Long Live Lego

I don’t know about you, but as a kid I loved Lego. There was always something captivating about having a multitude of building blocks to create something that only you could imagine. I could spend hours upon hours happily building a sprawling city or a land of knights and castles or an intergalactic star base complete with spaceships, robots and space gizmos. From all these little pieces, something grand and magnificent was built. With youthful imagination and enthusiasm, these creations allowed my brothers and I to fly circles around enemy pilots, become renegade knights joining Robin Hood’s band of merry men or policing the streets of Lego city fighting crime. As often the case as a child, there was never enough time to play and bedtime always came too soon. But as I lay in bed drifting off to sleep, I felt the Lego pieces come alive, imagining they lived their lives while we slept, in whatever creative scenario we built for them.

Fast forward a few years and Lego gradually fell behind the age of computer games, movies and fast fun entertainment. Gone were the days of creating magical worlds and places out of building blocks. To be honest, some time later my only association I had with Lego was to see what kind of sales margin we could get out of the product and what kind of returns each Lego special promotion could make. (I used to work for a big multinational toy company).

My curiosity was piqued when I heard about the new release of the Lego video games. Being a fan of video games, I thought about it – would it be too childish to play these games? Would this be any fun at all, even to those who don’t like playing video games? After a little persuasion, Kate & I decided to give these products a test run, after all they were based on some of our favourite films, Star Wars and Indiana Jones and we were interested to see how they’d be adapted. After dodging laser shots from stormtroopers, teaming up to run riot with our lightsabers, flying/driving all sorts of vehicles and star ships, running around solving puzzles, digging up treasures and swinging across ravines with Indy’s whip and running away from large rolling boulders, all we can say is…woohoo!

From kids all ages, thank you Lego for bringing to life the joy of childhood imagination and for letting us have fun with it!