I remember randomly building and playing with Lego when I was younger. However, I don’t ever recall asking for or building any Lego sets as I got older. It just wasn’t something I ever really got into. Instead, I would play with the small bricks at a friend’s house, but mostly I spent my time playing sports and video games.
Lego just wasn’t a huge part of my life growing up. In fact, for the last five years or so, I’ve been guilty of making fun of a handful of my friends when they’ve talked about the latest Lego sets or how much fun a recent build was.
On more than one occasion, I called them nerds. It also seemed like an overpriced hobby for adults and something to keep kids entertained and their creativity flowing.
Over a year ago, however, my entire point of view on Lego changed. I no longer view it as an activity for kids or for nerds. And while I grimace at the price of sets like the new Pac-Man Arcade, I now view each set as an investment in myself.
How Lego helped my mental health
I’ve never truly publicly admitted this. So, here it goes: My whole life, I’ve struggled with mental health. Depression. Anxiety. The whole gamut. It’s always just been part of who I am and what I have to deal with on a daily basis.
For years, I thought I had it under control and that I was able to manage it without any help. But after the pandemic, and after several conversations with a good friend and my wife, I decided it was time for me to talk to a therapist. It was time for me to get help.
In one of my very first sessions, my therapist challenged me to pay attention to what I did for myself on a daily basis. And if I wasn’t doing something for me, to find something that I enjoyed and work it into my chaotic schedule.
Around that same time, I found myself standing inside a Lego store, staring at the Nintendo Entertainment System set, marveling at how realistic it all looked. I was beyond intrigued by how the TV would actually come to life after the build was finished. I also found myself briefly reminiscing about my childhood and how much time I spent playing on my NES. It was a cornerstone of my early life.
On a whim, I decided to buy it, and $269 later, I was walking out of the store questioning whether or not I was now a nerd.
The next morning, I cracked open the box and dumped all its contents onto my dining room table. I remember the instruction book being as thick as a college math book, and there was some small orange tool that looked foreign to me. (It’s used to pry bricks apart when you inevitably make a mistake.)
Over the course of the next few nights, I spent an hour, maybe three, following the instructions, turning a pile of seemingly random bricks into what ended up being an NES console, complete with a cartridge that loads into the system, and there was a TV set that when you turn the crank, Mario moves up and down on the Super Mario Bros world that moves behind him — and the entire thing was built out of Lego bricks. The moment it all came together, I got it. I understood the passion and obsession for Lego. Heck, at this point, I’d even consider myself an AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego).
Since completing the NES build, I’ve completed the Lego Typewriter, the Lego Bonsai Tree and Hokusai — The Great Wave, along with smaller builds like the Harry Potter figures and a book that folds out into a Hogwarts playset.
My wife has also gotten in on the fun and has pretty much every flower Lego set that’s been sold over the last year, which, honestly, has made my job incredibly simple when it comes time to buy flowers for a special occasion. All I have to do is look for the latest Lego flower set and buy that. Not to mention the flowers never die, so that’s a bonus.
Not only that but on a couple of occasions over the last year, we’ve had Lego nights with my kids. We buy a small Lego set for each person and we all sit at the table building our sets together, talking, laughing and sharing in the frustration of skipping a step. The recently released Icons of Play set looks like a perfect example of something we could all build together.
Why Lego aren’t just for kids anymore
I recently had the chance to speak with Gen Cruz, the global head of product for the adult audience at Lego. And as I told her about my personal journey to Lego as an adult, she couldn’t stop smiling over the Microsoft Team’s call from her office in Denmark.
It’s a story she’s heard many times. A story of adults discovering or rediscovering Lego and the realization that Lego isn’t just a toy but “it’s essentially that they have really fallen in love with the hobby. That has now become a part of their everyday lives. Because it has really helped them in terms of having that mental focus, giving them something to do to escape the toxic everyday stresses,” Cruz told me.
It’s with that information that Lego tasked Cruz and the rest of the team that focuses on adults within the company to start creating Lego sets that appeal to adults.
Whereas sets designed for kids have a playable aspect from the get-go, with a minifigure that the child can play with inside the first bag. For adults, the focus is on “displayability” and personal interests.
The recently announced Pac-Man set is the perfect example of Lego’s approach to developing sets for adults, which typically takes two years or longer, according to Cruz. It’s clearly a display piece, mixed with some playability, thanks to the hand crank that moves parts, and it leans hard into the nostalgia of playing Pac-Man growing up.
It’d been a few months since my last build, but just this week I started working on the BD-1 Star Wars build, and by the end of the first bag, those same feelings of accomplishment and ownership started to come back as if I’d never stopped building. Once I complete BD-1, I’m going to start working on the Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” set, and I cannot wait to see what it looks like on my wall.
And to be totally honest, both builds could not have come at a better time in my life. It’s been a stressful couple of months, and I’d gotten away from doing something for myself on a daily basis. Add in the fact that I can start with a pile of random bricks and end up with something I built by hand and can feel good about when it’s done.
Everyone should experience that feeling — nerd or not.
