I love games. I also love legos. I had forgotten how much I love legos until today. My wife and I are about to have our fourth child (one week until the due date) and it has been a tradition of sorts to buy gifts for our other kids when a new bundle o' joy arrives.
So there I was wandering through the toy section of Walmart trying not to drool too much over Heroscape (after all, I was there for presents for the kids...not me). I picked up a baby doll for our youngest daughter (age 2) and I was trying to find something for our other two (ages 4 and 6) without spending a lot of money (pretty tight budget these days).
And then I hit the lego section.
Of course! We already had a small 100 piece or so set that my kids enjoyed playing with - but there never was enough for everyone. So I snapped up the last 1000 piece bucket on the shelf and headed home.
Well, I did a bad job hiding the presents and within five minutes of getting home the packages were opened. Happily, I got down on the floor amid the scattered legos and began building. Holy smokes! From the moment I ran my hands through the colored bricks and listened to the distinctive sounds that only legos can make, I was done for. Long after the kids moved on to other things, Dad was there still building and taking apart, building and taking apart.
My wife comes in and asks, "Who did you buy those for anyway?"
So later in the day, I'm on the internet looking at the lego website and planning out future purchases when it hits me...this is exactly what I do for board games! Not only am I a Board Game Geek, I'm a Lego Geek as well!
This then begs the question: Should I nip this in the bud before I have every closet in the house packed with games and every blank spot along a wall lined with lego containers? OR Do I spread what limited funds I already have (or don't have as the case may be) between the two?
Oh, the horror, the horror !
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Holy crap dude!!! Me too!
This summer I bought this guys LEGO collection on ebay for $600. I did resale alot of the sets for mucho profit ($1000) and kept the pirate LEGOs.
I like the Pirate Legos. Check these sites out.
http://www.brikwars.com/rules/2000/contents.htm
http://www.io.com/~sj/PirateGame.html
I, too, am a Lego-boardgame junkie. I he lots of boardgames and lots of Legos as well. Mostly a lot of the older castle sets, a few of the pirate ships and the newer NASA exploration sets. I have to really control myself walking down the Lego toy aisle. You are not alone my friend!
Just heed the advice given to people who get sudden wealth. take a few months off.
Okay a week
…and then go to a toy department and see how you feel when in the Lego™ isle then the game isle. Sure Legos™ are fun but it could be just nostalgia setting in.
I'd offer to trade you legos for some of your games, but you don't have anything I want right now.
I have some choice vintage sets that I don't want anymore.
I have two Lego soccer sets. Somehow my life was just not complete with only one Lego soccer set.
Holy cow I'm so excited.
I made it in before the Legolinguists come in and correct you on your usage of the non-word "legos".
I'm just warning you so you have time to prepare for the onslought.
Goodluck.
Um, that's obviously supposed to be 'onslaught' above.
Have any of you seen Geomag stuff? The little magnetic balls and rods that you build all manner of geometric shapes, etc., with?
If those didn't cost more than the GNPs of small island nations, I'd have me a bunch o' them.
I've never forgotten how much I love legos -- as my lego closet will attest Legos are the best! However, these days, it's mostly the Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series stuff, and they stay out on display.
Fortunately, my wife enjoys playing lots of different kinds of boardgames, so I don't catch any flack for the game collection. Of course, we are running out of space to put shelves . . .
I just hope that I never have to make the choice you are suggesting.
Speaking of wives, she collects Breyer horses (and other animals). Those things are not cheap, and they take up a fair amount of space. After all, you can't just stack them in the closet
On final note, I got my Lego shop-at-home catalog yesterday, and there is apparently a new product for little children. The bricks are 4x the size of Duplo and completely compatible. They are also made of a softer plastic. Maybe something to look into.
I still have all my childhood Lego (that's one suitcase and a hatbox full) plus the stuff I have accumulated more recently.
With the exception of Lego Creator all Lego that has been bought for the children to play with was bought by me but I allow them to play with it - so all the Lego belongs to me
Now if I could just find time to play with it all (and the games too)
Legos OR games?
What's wrong with you!
Combine, combine, combine!
