I bought the Cloud Cuckoo set too. I'm hoping to get Lord Buisness' Evil Lair soon. I need to buy the western plane one too.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Gatthekid

[alois]

The LEGO Movie! I was so excited when I saw the commercial for the first time. I went to see it two days after it came out and soon enough I bought the Melting Room/Chamber set. Later on I bought the Cloud Cuckoo set too. I'm hoping to get Lord Buisness' Evil Lair soon. I need to buy the western plane one too.

Honestly, you're way too young to have experienced a dark age

[AmperZand]

I started collecting fantasy themed toys and action figures in the early '90s as an extension of my existing passion for fantasy literature and games. In 1993, when TLC released its first wizard minifig, I decided to get the smallest set it came in as well as the cheapest set with the ghost minifig to add both those minifigs to my fantasy toy collection.

I soon added minifig knights, then others as more minifigs were released (such as Hubble Bubble the witch in 1997) and MOC minifigs using parts that I could re-purposed from non-Castle lines (such as Star Wars).

By 2010, my minifig collection was eclipsing my collection of non-LEGO fantasy toys and I gave it its own space. My display collection of fantasy minifigs now numbers in the hundreds with a few super hero and sci-fi minifigs as well. I also MOC or mod structures and vehicles to complement my minifigs such a Ninjago car reconfigured as a Batmobile.

Edited September 10, 2014 by AmperZand

[CrazyDalton777]

I have never had a full dark ages. There was a time when I still played with LEGO but just didn't buy any more at that time. The DeLoreon brought be "Back"

[grum64]

My Grandson Jake was responsible for me re-discovering my childhood love of LEGO.

It's a long story that I'll not repeat. If you'd like to read it, it can be found by following the link below.

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=67664&hl=grum64

PLEASE NOTE:

I shall not be held liable for loss of job, earnings ect., due to lateness for work or similar as a result of a boredom induced state of deep sleep due to reading the topic in the above link.

Should you have any concerns, may I respectfully suggest you leave open all doors & windows (where safe to do so - Safety First) to ensure a ready supply of cool, fresh air to increase your chances of staying awake whilst reading. You may want to set a minimum of 2 alarm clocks (3 recommended) to maximise your chances of being woken should you fall into a coma like sleep.

Following the link means you accept the above.

You have been warned

Edited September 10, 2014 by grum64

[ReplicaProfile]

I searched for LEGO military MOCs and after seeing the results I looked for LEGO forums (which eventually lead me to this wonderful site ). After that I immersed myself in LEGO (again).

Edited September 10, 2014 by TrentonC

[hollisbrick]

Mostly because of the Marvel and DC sets. I'm a huge comic book fan and then it was just a domino affect after that

[eurotrash]

My Grandson Jake was responsible for me re-discovering my childhood love of LEGO.

It's a long story that I'll not repeat. If you'd like to read it, it can be found by following the link below.

http://www.eurobrick...67664&hl=grum64

...

Dang Grum! Tip of the hat to you.

You're an inspiration.