(Written by Matthew Carey of GameBuildingSets.com)
When I think back to the first time I set down with a LEGO set as an adult, I remember thinking I was mad. It was roughly eight years ago with my (at the time) five year old son. He had seen his friends playing with their LEGO sets at school during a toy-day. He came home one evening and asked if he could be treated to his first ever LEGO set. After a bit of negotiating, he won (he always seems to win debates like this). So, the very next day I went out and bought him his first LEGO City set. If I remember correctly it was the #7249 LEGO City Mobile Crane, and also got some basic building blocks. 😀
That evening, I remember he played with it for hours on end. He went into his bedroom and we didn’t see him for three hours until he was called for dinner. He was truly engaged in the building process. It was like his mind was captivated beyond anything else he had played with before, and I simply didn’t understand it until – once again – he managed to negotiate me into joining him in his play…
That same evening after dinner, I proceeded to play LEGO with my son. At the beginning, I felt like I was a big kid and the whole thing felt ridiculous (At that time I didn’t know there were adult LEGO fans.) As we began building different things such as towers and houses, I soon began to realize though that LEGO could take my imagination anywhere – quite literally. I was amazed by the fact that something as simple as LEGO could bring out the creative side in me.
We played with that same LEGO set for the next three nights, every single night. We discussed what we would build next, who would build what and how we would go about doing it. Thinking back, those were the best times I have ever spent with my son – and I truly appreciate everything LEGO has done for us in terms of our relationship. LEGO allowed us to connect on a level that we haven’t experienced with anything else. Forget watching television together, forget visiting the cinema; the most bonding activity I have ever shared with my son is building LEGO together. We laughed a lot and also we most definitely argued on what we were going to build next. But, that wasn’t the whole point of it all. The point was, we were having fun together and creating a bond that has stuck with us to this day.
So, I was just curious how others discovered their passion for LEGO. What was your experience? What was the first LEGO set you played with? Did you receive your first set as a present? Or did you go out and buy your very own set? I can imagine the majority of readers having their LEGO sets given to them by their parents (much like I gave to my son), and from there your passion for the building sets have sparked into something brilliant.
You see, to me, LEGO is something more than just building and displaying something on a shelf. To me, LEGO represents everything that is great in life; family, fun, engagement, social interaction, creativity and more importantly, development. I just love how some themes (such as LEGO City) are specifically tailored for an educational purpose. They introduce children into the real world and let them experience what the world has to offer. Their imaginations take over as they become firefighters, or as they hop onto their motorbikes and become a police officer – chasing down the criminals of LEGO City.
It is the role-play aspect of LEGO that sparked my passion for the sets, and I have so much to thank them for. It has created a truly unique bond between me and my son, and I honestly don’t think we would be so close today without it. It has allowed us to share something in common – a bond which many parents fail to create due to lack of common interest. Still though, I must admit, now than I am an avid and enthusiastic AFOL (Adult-Fan-of-LEGO) myself, I do keep my own LEGO sets hidden away from Mike (my son). He doesn’t know where I keep them and he never will – he has his own sets to build with. 😉
And so, once again fellow TBB readers, let me know where your passion and desire to start building with LEGO first emerged. Tell me your story and I’ll be happy to reply as much as I can. You can also visit me on my website at GameBuildingSets.com where I review LEGO sets. Thanks for reading my first post and sharing your thoughts! 🙂
I’m not much older than I was when I first got into LEGOs. 😛 I remember liking LEGOs, but all we had were a few Megabloks. Then one day, when I was 8, we went to the LEGO Store. I got the LEGO City Mail Van, so that would be my first set. 🙂 Ever since that moment I’ve loved them. They’ve kinda faded every now and then, but I always get back to them. 😀 I am 12 now, (almost 13) so I actually am a fairly new LEGO fan, but it feels like I’ve had LEGOs ever since I was 4. 😛
I got into Legos around a year ago, when I was 11 and now I am a nerd about them :p I love legos so much! My first Lego set was I think one of those little racer cars….
