Loving LEGO
Crafty building block sets for adults help users relax, escape and compete
Jeff Lee was still in Kindergarten the first time he packed away his Lego. He rediscovered his enthusiasm for the building blocks in university and later passed along his passion to his children. Lee knew his son, Hilton, was hooked when the boy asked his grandmother, who was getting him a Lego set for his 8th birthday, to “buy a present for daddy too.”
Hilton, who suffered from mental illness, passed away in 2015 when he was 14. To help cope with his grief, Lee kept building with Lego.
“Some people write, some paint, I build with Lego as a creative outlet to express my feelings,” says Lee, who makes mechanical devices, such as working pinball machines, and prefers to put ideas together as he builds.
He can get so immersed in what he is building that he gets a mental break from grieving. “Self-care is important, as grief can take a physical and mental toll,” he says.
Whether building to escape, relax or for self-expression, a growing group of men and women are picking up their Lego blocks long after most have given up the childhood hobby. Known as AFOLs, or Adult Fans of Lego, they make up just 5 per cent of Lego’s total sales according to the most recently available figures from 2010, but there are more than 50 websites devoted to AFOLs, providing forums for news, set reviews and discussion boards about Lego.
The Danish building-block giant — realizing that such passionate supporters will be willing to buy more expensive sets and perhaps pass their love of Lego on to their children — is releasing more sets aimed at AFOLs. Between five to eight are anticipated this year, including the Downtown Diner (a modular building), a Technic Bugatti Chiron set, and licenced sets based on Harry Potter and Star Wars. What makes these sets different from children’s releases is the number of bricks — generally upwards of 3,000, the complex design and detailed interiors, and the cost. Prices start at $200 and can be as much as $600.
Last year’s AFOL top seller was a 7,500-brick set of Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon, a metre long, half-a-metre wide spaceship that sells for $1,013.99 (including tax).
Brad Wall is executive director of ToroLUG, a local group of AFOLS that he started with other AFOLS in 2011. ToroLUG has 29 members, who meet once a month in different eateries around Toronto.
The freelance software-programmer was looking for a new hobby when he stepped out of his Dark Ages — which is how AFOLs refer to the time they stop playing with Lego before they started building again.
Wall says adult Lego builders fall into two categories: “Those who use the medium as a true art form and build assuming no boundaries, and those who use empirical scientific knowledge to recreate things that either do exist in real life or could potentially exist in a fictional world.”
Building allows the artists to escape and the technical builders to create something that real world limitations make impossible, Wall says.
Wall likes the challenge of creating things that take him out of his comfort zone, or as he says, “trying to figure out how to use existing Lego elements to recreate what real architects have created.” There are some AFOLs who never entered the Dark Ages.
Eric Leis, a research assistant at the University of Toronto and ToroLUG community member, is one of them. For the past six years, Leis has concentrated on designing and building castles, particularly medieval castles, getting his inspiration from movies like The Lord of the Rings and video games such as Dark Souls.
Leis uses a technique called “studs not on top” (snot) to build castles so Lego’s round studs can’t be seen. “This makes for a more realistic build and a wider use of parts,” he says.
Graeme Dymond is another. He has built with Lego since he was 3 years old and he has never put it away. He was working at Toronto Dominion when the search for a master builder for the Legoland Discovery Centre at Vaughan Mills was posted in 2011.
“I didn’t expect to get the job, as I was competing against over 200 builders. But I went out for it, and to my surprise, I got it.”
He left the bank and for two years, worked as Legoland’s master builder. He was soon inundated with enough requests from private companies that he left Legoland and became an independent professional Lego builder. In the past four years he’s built many creations at his company, BrickManGraeme, like a six-metre-tall, 256square-foot house for Habitats for Humanity, as well as models for Mazda and Pepsi. Dymond has more than two million Lego bricks. He kept his collection at home until it got too big. He now rents a studio on Brown’s Line, where he stores them in large and small plastic containers, carefully separated and catalogued so he can easily find what he needs when building for clients.
Few AFOLs will build a career out of Lego. Everyone builds for different reasons.
Lee wanted to remain connected to his son as he grieved. Others see it as a competitive challenge. Aaron Chapman, a train operator on TTC Line 1, built a TTC Toronto Rocket subway train and posted his build on the Lego Ideas website, where fan builders can make suggestions for possible Lego sets. If a set reaches10,000 votes from website visitors by a fixed deadline, Lego will consider the idea for possible release as a Lego set. At the time of writing, the set had 1,897 votes with about 550 days to go until the deadline.
Uta Frith, emeritus professor of cognitive development at University College London in England believes “the more routine and stressful our jobs are, the more important it is to have a creative outlet,” which she thinks is Lego’s appeal.
“Creativity thrives on a minimal spur, and Lego gives such a spur. Anything can start with a tiny touchable, clickable brick, randomly chosen. The beauty is that you find in no time that you are led to build fantastic constructions that you did not even envisage,” she says.
“There is more tolerance than ever before for adult play and an acknowledgement of creativity and innovation as a major driver of prosperity,” Frith says. “This is true in general, and Lego has probably been a major catalyst in changing attitudes.”
Simon Liu is another AFOL attracted by the thrill of competition. Liu built as a child. When he left his Dark Ages in university in 2012, he quickly began to build complex models.
After attending Brickfete, Toronto’s Lego convention, and then Brickworld Chicago, one of the largest Lego conventions in North America, he became enthralled by the scale and complexity of the creations he saw.
“I want to build to the standards of other people. I like the challenge of figuring out how to match the 600 best builders in the U.S.A.”
Liu, who often works with Dymond, has built a functional bar, an arcade with a working game screen, a mini-putt range, and a poker table with chairs, teacups and a deck of all 52 cards. When they go to the Chicago Lego convention, they rent a trailer to carry their creations.
Nick Della Mora is a pioneer at livestreaming Lego building on Twitch.tv, which allows users to create their own livestreaming channels.
His builds are based on video games and movies, and he live streams five times a week on his own Twitch channel, BrickinNick. Two years in, he has 3,000 followers.
“Building with Lego lets me work with others and connect with people all over the world,” he says.