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What (or who) made you have an interest in Lego?

ethanjwallethanjwall Member Posts: 118
in Everything else LEGO
Having not purchased a set or built in a while, I feel I may be receding into a dark ages, of sorts. I DO NOT want this to happen. I still pull out my bricks and build occasionally and I'm not getting rid of my Legos any time soon, but I thought it might be helpful to hear from other FOLs that love Lego as much as I do. So, with that being said, I think that my family has just always been fans of Lego and they passed it on to me!

Comments

  • catwranglercatwrangler Member Posts: 1,895
    I can thank my mother for that; she was probably the person who bought me the Duplo set I had when I was very little, and I vividly remember her taking me to choose my first proper Lego set, #6369, when I was about four. It was a bit too advanced for me, but she tended to let me try things, or try them with her help, that were a bit difficult like that. I think it was 50% "well, she's a bright girl," and 50% "ooooh, that's a nice toy; luckily I have a child I can buy it for! :D :D" (She didn't get a huge number of toys in her childhood, but she remembers that she played with the Meccano more than her brother did, which probably explains her delight in buying me construction toys.)
    SprinkleOtterricecakekiki180703LEGO_Dad77LegogramtallblocktoostluxJackad7
  • paul_mertonpaul_merton Member Posts: 2,967
    I think one of the things that rekindled my interest enough to drag me out of my dark ages was my like of all tracked vehicles (especially tanks).

    This caused me to buy #8294 Excavator, and having only used old-school pneumatic stuff in the past, I found the linear actuators and studless bricks interesting.

    Another reason for choosing that particular set is that I really wanted #8851 when I was a kid. By the time I had saved up £20 and trudged down to Argos to buy it, they didn't have any left and said they wouldn't be getting any more. That was my first ever introduction to the concept of retired sets :(

    Today I'm still a sucker for most excavators and tracked things, but I'm yet to take the plunge on the almighty bucket wheel excavator!
    catwranglerricecakekiki180703LEGO_Dad77Legogrambandit778stluxJackad7
  • xwingpilotxwingpilot Member Posts: 799
    A 2015 trip to the Star Wars exhibition at LEGOLAND with little Miss xwingpilot did it for me. I had always wanted TLG to make Star Wars sets when I was a kid but it never happened. Mrs. xwingpilot encouraged me to buy a souvenir in the shop and the rest is history...
    bandit778catwranglerstluxBumblepants
  • mr_skinnymr_skinny Member Posts: 7
    edited December 2016
    My wife bought me the DK Lego Star Wars character enclyclodia as a daft prezzie about five years ago. I now have over 500 sets and 2000 minifigs, with the majority being Star Wars
    dspigelstluxBumblepants
  • Endigo_VandaneEndigo_Vandane Member Posts: 19
    My case is one of a perfect storm.
    I had a few sets before the age of 6, but they were just toys. Then on my 6th birthday I was given the 918, around the same time Belgium Television was showing the original Battlestar Galactica and I discovered I could build those spaceships with my bricks.
    That started my addiction.
    What keeps it going are the new sets with new parts that offer new possibilities.

    catwranglerMegtheCat
  • bookmumbookmum Member Posts: 1,512
    Well it was my mum who bought me my first fabuland set which got me going but many years later circa 1998 I used to shop at safeway and I had one of those ABC points card. I had some points I had to use up and they had a lego plane from the adventures range and I thought it was cute so that's what I used my points on. At the same time I was working for woolworths and got staff discount and we sold lots of lego and it was just tempting. So safeway and woolies got me back into it.  Two retailers now sadly gone. 
    catwranglerbandit778PeteM
  • ricecakericecake Member Posts: 878
    bookmum said:
    So safeway and woolies got me back into it.  Two retailers now sadly gone. 
    Safeway is still here in the US (my wife works at one). It's a grocery store here, but I'm not sure if it's the same company as the one you're talking about.
  • madforLEGOmadforLEGO Member Posts: 10,837
    I guess it would be my parents, but I have always liked LEGO for as long as I can remember. I cannot place when it occurred, but remember the little #6606 and #6607 vividly and I'm guessing one of those may have been one of my first sets-and I still have those as they are treasured to me). My buddy got me out of my dark ages when he bought a lot of used LEGO from a garage sale in the late 90's and re-stoked my interest. Then I guess it was also my parents again as they saved my brothers, and I's, LEGO in their storage locker as well. We retrieved it and have not looked back.