Keep going till you’re 30, and you’ll have a LEGO collection the size of a house! 🙂
I’ve had LEGO since I was a kid and had fun for a few years and then I hit the dark ages. At the end of last year, I just suddenly wanted to get back into LEGO and purchased the Millennium Falcon as my first purchase. Now, I run a LEGO blog and my passion for building and collecting hasn’t slowed down any and I’m looking forward to see what’s in store for the future.
I only got it to LEGO when I was a young adult. I have some health problems that made things difficult to work . It got so hard for me to keep a job that I just couldn’t work anymore. So, I needed a hobby. I believe my first LEGO set was the first driod escape pod from star wars and I’ve been hooked ever since. As , I got older , I to felt weird about playing with kid stuff . But, their are adults that still love the LEGO experience. I mean after all LEGO was created by adults why can’t adults play with it as well. ( nobody really grows up. I call it advanced childhood.)
When I was about 5, I saw a LEGO Bionicle. I loved it. I bought one and discovered LEGO’s website. I discovered there were Star Wars LEGO.
Thats pretty much how I found LEGO. 😀
I remember my first lego set was a miniature,green Creator train set. Before that,I was a train maniac and so decided to see what Lego went on about,and so built my own train. After that,I was hooked,and when I saw a certain train model (in lego)when I was looking for another set,I clearly remember fainting in the shop 😀 ever since my first discovery of Lego,I had a multitude of wonderful encounters with the ever so popular toy brand and have even gone from building my first minifigure,to buying the collectable minifigure series,to even creating my own Lego parodies of real life automobile manufacturers!!! I’ve been collecting Lego for about a quarter of my life and I hope it will continue for longer!!!!!!
My first was a legobrick box then i saw the power miners and i got hooked now i have every single power miner set they sold so now i am hooked to ninjago
by the way the back to the future car Won the lego cuusoo summer review so no western town 🙁
No LEGO Zelda?!?!?!? How dare you LEGO, you chose some stupid car over Zelda and a Western Town!!! 👿
Yeah, it is pretty sad… 🙁
Yeah, I read that too. Very sad. I was really looking forward to the Western Town. 🙁
But we’re getting Western sets with the Lone Ranger. That’s probably part of the reason.
WHAT A STUPID CAR GOT PICKED INSTEAD OF THE TOWN !
started as a kid in the 80s through to mid 90s. dint touch it for about 15 years but now back into it. for me it’s about two things – modular micro scale and a replacement for cigarettes…
I got into Lego when I was a kid in the mid 80`s and collected/built till the late 90’s. moved on to other things but recently got back into it with my son. for me it’s all about micro scale modular building
I have literally been a ego fan all my life, it started when i was 3 or 4 when my mom found a big bag of legos at a garage sale. My dad would love to build big buildings, bridges, (once across my room) he is very technical when he builds. I was more into building planes, cars, boats, spacecraft and still am. I have never lost my love for legos since, a big part of Christmas in our house is my dad, brother and me all get a big lego set and try to build it in the 3 hours we have before we go to my grandparents for their party.
lego fan
Sounds awesome 🙂
Matthew, thanks for starting a nice discussion! It is wonderful that you and your son can use LEGO as a way to bond and build wonderful memories. 🙂
I got my first LEGO set when I was 7. My brother and I spent endless hours building and playing. Mostly spaceships and castles. I left my LEGO collection behind when I was 14 and moved away going to highschool. Then rediscovered LEGO again as an adult.
Although I was toying with the idea of getting back to LEGO for some time, what brought me back to it again was in fact not regular LEGO but the DUPLO Castle line. It is an amazing collection and I bought every single set in the series. To this day I often mix DUPLO and LEGO as you can build impressive size structures a lot faster (castles, hills, etc.)
Eventually I got back to regular LEGO as well. I’m mostly a MOC-er – building my own designs – not a set or theme collector. I also love minifigure customization. I’m a big supporter of customizers and do customization myself. And I spend way too much time shopping on Bricklink. 😉
Nice story Admin!
That does sound pretty cool..
