Happy 50th LEGO! The first set I remember clearly was the big-ass castle set from the 1980's. Not the very first one, but the second one. I remember that it came in a big bucket and that I lost huge chunks of it within about five minutes of getting it. We got the original King's Castle not too long after that, but we started with what I think was the Black Falcon's Castle.
I don't know about any of you, but Lego has remained an interest of mine straight into adulthood. I love playing with Legos. I usually buy one set, maybe two, every year. Just for the sake of putting them together.
We had the castle and that was pretty badass, but I really wanted more. I don't blame my parents for not buying them. I was craptacular at that age and would have immediately broken/lost/eaten half the bits. I also would have left them lying about, pointy-and-really-friggin-painful side up, in the dark, in the middle of rooms. That way I could best hurt my barefoot parents at night. And OOOOOOooooohhhhh how I wanted that space monorail! 80's children, you know what I'm talking about.
Yeah, that monorail caused almost as many wet dreams in the 80's as Farrah Fawcett draped over that Lamborghini. It was kiddy-porn for the actual kiddy. Everyone wanted it. kids at school lied about having it. The one kid who had it was a huge geek no one liked, so no one knew he had it. Truth be told, my favorite kits were the pirate kits released in the late 80's. We had about 5 million pirate bits. I adored my pirate boat, my hideout, and my small pirate island. I had a whole friggin' pirate universe scattered about my floor. It was as glorious as it sounds.
On a side note, the two guys on the 4011 "Cabin Cruiser," yeah, they're totally gay.
1991 was also the year that Legos started becoming crack. They started kicking up their box design and introducing various sub-brands aside from just line names and "Legoland." They introduced Lego System, and around that time started really beefing up their general toy design. The monorail was only the beginning. Technic came out in '92, but I was never really taken with it. Don't know why. In retrospect, it was pretty badass. Probably because it didn't have some story to go along with it. Instead, all the new pirate releases were what got added to the growing Lego minefield on my floor.
It was around that time I kind of lost interest in Legos. I moved on to a few other, more complex building sets that allowed me to do more and feel a bit more adult. Erector sets, with their cool metal parts, are what really drew me away. But ohhhh man, back in my highschool days, I got drawn back in a big way when Lego introduced the first Mindstorms kit, HOLD ME BACK! Christ Almighty, it was expensive though.
I got to play with one at school, but that was it until a year or so later, 1999, I think, my parents got me the Star Wars AT-AT walker. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that it wasn't really a robot. Weee! I can shine a flashlight at it and have it move! This is fucking AMAZING! I wanted the badass kit you could program. Blasted thing of course had to cost, like, $300. Did you have $300 just kicking around at 17/18ish? If you did, I hate you. You probably had the kit and was one of those fuckers I never saw at school because you were too busy at home doing cool shit. Like have a robot walk... around... and maybe pick something up. Ohhhh yeah. Good stuff.
My love affair continues. I got a kit in my stocking for Christmas. A little race car. It was good.
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