    Now, at this point, I have so much that I doubt I could go into a 'dark ages' even if I wanted to.
  • BillyBricks84BillyBricks84 Member Posts: 355
    My parents picked up random small City sets and polybags for my brother and I as Christmas or birthday gifts when we were young, but I don't think I really was consumed by LEGO until I received my first pirate ship. I remember sitting down at the dining room table with my mom, dumping the contents of the box, and not going to bed until it was finished. 
  • BrikingBriking Member Posts: 768
    I had a little bit of Lego as a kid, but gave it away to my cousin when I entered my teens in the late 70s.  My next interaction with the bricks was mid noughties when my oldest got a few sets, but he never really got into it.

    So I blame my youngest.  For the last decade he's been a Lego addict.  I've been drafted in to help with builds and had Lego catalogues shoved in my face in time for Xmas and Birthdays.  And in 2012 he persuaded me to take him to Steam.  I came back with the FB and the GE that day.  And the rest is history.
    Bumblepants
  • bookmumbookmum Member Posts: 1,512
    @ricecake safeway in the UK was a supermarket which stopped trading about ten years ago. I have no idea if it was ever connected to the US version. Woolworths began life in the UK as being owned by the same Mr Woolworth as in America but changed owners over the years. Went bust in 2008. I'm still angry about that because the staff got a terrible deal (I had left by then). Ok thats enough retail history for one day. 
  • dspigeldspigel Member Posts: 478
    My parents were the ones that got me hooked. My older brother wouldn't let me play with his Lincoln Logs, so my parents picked up some legos for me. I loved the fact they were mine and I didn't have to share. I didn't get back into lego until my wife bought me #7140 at a thrift store a few years back. Now I'm sure she regrets ever watering that seed in my head.
    Wookie2spepper
  • mmozzanommozzano Member Posts: 417
    I had lots of random lego as a kid as well as a couple of the original pirate and classic space sets. 

    I nearly came out my dark age in 2012 when my wife got me Shelobs Attack #9470 for Christmas (I'm a huge LoTR fan).  I tried to build the set on Christmas Day but my son was 3 at the time and he trashed the half built set. I put it back into the box and there it stayed. 

    I eventually got back into the hobby when my son was 5 and started getting sets himself. 

    I did eventually build the shelob set 2 years after I started. I've also gone back and bought most of the LoTR sets on the secondary market (except Orc Forge, I really should get that one day!)



  • TheBoeingKidTheBoeingKid Member Posts: 4
    I don't remember because I've been using it since I was 4
    dinogirl1375ethanjwall
  • dinogirl1375dinogirl1375 Member Posts: 6
    Harry Potter.  I didn't pay much attention to Lego until the first Harry Potter sets came out.  I was in college, so I had to save and buy the sets slowly.  They never seemed big enough for me, so I had to "biggerize" them.  Then into Star Wars.  A dark period for a while, and now a pile of boxes I have to put together.  LOtR is the same; each set isn't big enough, so I have to fix it. :-)
  • OrmskirkBricksOrmskirkBricks Member Posts: 265
    #10240 I could simply not resist the pull of the light side. Star Wars X-Wing. Anyone who doesn't have it, should get it!
    xwingpilot
  • Glacierfalls265Glacierfalls265 Member Posts: 273
    When I was two a diaper wipe company produced boxes for the wipes in the shape of giant Lego-like blocks, which I loved to stack, so that started me building, but I didn't get actual LEGOs until I was 6 or 7, it was Harry Potter Sirius Black's Escape. And that did it. :) 
  • OldfanOldfan Member Posts: 707
    edited December 2016
    I don't really remember learning about Lego; it seems to have been known to me my entire life.  I have always loved playing with those bricks. I know that my preschool class had an assortment of bricks, and my parents got me the #565 Moon Landing set when I was 5 (either because I liked Lego or I liked space-stuff, or both?).  I would build and play and dismantle and repeat. This was followed by my first minifigure set #445 Police Units, and somewhere in there I got a #113 Universal Building Set (and proceeded to do the best MOCing of my life using all these sets!).  By this time all my friends had a variety of sets too.  The receipt of #462 Rocket Launcher started me on my crazy journey with the modern System sets.