It’s been about a year since I discovered my lego passion… I was coming back home from school on the schoolbus and Christopher had come back with two lego Ninjago books from Scholastic. I read them and I enjoyed them and they inspired me. I began to realize how great Ninjago was and, that I liked building lego sets! It’s fun putting the pieces together and look at the vehicle or building you just made. I had already built Lego sets but I didn’t really think about it (they were my brother’s). But since then I’m a HUGE Ninjago fan ( I practically screamed to my brother that Ninjago was continuing) and I am a Lego fan. I think Lego is educational and creative.
Woo! Total Ninjago fan! Absolutely love it and i have several sets from it! Ninja Go!
My earliest memory of building with Lego was when my older brother dumped out all his bricks, popped in Beach Boys, and we just built for hours. I think I truly fell under the spell of Lego around the time Bionicle first came out, so I was…around 5 years old. I love the old Bionicle line. One of my Lego dreams is to collect every Bionicle model out there. I have far more than anyone I know, but still a long ways to go. The brick part of my collection has grown substantially as well.
To be honest, I’ve been into LEGO all my life. I used to have just a couple pieces, but one day, at a garage sale, my mom found a huge bin of LEGO – at least 4000 pieces – for only $10 bucks. She bought it, and I built with that for a few years.
After a while, I began to stray away from them, and started using the computer and learning about that. I’ve regretted that ever since.
However, in mid-2009, I was walking through a Target with my family, and something caught my eye – It was orange and lime green; I liked to the colors, so I bought it – the Stone Chopper. After that purchase, I thought to myself, ‘Oh, I better get as many sets as I can from this theme!’
So I did, and went on to buy some Prince of Persia and Indiana Jones, and most of Atlantis, Alien Conquest, Marvel Super Heroes, Power Functions, and Ninjago – Including an entire collection of the 2012 spinners/booster packs.
To sum things up, I’m really glad I got into LEGO when I did. As of now, I’m 14, and have 19,000 pieces and 200 minifigs. Also, with all the upcoming themes – Legends of Chima and Galaxy Squad are my main interests – I think I’ve started a great career in LEGO.
And that’s how I found it! 😀
Hi Matthew,
I’m 30 years old. I got my first LEGO when I was about 9, it was a impulse set, a samll motorboat with no minifigure, and had instructions for about 3 sets, it was from Kmart. I remmeber I used to go to my frien Jimmy’s house and he had the Crusaders King’s Mountain Fortress and some Forestmen sets and I remember wanting them so bad, so mI asked my dad and he bought me teh impulse set. From that day on my brother and I would save up our $5 allowance for a few weeks for doing shores and getting good grades and we would buy more impulse sets or soemtimes value packs. He would collect Town and Space, and I would collect Pirates and Castle. I continued buying LEGO regularly and everytime the sets would get bigger, my biggest set was Rock Island Refuge, I saved for almost a whole year to get it.
Once I hit my teens I stopped buying LEGO and went into my Dark Ages. But one day while I was at a TRU in Phoenix while I was attending Tech School I came across a $50 Red Beard Runner, before that I could never afford a pirate ship so it had to be mine. This was back in 2003. About 5 years ago I also bought a smaller Pirates II set, Shipwreck Hideout. Then last year, soem days after Xmas I came across a 50% off Kingdoms Bonanza at Wal Mart, I asked my wife “is it ok if I buy all these and try to sell them on Ebay?” to my surprise she said yes, and ofcourse I kept soem for myself, the for our anniversary she bought me the MMV and throughout this year I was able to complete my whole first theme POTC, and I have every set from that collection. So I just came out of my Dark Ages but with a BANG!!! I like to improve upon teh basic sets by adding more detail, I’m not a bonafied MOC builder but hopefully someday I will get there =)
Hi, I’m Glenn, and I’m an addict.
Chorus: “Hi Glenn!”
My introduction to LEGO was more than 40 years ago when my dad (I learned it from YOU, ok?!) brought home this box that was mostly white & clear pieces and some wheels with metal pins that went into special blocks with holes in the side. That’s my earliest memory anyway. My brother and I played with and collected LEGO for many years after that. Sadly, when I left home under less than awesome circumstances at age 18, I left the LEGO behind and that collection is as much dust in the wind.
