Out of the Dark Ages
Building on yesterday’s post, I emerged from my Lego dark ages back in 1998. Shortly after Christmas, I was walking through a Kohl’s with my sister and niece. As we happened through the toy section, I noticed pirate Lego sets on clearance and I thought to myself, “hey… wouldn’t that be cool to stick up on my desk at work…”
Looking at the Lego pirate sets, I had realized a few things: Lego was no longer just primary colored bricks… there was green, brown, and shades of gray; Lego was no longer about just bricks… there were minifigs (as I later came to know what they were called), cannons, horses, plants of different shapes and sizes, etc.; and Lego was about themes… castle, pirate, space…
I honestly don’t remember what the first Lego set that I bought after coming out of my dark ages… I’m thinking it might have been a #6249 Bandit Ambush, but I could be mistaken. Or it might have been some castle set… I can’t quite remember… I took to the internet with my new found love of Lego… found rec.toys.lego (RTL) and eBay… worlds opened up to me… found that I missed the ‘golden-years’ (in my opinion) of Lego (1980~1988) — most of the sets I found most interesting came out during the ’80s. Found out that people had scanned instructions and posted them on-line for others to build from. Found people were hosting part auctions, like AucZILLA. Found people who posted pictures of their own Lego creations called MOCs. It was a whole new strange, wonderful world filled with people like me — Adult Fans of Lego (AFOLs).