"The Dark Ages" - How long were you away from Lego?

[AmperZand]

The first set I had that was mine and not just parts I had to share with my older brother was the Texas Rangers from 1977. I soon got into Lego Space when the first articulated minifigs came out and remained a Lego Space fan until 1983 when I discovered fantasy as a genre.

My DA lasted 10 years until 1993 when my interest in fantasy-themed toys led me to the Lego wizard and ghost sets that were released that year.

My interest in Lego has grown since but my favourite themes remain fantasy/historical ones such as some CMFs, the Ninjago minifigs and the LotR/Hobbit sets.

[Sparrowfeather]

Have you ever went through a Lego Dark Age? I've recently back into lego after at least a Year after looking at some the new Star Wars sets, I've really been missing out, but its good to be back.

Edited February 12, 2013 by Sparrowfeather

[Leo604]

Up until mid-2011 I had a dark age of about 3-4 years when I first got my Wii; can't really remember significant periods before that.

[LEGO Guy Bri]

Mine was from 2004 (age 15) through late 2009. With High School, girls, parties, and getting a license, there was much less interest in LEGO. Besides I consider that part of LEGO's dark age for there lack of good sets. At least City and Train anyways. More about discussing "Dark Ages" is here. A mod will probably merge these. Welcome back to LEGO though!

[Fugazi]

More about discussing "Dark Ages" is here. A mod will probably merge these.

Right on!

[Yeow]

I never really had a dark ages, I just had years when I purchased significantly fewer sets due to lack of money mostly. That was about 2003-2005 when I was 13-15 years old. I only picked up select Bionicle and Star Wars sets during that time period. Once I started working in 2006, I then picked up my purchase rate.

[MrHorntail]

The introduction of lego lord of the rings has gotten me back :)

[Roger_Smith]

I was away from ca 96/97 up until the end of 2012/beginning of 2013. I already told that story in detail in my introductory post here: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=78110&hl=

My interest slowly faded out starting in about 94/95 (actually it was replaced with an intensified interest in my H0 gauge Märklin model railroad after I convinced my dad to build a permanently installed layout complete with landscape an whatnot in my room, taking up the place that formerly belonged to my Lego city).

I occasionally still played with lego (the last set I got must've 6639 Raven Racer), but they more and more just stayed in their boxes and towards the end of the 90ies they were moved to the basement (and the model railroad to the attic. Both not a cool thing to have in your room as a ttenager ;-)).

There they stayed until I dug up my Playmobil to give to my niece, which is when I saw the parts of the Blacktron Message Intercept base, which I had had but never was able to build due to my unfortunate lack of instructions (again, refer to my introductory post for more details on that unusual story).

It gripped hold of me, and when, after some googling, I found the instructions online, I just had to get my Legos upstairs and finally build it. .

I had lots of fun with that, spent hours reading on brickipedia, rebuilt a lot of other stuff from my youth and then went on to make quite a bargain buying a huge lot of Lego on Ebay (almost as big as the one I got as a kid from our fomer neighbor).

Now I'm constantly building this old set or that, or coming up with ideas for MOCs :)

[naf]

My dark age went from around 1995 to, well let's see, maybe a month ago? I started playing with Lego in the mid 80's, and have quite a few very nice sets. My favorite system was space, and I have most of the light and sound sets, the original Monorail Transport System, Blacktron Renegade, to name the big ones. Plus countless other ships, bases, etc. I was a big train geek as well, and had the Lego 7722 train, one of my favorite sets. My brother was big into town, and he has a lot of sets from that system. When the pirate sets came out, I begged for the Black Seas Barracuda, and it appeared under the Christmas tree in '89. Got Forbidden Island on my following birthday, and my brother got the Caribbean Clipper. The pirates got the most play out of me for whatever reason, I was just in awe of those ships after I constructed them. I think it was because they were so different from anything Lego was doing at the time.

Over the past year, I got married and now have two young stepkids in my life who hadn't been exposed to Lego yet. Of course, I had to buy them some sets of the coolest toy ever created. Returning to the Lego aisle in the store after such a long hiatus, I was disappointed by what I saw. So many licensed Legos, I loved the charm of the Lego's from my youth with their unique designs and minimalist backstories; they let you run wild with your imaginiation. I ended up purchasing several of the 'Creator' sets, they have the feel of the old sets and allow you to build 3 different models with one box. My wife has now learned that she married a Lego maniac! In fact, for my birthday she went out and bought me my first set since I was a kid, the Lego Star Wars X-Wing!!

I'm now officially out of my dark age. I'm in the process of rescuing my Lego sets from my parents basement. They have given away most of my old toys, but they kept all the Legos. My mom even had the forsight to keep all the instructions (organized in a file cabinet!!) AND kept all the boxes for my sets. I'm having a blast building up my old sets, and already have ideas in my head for making some MOC's sometime in the future.

