Lego

As a child, I loved Lego. I was so fortunate to have amassed a huge amount of it, and spent countless hours dreaming and building things. As part of a house move when I was a teenager, I unfortunately had to get rid of all of it.

It wasn’t until a few years ago, I randomly got a set as a Christmas present. It was such a wonderful gift. It instantly brought back those happy memories, and I really savoured building it, bag-by-bag and displaying it pride of place in my living room. Of course, that was the gateway.

Realising this could be financially irresponsible, I limited myself to only buying sets from the Architecture theme. Specifically ones of cities I've visited – but I've bought a handful (really) of other sets that I thought looked fun or special. I particularly love vignettes and dioramas with lots of little details. Most of them are still in their boxes, waiting to be built because I don't have anywhere to put them.

In that time Lego, the company have obviously clocked onto that fact adults are buying their products – and they have lent into this, hard. So much so, I think it’s a problem. So many of the sets they are releasing are completely cynical, and just a bit trash? It just seems so scattergun and confused, partly due to the amount of IPs they have amassed. One driving factor seems to be “do you remember…?” and then make a set out of that. Pacman, Polaroid, and the Concorde are all recent examples.

You're wondering who is buying some of these sets, and you can tell from the discounts on some sets that they’re unsurprisingly not selling much at all. I managed to pick up a Seinfeld set for less than half its original retail price. I like Seinfeld, but that's such a weird, niche set. What's the deal with that?

It is meditative, and relaxing, and offline. You don’t need any skill, and you can’t ever be disappointed with the outcome, unlike painting or baking. But once I’ve built the set, it’s just left gathering dust on my shelf – and that doesn’t seem very within the spirit of Lego.