AFOL Influences

[ffilz]

My trigger for entering the hobby (I did have LEGO as a child, but never was too serious with it, but that was pre-minifigure) was a speech at a work event buy one of the MIT robotics guys in early 1999. He talked about Mindstorms and in particular how it was attracting lots of adults. Having always been curious about robotics, I picked up this easy entry to hobby robotics. I built a crude line following robot. Then I started surfing the web and soon found my way to Lugnet, Evils Stevie's Pirate Game (cool! gaming connection!). Eventually I actually settled into mostly castle building...

Frank

[Bruce N H]

Hey Frank,

If you came to the hobby in 1999, you must have moved pretty quickly. I remember running across your pages of links to lots of different MOCs organized by theme very early in my career.
...checks...wow, Google is my friend, they still exist -> list of castle links. Yep, you date that at 1999. That was a great resource. I'm sure 99% of those links are dead now, but back in the day that was my route to finding all of the cool MOCs in a given theme. Man, that background brings back memories. Todd originally made that for his Fibblesnork page, right?

Bruce

[richardanthonyc]

Wow Bruce I had not seen that page for years... its where I found Ikros through, also Mike Steele's page (link now dead) and Andrastavia (also long gone, well ozbricks has been gone year AFAIK)

[ffilz]

Yea, the background was from Fibblesnork.

During the second half of 1999, my job duties shrunk to almost nothing, and I was probably spending 4-5 hours a day surfing Lugnet, Brickshelf, and other sites, and madly coding up HTML to organize everything I found. It's a shame so much of it is no longer accessible in the original location, or worse, not accessible at all.

Frank

[TrishoHara]

In 2004 I sorted, built and sold my childhood Lego, it took over a week of continuing sorting and building. It was fun.
I met a guy at ebay who was interested in buying everything I had, so he visited me. He was about my age (mid-20).
I asked him what he was doing with the Lego. He told me about AFOLs, lego sites in internet etc.
I had a look. It was interesting.
Next time I was shopping, I went to the toys department. Star Wars Lego!
I couldnt resist.
Ebay.
Bricklink.
Several Lego forums.
I was hooked.

[Quickblade22]

So what inspired most people on here to continue on Building with Lego once they went by the age sticker on the box?

Keeping the original question in mind, the answer for me is I never went by that number. I never really stopped building or playing. My first Lego came from a neighbor that was selling their son's collection in an old typewriter case. I didn't actually discover sets with minifigs in them until I was about 10 when I got a small bucket of parts from someone cleaning out their garage. Once that stage hit, I never looked back. I had financial dark ages where I could not afford Lego at a regular pace, but that never really stopped me from using what I had. When I got married in 97, I ended up with someone who was supportive of my addiction....err I mean hobby, and her mom was a great clearance shopper. Luckily for me, this was during Lego's financial instability and sets were hitting the clearance rack frequently. I discovered the online community in the early 2000's and I remember how all this started. I saw Frank's page (which I just deleted from my bookmark not even a month ago) early on in my online presence and discovered Brick Bay soon after. In the chat room there, a member of CC (who's name is irrelevant since I'm not a fan of them) directed me to this site. CC has been my stepping stone into meeting some great people and making relationships I plan to carry until the end of my days. I saw the custom decals in the HOW TO section of CC and discovered BrickForge from this site. I get influenced by vets and newbies alike, but I've been a fan since influences were limited to artwork on the back of a box and the old idea book of the 80's.

[jediknight219]

When I was a kid, I got Space lego sets, my brother got town lego sets. My first set: Gamma-V Laser craft. My Last set(at the time): Spy Trak I. These sets came solely through Christmas and birthday presents. When my brother and I eventually got an allowance, my brother increased his collection, while I moved on to other things. But I kept building stuff with them occassionally though high school.

College came(1994) and I was separated from my lego collection. But then I took a Computer Graphics(1996, I think) class and found out about Pov-Ray. So I tried to make lego bricks with that. Ldraw existed at that time, but I didn't get started with that until MLCad showed up. I've mostly turned away from building digitally, but occasionally I might use it to work out a design.

Star Wars Lego sets showed up, and I was tempted. Somewhere around that time I found instructions online(Brickshelf) and rebuilt my old space sets as best as I could. In 2004, when I first started grad school, I bought my first new sets, to cheer me up after a vicious math test: the technic hailfire droid, and two bionicle sets(hey, they were in a clearance bin, I wanted to see what the fuss was about). Some time around then a friend of mine had started buying Star Wars lego sets, and I started digging in to the online community. It wasn't until the beginning of 2006 that I got Slave I and it really started up. Once I had Slave I, then I needed the Millenium Falcon, so I went to E-Bay. And then more Star Wars sets from Toys-r-Us. Then E-Bay. I absorbed my brother's collection and used Bricklink to try to replace missing/broken pieces. I tried building my own stuff, found that my collection of yellow was sorely lacking. So I got AquaRaiders. And Batman. And Spongebob. And...

Then I found a new friend, who was in his Dark Ages. Once we became roommates in 2007, the insanity truly began. I said to him one day, "Part of me wants to get every set Lego ever made. But I don't want to go there...yet." But he got me started with castles and trains. One day I must return to the stars...

When I was working on my dissertation, my advisor told me that I could sell my Lego and have more time to work on my dissertation. I told him, "That's not the plan. The plan is to finish the dissertation and get a job so I can afford to buy more Lego."

[JoshWedin]

I'm 27 and got back into the hobby about 2 years ago.

I remember your first SeaLUG meeting and now you are all grown up! [sniff]

Josh

[nanuck95]

I have a younger brother who is ~5 years younger than I am, so I used him as an excuse to still build and play with our LEGO up into high school even though I had stopped purchasing/receiving sets of my own. I purchased a couple sets off ebay here and there after college, but I didn't really get back into it until 2006 when I noticed a lot of really cool Star Wars sets. 2006 was a great year for SW, and the sets were still relatively inexpensive and I think I purchased all of them. In 2007 SW started getting more pricey, and about that time the Castle (crownies) line came out and piqued my interest. I found mocpages and began posting creations online. Ultimately I found CC in 2008 while searching the internet for the rumored castle advent calendar and I've been here ever since. I haven't been as active the past year or two now that I have my own kids to keep me busy, but I still try to keep tabs on things.