Those damned dark ages

[Vindicare]

For those of us who lost our way, what set(s) brought you back? For me, I was bored one day, got on ebay and searched "just for fun" of old legos I had and loved as a child. I saw forestmen and decided to bid, fast forward a month or so, I have 3 forestmen sets and all ninja sets. Then I looked on Lego.com saw the Cafe Corner and I never looked back.

[bort138]

I helped my then 10 year old cousin build 7094 King's Castle Siege about two years ago and decided to get all of my LEGO out of storage and build some stuff with the pieces I already had. Last Christmas, I received 10197 Fire Brigade and had to buy the rest of the of modular buildings. Once Atlantis came out I was hooked on buying newer sets. I was a huge fan of Aquazone back in the day and was happy to see a return of a sci-fi underwater theme.

Edited August 15, 2010 by bort138

[rday1982]

Moved house, aged 13. Never had the space to recreate my LEGO city, so it stayed packed away. Fast forward 25 years, and I start getting stuff out of storage to sell on eBay. I couldn't bear to part with the LEGO, and started playing with the train set. Now, a few months down the line, I'm obsessed with LEGO trains again.

[nismogrendel]

I saw the Endor Battle set (8038) on some blog one day, and because Jedi was my favorite as a kid I had to go get it. After I picked that up, I saw a red car in the Town set that had some pieces I could use to build a model of my Dad's '79 Jeep Cherokee Chief. I ended up buying a few town sets to get the correct wheels/fenders/etc (this is before I knew about Bricklink). Recently I've been into the Space Police III and World Racer kits, SP3 is kind of weak when it comes to vehicles for the police but the minifigs are excellent so I keep buying the sets.

This month I got Slave I, AT-AT, Wampa Cave, Cad Bane's Speeder and the motorcycle and race boat WR sets. I'm hooked again, now if they would only bring back Blacktron...

[Mariano]

I bought two boxes for Xmas for my daughter and i saw the cargo train deluxe (7898) and, the forgotten and dusty Lego fan inside me, woke up again and this time, definitely.

[lightningtiger]

I remember my son saying look 'Dad, I wan't this for my birthday !' - he was watching a Lego ad on Cartoon Network, it was for 7744 police station - he thought it was cool the bad guy's preforming a classic jail-break !

So he got the set, I helped him......BINGO.....I was bitten by the Lego-bug again......I did collect most theme's till I found out I ran out of room - and also had an upset wife !

Now I MOC city, build SW - but my son is into SW first, then a dead heat for second Kingdoms/Pirates/City !

I'm a conformist! everyone !

[Hey75]

I remember my son saying look 'Dad, I wan't this for my birthday !' - he was watching a Lego ad on Cartoon Network, it was for 7744 police station - he thought it was cool the bad guy's preforming a classic jail-break !

So he got the set, I helped him......BINGO.....I was bitten by the Lego-bug again......I did collect most theme's till I found out I ran out of room - and also had an upset wife !

Now I MOC city, build SW - but my son is into SW first, then a dead heat for second Kingdoms/Pirates/City !

I'm a conformist! everyone !

That true , Father and Son happy Wife Angry. I always say this(See Lego, Buy Lego, Build Lego, Play Lego) to my wife everytime we went shopping on the weekend cos no matter how we will sure have some Lego home. After some time she will get over it and not mad any more

[Calabar]

One day I saw set 7094 King's Castle Siege priced 89 euro in a shopping centre.

So I said: "if it should go down to 60 euro, I'll buy it!" (obviously thinking that's not possible).

But there was a "shopping centre" war about the price of that castle, so that another shopping centre put it at 69 euros. The other then priced it at 67 euros!

At the end, thanks to a discount ticket (15% of discount on a single item) I bought the castle at 57 euro.

From that moment, I never exited the tunnel!

Edited August 15, 2010 by Calabar

[GRogall]

For me it was the Santa Fe Super Chief 10020 finally you could almost build a complete train!

[jm28cardiff]

I'm 35 now, the last lego I bought before my dark ages was when I was about 15. I bought a couple of Futuron and Blacktron sets in about 1990? I was already "too old" for it at the time, because my parents made fun of me for buying it!

Even after I stopped buying and playing with lego, looking back, I would still occasionally look at what was in the shops. I remember looking at Pirates stuff, thinking it was cool, but not buying because I was "too old".

About ten years ago I found a website with Lego instructions, so I rebuilt a few sets. Had fun doing it, so almost came out of my dark ages then, but it was a false start. I put it all back in the attic again.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, I got my lego down from the Attic again, finished rebuilding my old sets, then started buying some in the shops. The smart car was the first I bought, I thought it was a cool little car. Now I have spent about £1000 on sets in the last two months, which is crazy when you think about it! But I was catching up on things I've missed out on over the years. Hopefully, going forwards, I can buy things as they come out and not go into another dark age!

