The Lego Vault

I love Legos. A lot of people love Legos. One of my favorite blogs Gizmodo loves Legos. Not only did they post about the best Lego sets in history but they recently paid a visit to Denmark and found out in the process that Lego keeps a (sort of) secret corporate vault that contains every Lego set ever made - 4,720 in total. "Great Googly Moogly!" and"Holy Mary Mother of God!" immediately come to mind.

I could not wait to take a fun trip down memory lane and started to look at some of the photos. Only a few pics into the stroll I immediately froze, like the proverbial deer in headlights, when I saw the set below:

I had that one and still have it - the bricks and hopefully the blueprint are in my Mom's attic somewhere.

In terms of the various Legoland themes, I was always a Lego Space guy. My grandfather and father instilled in me a love of the cosmos and in very "chicken and the egg" type situation, I'm not sure if my love of space is due to Legos or if my love of Legos is due to the space theme of the bricks I played with as a wee lad. I never had any Legoland Castle or Town sets - only Space. I had about half to three quarters of the sets in the Legoland Space part of Gizmodo's "Best Lego Sets In History" photo collection and loved every single one of them.

In terms of time, I must have spent months - not days nor weeks but months - during my formative years stooped over hundreds of bricks that were spilled out on my carpet, hunting for the exact brick that I needed in order to either complete the Lego provided blueprint or the one that I dreamt up that day. I remember my back hurting on many of an occasion due to the hours that I sat Indian style, hunched over looking for these specific bricks. I remember when Don Mattingly first developed back problems, I thought to myself, "It must be like he's looking for Legos..."

I'm acutely aware of my own childhood now that I see another one unfolding right before my eyes. I never want to force anything upon my daughter, I want all of her loves to be genuine, but I do hope that she enjoys playing with Legos as much as I did. Then again, Mega Blocks seem pretty cool too these days...

Via Neu