Lego

Growing up, our house was always full of Lego. Boxes and boxes of damn Lego. There were elaborate trucks made out of it, strange flying machines, entire cities constructed out of these little blocks. Friends would come over and spend hours playing with it. Grandparents, aunts and uncles would marvel at the creations. It was fun. It kept us out of our Parents hair and was great on those rainy days that you couldn’t go outside on your BMX and see who could do the longest skid.

Coming from the Danish words LEg GOdt meaning play well, Lego has been around forever. Ok not forever, but since about the late 40s. However, Lego as we know it started appearing in the 60s. In fact, 60s Lego blocks will still fit together with blocks bought today.
It was seen at the Brighton Toy Fair for the first time in 1960 - and the blocks took Britain by storm, massively outselling the Loopyloop (whatever the hell that was)

Nowadays it seems you can only get Lego items as a whole, for example, a Lego Space Ship, Lego Star Wars, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, Lego Harry bloody Potter. Yes, unfortunately it is totally commercial these days.

However, for us Kids of the 80s, Lego was brilliant. These were the days that you could just go and buy loads of Lego blocks, and make whatever the hell you could dream up!

You could still get the sets, and my particular favourite was the space and moon Lego you could get. In particular, I had the classic ship that is pictured here.

Damn, those are some memories right there!

You would end up spending days building this great big damn space ship, create a whole story for it and all the little Lego dudes that had their faces worn off from overplay.

This would then culminate in a big crash scene where you would lob the thing across your bedroom, or even better out of a first floor window, to smash the thing into a thousand pieces. Damn that was one of the most satisfying memories I have from the 80s!

You could also get the technics Lego, the mechanical stuff where you had motors, moving parts etc. I remember making a helicopter, and a beach buggy with working rack and pinion steering. Awesome! Here is my beach buggy from back in the day.

I remember having a huge box if the stuff, and after tipping it all over the floor kids of the 80s would be entertained for hours and hours.

Yup, back then kids did not need crack, guns, knives, muggings and happy slapping to entertain them, a simple box of Lego would do the trick. A genuinely innovative toy that fuelled the imagination of 80s kids. Those were the days.