For many adults, rediscovering Lego allows them to share moments with their children. Handout
Being cooped up at home during the early days of the pandemic, making every attempt to avoid doom-scrolling the day away, many people began exploring lo-fi ways to pass time. In some households, that meant nurturing a sourdough starter. In others, jigsaw puzzle pieces took over the kitchen table. And then there were those who reconnected with their childhood love of Lego.
The Danish brand, which starting making wooden toys in 1932 and introduced its plastic bricks in the 1950s, rose to the occasion with an ever-expanding lineup of sets with grown-up builders in mind. Its latest options focus on expert builds that cross over into everything from design and housewares to fashion and travel, helping fans extend their lifestyle interests into another creative and often meditative pursuit.
Auto aficionados can line their bookshelves with model Ford Mustangs, Fiats, double-decker busses and James Bond’s Aston Martin. For the plant parent, there are sets of succulents, birds of paradise and orchids. Fashionistas can try their hand at building Adidas’s Superstar sneaker. There is an ever-growing skyline of architectural landmarks such as the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid and Rome’s Colosseum, as well as an original, imaginary city, which consists of interlocking sets like a town square and boutique hotel – complete with a lobby gallery. Ranging in size from a few hundred to several thousand pieces, these grown-up sets feature very adult price tags, with some scratching the four-figure mark.
This growing library resulted in a 27 per cent increase in revenue in 2021 and Lego wants to keep that momentum going. For its 90th anniversary this year, the Lego Group is launching more than 245 sets in the first half of 2022, the most it has ever released in that time frame.
Make no mistake, Lego has always had a huge following of adult fans. Known as AFOLs, short for “adult fans of Lego,” they are a community that’s grown well beyond the brand’s control, organizing their own local meetups and global conferences, such as the annual BrickCon in Seattle where builders showcase their original creations to peers and admirers. Some AFOLs are celebrities, like musician Ed Sheeran, who once celebrated an album going to No. 1 by buying himself the Star Wars Death Star set.
After tackling one-too-many jigsaw puzzles during lockdowns, thirtysomething public-relations professional Charley Varanelli decided to give Lego a try when a friend shared her set on Instagram. She selected a bonsai tree with pink petals, which she built on a rainy day. “I wanted to do something other than watch TV that has that creative element. It puts everything in a box for you, and you still have that creative feeling of building and completing something,” she says, adding that this particular set appealed to her love of flowers.
“The invitation has always been there for everyone to build,” says Raquel Faria, the director of marketing at the Lego Group Canada. Original designs by Lego consumers often inform product development via Lego Ideas, a website where builders can upload their original creations for their fellow fans to vote on. Once a design receives 10,000 votes, the Lego Group will review its potential development, as it did with the Home Alone and Yellow Submarine sets. “That’s just a wonderful way to bring the community into co-creation,” Faria says.
Where many of Lego’s more recent adult fans differ from their hard core AFOL counterparts is in their intention of using Lego sets as a meditative and methodical means to escape reality, rather than as building blocks for an inventive, original creation. In the Lego Play Well study, an online survey conducted between May and June of 2020, 77 per cent of Canadian adult respondents said that play helps them de-stress and relax, with 75 per cent saying it offers them relief from everyday chores and worries.
“Maybe adults just want something to sit down and relax with, and something like the art sets, where you’re just putting down the little one-by-one plates one at a time, is very relaxing [and] time consuming,” says Chris Perron, who moved from Edmonton to Denmark to work as a designer at the Lego Group in 2016. When creating a set with adults in mind, he says consideration veers toward offering a final product that’s cool to display, versus a set that a child would want to hold and play with. Varanelli’s petite bonsai tree enjoys pride of place on a living-room shelf next to books, candles and real plants.
Interest is also being stoked by the often-intricate functionality of more elaborate sets. Take the 1989 Batmobile, a replica of the iconic car featured in the Tim Burton film, which Perron helped design. It incorporates features like steering, a canopy that opens up and little pistols that pop out of the vehicle’s body, just like in the movie. “It’s got some of these features, but they’re more to show off to your friends,” Perron says.
For many adults, rediscovering Lego also allows them to share moments with their children. Kirk Dunkley’s lifelong love of Lego has become an activity he enjoys with his five-year-old daughter. “She likes to play with them like a little dollhouse,” he says. A Calgary-based artist-turned-entrepreneur who trades bitcoin, Dunkley also plays with Lego on his own, favouring the collector models and complicated pirate ships. “It’s an activity that brings me back to the state of being a child sitting on the floor in my bedroom playing with Lego – and the state of peace I had when I was kid,” he says.
Auto aficionados can line their bookshelves with model Ford Mustangs, Fiats, double-decker busses and James Bond’s Aston Martin. Or even the Volkswagen T2 camper van. Lego
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