Monday, June 14, 2010

Old Hobbies Die Hard

Although my wife may argue based on my earnings/time spent ratio, writing is not a "hobby" of mine; I consider it a vocation and treat it as such.

But one of my old, bona fide hobbies reared its costly head this weekend: wheeling and dealing Legos on eBay. It all started with the six-year-old and his desire for a retired Power Miners set...did they have to put all those pictures of the other sets in the back of the instruction manual?

Lego really knows how to market.

So I did a few searches for sets & minifigs I used to own...holy jumping catfish Batman! I shouldn't have let that Greedo minifig go for five bucks.

Doing my best to maintain a reasonable control over my wallet. But when they're this cute/menacing, who can say no?


15 comments:

Jamie Eyberg said...

I have only recently been caught by the Lego bug. It is a fun bug to have. Have a blast.

Kara McElhinny said...

He is awesome, I'd love for him to keep me company as well... so I don't blame ya Aaron, :D

My son is just getting into Legos and being a girl who liked to torment her barbies as a child, I have to say I was missing out with the Lego's thing. I'm having a blast with it!

(Oops. Should I worry about my son having fun??? :D)

Andrea Allison said...

Lookie there. You have a new mascot.

I guess I just never got in to the whole Lego thing. And now everyone is going to tell me why I should...

Alan W. Davidson said...

I remember having tons of that around as a kid...I guess it was more affordable back then...

I don't remember a vampire figure. That probably wasn't manufactured recently. Conservative Right may deem that inappropriate for children and block distribution...I say 'bite me'.

Rabid Fox said...

I used to get a real kick out of Lego when I was little, though the tiny action figures never appealed to me. I usually wound up crafting vehicles for my other action figures to ride in.

I think Tyco had a brand of building blocks too--whatever they were, I got a bucket of them one year and loathed them for not being Lego. :)

Katey said...

I've always had a serious weakness for Lego sets. When I was a kid we were really into the M-Tron and Blacktron space sets, plus anything with castles.

Made for some weird combination. We were into crossover Lego fic, me and the kid brother.

Cate Gardner said...

I only had boring block lego with the occasional wheel or tree. :(

Aaron Polson said...

Jamie - Fun and potentially expensive...Legos ain't cheap.

Hinny - I'm sure he is (having fun).

Andrea - I think they just capture some folks' imaginations. Not for everybody, though.

Alan - Lego did a series called "Lego Studios" about ten years ago--a riff on Universal Studios. There's a vampire, a "Frankenstein's Monster", a vampire, mad scientist, werewolf, and mummy.

Gef - There were no Star Wars sets when I was a kid, so I modified my Lego Space minifigs to be Stormtroopers, etc. I even yanked a hand off one poor little guy to be Luke from ESB.

Katey - It's all storytelling, isn't it? In addition to "modifying" my Legos to go Star Wars, we created a whole race of transformers. That was a blast.

Cate - You need a little vampire buddy, then. I recently attending a reading (the book was about adult fans of Lego), and the author explained they didn't really take off in the U.S. until themes were introduced in the late 1970s.

Jeremy D Brooks said...

Awesome... and it doesn't sparkle.

Fox Lee said...

MY dad is an eBay whore for fishing stuff ; )

K.C. Shaw said...

That lil vampire guy is adorable! We just had the regular old non-themed Lego sets when I was a kid, and we made spaceships with them. And houses for ants.

I used to have a collection of action figure bad guys. I sold them all on ebay and at the flea market finally, mostly because I didn't have room to display them and it seemed silly to have boxes and boxes of bad guys in the closet. I expected them to gang up on me one day.

Danielle Birch said...

I have fond memories of my brother and I playing with lego as kids.

Tyhitia Green said...

That lego is awesome. I'd put him on the des for inspiration. :-D

Jameson T. Caine said...

Of all the childhood toys that I no longer have, the ones that I regret losing the most are all the Lego blocks I had. I'd love to have loads and loads of them now, but I've found that they're priced only slightly less per ounce than gold.

Aaron Polson said...

Jeremy - Hell no.

Natalie - We all have a tendancy to spend money like mad.

KC - There's a story in that, too...

Danielle - They're a worldwide phenomenon. And cute, too.

Tyhitia - He even has a reversible head for two varieties of vampire mood.

Jameson - Legos are very pricy, but seem to have the best bang for the buck (in my book). The boys will play for hours.