After many years of wandering aimlessly through life, having forgotten about LEGO (HERESY!), I spotted some of the Star Wars sets around 1999… I don’t rightly know how many pieces I have, as I kept track of my sets on peeron.com until they quit having newer sets, making it impossible to add them to my inventory, and I had no idea of other places to go. That peeron list adds up to nearly 250,000 pieces, and I’ve added quite a bit in the roughly two years since, so make of that what you will. I also discovered TexLUG since then. talk about an eye-opener. I mean, I was never ashamed of my LEGO before, but wow. AFOL FTW.
Hi, Glenn, nice to have another addict around! 😉
As far as your collection, have you considered moving it over to Brickset from Peeron? I think there is an easy way to do it and Brickset is very much up to date. Huw is very good and dedicated running Brickset. You might want to give it a try. 🙂
Hi my name is Jordan,and I personally love lego. The first time I discovered Lego was from one of those ninjago.com commercials. So I found Lego.com and started collecting lego. I started searching at various stores for different lego sets. My first set was a lego city tractor. I then started collecting different lego themes such as Technic,Star Wars,and Ninjago. My first Technic set had 892 pieces in it. Also a Lego star wars book set had about 200 bricks in it including a clone trooper and a battle droid.So thats how I discovered my Lego passion,so whats yours? 😀
Power to the Lego fans!
From personal experience, I can state quite categorically that you can really enjoy building with LEGO Sets. It also helps in spending quality time with your kids and thus helps in child-parent bonding. It helps in getting the child along a particular path of development once the child sees the parent also enjoying the activity of making things out of the blocks.
My mom played with LEGOs when she was a kid (though back then they were mostly just normal bricks) so my grandma kept that collection (not really that much), and later bought a whole bunch more at a garage sale. Out of that they gave us a small bucket full and my grandfather built us a table. We used to divide the squares of the table up between the three of us (then it was the four of us, then the five) and each build our own castles. My brothers got a few racers, and one Knight’s Kingdom, and my dad got us a bucket full of pieces. For a long time we just shared, all in one big bucket, but then we all agreed (more or less) to grab whatever we could and that would be ours… (I think I ended up with the most, but that was only fair since it was my idea! 😆 ) Since then my four siblings have tryed to mix their’s together a couple times but it never works! About five years ago we started getting the product magazine, and then we started picking which sets we wanted for our birthday from our grandparents, then we discoved the LEGO website about a year later, I think. It wasn’t until a year ago that we were watching the Ninjago Movie on youTube when we discoverd videos about the January sets… and then somehow that led us to The Brick Blogger. Of course it wasn’t long before I realized that seeing sets a month ahead of time wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, I started commenting a little later, and that was that!
I’d say I’m a MOCer; I have one set built right now and that’s the Skull Motorbike (and even that is missing a few pieces I found useful). Very few of my MOCs last long either! I tend to stick with Medieval because I always loved knights and castles. But I also like spaceships and futuristic stuff (though not SW and I’m not interested in Aliens/Insects!), and I don’t mind city (if you give me the motivation, I’ll build from almost any catagory). As far as themes I buy mainly for the pieces, though the smaller set’s I get to keep them built – at least for a while. I really love the challenge building gives me (though I don’t relish the photographing challenge quite so much), especially with my size collection – sometimes the lack of bricks can get annoying (when it’s just one especially!) but I like solving problems like that… once in a while!
My son’s had one of the first Lego’s .Their Dad loved to make things and when we got Lego’s at Toys R us one x-mass that did it for the rest of that year and into the next.
The last I remember is a large metal foot locker filled with them. My youngest son is now 42 and we both don’t know where that footlocker went!
I started playing with them last year I do not remember what started me I am 70 now and just love them. I really don’t think there is another woman in my complex playing with them. LOL at least not at my age. I really like the mini figs. I used to do mini doll houses so this is like that. People that come over see them and ask if my grand kids left them. I tell them I don’t have grand kids they are mine. ( love the looks and rolled eyes.) I have car’s and airplanes. I asked my son’s for a gift card to Legos or Toys r us.They got me anew tv instead. oh well.. I am trying to get enough white and black for the Penguin instruction I got a while back. I am on SS so limited. Think I need a new Name …GrannyLego?
