Admitting you’re an adult that plays with Lego is no longer the shameful revelation it would have been a decade ago, even if it’s not necessarily the sort of thing you brag about when trying to seem cool.
But Lego didn’t become the most trusted brand in the UK (beating the likes of Apple and Disney) by only appealing to children.
Everyone loves Lego, or has loved it at some point, and nowadays there are plenty of Lego sets that, in terms of subject matter and price, are aimed squarely at adults.
The tactile joy of the little plastic pieces isn’t necessarily just a trivial time waster. We spoke to several adult fans who claim that building with Lego actually helps them to relax, and in some cases cope with major mental health issues.
James Maheady is a 31-year-old teacher who enjoyed Lego when he was younger but grew out of it when he got into his teens, after which all his bricks were retired to the loft. But when tragedy struck it was Lego he returned to in order to cope with depression.
‘Me and my wife, we lost two children’, Maheady tells us. ‘It hit me really hard and I got really bad depression and anxiety. I could get through the working day okay but when I got home I needed something to do, to get through the rest of the day. And I thought to myself that maybe I should get some Lego and build that to take my mind off other things. And it did.
‘When I was doing it, the depression and the anxiety, it wouldn’t take it away completely, but it definitely helped provide a bit of a break.
‘And so after building some of the sets I decided to build my own bits and I ended up building… we got that big Millennium Falcon. I built that and then I made a coffee table to put it in. That was when I really started enjoying it, not just building off instructions but building my own things. Because then I can get lost in it even more, and really enjoy it.’
Maheady subsequently met fellow fans online and by helping out with his nan’s charity group, but for him building Lego is usually more of a private pleasure.
‘I’m a PE teacher, so I’m quite sporty. I do a lot of my socialising while playing sport but when you’re playing sport you don’t really get that relaxation time’, he explains.
‘When I was suffering really, really bad the Lego was a godsend. I would struggle through the day at work, come home, struggle through whatever I had to do, and then get to a point at night and sit down and for two or three hours it wasn’t a struggle.
‘So I think anyone that’s looking for advice for mental health it’s such a good thing to do.’
Not every adult fan has such a serious story to tell. For many an escape from the daily grind is all the reason they need to take up the hobby. 29-year-old Peter Mordecai is a solicitor by day but a Lego builder by night.
‘My work’s quite high intensity and very stressful’, he admits. ‘So it’s nice to just do something completely different. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so it’s nice to have something that’s very hands-on, very precision-based. It’s nice to have something completely different from my job, where I’m not thinking so much but can get really focused and forget about everything else.’
Jack Daubey is a 29-year-old sign maker who, like many people we spoke to, found himself getting back into Lego through one of the company’s most popular themes: Star Wars.
‘My other half bought me one of the Lego Star Wars advent calendars and I really enjoyed that’, says Daubey. ‘A little thing every day, throughout December, and she could see I was clearly enjoying it so I ended up getting a bit more Lego for Christmas that year. I particularly liked the minifigures, so I kind of came back to it through collecting the minifigures and then got more involved in building’.
From there he began experimenting with constructing his own models and eventually attending Lego fan events and teaming up with others to make collaborative projects.
‘I got involved with a charity called Fairy Bricks, who donate Lego bricks to children’s’ hospitals. And I started helping them with fundraising at shows and things like that. That was the major catalyst for me’, he explains.
‘I think quite often people have a bit of a bad idea about adult toy collectors. They think they’re people who don’t want kids to have the toys and want them to be kept pristine.
‘But I think Lego fans go against that grain quite a lot and for me that was really a good way of putting something back.’
Dan Jarvis is a 37-year-old forklift driver and one of the most respected Lego builders in the UK. With three children in the house he does all his Lego in the loft, a mirror image of the Will Ferrell character from The Lego Movie with his massive set-up in the basement.
‘When I first got back into Lego I was living on my own and a friend of mine just brought round a box of Lego, that he’d found in his mum’s attic, to keep me entertained; to keep me busy. Because I use to like doing Airfix models… I always enjoyed building stuff. So I got the bug and then I discovered the online community and all this massive world of Lego.’
Like the others he started off buying Lego sets but gradually began to focus on building his own designs and taking them to exhibit at shows.
‘I was always quite creative when I was kid, building dens and using toys to recreate scenes and stuff like that. So I think it was always in me,’ says Jarvis. ‘Even now my wife says that for a grown man I’m still quite childish, because my imagination and my creativity is still quite strong. Because a lot of men she knows from my age, they’ve lost that.’
Jarvis estimates his Lego Star Wars collection at around 300 sets but is now more interested in building his own creations – with no instruction book to follow. To do that he needs access to a lot of Lego. He estimates he has anything from a million to one-and-a-half million bricks, with a total worth of between £15,000 and £20,000.
As with the others Jarvis primarily sees building with Lego as a way to relax and to enjoy some quality alone time.
‘Mainly the stuff I build, I do it on my own. Because it’s my escape. I go in the loft and I can forget about all the troubles in the world and I totally relax. And that’s my stress relief really.
‘If I’ve had a busy or bad day at work and you come home and the kids are running around and screaming there can be days when it gets really stressful and it’s then nice, when everyone’s in bed, for me to just sit in the loft for an hour or two and build something. And then I wake up in the morning all refreshed and happy.’
‘It’s definitely something I think about if I’ve had a stressful week, it’s definitely something that helps for relaxing’, agrees Daubey. ‘I enjoy that it is something constructive.
‘I think there’s a lot of hobbies that you can get relaxation from but for a lot of people my age it’s video games and things like that. And quite often you don’t feel like you get anything back out of it after you’re done. Whereas with building a Lego set you stand back after you’ve done it and you’ve got something fun to look at and to appreciate.’
‘It really draws your focus. You can take a simple set, that you can build in five minutes, and have a film or something on in the background. Or you can go for one of the bigger sets and really get involved in it. And there’s such clever techniques… you start to think about how you can apply that elsewhere. So it’s an excellent distraction, but also it gives you something to take away afterwards.’
‘I’m lucky, my wife is quite into Lego as well. Not as much as myself, but she is a massive Harry Potter fan. So the resurrection of the Harry Potter theme means that… we had a trip to the Lego shop earlier in the year and came away with two copies of almost all the sets. So we’re planning on building some of the bits of Hogwarts together. So it’s quite nice on that front.
We ask Daubey how much his collection is worth but he hesitates to put a value on it. ‘
I used to justify it a lot in terms of the value. If someone said to me, “Oh, you collect Lego? That’s a bit weird”. I’d say, “Oh yeah but I bought this one set for £15 and I could sell it for 60 quid now if I want”. But I don’t really look at it in terms of the money so much anymore.
‘I realise that actually it doesn’t matter. It’s what I get out of it that’s important. I enjoy it, it helps me relax, and I get a lot of value out of it. It’s something creative that also helps you clear your mind and that really works for me.’
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