The Lego Thread!

[SiHart]

One of my favourite toys from my childhood celebrates its 50th Birthday today!

Children's favourite Lego is celebrating its first 50 years with a series of events, including a world record attempt.

From Easter onwards, there will be a Lego Brick Road tour around the UK, and a special commemorative pack will be available for collectors.
The toy's manufacturers are also hoping to build the biggest Lego tower ever.
The simple toy, which got its name from the Danish for Play Well - Leg Godt, has allowed generations of children and adults to construct everything from houses and castles to monsters and robots.

In 2005, artists Darren Neave and John Cake recreated pieces including Tracey Emin's My Bed and Damien Hirst's shark out of Lego for an exhibition.
In 2006, a team at Legoland in Billund, Denmark created a model of the world's largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380 superjumbo
Made of 75,000 Lego bricks in eight different colours, it was around 10ft long, and took its creators more than 600 hours to finish.
Last year, an avid Manchester City fan reconstructed the team's former Maine Road stadium out of the little bricks.

Such is the power of the brick that it has spawned a number of fan clubs. In Britain, there is the Brickish Association for AFOL's (Adult Fans of Lego).
Member Warren Elsemore, from Edinburgh, recently completed a scale model of the Forth Rail Bridge, a project that took 18 months to complete.
He said: "I blame my wife. I had built a model of the GNER trains, and my wife said I should make the bridge for it to go over.
"The model's got about 12,000 bricks in it."

Meanwhile, another couple are set to marry after bonding over Lego. Pete Reid, 33, from Romford, Essex and Yvonne Doyle, also 33, from Dublin, Ireland met at a private gathering of Lego lovers three years ago.
Mr Reid said: "We met at a Lego meeting around someone's house in Scotland. Our eyes met over a pile of bricks.
"We build together most weekends now. The biggest thing I've built by myself is a four-foot space ship. but we've made bigger things collaboratively and with others."
He added: "I've never not been into Lego. It's an all consuming thing for me."

Lego was founded in Denmark in 1932 when carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen began making wooden toys.

So were you a Lego fan as a kid? What did you build? Town, Space, Castle, Trains or Technic?

Lets put some bricks together and build a thread!

Si xx

[duncan]

I have always lacked creative ability and never touched Lego as a child.

[Pip Madeley]

My grandma and grandad bought me a Lego set one Christmas (perhaps 1992) - I still remember going to their house (which is now my house), and Bruce Forsyth's Generation Game was on the TV... it was packed with bricks & my sis and I made houses and cars out of them. Happy days.

[Si Hunt]

I loved Lego as a child, it kept me amused for hours.

Sadly, today's Lego isn't up to much as it's all been licensed out to feature films, and, shockingly, you can hardly buy ANY town Lego any more, which used to be the best sort. It frustrated us when we read about how their profits were dwindling - we wanted to shout at them - "you want to know why? Because you can't buy a Lego Post Office, town house or cafe any more!!". The nearest you can get is the "City" range which covers heavy 'industrial' versions of the Police Station, Fire Station etc. But you ought to be able to build towns again, as they were fab!

Si.

[Stephen Morgan]

I must have been bought one of the earliest Lego sets back in the day. I used to make things like spaceships, pretty basic really when you think of the things you can do with it these days.
I also had a similar thing called Betta Bilda, which I used to make houses and little villages with and used to dot them around my train set and Scalextrix. Which has also just seen its 50th anniversary.
OH! those were the days.

[Antony Cox]

Lego was a HUGE part of my childhood - I must have spent hundreds of hours buidling all manner of stuff. One of my most successful builds was a model of Titanic - I've got a photo of it somewhere which I must dig out.....

I agree that the modern stuff is far too 'technical' for my liking - I much prefered the era where you had to build everything from scratch rather than all the pre-formed stuff these days - and it's so bloody expensive now!

[Rob McCow]

From the age of 3-13, Lego was my number one toy, outlasting Transformers and Action Force by a considerable margin.

Then from the age of 19-20 it was rather important in my life again, when I was working for Legoland Park in Windsor!

If you're quick, Google have a special 'Lego' style logo today

[Antony Cox]

Google have a special 'Lego' style logo today

You could say they have a logo style Lego, too.

[Pip Madeley]

Just incase anyone misses it.

[SiHart]

I got my first Lego set when I was 3. It was a Basic set, so there were just bricks and wheels and bits and pieces to build houses. I had one of those books which showed you how to make a variety of different models too, which was great (in fact I've still bits of it now- it was well used throughout my childhood).

As I grew up we got more and more of it. We always stuck with the Basic sets though, and didn't really get into collecting Legoland sets or Space (despite me wishing for Space lego!) and we used to ahve great fun building towns and cars and bases for the Lego men. My friend at junior school, Phillip Wood had more lego than anyone I knew and we used to spend whole days in the holidays building things.

Eventually I started on Technic Lego- ihad the beach buggy and the wonderful Excavator model, but my efforts to keep them built were often thwarted by my brother, who liked to smash things! I then used to help him with his sets. He had lots of Castle Lego and great it was too- I used to enjoy building the big models.

So yes, Lego was the toy of my childhood.

Si xx

[Logo Polish]

Legopolis would be quite a good name for a Lego Town.

[Si Hunt]

Wouldn't it just.

Si.

[Logo Polish]

Ha, didn't know about that. Or had forgotten about it if I did.