Edited March 30, 2013 by naf

[Janglais]

Like many here, I would have put it all away when I was somewhere around 14-15 in the mid-90s. My next door neighbour and I used to spend the weekends building stuff all the time. I distinctly remember when he moved away a girl at school making fun of us not being able to "Play Lego" anymore, and I think that was the catalyst.

A year or so ago, a mate recommended I try playing Lego Star Wars on the XBOX, which then got me looking at what Lego sets were out there these days. This then led to a few nostalgic walks through the toy aisle on my lunch break and eventually to buying a couple of covert Star Wars sets (which sat at home hidden away from my housemate).

Now with the housemate moved out, there are two spare rooms in the house - one of which I intend to use for Lego. It starts again (at age 31)...

[Xeen-ia]

As far as i remember, my dark ages started when i was about 11 or 12. My 5 year younger brother kept splitting my paradisa models apart, and i just didn't want to bother with keeping my stuff out of his reach anymore. He got all my classic town and paradisa sets, and combined it all in some of the most spectacular ugly builds i have ever seen.

Flash forward to summer 2012, where my own 5 year old has grown out of duplo, and is know old enough for his first real lego City set. I hadn't been to the lego store in Copenhagen before, even though i work appx a 10 minutes walk from there.

We went in, and was greeted by a nice young lady, and then i saw it - the grand emporium...and i was back! I got that, my son got a police set, and my boyfriend had the same experience as me...he got mindstorms.

Since then, we've all been hooked...although i think i'm the one that's hit the hardest. Apart from green grocer, cafe corner (on the way in the mail) and market street (wont bother), my modular collection is complete and know i'm on the way to making my own modulars.

My bank lady hates that day we wen't to that store...

oh - and i got my paradisa back...including all my brothers castle sets.

Edited March 31, 2013 by Xeen-ia

[Kalagorn]

Well, my Dark Ages were about 5 or 6 years long, until I got a Lego Star Wars Geonosian Starfighter for Christmas 2012. I built it right there and then, as it got out of the wrapping

[timmyc1983]

My dark ages began at around 1998 ( i judge this by that year's catalogue is the latest i can find) when i was about 14 and i have just a few months back got the bug again.. Altho, i will say the bug never left; when i was a kid i had a Lego city and loved it, i would set it up and look forward to Christmas each year to add more sets to the ever growing city. But as i grew older and discovered new things, i ran out of time to be with my Lego so my parents made me pack it away and there it stayed for 15 long years, except for a brief period in 2010 when i had a friend staying with me who loved Lego too, we each bought a small City set (randomly enough i bought 7732 'Air Mail' and he bought 7741'Police Helicopter' and now they are both in my city ) and brought some selected sets over from my folks house for us to 'play' with. Also right thru out my dark age, if i were ever in a department store, i would seek out the toys and find the Lego, i just never bought any. And i also knew in my heart of hearts, that when the opportunity to build my city came up again, i would do it in a flash!

The reason i got back into it this year is because i have recently been in a pretty bad way (loss of my business and such) and Lego is a fantastic way to not only keep my mind off the bad stuff in my life but also keep my mind active. I started by getting my old town out and re-building it and then discovered the modulars and that was it... hook, line and sinker! The only problem is i now have a major addiction and no job=no money to feed it with

But i can see that as being my last dark age, i never wanted one in the first place and hopefully being older i can be in a better position to prevent another dark age occurring

Happy building

Edited April 21, 2013 by timmyc1983

[Commander Wolf]

I'd consider my dark ages to be my 4 to 5 years of college,simply because there was no way for me to bring my bricks with me. I have a friend whose experience was pretty similar as well (though he is still wrapping up his degree). I think I only built a single MoC that entire time - and it was for a class. I went to school pretty close to home, but it was really frustrating to only be able to work in fits and bursts on weekends, etc. Luckily those days are long gone now.

[Kivi]

My dark ages officially lasted from 1998 to 2009 though I never completely lost contact with Lego during this period. I even visited Legoland for the first time in 2004.

[Aanchir]

My dark ages officially lasted from 1998 to 2009 though I never completely lost contact with Lego during this period. I even visited Legoland for the first time in 2004.

Funny reading your post because at first from your username I thought you were a BIONICLE fan, which would be impossible if you were in your dark ages during that whole time! Kivi was a minor character's name in a 2003 BIONICLE online game. It's an understandable coincidence, considering that most of the new character names in that game were real-world words and given names plucked from an assortment of world languages.

I didn't have any dark ages, myself, and I like to credit that to BIONICLE. Not only was BIONICLE my main theme of interest during what might otherwise have been my dark ages, due to its complex story-driven nature, but it also was a big part of why I became interested in other LEGO themes as a teenager. Knights' Kingdom II and Exo-Force were decent adventure themes on their own, but it helped that both provided great parts for BIONICLE MOCs.

Then again, a lot of the themes during my teenage years were story-driven in one way or another, so perhaps my interest in BIONICLE was the outcome of the kind of LEGO themes I liked rather than the cause, and if it hadn't existed it might have just freed up my budget for other LEGO themes like Orient Expedition and Alpha Team. I guess I'll never know.

