The Brick Connection – A novice Lego fan explores the great brick world of LEGO

Hello Brick Connectors!!

I don’t know if I’m actually going to call you readers that, but for now let’s go with it.

Anywho, right after learning all that Lego lingo I had a chance to put it to use. Here’s a little background for you: Engaged couple, Amanda and Ryan are the co-owners of BrickWarriors and they are moving into their very own house. Yay!

They have the usual furniture and whatnot to move, but they also have Ryan’s very large LEGO collection to deal with, which currently resides in a room in his mother’s house. In order to make moving his massive collection easier, Ryan is condensing as much as he can. This means dismantling many of his Lego builds, including Lego sets he put together and some MOCs.

Believe it or not, I actually volunteered to help with this. I was just texting with Amanda about how the packing process for their move was going and she mentioned the Lego situation. So I jokingly said I could help since I need to learn more about Lego for this blog. Well she and Ryan decided to take me up on my offer. And honestly it was a lot better than being stuck in the office on a Friday afternoon.

As someone who hasn't taken hours, minutes or even seconds of my life to build a Lego set or MOC (except for those 2 times that I was forced to for work and therefore didn’t really give a crap), I imagine dismantling these creations can be kind of sad.

But when you’re dismantling someone else’s creations (with their permission), well that’s just fun.

So I went over to Ryan’s mom’s house and along with Ryan and Amanda tried to help condense this crazy Lego collection.

Just one corner of the room that holds Ryan's collection

Ryan's storage bins filled with different Lego parts

First Amanda and I separated some BrickWarriors pieces, which was easy because obviously I see those little buggers every day. (They may even haunt my dreams.)

But then it was time to separate some Lego. Initially we worked on a box of random Lego creations and pieces, nothing of any significance. And then we worked on this weird shark castle tower thingy:

I don’t know how the rest of you organize your Lego, but Ryan has a bunch of plastic storage bins with drawers (as seen above); probably from Target. They’re pretty handy. I have some in my room at home to organize my junk.

I’m not saying that Lego is junk, but I’m also not completely saying it’s not junk. Let’s say it’s only junk when it’s in a million billion pieces and has to be “organized.”

A small disclaimer before I move on: My jokes and jabs at Lego and Lego fans are not meant to be insulting, just humorous. I’m not saying these things to be mean, just to get some cheap laughs. Last week I think someone took offense to my description of “purists.” I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with “purist” Lego fans. I just know that I work for a 3^rd party accessory company and therefore like it when people buy our products so the company can stay profitable, so I can have a full-time paying job. #Blessed

All good? Okay, back on topic…

If you think Ryan couldn’t possibly have enough Lego to fill up one of those big drawers with a bunch of little Lego pieces, well you are wrong my friend. One of those drawers is about 90% filled with just Lego minifigure heads. JUST THE HEADS!

I would love to have that drawer of heads at a Lego convention and dump it on the next kid that comes to our booth and asks me where the heads are...

“We only sell accessories ya stupid idiot, but how do ya like these heads!!”
*Cori viciously dumps drawer of heads on innocent child*

Sorry, got a little carried away there. (For those who don’t know, when we go to Lego conventions to sell our stuff we get asked about minifigure parts a lot, which FYI we do not sell!)

So now to the actual dismantling of the Lego stuff. While taking everything apart we had to separate the pieces into piles based on its function and/or look. Basically Amanda and I would take a piece off, hold it up to Ryan, and ask, “what’s this?”

In the beginning we were asking him about almost every piece. We were basically like annoying little kids that always want to play 20 questions for every new object that appears in front of them. Eventually the questions died down as we had created enough categories to separate and group the pieces with some ease.

Here were some of the categories that Ryan had us dividing the pieces into:

Jumper plates – I’m basically an expert on these bad boys now.

Cheese – a term that I did not mention in the blog, but one that I learned in my research. These are the wedge pieces that look like a piece of cheese, without the usual cheese color and delicious taste. AKA a small slope piece.

Slopes – different from cheese, because of course. These were bigger than cheese and usually had a stud on top.

Arches – single pieces that were arched. (Not to be confused with other curved pieces)

Round plates – I’m not explaining this

Minifig heads, Minifig torsos, Minifig legs – it was a massacre!!

Hats – for the minifigs of course

Hair – plastic minifig hair. There were a couple hair pieces that were attached to hats, which led to the big question: hair or hat?

Ladders – yes, there were enough of these to make a whole category for them

Food – unfortunately not literal food. It was Lego food, or food-related objects. Amanda asked if a little Lego book classified as food. It did not.

Wheels – the ones for making vehicles mobile, not to be confused with steering wheels

Animals you can ride – not to be confused with…

Animals you can’t ride

Things of value – or at least of value in the Lego world: money, coins, shiny pieces?

1x plates – plates that were 1 stud wide

2x plates – guess how many studs wide these were?

SNOT – I asked about one strange looking piece and Ryan said it was SNOT. (A piece that helps you achieve SNOT.) And then I was like, “you mean studs not on top! BOOM! I’m amazing!” Okay, I don’t think that’s verbatim what happened, but it was something like that.

At one point when asking about a piece, I asked if it was SNIR, when I actually meant SNOT. Ugh! Rookie move. Never mix up your SNIRs and SNOTs!

Clips – they clip to stuff

Single studs – it was literally a little square or round single stud piece. I believe we had to keep the round and square ones separate from each other. Yes, Ryan’s collection is big enough that it is necessary to do that.

Normal Lego (aka bricks) – OMG, so easy you guys.

Stupid pile – Ok here was where it got funny. There were a bunch of pieces that weren’t significant enough to have their own category and just seemed so ridiculous in general that they were deemed unworthy and sent to the “stupid” or “trash” or “nothing” pile. Ryan wasn’t necessarily throwing these pieces out, but he knew they were not going to be much use for him in future builds.

It led to me and Amanda asking Ryan over and over, “is this stupid?”

These "stupid" pieces were those random ones from Lego sets that only serve a purpose for that particular set. Like Lego literally created this random-ass piece just so they could get that one thing to attach to that other thing or make it look like that scene from the movie.

Ha, look at me trying to pretend like I know crap about Lego sets. Fake it till you make it, right?!

But hey, if Ryan were to figure out a good use for one of these “stupid” pieces then it we could all say, “NPU brah!”

The stupid pile

Now for what you’ve all been waiting for…the “after” picture of the shark castle tower thingy:

And now a close up:

Once the pieces were separated, we placed them in their corresponding drawers and then we were done…for that day at least. There was still more to be done, but that’s not my problem…Although I wouldn’t mind going back and doing more because the office is BORING.

So I think I can now say I’ve taken apart more Lego than I’ve actually built. Which is kind of a metaphor for how my fandom of Lego has gone: backwards.

Well that’s all for this Brick Connection, you brick connectors you! (Yeah, we should probably change that.)

Thanks for reading! Leave some comments about what you think I should talk about or do next with Lego. I think I’m just going to steal a bunch of Lego bricks from Ryan’s collection and see what I can create. To be continued…

*Compliments, general feedback, and constructive criticism are welcome. Any haters that are gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate can go step on some Lego with their bare feet. *