Since it's national blog posting month, I'm going to try to keep up with my wife and post daily. Of course, since I didn't start this blog until after November 1st, I guess I've already failed.
Anyway, a friend recently commented on the fact that I collect Star Wars Lego sets. Apparently her husband also collects Legos and will be glad to learn that he isn't the only adult who collects them.
Like almost any boy of my generation, I collected Legos up until my teenage years. Past the age of about 13 or 14 I replaced Lego collecting with scale model airplanes. Of course, like most other teenage boys, I thought that I had outgrown Legos.
Years later, Lego made a fateful decision to join with George Lucas and to produce Lego sets and figures from the Star Wars universe. All of a sudden, thousands of adult men found that some diabolical individual had joined two of their favorite childhood franchises: Legos and Star Wars.
Much to my wife's chagrin, she was primarily responsible for my Star Wars Lego hobby. In April, 2005, with the release of Star Wars: Episode III, Lego released nearly a dozen building sets tying into the film. She offered to buy me one as a gag gift for my 26th birthday. I said that that would be fun and suggested the "Jedi Starfighter and Vulture Droid" set. Something in my head clicked (or possibly snapped) as I assembled Anakin's starfighter and flew it around our BYU apartment. I believe that putting a model airplane or spaceship into any man's hands inevitably results in the irresistible compulsion to fly it around the house, usually while making sound effects.
Three and a half years later, my collection consists of about 60 Lego sets. The smallest is a 23 piece set with minifigures of Luke Skywalker, a stormtrooper, and an Imperial officer; the largest is the 3,104 piece Imperial Star Destroyer. Now my wife wishes that she had just bought me a tie for my birthday.
The question is...Do you play with them now, or just build them and look at them?
ReplyDeleteWell, I mostly just build them and put them on display in the office. Occasionally I'll fly them through the house, making sound effects and shooting missiles at the kids.
ReplyDeleteI loved this post James! Rick usually just builds his, then brings them to work to put on his shelves. When they are here, kids inevitably find them and take them apart. Which is kind of funny, because once a little boy was flying one of the big starfighters(ARC-170) around and it hit a wall and fell into several pieces. The kid ended up crying thinking he broke it, and Rick just laughed and helped him put it back together.
ReplyDeleteNice that some things can fix so easily!