Legos

[Max Rockatansky]

An off forum conversation in a road group yesterday circled on/off on the topic of Legos.  I've never seen a dedicated Lego thread, so I figured I'd start one.

When I was kid Legos were one of my favorite toys given I was into things like roads, buildings, railroads and other infrastructure.  When I was seven I started getting into building complex sets which I usually obtained via birthday or Christmas gifts.  When I was twelve I was into skyscraper design which took inspiration from with new buildings in my Lego city.  Through high school I kept adding to my existing Lego city via use of 1,400 piece boxes which were about $19.99 at the time along with 1,200 block knock off Mega Blocks bins which were about $12.99.

The end product of constructing of the same Lego city from 1990-2001 was this:

LC1 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

When I was 14 my Dad and I constructed the table which the Lego city eventually stood (seen above).  The Lego and Megablock totes didn't really have much in the way of color coordination so I had to make due with what was available.  I did start painting some of the buildings in Krylon Fusion paint during 2001 right before I moved to Arizona.  Usually $20-$60 of my high school work paychecks went into buying extra totes to expand the Lego city.  The below photos I took during 2007 when I was staying at my Mom's house while on vacation:

LC2 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

In the above photo the bulk of the development along with one of the test painted buildings can be seen.  The tallest building in my Lego city is on the left and capped out at twenty five floors.  Each floor was constructed of support columns which generally were 7-8 blocks high (depending on the design of the building). 

LC3 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

In the above photo the last (unfinished) skyscraper I began work on during my last year in Michigan can be seen (the building on the right with the helicopter).

LC4 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

The above photo is another shot of the center of the skyscraper development.  The building in the center was a high rise extension of a Police Station set (set 6384-1) which was otherwise unaltered.  I did build a city jail immediately behind the police set.  Most of the original building sets were razed to make way for the skyscrapers, some of the parts were harvested where I could use them.  The modified vehicles in the photo are some of the vestiges of the sets they came from.

LC5 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

Above is a view into the depth of the Lego city.  I had to base the Metro rail alignment off of the gap in the high rises on the right to get fit into the circumference of the city when I installed it during 1998.  The Metro rail was powered, fully elevated and had four station platforms.

LC6 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

The the above photo isn't the greatest depiction but I had mocked up the entrance to an elevated freeway which would have begun on the right.  I hadn't quite worked how I wanted to construct the freeway entrance/exit ramps which is why I never got around to constructing any of it aside from the approach roads.

LC7 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

Above is a reverse view down the metro rail line.  The castle in the background is a heavily modified Black Monarch's Castle set (#6085) which I originally had built upon receiving as a gift during 1990.  The castle set more or less kept falling into disrepair as I repurposed many of the parts for other projects.  By the end of the castle set ended up being patched-repaired and expanded to a fifteen floor structure with a dungeon level.  The castle had a dual stair case which ascended the two outer towers towards a throne room.  Essentially I just wanted to build something different than a skyscraper and went with grand castle design.  I did submit the castle as an art project in high school which was quite the challenge to transport in a Chevy CK.

LC8 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

Above the circular grade of the metro rail around the center skyscrapers can be seen.  I did construct an observation tower which had one functioning elevator and a interior lighting set.

During 2010 my Mom decided to retire and moved to Florida.  I ultimately took a hammer to the city to bring it down (which was a lot of fun) and packed it up into five storage totes.  I gave the totes to my Niece in Florida who still has them to this very day.

[Hunty2022]

When I was Legos

How was life as Legos? How did you become Legos? How did you become a human again?

[Max Rockatansky]

When I was Legos

How was life as Legos? How did you become Legos? How did you become a human again?

That was a test run for typing on my new travel Chromebook.  I've since patched up the original post.

[formulanone]

Had a few sets as a kid but mostly inherited a lot of old bricks from around 1970 or so (they had the curvy font stamped on the nubs), but noticed the modern ones had the thin italic LEGO on them. I used to make little towns but also enjoyed having "natural disasters" as an excuse to rebuild the city once again. We're talking 2-3 stories at the most; I usually picked out stuff that would be the equivalent of the CITY sets today. I don't remember too many other options (the fantasy and space ones were a few years away) in the toy stores in the early-1980s, but maybe that's just what I gravitated towards.

My father built my brother and I a play table for them, but by the time we were in high school they weren't getting played with much. When my nephews were older, they inherited our bricks and I'd play with them too. My son was into them for a while, but he seems to be a little less interested as he's in middle school. But if I break out a few tubs of them, we'll have a go at making stuff.

These sets can get really expensive, but some aren't too bad if they're simple enough. I couldn't help buying him a X-wing fighter and TIE fighter set last Christmas because that's what we he wanted. When we had COVID last summer, we spent some time just making race cars and figuring out how to get a good center of gravity, mixed with stability, tensile strength, and then sliding them on the floors. Crashing them together is also part of the fun.

[Scott5114]

I never actually had Legos as a kid. A friend of mine had them so I'd play with them when I visited him, but I never had mine of my own.

