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zwolanerd

I guess I just like liking things

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Lego is the best toy of all time.  The bucket of multicolored bricks I had when I was a kid provided me hours of entertainment and education in architectural forms. My brother and I had basic sets: squares, rectangles, slanty pieces, a few windows, a rectangular green base platform, that was about it.  Just a few hundred pieces, but I don’t remember having any actual kits.  We built what we could, which for me included a lot of small space ships and some houses made of all-on-color stripes.

I don’t have any kids of my own, but my brother has two. His oldest just turned 11 and recently participated in his school’s team for the Lego robotics competition. He’s been playing with Lego for most of his life, so it was a natural step. This kid has more Star Wars Lego kits than I even knew existed, and I have to admit to a little jealousy. Kits these days are very specific to that kit, with strange little pieces that wouldn’t help you much anywhere else.  I can’t imagine how you’d ever sort them all out if several kits got mixed up together.

Spidey meets the sarlacc, and Sony gets an idea – soon to be a major motion picture

Somewhere along the line, he got the Spider-Man minifig pictured here in the grip of the sarlacc. But my nephew’s not really into comic books, he’s pretty much straight-up Star Wars, Lego-wise. He sold me the Spidey minifig for $1.37, but he let me take that picture for free, so I guess I made out all right.

I am constantly seeing Lego kits that I want to buy for myself.  Most recently, they’ve released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kits, and even though they’re not the Turtles I’m familiar with, I still want all of the Turtle minifigs.  But I can’t get past the “what would I do with them?” question of buying a kit.  Sure, I could put it together and I know that would be fun, but then what?  Lego kits aren’t the sort of thing you display (especially when you have a wife who made you put away your Batman cookie jar when you got married), and I don’t have any kids who would play with them, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t want them to because, hey, those are mine!

Still, I love the idea of putting a kit together!  There’s something so orderly and satisfying about it. I’m an instruction follower by nature and Lego kits scratch me where I itch. Is it worth $70, though, just to put something together in 2 hours that will need to be taken back apart directly thereafter and then put on a shelf? I go back and forth on this, but I have yet to end up on the “yes” side of it long enough to actually buy a kit.

There is one kit I would buy in a heartbeat, though, if I could afford it. I saw it for sale at a local toy store four years ago for $50 but decided it was too expensive. This is a decision that haunts me to this day.

I cannot explain to you how much I wish I could buy this kit. The Tumbler is my second-favorite Batmobile of all time, and I think the Lego recreation of it looks fantastic.  It’s been out of production for a long time (for some reason that I’m sure some Lego executive thinks is good), and even though I want this so much, I’m not prepared to spend $915 on it.

The more I think about it, the sadder it makes me. I know that’s ridiculous!  There has just never been any other Lego kit I have wanted to build as much as I want to build this one.  Sure,  the Death Star is neat and the super-awesome Batcave has some sweet stuff going on, but I would never in a hundred years be able to do those. This one’s sad because I could have had it.

Cue the Sinatra: “Regrets, I’ve had a few.”

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