November 22, 2011

"I've never spent $200 for a Lego set."

"The most I've spent was the $150 for the Modular Houses, and even that made me cringe a bit. They're so darned fun and detailed that I just can't help myself. From a price to piece standpoint, the set is still less than 10 cents per piece."

It's the Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House. Seems like a great family Christmas present.

***

And while I'm Amazoning... please buy your Christmas and other holiday presents and all presents for yourself and others through the Althouse portal to Amazon (which is always linked right under this blog's name). You can send a little money my way without paying anything more for your things. And by the way,  you can save 55% today on "Lion King" and "Cars" Director's editions sets. But I'm fascinated by these Lego sets. Here's Fallingwater. Seems like you could play with your kids and teach them (and yourself) about architecture.

27 comments:

Mary Beth said...

Nice, but it's no Millennium Falcon.

Jay Fellows said...

Ann, I've been a big reader of your site for years now. However, I've only just started using your Amazon link. Seems only fair for me to give something back!
By the way, what sort of slice of the action do they give you?

Curious George said...

"Jay Fellows said...

By the way, what sort of slice of the action do they give you?"

Ann's cut

KCFleming said...

A team built one of our campus buildings out of Legos. (Photo)

It was supposed to have been built in a single weekend at one of our city festivals, but only got half done, then later showed up n the lobby of the building.

Curious George said...

"Seems like you could play with your kids and teach them (and yourself) about architecture."

Lego kits like those are for adults, or at least older children. Let the kids build their own stuff. That's the appeal of Legos.

In my generation it was Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, and Erector Sets. Here kids, use your imagination, solve problems. For my kids, legos. My involvement started with "Dad, look at what I made!" If

Ann Althouse said...

"By the way, what sort of slice of the action do they give you?"

It varies by category and volume, but approximately 7%.

al said...

Lego Supercar. It was more than $150.00 years ago when I bought it and worth every penny.

Henry said...

Legos are awesome. I think the grandparents have spend over $100 on a set or two and they are worth every penny. My mother-in-law scored several huge bags of mixed parts at a junk shop. Even better. My 4-year-old has a little lunchbox of legos that he brings on car trips. Once my older son decided to rebuild all his mixed up Star Wars sets. Kept him out of trouble for weeks. Did you know you can order individual missing parts directly from Lego? There are also third-party exchanges.

Henry said...

"Worth every penny" -- al and I agree.

kjbe said...

Mary Beth, that is awesome.

Known Unknown said...

Secretly, Legos suck. They are overpriced. They are frustrating for children to build. They can't be played with too much, or they fall apart.

I say this as someone who really wants to like legos, but my experiences have taught me otherwise.

TML said...

I feel pinched between Glenn's gentle requests to amazon through him and Ann's witty exhortations to amazon through her. Not fair.

MadisonMan said...

It varies by category and volume, but approximately 7%.

Less than Cook County but more than Dane County.

ken in tx said...

We just shipped a 20 pound box of hand-me-down Legos to some of the grand kids.


WV= gracias

Your Welcome.

Wince said...

"Did you say knives?"

"Rotating knives, yes."

Yes, well, of course, this is just the sort blinkered philistine pig ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome, spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker's cuss about the struggling artist. (shouting) You excrement! You lousy hypocritical whining toadies with your lousy colour TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding masonic handshakes! You wouldn't let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards. Well I wouldn't become a freemason now if you went down on your lousy, stinking, purulent knees and begged me.

Wince said...

No, that was not a Mika Brzezinski tirade.

jacksonjay said...

Does Amazon revenue throw Glenn or Ann into 1% territory?

Patrick said...

I have three sons, and they all absolutely love Legos. Star Wars Legos are their favorite, but they make all sorts of stuff, even out of the "kits." Some stuff, like the Star Destroyer, you just don't mess with. This year, the Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar. Seems a little sacriligious, but not too bad. We also have regular advent calendars, and a Jesse Tree.

Calla said...

My husband and I built Fallingwater a couple of years ago - highly recommended. We're working on the Robie House now.

In between we made the Taj Mahal, which cost $300 for almost 6,000 pieces. It was a splurge for our 36th anniversary. I wrestled with paying that much for a toy, but it gave us months of enjoyment. (We ration it out to prolong the fun - only a couple of pages at a time.) Sadly, it's no longer readily available - I see it's almost $1000 on amazon now.

edutcher said...

Bought The Blonde's Christmas books through Althouse.

As to $200 Legos, I remember when you could get the Marx Fort Apache, with about 80 guys (cowboys, Indians, cavalry), the fort, a couple of wagons, and a whole herd of horses for $25.

Of course, it was Mom and Dad who said, "Well, maybe for Christmas. $25 is an awful lot of money".

Chip S. said...

Seven percent? Hefty.

Have you considered accumulating this pile of loot to establish the AlthouseBlog Professorship? Condition of employment: Must engage the real world through blogging.

Carnifex said...

We were poor growing up. The only thing I ever got to play with was myself(ewww!) apologies, couldn't resist the set up

I remember playing with Lincoln Logs, and Erector sets(hated the little nuts) but seems to me my favorite toys were empty boxes that some appliance came in, or a roll of twine. You could make bows and arrows with the twine, and a fort or castle outta the box. Later we would slide down steep hills on what was left of the cardboard,

There were no lawsuits if someone got hurt. No girls were allowed but dogs were everywhere. Snakes, frogs, yo yos', and cool looking rocks were accepted forms of currency. Later on, Dads stolen Playboys.

Like "A Christmas Story", bb guns were the be all, end all, of x-mas gifts.

King-of-the-Hill played like tag team wrestling. Dodge ball played with baseballs. We were immortal, invincible, and utterly dumb to how good we had it.

Sneaking smokes out of your dads pack. Or if he was cool just giving you some(I had a cool Dad).

Then I look at the youth of today...some can't even make change without a calculator. Or write a complete sentence. Or form a cogent argument.

These Lego kits are cool, but they are very very uncool.

Joe said...

Legos are simply awesome.

Son #1 not only got an Tie Fighter at one point, he got a Mindstorms kit. Turns out, he's not a programmer, but we had a lot of fun with it and then sold it years later for 75% of the new price to help buy a nice dirt bike.

kimsch said...

Come to Wheeling, IL to the Hyatt hotel on Fathers' Day weekend for Brickworld. It's a LEGO convention. The things that are built out of LEGO bricks are absolutely fantastic.

Last year's Brickworld photoset
2010's Brickworld photoset (Tech Republic published some of these).

Toad Trend said...

This is good stuff. Love Legos but like EM Davis there does exist a certain frustration among some dabblers.

EDH

Past murals depicting Mediterranean
scenes...heavily soundproofed..."

LOL great stuff.

Craig Howard said...

I feel pinched between Glenn's gentle requests to amazon through him and Ann's witty exhortations to amazon through her.

That could be a problem. However, when it comes to Amazon purchases, I have taken a vow of cruel neutrality.

gpm said...

Like Carnifex, we did the box thing. I especially liked it when we made the box into a rocket ship. Not many steep hills on the South Side of Chicago, but we used to do a tank sort of thing when the box began losing its shape.

Not a lot of snakes, frogs, etc., or even BB guns, but we had a lot of "street" games that, I think, have since been lost. I keep meaning to do a little essay on that subject.

We also played (16-inch!) softball, using the street intersection as the field, with the sewer in the middle of the intersection as the pitcher's mound and sewers in the four corners as the bases. Left and right fields were streets, but center field was a bit of a problem, since there was an apartment building there. Since we were usually a bit short on players, we played "pitcher's hands are out," in lieu of making plays at the bases.

--gpm