The first GM I ever played D&D with had a tradition of making all of the characters and monsters out of Lego minifigs. This was fun and made the game more visually interesting, but it did mean we were sort of limited on the options in terms of player-character appearance to what Lego made. When I made a triton (a character from the deep sea) I had to go on eBay to track down blue minifig parts and green hair.

After the Lego guy stopped playing with us, I eventually shifted over to a numbered token system so I could take fussing with the minifigs off my list of GM chores. (It also made accounting a lot easier, because I had fewer "I want to attack the goblin" "okay which goblin?" type questions; now people just say "I want to attack the 4", regardless of whether token 4 is a goblin or a mind flayer this week.)

[epzik8]

I tried to make my own city buildings out of Lego bricks a couple of times, but wouldn't have had the patience for big projects like in the OP. I had quite a few themed Lego sets however,

[JayhawkCO]

The plural of Lego is Lego, to the hardcore afficionados. (I learned this on Lego Masters.)

[Scott5114]

The plural of Lego is Lego, to the hardcore afficionados. (I learned this on Lego Masters.)

Maybe to the braindead marketers at the Legos Company.

[JoePCool14]

I certainly had my fair share of time with LEGO sets when I was a kid. I had a lot of the Spongebob sets, some of which go for a pretty penny on eBay these days. I also bought some of the LEGO City line. I had a lot of them built, but unfortunately, one day with my childhood friend, we did our own "natural disaster" with my LEGO sets, and they ended up all mashed together in several bins with some small pieces lost. Never again were they all put together, but a few of them were re-compiled and sold on eBay years ago.

The coolest sets we still own are old Ferrari Formula 1 sets, from the mid to late 2000s (decade). You would get to build the garage and cars, or even a transport vehicle in one. These ones are separate from the others, safely boxed away.

I've bought a few in recent years, mostly as something cute to work on with a girlfriend. But they've gotten quite expensive unfortunately, and I also have no girlfriend to work on them with, so I haven't purchased any recently. 



I did use LEGO pieces in my homemade "cities" though as a child. I would use them to create traffic lights and attach them to posts and bases. I even had a "system" for making pedestrian signals. The different little brackets available made it quite fun and semi-realistic to put together. I wish I had photos of the old cities I made, complete with Blue Highway signs made in Excel with snippets from the MUTCD.

Nowadays, Minecraft or Cities: Skylines fills these kinds of voids. I don't think the concept of LEGO will ever fade away though, for me or for the kids of today and tomorrow. It's cool to have a tangible object, rather than just something in a computer. Whatever I haven't sold on eBay, I'll likely keep and use them for when I have a family of my own.

[Max Rockatansky]

Back in my era the closest Minecraft block analog was probably Sim City 2000.  I did mock up my Lego city in Sim City 2000 as a central island in a much larger city.  I ended up using the Urban Renewal kit to make the buildings close analogs for what I had actually had built and planned to.  The rest of the city extension was built using the normal simulation (plus the fund, fund, loan exploit to speed things up).

Come to think of it I actually have Sim City 2000 and all my cities saved onto a flash drive.  I have no idea if it will actually work on a modern computer without a source port but it would be fun to try. 

[bandit957]

I remember a toy called American Bricks that was sort of like Legos.

[mgk920]

I did build a few tall buildings and strong bridges with Lego bricks as a child.  Today, if I was a child/teenager, I'd likely be most turned on by building 'Great Ball Contraption' ('GBC') modules. (Rube Coldbergish units that simply must allow a minimum throughput rate of one Lego ball per second).

Mike

[JoePCool14]

Back in my era the closest Minecraft block analog was probably Sim City 2000.  I did mock up my Lego city in Sim City 2000 as a central island in a much larger city.  I ended up using the Urban Renewal kit to make the buildings close analogs for what I had actually had built and planned to.  The rest of the city extension was built using the normal simulation (plus the fund, fund, loan exploit to speed things up).

Come to think of it I actually have Sim City 2000 and all my cities saved onto a flash drive.  I have no idea if it will actually work on a modern computer without a source port but it would be fun to try.

As a C:S player, I don't know if I could ever even try going back and playing older Sim City games. I don't think I'd get the satisfaction that it once gave players. Maybe Sim City 4, since that one's from the early 2000s and has decent looking 3D graphics.

[Max Rockatansky]

Back in my era the closest Minecraft block analog was probably Sim City 2000.  I did mock up my Lego city in Sim City 2000 as a central island in a much larger city.  I ended up using the Urban Renewal kit to make the buildings close analogs for what I had actually had built and planned to.  The rest of the city extension was built using the normal simulation (plus the fund, fund, loan exploit to speed things up).

Come to think of it I actually have Sim City 2000 and all my cities saved onto a flash drive.  I have no idea if it will actually work on a modern computer without a source port but it would be fun to try.

As a C:S player, I don't know if I could ever even try going back and playing older Sim City games. I don't think I'd get the satisfaction that it once gave players. Maybe Sim City 4, since that one's from the early 2000s and has decent looking 3D graphics.

