Lego - Build a dream

[mook]

[ I take it it was shit then?

Actually it was quite good, but a bit too fiddly for my eight year old fingers, and some of the most important parts, like the little red circlip thingies that held the rods in place would fuck off just when you needed them. It was the bollocks for making cranes though, it came with motor that was stupidly powerful, I remember making a gantry crane that could lift four house bricks, count them, FOUR! On the downside it was the second most painful thing in the world after a three pin plug to step on in bare feet.

[Ambient Sheep]

Another thing I used to do was to make a certain style of tank and see how resilient to damage (i.e. me chucking it down the stairs, or ramming it at full speed into a wall) it was, and repairing/reinforcing it after each test throw/ram.

Yes, me too!  :D  Destructive little buggers we were.

And my pocket money was 10p a week until I was 11, when I think it went up to 50p.

Actually [Fischer Technik] was quite good, but a bit too fiddly for my eight year old fingers, and some of the most important parts, like the little red circlip thingies that held the rods in place would fuck off just when you needed them. It was the bollocks for making cranes though, it came with motor that was stupidly powerful, I remember making a gantry crane that could lift four house bricks, count them, FOUR!

Wow.  Yes, it was a huge crane-set that was in this shop window we used to pass every week or two, and I used to point at and whine.

On the downside it was the second most painful thing in the world after a three pin plug to step on in bare feet.

Owww, yeah, it looks it.

[Ambient Sheep]

There was nothing worse then when two small flat pieces got stuck together. It was always a nail shredder getting them apart.

Apparently they sell a tool now to separate them for you.

[LadyDay]

I hate Lego, there, I've said it.

That's 'cos you're a GIRL and you SMELL.

Pfft, I bet I could have slaughtered you at Subbuteo...if I hadn't thrown up on the pitch the day I got it.

[Garfield And Friends]

There was nothing worse then when two small flat pieces got stuck together. It was always a nail shredder getting them apart.

Apparently they sell a tool now to separate them for you.

Feh!

Another thing I remember about Lego was that one of my friends had an amazing collection of the stuff (his parents were quite well off), but most of it had teeth marks in it. Often there were small ballbearings and bits of earth/grass stuck in the undersides of the bricks too. The unappreciative dolt.

Also, my uncle gave me a gift of 'Lego bricks' one Christmas. Nice gesture, except it was some dodgy lookalike brand that lacked the 'circles' underneath, so you couldn't build anything other than bulky 4 (pegs long) * 2 (pegs wide) * 3 (layers deep) constuctions. Mostly walls. Walls I tell you.

This has all sparked my memory. Another thing I used to do was to build boats and to see how long they would float in a filled sink before springing a leak and capsizing. This eventually led to me to cheat by using 'extra' stuff like tissue paper, blu-tac, sticky tape, or plasticine to 'waterproof' the base of my boat. Worked a charm, like.

[terminallyrelaxed]

I can't believe all the ready-molded stuff you get these days. When I were a lad we had a huge basket of lego bricks and bits and maybe half a dozen little guys. I eventually got one little car and a couple of spacemen (lego men with helmets) and a space-scooter kit, but it was all made out of little fairly normal bits of lego and you could change it etc, it was ace.
I've got a picture of my uncle helping my brother build a crane out of lego on the night I was born. Its about a foot tall and all different colours with all the random bricks, and looks like a lego construction should look. I'll see if I can get it scanned...

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

Lego was the first and last fan club I joined. I'm sure I've got my stitch-on "Lego Club" patch somewhere still. I remember saving up my pocket money (20p a week - kids don't know they're born these days et cetera) all year to buy stuff from the catalogue that came with the quarterly member's magazine.

I always liked getting a card on Christmas and on my Birthday from Mr Lego.

[genital panic]

It was all about Pirate Lego for me. The day I trumped my best friends Governers Ship (which he had bragged about ceaselessly for months) with the more expensive, bigger and better cannoned Pirates Galleon was glorious. He had nothing on me from that day forth. The cunt.

I think I was on about £1 a week back then so it would generally take about a year to buy anything decent, and so for roughly a 3 year period my birthday and christmas presents were only Lego. Ah, I Heart Lego.

Can't help but feel I missed out on all the Lego technik stuff though, it sounds mental. Strong words will be exhcanged with my parents about their decision not to buy this for me.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Can someone pass me a three-er?

I think you mean 'a three-dot'. Cyuh.

[Purple Tentacle]

There are six dots on a three'er though, unless you had weird triangular Lego, weirdo.


