What set/theme ended your dark age?

[Athos]

I never really had a dark age. I found the AFOL community at about the same time I was outgrowing my childhood interest in Lego.

Steve

[leaf_of_lire]

The Rahkshi from Bionicle forced me into my dark ages.

[Jyp]

I stopped buying and playing Lego around 1990 for two reasons:
- my mom was telling me* that I was too old for this
- Legoland/System sets were looking more and more simple (including huge gaps in spaceship cockpits, in front walls, etc.) using less and less (standard) bricks

Many years later, I discovered the 10020 Santa Fe while looking for a Lego set for my father (just for fun), so that I ordered some of these realist sets for myself (because of the amazing design of the Santa Fe or the BNSF, train shed, etc.) as well as the Legend Guarded Inn & BF Fortress. I also bought ancient sets (classic castle & classic space) on eBay and BL.

Now I'm a very small collector but I look for:
- nostalgia (just a bit for now since I've got many of the sets I've always dreamt to have)
- realism (Café Corner & Green Grocer forever!!!)

* Actually she was between laughing at me and being aggressive! Then I've understood that people from her generation think such plastic toys are only for kids -- especially not for a teen!

[Mog]

Great thread!

I never stopped liking LEGO, but I stopped playing and collecting around the end of the nineties. Throwbots was, I think, the last LEGO thing I was into, and I had probably stopped playing with "kiddie" bricks a while before that. This was mainly due to embarassment, not because I didn't like the bricks - in my senior year of high school, I won a national arts competition with a sculpture made out of LEGO, so I was still into them. But after Throwbots, I just kinda...stopped. I think it was a combination of several things - I didn't like Bionicle (still don't) or any of the more "action-figure-y" sets, like KK, and LEGO discontinued "true" Castle sets, replacing them only with Harry Potter (which, at the time, I didn't care for, either). I would still visit the LEGO store at MoA (who wouldn't?), and I think I even bought a brick bucket once or twice, but I didn't really get back into LEGO until the end of last year. Castle had made a comeback, the Millenium Falcon (and, later, the brick's fiftieth birthday) was getting a lot of press, and I paid more and more attention to LEGO until eventually purchasing my first new LEGO set (a LEGO Mosaic set, of all things) at the beginning of this year.

My Brickset set list now lists twenty sets. (Admittedly, most of them are very small, and that's including a keychain, a storage unit, a brick separator...). My friends think I'm going through a quarter life crisis - I turned twenty at the end of last year - but they're mostly supportive, and glad to see that I have a new hobby, I think. Still, as a poor college student, I have to be careful with the money I spend on plastic bricks, and they definitely raise their eyebrows when I explained I'm trying to decide between purchasing LEGO sets or an iPod. (I compromised, getting a digital camera I will use to make brickfilms. Huzzah!) But whatevs.

Sorry for my long-windedness. Off to build Mini Animals!

[The_Hun]

Well, I've never had a lot of Lego as a child - about a dozen small Town sets with only one building (6362 Post Office). I stopped playing with them about 1990-ish, when I went to high school. Then in 2004, just out of curiosity, I bought 4401 Little Creations, and fell in love with the brick again. First I bought small Designer / Creator sets, then I collected all the SW minis, the Tiny Turbos - and then when the Vikings line was introduced in 2005, it came to me that all I ever wanted to build but never had a single set to do so was Castle.

[principe azul]

During my dark age I wasn't completely distant from lego and I picked up an occasional Star Wars set, but the thing that really got me out of the dark ages was my wife buying me the Royal Kings Castle (10176). Then I discovered the new castle line and it was on.