When I was a kid, I had an absolute ton of Lego. I had a huge plastic box of the stuff until I was about 20 years old. Stupidly, I decided to leave it behind when I moved out of the flat I was living in at the time. I never really thought about it after that.

Skip forward 10 years though and my girlfriend buys me a Lego Star Wars Imperial V-Wing, and I immediately caught the bug again. I usually take it upon myself to post Lego news on the Big Comic Page, too.

The best thing about re-discovering Lego wasn’t just all the super-useful new parts, or the licensed sets that have come around in recent years (resulting in some amazingly cool minifigures). It was the discovery of a worldwide community of Adult Fans of Lego, or AFOLs.

Type ‘Lego’ into Google, and of course the results could be endless, but type in ‘Lego car’ or ‘Lego Optimus’ and some of the images will astound you. AFOLs have taken a simple construction toy and utilised the pieces in ways the original designers might never have dreamed of. There is a huge glossary of terms and building techniques now that I couldn’t even have imagined as a kid. These guys are professional engineers, artists, and in a lot of cases, just big kids with awesome imaginations. Lego have even opened up a submissions website called Cuusoo, for people to pitch their own ideas, with the Back To The Future Delorean, Ghostbusters Ecto-1, and the Mars Curiosity Rover all having made the cut.

Not being the most imaginative guy in the world, I still like the official Lego sets. My current collection includes an X-Wing, an Avengers Quinjet, a Batcave, and numerous other Superhero-themed sets, but most of the models I have around the house are inspired by, or built from instructions found in the AFOL community. My current favourites are these Tumbler vehicles from the Dark Knight film trilogy, as designed by Flickr user _Tiler. The Lego Group have attempted official Tumbler models before with varied success, but these are better by a mile:

My other favourite model, and seemingly constant work in progress, is my Optimus Prime model. This was based on a fairly simple design by BWTMT Brickworks, but I am constantly modifying him. The legs have been a regular annoyance. I really wanted to go for a ‘G1 toy’ look and transformation (right down to the removable hands), so I took all of the knee articulation out of the legs, and I am now at a place where I am pretty happy with this guy. These are (very unprofessional) photos of the original build, and how he looks now. There are some areas where he doesn’t ‘quite’ emulate the G1 Optimus, and I really need to work on that front grille, but believe, me this guy still looks awesome on the mantlepiece:

Lego is set to change a bit in years to come. For decades, Lego bricks have been made from ABS plastic, and they are already looking into alternative materials, due to cost and environmental reasons. Hopefully they find an alternative that doesn’t mean too drastic a change, because when I’m 65 years old, I’m gonna  want my bricks just the way I like ’em.

I’m interested to know if any of the BCP readers share my love of Lego. I know we all think the Star Wars, Superheroes, and Ghostbusters stuff looks cool, but how many of you still buy and build? Better still, show us some pics of your stuff!

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The writer of this piece was: Alan Shields aka (Al)
You can also find Al on  Facebook