This is one of those posts I’d saved as a draft, but not got around to writing! I thought about it again a couple of weeks ago after a visit to Legoland in Windsor, although still didn’t get around to it. Today was my daughters 5th Birthday party, and we’d arrange a Lego Masterbuilders party, so thought I’d try and blog about everything at once!
So, Lego. It’s brilliant, right? I know as a child in the late 70’s, and early 80’s I spent many, many hours building and playing with Lego sets I’d received as Birthday and Christmas presents. Back then, my favourite was Lego Space, but given my love of Star Wars, I just wish they’d had all the franchise links they do today. It’s hard to imagine anyone not growing up with Lego, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone to know Lego is now the largest toy company in the world. You might be surprised to know that this is only a fairly recent thing though, as it’s only in the last few years that they knocked Mattel off the top spot, mainly down to a decline in Barbie sales (although they still report selling a Barbie doll every 3 seconds!) I don’t think my daughters love of Lego is quite as strong as mine, given the wider variety of toys and electronics available today, but she still loves building a new model for the first time and is pretty proficient with sets with only a few pieces on each page. One of the things I notice with today’s sets though is the number of pieces, specifically made for that particular set. I guess it does make them look a little more like the TV programme or movie they were inspired by, but it does make them less useful for building your own inspired creations. I think that’s one of the other reasons for playing with it less, as I could not only build the spaceship on the box but could use the bits from various sets to create something completely different and unique.
I still profess to be a Lego fan to this day and have a number of my models displayed in my office. My pride and joy would have to be the Ultimate Lego Millenium Falcon released about ten years ago, which my partner bought me as a birthday present. It’s almost 3 feet long, and with just under 5000 pieces took just over 37 hours to build! It’s been built twice (well, maybe one and a half) as it didn’t survive a house move very well about eight years ago after being wrapped in a blanket and transported in a large packing box. It turns out it was also a great investment! I think it cost around £350 new, but Lego doesn’t make it anymore and now second-hand models are selling for over £3000!!
I remember being that young boy, playing with my Lego Space sets, reading the Lego magazine and seeing that they’d opened a Legoland in Denmark. Oh, how much I wanted to go, but no matter how much I begged my parents, it was a trip that never happened, and even now I still haven’t been. If they hadn’t opened a Legoland in the UK, I’m sure I would have by now. We’re fortunate to have friends who live in Windsor, so since my daughter was born have been down a couple of times. It also helps that one of the friends works for Coca Cola and gets massively discounted tickets! If you’ve never been, it really is worth a day out. It doesn’t have the thrill rides of Alton Towers and is aimed at a younger audience, but the Lego village itself is worth visiting alone. I’d love to know how many bricks and hours it took to build everything, but it is stunning. Our last visit was on the first Saturday of the English school holidays, and we were prepared for monster queues. As it turned out, it was actually very quiet and we managed to get on pretty much everything we wanted with very little queuing. The weather wasn’t brilliant and may have put some people off, but nobody melted. I remember a Bank Holiday trip to Alton Towers many years ago where we expected the same, but it rained all day, and we walked right up to the front of just about every ride, going on Nemesis about four times at the front, the back and middle! Moral of the story? Don’t assume popular days always are!
So finally, the party today. My partner had heard about a Lego Builders party where the organisers turn up with boxes and boxes of Lego and facilitate a couple of hours building as part of a birthday party. It sounded a little different from the usual soft play/bouncy castle/magician affair, so was booked along with a local scout hall. It’s probably the first kids’ party I’ve been too where there wasn’t at least a couple of disagreements resulting in tears, so from that point alone was a great success. Some people liked to be building in groups, some quite happy building by themselves, but everyone seemed to have a great time, or at least the birthday girl did! Not surprisingly, many of the kind gifts she received were Lego related so we’ll be spending a few days over the next few months building those, which in turn will result in some of the older sets coming out to play again. Maybe not for a few weeks though, as she’ll be starting Primary School next week (on her actual birthday!) and will probably take a few weeks to acclimatise to her new Monday to Friday week, having only done three days a week at Nursery.
So it would be rude to finish a Lego blog without some Lego pictures right? The first few are of my Millenium Falcon, being built the first time and then rebuilt about five years later. The next ones were taken at Legoland, with the last two from the Lego Builders party today. Hope it brings back some Lego memories for you or inspires some more up to date Lego adventures….
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