À la Recherche des Lego Perdus
OK, so we watched The Lego Movie the other night, and I recognised 1980-Something Space Guy from Nate and Si’s days playing with Lego, so I looked him/her (can’t honestly tell from the minifig, can you?) up in the Brickipedia, as you can see from the link above.
That got me started thinking about the earliest Lego I had, a set which was sold from a side section of Benoit’s clothing store in Brunswick, Maine — in the days when even mail order was a somewhat exotic phenomenon, and local retailers were by far the commonest form of access to commercial goods. If Benoit’s were restored to its mid-sixties condition, I could take you directly to the Lego section (which had only two or three sets). I think I was first given this set, or one very much like it:
I thought I recalled that the cardboard packaging was gold-yellow in colour, but I don’t see any such boxes at the Brickipedia site, so that must be a mistake. The package I remember was definitely a vertically-oriented oblong solid, and I was subsequently given the Gears set, some wheels, and a set with clear bricks, doors, and windows.
As you can imagine, all of this research and reminiscing absorbed several hours. Thank you, Internet.
(Yes, I do remember that I used to blog daily. Baby steps.)