[Stephen Morgan]

Just incase anyone misses it.

He He... I noticed this earlier when I Googled Betta Bilda to see if I got the spelling correct. All good fun innit!.

[Simon R]

Lego was probabaly my favourite toy as a child. My brother and I had loads of it and had our own town with it's own theme park which was our cunning way of intergrating the Pirate/Robin Hood/Castle Lego into proceedings. Our biggest two was on the spare room floor and about 2 meters long. I wish I'd taken a photo of it. There's a photo somewhere of a smaller town but that's not the same.

We had the yellow mid-80s airport, a multi story car-park, various houses, fire station, two police stations and a hospital.

I used to really like making Peter Cushing-esque TARDIS interiors with all the random bits of and I can remember my dad building me a vaguely Police Box shaped thing after the first episode of "Trial".

Is there any link to the Legobrick Road tour dates? It might be worth a ganders if it's cheap and local. Ish.

[Jon Masters]

Like many others of my age I used to love Lego, and am very pleased that the boys have got into it as well (especially the Star Wars lego - I'd love to get the huge Death Star or Millennium Falcon)

I used to love getting the little vehicle kits, like the ambulance etc, but I would only ever bother to build the proper model once. Then the bricks would join the huge tin and be used to make anything. My sister and I would spend whole days playing Lego battles - you would have half the tin at random, and then have to build a whole series of vehicles (inlcuding spaceships of course) which would then be launched across the room at each other to see which wouldn't break.

When I left home the big tin got passed on to a young firend of the family - however, I was so excited when the contents were returned to us a year or so ago when he grew out of Lego so the boys could have it. Its very sad but the sight of some of these old special shaped bricks evokes powerful memories when the boys start building with them

(HST, I'm not a big fan of the huge models made out of millions of bricks - I just don't see the point)

[enzo1701]

LOVED Lego as a kid!!!

Some of my favourite things about Lego are all the re-enactments on Youtube... Eddie Izzard's Death Star canteen, Monty Python's Knights of the Round Table, Grand Theft Auto: Lego City.

Do some searches.

[Jason Thompson]

I always had lego when I was a kid. I started with the basic stuff when I was little, progressing though Space (though I never got the really big Space Police ship I wanted) to Technic. I had the test car, which was one of the first Technic kits, I think. It was great, with reclining seats, suspension, working pistons in the engine, a gear box and everything. I also had the JCB, which I loved, with its pneumatic arm.

After a while the boxes went and the big plastic tub became the ultimate lego receptacle, and I built all manner of things. These things included a Dalek and a Tripod. The Tripod I was particularly pleased with. It was about three feet tall!

Now I must say I am consistently disappointed by the lego sets you get, where 80% is pre-formed and doesn't really lend itself to random rebuilds. The random rebuilds were half the fun!

[Dirk Gently]

I had Space Lego when I was about 11-13. It never stayed withme as a toy for too long. I was always an Action Man toy lover myself. I used to play UNIT.

[Stuart Wallis]

My cousin bought her sons some Space Lego about twelve years ago. Only one of the three was at all interested in it , ant even then i used to spend more time trying out the new builds than he did. Ended up being a bit of a guilty pleasure in the end.

"Stuart, can I have a go?"

"No Luke! go to bed!"

[Rob McCow]

This site is a cool and awesome trip down memory lane.

See you in an hour's time!

I used to think that this was the most cool and awesome toy in history:



But looking at it now, I'm not so sure. Oh, it had letterboxes in it's kneecaps! Who am I kidding, it's wonderful!

And can anyone guess what's going on here?



Click link below to see in full!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAH5b...eature=related - I have a new favourite You Tube person.

[enzo1701]

Four seconds? That's not very good.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I used to love it as a kid. It was always around as far back as I can remember. Me and my sister used to make snakc bars with disco flooring and stuff Then I inherited some Space Lego and started to collect newer things to go along with it and built my own Moonbase up.

Then it seemed to get more expensive, to the point where I couldn't even afford to buy anything other than the smallest sets. But maybe my pocket money didn't increase in line with inflation

Also I remember it changing to include bigger and more specific molded pieces. Previously you'd build a castle window out of lots of little blocks, now they were coming with one-piece molded windows. They looked nicer, but weren't as much fun or as adaptable. Then it was all themed to tie in with films like Star Wars and stuff and I had enough.

In about 1999 I found a Formula One car made out of some sort of fake Lego (it was identical and even fit together with proper lego, but without the branding) - it was reasonably priced, made up of lots of little regular pieces and built into something big and complicated and nice looking, fun to build etc. It was everything Lego used to be but no longer was by that point.

According to my sister it's gone back to more how it was these days, but I haven't personally checked it out for many years. I still have all the old lego though.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

That site is great! I'd love to see some scanned construction manuals though. I didn't keep all my space lego ones and then my Dad dismantled them all after I moved out

[Carol Baynes]

I remember Lego when the people didn't have any faces! It was like building an army of yellow Autons!

I got bought some Lego when I was having my tonsils out in 1979, in hospital. The Legoland series had stopped having Lego people bodies with stickers, and the details like buttons and ties were (gasp) printed onto the pieces! The space Lego series started about then as well.

My cousin had a space cruiser (L224 I think it was called) on a run way with craters and a little moon hut! He had a rocket launch pad as well- all very impressive for 'back in the day'!