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In my case... my Dark Age ended when vacationing in Germany in 1979 (in my 20s), and finding 2 rare 20 year older LEGO sitting on a dusty shelf of a stationery shop... namely continental European (only) LEGO Windows/Doors 214 1-10 retailer boxes for individual sales (1957-66)... I bought them both on the spot...
I should admit that you can take my words around Dark Ages with a pinch of salt because I haven't reached a Dark Age (proper) yet. I'd certainly aim to keep Lego in my interests but circumstances may well change in the future so I can't make any bold claims like "I'll never have one!".
In the situations referenced, I used Lego to keep me both calm and to exercise my brain in exam periods, as well as a point of creativity very different to my regular workplace since I started full time work. When I was a student I bought very little new Lego because I had to be tighter on cash (and I didn't feel it'd scream 'independent mature adult' to my housemates), but I never lost my interest in the hobby throughout.
The most significant factor that may affect my love of Lego is a relationship I find myself in - the Lego Wife column in Blocks suggests there are plenty of enthusiastic/long suffering partners out there for AFOLs. But equally, what do I do if I think I've really found a connection but they think my hobby's childish and I should get rid of my Lego? There are plenty of partners out there who hate football but don't stop their other half from watching it so I might make the perhaps ignorant/optimistic hope that something similar could apply to Lego.
Interesting thread though - I hadn't noticed one like this before.
will be my downfall, if anything. It's not the most attractive hobby. Although I don't think I could find a connection with someone who thinks Lego is childish ;)
I do still enjoy buying parts for MOCs but then never get around to using them to build with.
I'm almost getting to the point where I cannot be bother to build sets.
I think I need a Dr!
Can't seem to edit, and probably should have just googled it in the first place. So, a little one on the way? First one? You had better back-burner your Lego time for the immediate future. Take it from someone who has a 14 month old and spent a lot of time working on a Lego city as a way to decompress to the point where it got in the way. Your time will be totally monopolized and I would strongly suggest not spending time on Lego while the newbie is awake and/or needs attention at some unholy hour. This hobby should be less important all of a sudden, as should everything else. It becomes a balance after the kid and wife go to bed: do I call it a night and get decent sleep, or do I stay up for a bit doing ___________ and get some me-time? Be careful with that, too, because she will have very, very little me-time, and it can easily be perceived that you're more interested in everything else (including Lego) than the family.
@The_Rancor most of the people who have big collections/setups, including myself, have kind of discovered a similar phenomenon. You're in the UK so I assume you don't watch baseball, but the "Winning Pitcher" stat is one that has been devalued and deemed irrelevant with the dawn of analytics: since it's a team game and the pitcher can only control so much, the Win stat has been knocked down many notches and is no longer deemed an effective measure of a pitcher's skill. However, fascinatingly enough, once those W's start to pile up over a career, the perception of it changes, as it is indicative of success over a long span of time - there's something elusive and etherial about the 300-Win benchmark. So individual Ws don't matter, but when that number is well into the 200s and up, they somehow do again.
What's this have to do with Lego? A couple sets here and there, and a couple more and a couple more, may be deemed "ridiculous" or "a childish habit", but there seems to be a tipping point where once enough shelf space is filled and enough scenes and dioramas are built that it becomes a form of artistic expression, especially with MOCs and custom scenes. So the attitude begrudgingly morphs to realizing that not only is it a hobby, it is something we enjoy as a way to downshift from the everyday chaos. Invariably everyone that has come over since Brickadelphia has been built, or that I've shown pictures of it to, has said something on the lines of "Mark you're a nerd, but you knew that already, and this is actually pretty cool." My argument is that it's a better hobby than videogames and binge-watching shows. At least I have something physical to show for it that I've built over time and that my son and I will be able to enjoy together down the road.
Having children is going to change everything, for years. Put a lock on the Lego room, and roll with the chaos.
A friend of mine started going out with a girl, and only discovered she was an AFOL when she invited him to her flat. Happy ending - he also became an AFOL, and now they are discovering that it is not a child-proof hobby.
Yes it is the first one, and the wife is having a year off work. So suddenly there is so much less money available for Lego. Perhaps that's why my subconscious has tempered my buying.
I have remained interested in LEGO throughout the time my children have been small, the odd little set for an occasion, periodic Bricklink orders to make sure I had the parts I wanted if I found time (I didn't).
Prior to this I would say I have had two dark ages.
My first dark age was during sixth form college and University (16/17-21). Then I got myself an #8880 when I started work in '95 but that was the only thing I bought. I really got into LEGO again with the Star Wars sets in '99, but didn't do much more than build the sets and then store them. I think it was more a Star Wars thing than a LEGO thing, although part of it might have been a hoarding collecting thing.
I had a second, much more brief, dark age when I met my Wife in 2001, possibly and regrettably compounded by how I felt about 'Attack of the Clones'. It only lasted until we got married and she bought me #4504 for Christmas '04 (at my request). The immortal words "this isn't the start of something is it?" and my retort "No, I just want this one thing..." are occasionally joked in our house when a new or large set enters through the front door!
My advice, is keep an eye on LEGO as much as you can, I regret so many of the sets I missed out on during each dark age or down time. Some of it was unavoidable, babies are like Black Holes for money.
1) Baby
2) Sorting the ten years of DIY I need to finish
3) Lego
Speaking of Lego movies, I wonder if it could be said that either Lord Business, or Finn, or both, are experiencing dark ages in Lego Movie 2? - it seemed implied from the trailer/synopses.
Thus began a long period of interest in guitars, mountain bikes, surfing, power tools, furniture, household goods, cheese, wine, watching bands, having a drink at the pub and other mundane adult items and activities well into my twenties and thirties. It wasn’t until only a few years ago, in my late thirties, that I rediscovered how much fun it is to build things out of little plastic bricks.
I became a teenager in 1991. My early high school years in Australia were a blur of flannelette, long hair, goatees and heavy metal. If I'd been caught playing with LEGO in the mid 90's at age sixteen I probably would have been wedgied every day of my life for the rest of the decade. That's a Dark Age to me, that period of my life where LEGO wasn't 'cool' anymore. This is unlikely to happen again. I'll be 40 by the end of this year, I haven’t been cool for most of this decade. I might eventually give it all up one day but it won't be for the same reason, therefore I won't think of it as a Dark Age. I'm guessing DA's will become less common over time. It's not the 90's anymore, pursuing childhood hobbies into adulthood doesn't appear to be looked down upon like it used to be and LEGO seems to be more mainstream than ever.
As has been shown by the December 2016 Disney Castle livestream. She went from the start of the stream being all "I've never built a Lego set" to "No, I need to finish this bag!" by the middle, and the guy was like "OMG slow down! This is why no one bought you Lego, you're a junkie!"
She says he’d rather have the money to buy stuff for video games.
Where did those 'cool' 'baby' toys go!?!?
Not sure what that is supposed to mean, but not really, I already have one.
Dark age for me was probably aged 13 until I was in my late 30s. I picked up a few 1999 SW sets.