I started with Sim City 3 but couldn't get into it.  But that's kind of line how things tended go for me with games approaching what is seen now in modern times.  I can't pinpoint what really made me lose interest in gaming other adult life was pulling attention in other directions.  A lot of things I did before I was 18 and moved to Arizona were borne out of sheer boredom.  I guess even the Lego city in the original post would be a great example of something that I just had the hours to dump into.

With older games I do think that there is some kind of pick up and play element to them.  Even complex games like Sim City 2000 can be relatively fast play throughs if you knows the ins and outs of what you are doing.

[JoePCool14]

The problem with most modern games is that they are just so complex that you have to dedicate a lot of time to learning them and getting good at them, something that most people aside from kids don't have. That's the reason I stick to the games I've been playing for years because I don't have the time or willingness to try learning something new.

[DTComposer]

I used to build my Lego sets by the instructions once, then disassemble (usually via a tennis ball "bomb") and build my own cities. I wouldn't build up my walls very high, since I was more interested in what happened inside the "buildings."

My road-geekery came out when I would draw traffic signs (such as left/u-turn signs for traffic signals) on Avery-style labels, cut out and affix to bricks (this was in the '80s). I also put double-yellow lines over the white dashed lines in the middle of the road plates, and would create limited-access roads through use of RIRO and Michigan lefts (although I didn't know what they were called at the time).

[CtrlAltDel]

I never tried to build a whole city, but if I was playing with Legos, my preference was to build individual buildings. Some were skyscrapers, others more like museums and so on, but I never had enough Legos, or the desire, to go beyond that.

[bandit957]

I never tried to build a whole city, but if I was playing with Legos, my preference was to build individual buildings. Some were skyscrapers, others more like museums and so on, but I never had enough Legos, or the desire, to go beyond that.

That's sort of what I did too. I also built small cars using a Lego set that had wheels.

I remember Tinkertoys too, but this was when I was too young to build anything too advanced. Also, some classrooms had Lincoln Logs, but I never had this toy.

Another useful toy was Girder & Panel. They had a set to make buildings, and they had a set to make highway bridges.

[GaryV]

No one ever did robotics with Mindstorm?

[Scott5114]

This isn't Lego related, but I used to make cities for my Hot Wheels out of masking tape. Two widths of the skinny kind could make one lane, and the whole width of the thick kind would make two lanes. I remember my mom getting mad I was wasting all the tape, but eventually I found out how cheap it was and just bought my own with money I made from doing chores.

The last city I made even had a freeway, including a diamond interchange with a shitty cardboard overpass, and cardboard signs with a gantry made of toothpicks.

[bandit957]

Hot Wheels, Legos, and the little Fisher-Price people toys were all considered to be in different "universes", if you will. I played with each of them, but just not intermingling with each other. Later, they came out with Playmobil, which was another "universe", but I was too old for it when they came out with it.

[CtrlAltDel]

This isn't Lego related, but I used to make cities for my Hot Wheels out of masking tape. Two widths of the skinny kind could make one lane, and the whole width of the thick kind would make two lanes. I remember my mom getting mad I was wasting all the tape, but eventually I found out how cheap it was and just bought my own with money I made from doing chores.

The last city I made even had a freeway, including a diamond interchange with a shitty cardboard overpass, and cardboard signs with a gantry made of toothpicks.

I never made interchanges with Legos or Hot Wheels, but I did with little blocks of wood in the sandbox.

[Max Rockatansky]

This was the base set the metro rail in the original post was based off of:

https://brickset.com/reviews/set-4559-1

[JoePCool14]

This isn't Lego related, but I used to make cities for my Hot Wheels out of masking tape. Two widths of the skinny kind could make one lane, and the whole width of the thick kind would make two lanes. I remember my mom getting mad I was wasting all the tape, but eventually I found out how cheap it was and just bought my own with money I made from doing chores.

The last city I made even had a freeway, including a diamond interchange with a shitty cardboard overpass, and cardboard signs with a gantry made of toothpicks.

I used toothpicks and popsicle sticks stuck in blobs of clay as sign posts. I also had another toy that I would use to make gantries (unfortunately, I don't remember what it was called. They were long sticks that fit into gear-lookin' things.) I also stuck those in clay to make them stand up. I specifically remember setting up in real-life the figures on pages 15 and 47 of Part 2E (Signs for freeways) in the 2009 MUTCD.

[Scott5114]

For that city, I had stuck the tape on a sheet of corrugated cardboard, so I could make the signs stand up by poking the toothpicks into the "ground". It was unfortunately before I knew what the MUTCD was, so I couldn't comply with it. My first pass at the signs was just drawing on the cardboard with Sharpie, but then I went back and did some designs in I think Microsoft Word, printed them out, and stuck them to the cardboard. This was before Michael Adams made the Roadgeek fonts, too, so I had to use Blue Highway, which was the closest thing to genuine Series E(M) I could find at the time.