    After the dark ages of high school/college/first career struggles, the Star Wars license brought me back to Lego in 1999.  And here I am today with a basement full of ever-expanding plastic goodness that someday I'll organize and display properly...and I still enjoy the build.
    catwrangler
  • YodaliciousYodalicious Member Posts: 1,366
    My dad found out I was on my way and bought an enormous amount of classic Space sets. From the time I was born until the early 1990s, LEGO was the predominant toy in my life. 

    Fast forward to 1999 and Star Wars brought me out of my first dark age, but that was a very brief buying period. 

    Then fast forward again to 2012 when I found I was having a son and I bought the first wave of LotR sets for him. 4+ years later and I have 2 sons (the oldest is already obsessed with LEGO) and more bricks than I ever imagined. 

    A big thanks goes to my mom. My LEGO was the one thing of mine she never got rid of over the years. So I have a big collection from 1978-1993, a much smaller one from 1999-2000, and an obscene amount from 2012-present. 
    SprinkleOtterkiki180703Glacierfalls265stluxdspigelspeppercatwrangler
  • astarguyastarguy Member Posts: 40
    my fist exposure to Lego was from my grandparents. the would buy a set when ever i was going to visit them and i went from there. i always had Lego in a box that had various parts for old generic sets (aka ones with out instructions) and some that did. so i guess i never had a dark age i just did not buy a lot of new sets until about 2006. 
  • SprinkleOtterSprinkleOtter Member Posts: 2,780
    SumoLego said:
    TheOriginalSimonB said:
    My grandmother was Danish so Lego is in my blood. Along with bacon and beer.
    I like to eat danish, so Lego is also in my blood.  Along with lots of sugar and polyunsaturated fat.
    Hmm... Polyunsaturated fat. So that's where it comes from.
    ethanjwall
  • MaffyDMaffyD Member Posts: 3,579
    edited December 2016

    My parents bought me #369-1 for my birthday one year when I was little. I still remember getting it from the seaside shop where we went for October half term break - I think it was Filey, or possibly Scarborough. Anyway, after that it was a steady stream of smallish sets (my older brother got all the bigger ones) until I grew out of it (probably because I never got any of the bigger ones).

    My wife bought me the #7191 X-Wing for a wedding present, and the rest is history.

    I get the bigger sets these days.

    LegogramPeteMcatwrangler
  • SumoLegoSumoLego Member Posts: 15,241
    SprinkleOtter said:
    SumoLego said:
    I like to eat danish, so Lego is also in my blood.  Along with lots of sugar and polyunsaturated fat.
    Hmm... Polyunsaturated fat. So that's where it comes from.
    All of my danish come out of sealed plastic bags.  Is that weird?

    I won't tell you how I get ketones for brain nutrition...
    SprinkleOtterethanjwall
  • VorpalRyuVorpalRyu Member Posts: 2,318
    My family are massive fans of sci-fi & before I was even born, several family members started buying Lego sets for me (& kept buying more even though I was too young to have them yet), amongst them were a few of the early Space sets. As a young fan of Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who & Battlestar Galactica, guess what sets were my favourites...
    catwrangler
  • AndyPolAndyPol Member Posts: 410
    I got #373 for my seventh birthday and the rest is history....
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