My brother and I used to build 'tanks' out of Legos. What we'd do is make a launcher (kinda think 'slingshot', but the rubber band stretched across the end of something more like a half-pipe) to shoot dominos. Nice, hard, wood ones. Firing the gun entailed lining up your domino launcher device over where your tank was and shooting at the enemy tank.
STARTED all with building mechs. You'd get a shot for each missile launcher, laser, or gun you built on your mech. Thing is, Lego mechs don't last very long under the for of rubber-band propelled wood dominos. So, as our designs kept getting torn to pieces by each other, we'd build them bulkier and more square each time up until we simply ended up with tanks.
Pic of the last one I built:
http://xanderf.dyndns.org:8080/other/tank/tank.htm
(You have to cut and paste the entire line into the address bar - BGG doesn't link it right)
Note the sloping front I put on it, too. This was a recent innovation for us, the discovery that when a sloping Lego got hit at force with a domino, it would (sometimes) actually push the bricks tighter together instead of breaking apart. Sometimes. Depending on the angle of hit.
And, as you can see from the top view, those walls are THICK. Rubber-band propelled dominos really do have a lot of hitting power, and even this tank would come apart eventually. Course, we never did do that final battle, and this has been sitting in a box for these last 7 years.
I'm too lazy to find and post the URL's but Goggle the following for some neat Lego stuff.
The Brick Testament Lego
Escher Lego
Monty Python Lego (brilliant & hilarious)
There was another site where a guy made a 10 foot (or so) dinosaur out of Lego as well but I can't rememer where I saw it.
LEGO's website has a downloadable boardgame w/rules called LEGO X-Pod PlayOff. This would be perfect for your kids.
We have quite a fortune invested in LEGOs and intend to hang onto them along with a rather large collection of BRIO trains for the grandkids someday.
Games are fun. LEGO is fun. So combine them!
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=3876
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/cgi-bin/photo.cgi?chess_1.jpg...
http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~erikred/brick/chess/chess.html
If you haven't discovered the world of K'nex already, and you don't want to be burdened with another obsession, you may want to ignore this message. I was a Legomaniac once. Now I'm a K'nex nut.
Check out their website.
K'nex.com
But remember, you've been warned.
I got hugely into Legos before I got hugely into boardgames. Both ostensibly for my kids...
I still have several super-duper enormous Lego sets on top of my office cabinet waiting for a long cold winter weekend when I can indulge myself...bliss!
I had a wonderful Ebay experience with one of my Lego sets. It was a huge model team set with a semi-truck which carried a helicopter. Almost 1100 pieces! Such fun to put together. Well, I sold it on Ebay and had the incomparable pleasure of watching while 2 buyers bid it up to $130 in the last 5 minutes of the auction.
Legos rock!
Use the lego to build more storage.
I have friends who put lego on their wedding gift registry list. Fraser was devastated when he found out - because we hadn't thought to do that!
My sister, brother and I had a huge combined collection that's currently in my parents' attic. It was the biggest in the neighborhood and I think some of the neighbor kids' got mixed in. That's the great thing about legos is that if you're in it for the fun and not for the collecting you can combine everything you have which is infinitely more fun!
I've gotten a few of the Star Wars kits as gifts from my sister over the last few years as well that I have at my place. Makes sense since she doesn't know what board games to get me!
One day I'll have to go over to my parents and relive my childhood with legos all over the floor!
I have more games than mundungus, but he has the Star Destroyer and Blockade Runner in his garage!
And I'm a purist/snob. I always hated it when other kids had Lock Blocks or Knex or whatever other artificial legos they had mixed in with their lego blocks.
And as far as Nigeria goes I don't know if they sell Legos there. Can you find a Lego logo in Lagos?
Thats the main toy theme in this house too!!, a man after my heart!! Nothing like a new box of Lego to build together with the kids. I think they are excellent toys to learn w/o realising it and the age range they last for is excellent and make them good value for money.
Another thing we are hooked on is Playmobil, love that stuff and the quality, lots of different themes so much fun!!
Keep your eye on the sale/mark down shelves at Target, WalMart etc I never pay the full price for any Lego or Playmobil!! Could not afford my ooopps our habit otherwise!
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