Lego Basic for me please. This thread has done nothing but make my feet ache in memory of those middle-of-the-night treading-on accidents.

[Jack Shaftoe]

There are six dots on a three'er though, unless you had weird triangular Lego, weirdo.

A 'three-er' is CLEARLY a bit that is one dot wide, and three long. Although it isn't called a 'three-dot' because that sounds frankly a bit girly. 'Three-er' is a much more brisk manly way of telling your lego assistant (younger brother, who was never allowed to build things himself but could help me if he bahaved himself), what bit you needed.

A whole hour would fly by, with only the following things said.

'Three-er'
'Now a two-er'

Pause.

'Three-spindle'
'Square roofy bit'
'Another Three-er'

Long pause, then finallly:

'SPACE-HOVERCRAFT!!!!'

'Three-dot'. Honestly. This thread title should be changed to 'a load of people talking about the wrong names for bits of lego'

The recent viking range was fucking tops. Not sure about the mecha-lego though, they look like they should transform into something, but they don't.

[Dark Sky]

How old are you DS? I always assumed that you were significantly older than me, but that control centre thingy was the last Lego I ever owned. I don't know why I assumed you were older than me, I think you mentioned that you couldn't torrent becuase you were at uni, not so long ago.

Uh urm oh help I'm being stalked.  I'm urr...still (just) twenty one, fact fans.  George Orwell generation.  Clocks striking thirteen on cold days in my birth month and all that kerfuffle.  Obviously you would have mistaken me for being older due to my understated intelligence, gentle wisdom, and world weary melancholy.

Anyway.  Lego time.

I knew that this thread would deteriorate into arguments about what all the names of the bricks are.  I think every household had their own special secret code for this sort of thing.

For example, my sister and I would refer to one of these...



...as being a "sixer".  It wasn't until many years later that we realised that it was a bit of a stupid name, all things considered.

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

You played Lego with girls? Urrgh, gay.

[Mister Cairo]

Did anyone ever go to Legoland (Windsor)

I remember how glad I was when I passed my Lego driving test.

[BagJob]

I can't believe how many of you are claiming you never followed the instructions - no wonder the world is in such a state today. What the hell do you think they were there for?

I started off with the basic lego. I had this yellow thing. It was like one giant brick with wheels, you'd stick a red key in the side, wide it up, then let the thing roll along. The idea was that you'd build a car shape on top of it.

Then I remember getting the lego airport. You'd have four of those big flat studded base plates with the runway drawn on. Then you'd stick these transparent round flat 'oner' pieces that were supposed to be the runway lights.There was a plane also. You'd have to lift open the roof to stick the passengers inside. I remember my parents buying me a lego red fire helicopter from a small model shop in Portugal. That was our first holiday abroad and I think we were all amazed that they had lego in other countries. I always wanted the monorail, because that was like a train set and lego combined - the holy grail of toys.

Then I went on the Lego Pirate ship stuff. I had both ships; the pirate one which had red and white sails, and the navy one which was a bit smaller and had blue and white sails. This was truely awsome toyage at the time. The cannons could fire the little round one bricks, and there were swords and pistols and rifles. The flags were awful and you could guarantee they'd get broken and wouldn't clip onto the flag poles anymore.

I went onto lego technic but I think those sets were a bit pricey - especially the big car one. I had a motocross bike. It had suspension struts and when you turned the back wheel the cylinders in the V-twin would move up and down.

When I was a nipper and I'd been invited to a kid's party my Mum would buy one of the small lego sets and send me off with that to give as a present. Back then you could be sure that everyone had at least some lego, so it was a sure bet they'd like it. Unless they happened to be an awkward person (or "girl" as I call them).

Anyway thanks to this thread I've just discovered that I have a lego set still unopened in the box. 6245 - the little pirate rowing boat. Hopefully this will now be worth enough for that learjet I want?

[Ambient Sheep]

Anyway thanks to this thread I've just discovered that I have a lego set still unopened in the box. 6245 - the little pirate rowing boat. Hopefully this will now be worth enough for that learjet I want?

If you go to eBum and type in "Lego 6245" you'll be really...disappointed.  Ah well.

[Jemble Fred]

I can't believe how many of you are claiming you never followed the instructions - no wonder the world is in such a state today. What the hell do you think they were there for?

Rule-obeying automatons? Smiley bloody smiley, etc.

Besides, proper Lego (ie big bags of bricks) doesn't have any instructions.

[Tre]

I used to make the thing on the packet first, but without the instructions (unless I got stuck). Then it would be dismantled and put into the big red box, and later become something else.