Edited April 21, 2013 by Aanchir

[BrickG]

Practically all of my life.

When I was a kid I really liked Legos but my parents were poor and my first choice right in front of Lego sets was video games. So I didn't get much.

Then I got older and randomly spent a lot of $$$ on Castle sets after I got nostalgic and recovered my old (now 75% missing) collection. From then it was on an off. Every other year or more I'd buy a lot of sets then stop.

Right now I find myself with a lot more money than I've ever had. I can afford them. But at the same time money seems to stress me because I feel like I'm using it bad. :P

[Wolf_Gang]

I stopped playing with Legos throughout high school and college. In high school I still had sets displayed in my room though. During college, all my legos went into storage. After I graduated I bought the Spiderman-Venom set on a whim, I can't really explain why. That was my catalyst. Now I'm full on into Lego again.

[Mr Bill]

I received my first set at Christmas, 1966 when I was six years old. I pretty much received a set as a gift at least once a year after that and then started buying my own when I got a paper rpute at age 12 and since then have never gone longer than 6 months without buying or receiving Lego, so I never had a "dark age." At high school and college age I was using Lego in my animated films and for models in projects, while most of my peers were more interested in girls and cars at that time (not that I wasn't of course -- I just balanced my Lego hobby with my interest in the opposite sex).

--Mr. Bill

[DoctorKairam]

My dark ages lasted from 1995 to 2005. It all started when I was 14 when I discovered new interests, including building model kits (I still make them) which I thought were more rewarding than Legos. I was also at the age hwere lego was no longer cool (I was wrong), During my dark ages, I did appreciate some of the Lego sets but did not buy them. I remember my younger cousin getting one of the Ninja sets in the late 90's (not to be confused with Ninjago). I actually helped building the set for my cousin which I enjoyed. I also saw all the early licensed sets being released, but sadly I did not bother to buy them. It wasn't until 2005 that I discovered the Vikings sets, so out of nostalgia I bought a few of the smaller sets. Ever since I have been collecting random sets that I thought looked good to me, ranging from City, Castle and Star Wars. My true passion though are Architecture, Minifigures, and the Advanced Models (Sopwith Camel, VW Camper,etc.).

[Laservampire]

1999 (14) to 2013 (28) for me!

I remember being very underwhelmed by the stuff that was coming out at the time, the Star Wars stuff looked okay but seeing it up close was a big disappointment. Nothing in the Technic line looked particularly interesting to me (apart from the red supercar, which was waaaay more expensive than the 8880 supercar I already had) and I thought the Slizer stuff was absolute rubbish.

The next year I took up guitar which made music and record collecting my number 1 hobby.

Despite checking in occasionally to the Lego aisle whenever I visited the shops, nothing grabbed my attention. All I saw were more <insert that tiresome argument> pieces, less and less Technic, and some really awful looking licensed sets.

This year though I got my girlfriend hooked on Collectable Minifigs, thanks to buying her one randomly from the "impulse items" at Target. In one of our searches for them I picked up the 9493 X wing and was blown away by how much better it looked than the old Star Wars sets.

Since then I've bought about 8 original trilogy Star Wars sets, a Technic dirtbike and all of the Shell Ferrari sets. I really don't want to get into any other lines (like modulars!!) as I don't have enough money!!

[Smartiepants]

from memory stopped in my very early teens when music became my new love, started again when my wife brought me the camper van last year & have since spent a small fortune, i'm 50 this year so best part of 40 years

[Alternator]

from memory stopped in my very early teens when music became my new love, started again when my wife brought me the camper van last year & have since spent a small fortune, i'm 50 this year so best part of 40 years

I just joked in another thread about the possibility of some people having half century dark ages

For me it was about 15 years... I dropped it mid teens, itI wasn't so much I wanted to, but my parents weren't buying it for me anymore and I'd only buy technic sets myself (despite liking the other ranges) - and I couldn't track down the proper technic sets and thought those new Bionicle things (which had technic printed on the boxes ) were what was going to be technic from there on... I needed to save money for a computer anyway.

I got back into it around 2010 when my partner discovered I used to be right into Lego, she thinks it's pretty good too and encouraged me to take it back up as a hobby - I've been quite enjoying it since.

Edited May 8, 2013 by Alternator

[kibosh]

My dark ages began around 1983; the summer between elementary school and junior high. I distinctly remember packing up all my kid stuff in preparation for entering a world with girls.

Ironically, it was a girl that brought me out of my dark ages around 1996. My girlfriend bought me a Castle set for Christmas. She said she thought everyone should get a toy at Christmas.

3 years later, she became my wife.

[MikroMan]

I haven't had any proper Dark Age, but I've had several short period of time when I was pursuing other interests, mainly sports and computer sciences. I've had quite a lot of people laugh at me for being over 15 years old and still ''playing with toys''. My 10179 UCS Millennium Falcon usually shuts them up pretty fast.