Guest blogger: Jonathan Bender on Lego and obsolescence.
My friend Jonathan Bender is the author of the fantastic new book Lego: A Love Story. Lego (it’s never plural!) isn’t obsolete, but there is a kind of nostalgia value to these colorful blocks that is undeniable.
I asked him to put together this nice little gallery of obsolete objects made out of Legos. Uh, I mean, Lego. Anyway, take it away, Jon!
I have very few holdovers from the age of 12, which based on my taste in eyewear and sweatshirts isn’t entirely a bad thing. But at times I miss that world of snow days and Duck Tales episodes.
And close to three years ago, while in my childhood closet, I might have just stumbled onto a portal back into my past – a way to hang on to all of those items that have disappeared not just for me, but my entire generation. Next to the white bookshelf weighed down with a set of 1987 Encyclopedia Britannica, sat a sealed blue tub with my name on it in bubble cartoon stickers. Inside that tub were the LEGO bricks I left behind for soccer, piano, and girls.
LEGO bricks, it turns out, are the perfect medium for capturing the obsolete world. They are easily identifiable and have a literal connection to the past; bricks from the 1970’s can still be snapped together with bricks from today.
As part of a year spent building alongside adult fans of LEGO for my book, LEGO: A Love Story, I discovered that builders are often looking to trap their nostalgia inside elaborate creations of plastic bricks. What follows are some of the incredible creations keeping the past alive or at least trapped, silently screaming like Han Solo in Carbonite:
Typewriters! Obsolete? Yup. But we stil love them.
Darth pulls the Say Anything move with a boombox.
Lego used to make bricks that looked like cassette tapes, like the one used here and in the Darth diaroma.
An ersatz Polaroid. If only it actually worked!
Once upon a time, phones were not shaped like rectangles.
A Gameboy, batteries included. Unfortunately, they always ran out awfully fast.
Gas station attendants are gone in all but two states. Click here to watch this little guy in pumping action.
Remember bellhops? Me neither.
More Lego Nintendo love. I have a feeling the bricks used to make this cost more than buying the actual thing on eBay…
A Commodore keyboard.