[DLuders]

After our house burned down in August 1996 (via a 3,000-acre wildfire), my wife and I had to buy new toys for our (then) 4-year-old son. We got him Lego sets from Toys 'R' Us, and as he got older, "father and son" enjoyed building Technic MOCs. He's now almost 18, but we still both like to "free build" and build motorized Power Functions cars and trucks.

[Dunjohn]

I can't remember when I stopped; I think the 90's Pirates sets were still in the shops.

About two years ago, I finished work at 5.30 one Friday and had to hang around waiting for a card tournament to start at 6.30. I wandered into a toy shop, spotted a cheap little Lego fireman's car, set 7241, and figured that might might burn a few minutes. The next week, it was an ambulance, slightly larger but still cheap. It snowballed from there.

[escortmad79]

I came out of my dark age last Christmas. I jokingly asked my fiancee for some Lego for Christmas so she bought me a tub.

I also saw the stuff Jamie Berard had designed, Cafe Corner & Emerald Night in particular & decided I had to have them! Unfortunately I was too late to get Cafe Corner as it had been discontinued by the time I came out of my dark age but did get the Emerald Night set for my birthday & then bought Green grocer shortly afterwards.

I bought one of the original sets I had when I was a child from BL auctions when they were up & running & keep looking on ebay for other sets I had.

Since Christmas I have purchased a whole heap of stuff (All of which is recorded on my about me page) with a view to creating a Lego City when my fiancee & I move into our own place again

[djmangunz]

Great topic! Huge Lego fan as a kid, especially the Pirate theme. I escaped my "dark ages," about seven years ago when I started teaching. We had a tub of Lego bricks in my room and one day a student came up to me during recess and asked me to help him build a pirate ship. I was hooked again. Thankfully, I have an awesome wife who enjoys kids stuff as much as I do, such as Pixar movies and Harry Potter novels. So, she feeds my addiction by purchasing me new sets each Christmas and birthday!

[vynsane]

It's funny, the same topic is going on over at FBTB now. I already answered there, so no sense in rewriting it, when 'copy' and 'paste' are readily available ;)

The beginning of the end of my 20-odd year dark age was due to the LEGO Star Wars, Batman and Indiana Jones video games. They were really fun, and I intended to get a set that was representative of each game. As my interest grew, I started noticing LEGO everywhere I looked - I saw an article in a magazine at my wife's Uncle's house featuring the Indiana Jones 7198 'Fighter Plane Attack' and thought "Oh, that's COOL", then noticed the Midi-Scale Millenium Falcon on a chance trip to Walmart. I made a point of noting it to my wife (this was sometime just before Christmas, and my birthday 4 days after).

Well, my wife got me the Midi Falcon for Christmas and a few days later I got the Indiana Jones 'Venice Canal Chase' from her Uncle and his girlfriend - close enough, I thought, then days later had second thoughts - perhaps I could exchange it for 'Fighter Plane Attack'. I had so much fun putting the Falcon together with my 3y/o daughter on Christmas morning and wanted more. I had received some money for my birthday, and my wife convinced me to keep the Canal Chase set and also buy the Fighter Plane set, but I couldn't find it anywhere in stores. I found the LEGO online shop (and the MOCs on Flickr which opened my eyes to what was possible, especially nnenn's starfighters) through searching online, added the Fighter Plane set to my cart and noticed Space Police III! Space Police I was one of my favorite lines ever, only trailing Blacktron I in my estimation, and I filled my cart with a couple hundred dollars worth of LEGO sets - it was all over.

I've since opened the floodgates and (according to my collection on Brickset) have a total of 72 sets (which includes 24 CMFs from series 1, so let's not get over-excited) with a MSRP total of $1505! Most of those I bought at a certain discount, so it's not been that much, but it's easily over $1000 spent in the course of 8 months or so. Man, that's scary. At this point SP3 comprises the bulk of my collection, but I intend to acquire most of the Indiana Jones sets over time, and a few Star Wars sets here and there that intrigue me. My current collection includes (in roughly the order of highest concentration to lowest) SP3, Creator, Indy, Atlantis, World Racers, Star Wars, some Classic Space stuff I had as a kid that I re-purchased on eBay (before finding BrickLink) as I don't have any of my childhood sets, and a smattering of Agents, Prince of Persia, and Adventurers.

So, to sum up: Equal parts video games, licensed themes, AFOL's MOCs, and Space Police III.

[Modulex Guy]

I luckily never really had a dark age... Mine was more of a dim age.

I never gave up building MOCs out of what I had, but buying sets had stopped when I was about 2003 through 2006ish when I was in High School (those dismal teen years).

Around 2007 I had discovered Racers, started buying a few because I like cars. Also around the same time I had discovered the LEGO store in Schaumburg and PaB!

