Legoed

I wish playing with Legos was a socially acceptable activity for a 26-year-old.

Legos are awesome.

I know some of you fall into other camps. You got your Erector Set crew, you got your Lincoln Log crew. Some of you might even swear by K’nex, god help us.

But Legos can do anything. Get a green land piece, a wall, and four knights, and you got yourself a castle under siege. Add a few skeletons, and suddenly you have a horde of undead warriors attacking a human stronghold. Put parrots on the skeletons’ shoulders and now they’re pirate skeletons.

I used to do this all the time. I’d build huge, elaborate cities, where doors opened up to brick walls and astronauts fought dragons. Then I’d connect those cities to other cities, creating sprawling megalopolises. (Megalopoli?) When they invariably got destroyed (when my parents wanted their basement back, for example) all the pieces would get dumped into The Box.

The Box was—you guessed it—a box in which my brother and I stored all of our Legos. Every set we ever bought inevitably got dumped into The Box, and we had thousands of pieces. You want a red four-block? Check. A white single? No problem. One of those elusive double clear blocks? Sure thing. Or how about something a little more obscure? A flat, yellow two-fer? One of those pieces that has a hinge on it and, you know, kinda swings around so you can make walls move and stuff?

OK, so we didn’t have the greatest names for the pieces. Also, we didn’t have the best organization system. Sometimes it took over a half an hour of rooting through The Box to track down the one piece we needed. But we had faith. It was there, somewhere. The Box always came through.

But things, these days, have gotten worse. The state of the modern day Lego has declined dramatically.

Back in my day, (you whippersnappers) (that’s right), there were plenty of choices in the Lego aisle. Especially if you went to the bottom shelf—the expensive section. You had full-blown castles, with turrets and walls and everything. Or space stations, with see-through (futuristic!) pieces. Or a pirate town. A town.

But now, all Lego seems to sell are replicas of historic buildings, or ships. And half those ships are different size Millennium Falcons. It’s a fundamental shift in what Lego is supposed to be.

So listen here, Lego. Buildings are boring. (Tom Hanks proved it in Big.) I don’t care how accurately you can depict them. So are ships. If I wanted a model plane, I’d just buy a model plane at my local model plane store which doesn’t exist because no one likes model planes.

And don’t get me started on your movie-related Lego sets. If I wanted to see Block Indiana Jones fight off Block Nazis with a block-shaped whip, I’d just stick to dreaming about it like I normally do.

One day, I'd like to get married, have children. But how can I, in good conscience, bring a child into a world that doesn't have Lego castles? I'm not a monster.

So please, Lego. Get back to basics. More castles and pirates. Less Louvres and Millennium Falcons.