I realized something while placing the Lego prizes on my desk: I need a Lego Mat, one of those flat green Lego pieces that can be used as the base for your Lego tower. As a kid, I must have had a few of these, but sadly my brother and I recently cleaned out our childhood home, donating our old toys. If I had a green Lego plate in my youth it’s long gone by now and probably part of a germ-ridden toy bucket in a dentist’s waiting room. But I need one. The pieces of my calendar are too light and airy, and unless I secure them to a giant thin slab of Lego, they might get knocked over or float away. And then birds will eat them. I can’t have that happen.
With that in mind, my girlfriend and I drove for over an hour to the nearest Lego Store to buy a $4 Lego Mat. This makes no sense for a variety of reasons.
1. I don’t really need a Lego Mat.
2. I could have probably bought one at the local Toys R Us, and saved $500 in gas.
3. I could have found one at a thrift store or stolen one from a weak child.
4. Traffic was satanic and the mall crowd was even satantic-er.
5. I could have made my own Lego Mat out of a piece of sticky, sticky cardboard.
But the holidays aren’t about logic and practicality. If they were, I wouldn’t put plastic balls on a plastic tree while singing Mariah Carey songs, and instead of gift wrapping those jars that have cookie ingredients inside, I would just give my family members waded up, wrinkled $20 bills. Everything about the holidays is impractical, and a trip to the Lego Store is the best type of unnecessary trip because it results in the ownership of Legos.
I’m rambling. To those who want to see today’s Advent Calendar prize, read on. You’ll never guess what it is. I mean it this time. Ready? It’s a…It’s a…
It’s a thing!
A thing that is yellow! A thing that is also kind of gray. A thing that is not purple! It’s a thing, and I think it’s great!
My girlfriend and I looked at the illustration on the calendar and couldn’t figure out what this item was meant to be. My first thought: It’s a chainsaw! But it’s too big for a Lego Person to brandish. Only after construction was completed did we figure out it’s a Toy Crane Truck for the Lego Children to play with.
Toy Crane Truck is not the greatest Lego item, but since I had just returned from the Lego Store, it doesn’t really matter because I bought a Lego Mat at the store…and a big ol’ cup of Legos.
The Lego Store has a wall near the back made of bins containing individual Lego pieces. For $15, you can fill up a large cup with as many Lego bricks as you can cram into the container. Though I only wanted the Lego Mat, I salivated at the thought of adding walls to my Lego Mat. My Lego Mat is now an official Lego Environment, which I have called “Good World.”
I wanted the walls of Good World to be a single color – Red. This could only be accomplished by buying the individual bricks, since a regular Lego set would contain too many worthless yellow pieces. I wanted red pieces. I needed red pieces. I needed 144 red pieces, to be exact. This was the number my girlfriend and I came to after doing some difficult Lego Math inside the Lego Store.
If you were shopping at the Lego Store in Pennsylvania today, and saw two adults in the back of the store staring off into space and counting on their fingers, that was us. (And you should have said hi, jerk.)
We even consulted with the store’s Lego Expert to make sure we had enough red bricks to make the two walls I needed for Good World. He was very helpful, and I wish I remembered his name so I could thank him here. Let’s call him Clive. Thanks, Clive!
144 red bricks didn’t quite fill up the cup. To get my money’s worth we began tossing in random pieces that I will use at a later time. Among these pieces: 4 ladders. I now own more Lego ladders than I do real ladders…by 4.
The Lego Store was an amazing experience. There was so much to see and everyone inside the store was happy. The rest of the mall was filled with angry people carrying gigantic purses and pushing strollers that were less baby-carrier than baby-personal-tanks.
It was worth it.
We built the two walls of Good World and then added my four Advent pieces to the universe I’m governing. As for Toy Crane Truck, I like it because in the scale size of Lego People, this “toy” is tall enough to reach Sword Boy’s chin. When I was a kid, I never wanted a chin-high toy truck, but had I received one, I would have cried tears of joy. Then I would have cried because I thought I saw a Gremlin in the basement. I was scared of the Gremlins.
Day 4 Rating: 2.3 out of 4 (Points deducted because it confused me)
Check back tomorrow, when I will post at a more reasonable hour.