It started with buying a cup of parts here and there, and now, me at 20 years old, I find myself buying more than ever.

...I love LEGO.

[RocketClone]

One day i was roaming around at my local Target, and then i spotted some of the star wars sets, and bought a couple of V-wing sets, on sale for $7.00, bought a couple of them, been a Lego fan since.

Rockets away!

[fred67]

Trains... I was doing N-Scale model trains (I lived in apartment and needed a small scale). Then I moved into a house, had kids, and decided LEGO was a better "scale" to model in, and more fun for the kids, too.

Since I started buying LEGO Trains, and being a Star Wars fan, my mom gave me the Imperial AT-ST for a gift, and that started in on Star Wars, too.

Then LEGO started with the Fantasy Era Castle sets, and being a big LOTR fan, I started buying them.

[-zenn]

I saw some pictures of Lego moc's on Brickshelf. Kept lurking for some weeks and than decided to build some of my own.

[Gabe]

I was a massive lego fan as a child, really into the classic space theme, but as i entered adolecence the lego got put away, and eventually my sister took it for her kids. :( Fast forward to a few months ago, I bought my partner some small lego fire sets as she collects toy fire trucks - i figured she at least needed some firemen to drive them! We had a fun time putting them together and the next day i was back at Kmart for a SW rebel trooper battle pack. Now i'm onto Bricklink and finding all the old Viking sets - just briliant. I wish Lego was still making that theme.

[Sirens-of-Titan]

I actively built and enjoyed playing until about 15, when my peers no longer cared for Legos I had to go and cave into peer pressure and "grow up". I was still very interested and even checked out Eurobricks within the last 4 years of the end of my dark ages, but never had the courage to buy a set.

I was recently celebrating a one year anniversary of dating my girlfriend, and was looking for something special to get her. Try as I must i couldn't think of anything, until one day when I told her about how I used to play with Legos like crazy when I was a kid. To my amazement, she told me she was obsessed with them up through the 8th grade but stopped because she felt 'too old'.

We couldn't believe it, we recognized the same maddening spark all Lego fans share in our each others' eyes, and we were off to Toys'R'Us so quickly the rest seems like a blur. We bought and built a few pirates/ Kingdoms sets and she also got a few city impulses. We later found out about Collectible Mini-figures, and we were hooked.

I now have my own projects and also collect and build with her. I gotta tell you though, it was like falling in love all over again!

[Apollo]

I entered my dark ages following the 2003 World City line, and came out of my dark ages following the release of the BIONICLE Toa Inika in 2006. The new play features advanced my interest in LEGO, and it was not long before I was collecting SYSTEM themes again, such as Mars Mission and Power Miners. I am currently collecting Space sets both new and old, Atlantis, and I am saving up for an Imperial Flagship

[wooootles]

Cafe Corner planted the idea in my head Inception-style;

Green Grocer sealed it for me. A 9-year layoff all-in-all, though it was actual about 12 years ago when I started to quit with Town Jr sucking even for an 11-yr old

[flat_four]

I made it out of my dark ages properly around 9 months ago.

As I child I'd collect mainly town/city sets with a few from other themes such as pirates and castle. I'd say I stopped buying regular sets around 1994 at the age of 12 but continued to buy the odd technic sets till my later teens. My LEGO eventually found its way to the loft and stayed there until I moved house earlier this year, apart from a couple of outings in the late 90's where my 9v train and a few town sets were set up at as a display at a local model train show.

From time to time over the next ten years or so I kept my eye on what lego was producing and also purchased a few of the UCS and technic starwars sets. I remeber thinking the town/city line went badly down hill in the early 2000's. Definately not the case now

January of this year when I was browsing ebay and i saw a Taj Mahal set for sale. I thought the model was brilliant especially the dome and knew I had to build one. I purchased and built it and although slightly tedious to build in places it was all worth it when complete.

From this point It snow balled, I started researching LEGO online a bit and began to realise there were a lot more AFOL's out there than you might first think. I quickly discovered EB's and spent a lot of time browsing. I was blown away by some of the MOC's, inparticular those following the modular building style. Eventually I purchased a green grocer and loved building it, so followed it with GE and FB. I eventually want to build some of my own MOC's along these lines but although my parts collection is getting larger (I'm not even going to think about how much capital investment into brightly coloured plastic bricks ive made!) now, finding the time to build is now the main problem.

Eurobricks was a great source of inspiration for me and an invaluable source of knowledge back then and even more so now.

Thanks to you all.

[dr_spock]

I wasn't a big Lego fan when I was a kid. I bought a few sets while in university and then stopped. Many years later, I had kids and I bought sets for them. I didn't get the Lego bug until my son asked grandma to buy me a big Creator set. She took him Lego shopping for his birthday present and he felt I should have some Lego too. Well, I built that 1279 piece set and was hooked. That was about 2 years ago and now 25000+ pieces later...