I discoverd legos when i was 4. I was at toys r us and we were going to the preschool section with my mom . I saw a lego star wars ARC-170 STARFIGHTER then I asked my mom a question “Are the stars really waring”?She said no and I walked over grabed the set and asked if I could get it she said yes . So that was my first time with legos.
I’ve liked LEGOS because of my Brothers (I have 3) but yeah its een off and on ! 🙂 But I think there fun! 😀
wow i first liked Lego star wars then Lego Ninjago then Lego Legends of chima then Lego friends then from there its tied
P.S that was 2 years ago because i didn’t know how fun they were because I never had ones 😀
My first encounter with lego was when I was 9, I think, when i was shopping with my mom at walmart and I saw (and got) the lego star wars freeco speeder. I didn’t really like the other toys they had there, and decided to give lego a try. I was just getting into star wars things and truth be told, at first I was mainly in it for the lightsaber. 🙂 Now I am an eleven year old (soon twelve) addict to lego star wars, lego the lord of the rings, lego the hobbit, and lego harry potter ( it’s sad they had to close it, there was so many other sets they could have created!) I also do a bit of minifigure creating with the help of brickarms and pieces of lego minifigures doubles. I am extremely excited for more of Lego the hobbit, lord of the rings, and starwars!!! 🙂
True story:
March 5th 2003
Grandpa Joe: “Hey! Nice to see you again sonny! I got you A LEGO set for you birthday! You see its the LEGO knights kingdom CASTLE! It will fit nicely with your other LEGO sets!”
Dad: “He doesn’t have any LEGO sets”
Joey: “WHAT? Don’t you remember how I raised you with good ol’ LEGO? I think your son would like it just the same! Here, I’ll help you build it.” almost going on the 10 years anniversary, I have still have it on home video. A magical moment for me and a start to my chronic LEGO buying craze.
That’s really sweet of your grandpa! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
im broke 😛
that version is slightly condensed. There was ALOT of trouble building the LEGO, being only a beginner xD
yeah
SWEET! Ur lucky.
Funny, sometimes i think my dad’s more into legos than i am. The first sets we got were ALWAYS starwars sets, now my room is crowded with them! In all the nooks and crannys, and i mean that quite literally; Of course, they’re already crowding the shelves, but my dad also buts nails in big bricks and PUT the sets on the nailed in bricks! I think that’s awesome, but my mom doesn’t, and my dad also even hung a few sets by rubber bands! Well anyways, i think my passion started with his. After a couple of years of legos taking over my room, i learned to enjoy them. Soon enough, when i started getting old enough to think properly, I also started getting the movies and references that each set and series carried, and, living with a dad that LIVES on references, puns, and bad jokes, i had to watch all the classic movies. I had watched The Lord Of The Rings when i was a kid, but i had no clue what it meant. Now that i do, i watch just about every week, because you can NEVER get enough J.R.R. Tolkien! But, besides the point, as i grew and got the movies i actually started to enjoy the sets more! Expanding my legoness outside of Starwars, my room has just about been conquered by legos, which i like, my brother (of whom i share my room with) doesn’t mind, and my mother (their always has to be a hater!) absolutely despises. Wow. I had never looked at it from this angle 😛
Frank, thanks for sharing! You have an awesome dad! 😀
I know!
My first experience with LEGO is with Ninjago. I decided to watch “Ninjaball Run” and enjoyed it greatly. 3 months later I got the character encyclopedia with the exclusive Lloyd kimono. My first set was Jay’s Storm Fighter and I now have 7 sets and so many different things to go with Ninjago! Sadly, I am the only one in my family who likes LEGO and Ninjago, but that won’t stop me! Keep building and peace!
Melissa, thanks for sharing. Yeah, Ninjago is awesome and shoudl be back soon. As far as LEGO, keep building! LEGO is fun even if you have to play by yourself! 😀