Lego wasn't made for following the instructions. It was made so you could create your own little world of multi coloured houses with missing roof tiles owned by  little men with no hair.

Back to the three-er debate:

A regular bit with 6 dots is a three-er

A flat bit, with 6 dots, is a flat three-er

A thin bit, with 3 dots, is a thin three-er

A thin flat bit, with 3 dots is a thin, flat three-er

[Almost Yearly]

Lego purist here, don't be giving me nothing with no face on it, nor your bespoke grey nonsense. Even my little translucent oners used to seem naughty and precious. I'll allow the old cross-hatched red or white fence pieces, because they fit sideways over the dots on a standard brick and thus you can effect a ninety degree change of axis.

I won a big bucket of the stuff in about 1973 by making a pretty mean Starship Enterprise in a Christmas competition up in the toy department of Cavendish House, Cheltenham fans. I can draw a straight line between that and an honours in engineering design.

I even made a kind of Subbuteo set out of standard bricks. You shoved them around on a big cardboard pitch, chasing a white 2x2. Needs must.

At the appropriate moment, I shall take away my littl'un's pile of pre-formed brightly coloured imagination-free plastic and replace it with a big tub of standard Lego, if that's possible. <checks eBum> *Sob*


I presume someone's already linked to that Lego porn site.

[Hugo Rune]

This is Lego porn.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

I got a set of really great lego stuff once that had some instructions for several different vehicles. I followed them all and tried out all the vehicles until I settled upon a sort of lorry like design. Then I modified it in stages, at first putting some chairs and things in the back of it, then joining the back and front together so it was one big enclosure where the people could walk from back to front. Then I put a door in the back, some "computers" in there, a central computer hidden under a removable panel in the middle of the floor, an opening up roof so you could move things around inside it, restyled the front end to look a bit different and be a bit more sturdy. Ooh, I'm getting all nostalgic thinking about it. I think it's all lost now unfortunately. It was really great fun.

[Ambient Sheep]

...by making a pretty mean Starship Enterprise...

I always tried to make one of those, but the diagonals wouldn't support the weight.  Presumably that's why I *don't* have an honours degree in engineering design.

[I Am The Walrus]

I used to do a Stand Up routine about lego. It went:

"I've rediscovered the joy of lego, it's amazing anything is your multicoloured bricked dream it's great!  (This goes on for a bout 20 more seconds) Oh god that is a bit sad isn't it? Maybe I need a girlfriend...have I got enough bricks though?"

Used to do that right after my "Barbie is too realistic for little girls" rant!

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

I think I can draw a fairly wobbly line between playing with Lego and getting a D-grade AS Level in Design Technology.

[Cardinal Tit Storm]

Lego Transformers was where it was at. I could never get enough hinges and turntables - like gold dust, they were. I was a bit obsessed with recreating the Ghostbusters HQ and Ecto 1 as well - must have watched the film a hundred times trying to work out the layout of their firestation.

Meccano was probably better, but I never had enough to do anything with it.

[Jack Shaftoe]

Tre said

A thin bit, with 3 dots, is a thin three-er

Ah, you're quite right - a gold lego badge is on its way to you in the post.*





* it isn't really, of course.

[Almost Yearly]

Ooh, how could I forget this anecdote -

I was working in the public bar of a hotel that never had any public in it. One evening I arrived to see a huge man made of Lego outside the gates, announcing a Lego conference taking place. These fuckers in suits spent all night in my bar playing with Lego and getting twatted on the most expensive whiskies behind me, one of which cost £16 a shot. That's the job for me, I thought.


Edit: Yeah, my Enterprise diagonals were extremely vulnerable, but held as long as it sat on the display shelf of entries and no-one touched it.

[Almost Yearly]

It just so happens I'm eating my first Drumstick chewy lolly for about thirty years here, and it tastes of Lego somehow.

[BagJob]

Anyway thanks to this thread I've just discovered that I have a lego set still unopened in the box. 6245 - the little pirate rowing boat. Hopefully this will now be worth enough for that learjet I want?

If you go to eBum and type in "Lego 6245" you'll be really...disappointed.  Ah well.

Gutted!

[ozziechef]

I once won second prize in a local village model competition by building a playground. It had a slid, a dustbin and I'd utilised two of those fire hose bits to make a swing.

I also once made a model of Coronation Street but my Lego Board broke in one of the corners so it was a bit more L shaped than the real thing.

Anyone fancy a V W lego model competition now?