Why it's OK to love Lego even if you're an adult

A handful of bricks, perhaps a base-plate, a couple of mini-figures, and you can create anything you want.

I'm not ashamed to admit I'm an AFOL (adult fan of Lego). I was a KFOL (kid fan of Lego), and I still have instruction manuals from the 1970s tucked away in large plastic tubs full of my childhood bricks.

I clearly remember one of the first kits I had, a castle theme, hundreds of yellow bricks made into turrets and drawbridges - with real string and pulleys - bricks to make horses (moulded figures were few and far between back then), mini-figures with shields and helmets.

Mini-figures! What a revelation they were. Prior to that, figures were large, with heads the size of walnuts mounted on a shoulder block with jointed arms. Mini-figures were released in 1978, and they are now the world's largest (Lego) population, with more than four million of them around the globe.

I pitched this story as a deep dive into Lego; a scramble, if you like, deep into the plastic tub to find that one tiny block, in the specific colour (of the 60 now available), that you need to complete something.

What is it about these simple building blocks (there are around 3700 different kinds) that has kept children (and adults) entertained for close to 80 years? Why did sales of Lego increase by 22 per cent during the height of the pandemic? With a new season to start on April 18, why is Channel Nine's Lego Masters one of their most popular shows? How do I get Ryan "Brickman" McNaught's job?

McNaught's a great guy. He must know us AFOLs resent him, want to be him, but he's a perfect mix of childlike wonder and enthusiasm, wrapped in the body of an engineer.

As Australia's only certified Lego professional, and one of 21 globally, he builds and oversees construction of models for exhibitions and displays worldwide.

He also finds time to judge on Nine's Lego Masters, now in its fourth season, and he's written two books, The Brickman Family Challenge Book (Murdoch, 2020, $35) and The Bricktionary: Brickman's ultimate Lego A-Z (Murdoch Books, $39.99), released in March.

We'd met once before, when he was in Canberra to launch the Lego exhibition Towers of Tomorrow at the National Museum of Australia in 2017, and four years on, he's more than happy to talk about his own love of Lego.

"I got my first Lego kit when I was three," McNaught says. "My grandmother Hazel bought me this little blue boat, there were no figures in it, that's how old I am, but I remember it to this day."

He remained a fan until his teens in the mid-'80s, when all of a sudden it "wasn't cool" to play with toys, and didn't pick it up again until his twin boys, who are now 14, came along.

"I remember my mother going, 'Well you'd better have all your Lego back', and I opened the box and thought wow, how unreal is this, how cool is it? And that sparked my imagination all over again."

I ask him if he still feels that spark when he finishes a design, or opens a new packet of bricks.

"Absolutely," he says. "I'm not classically trained in the arts in any way, shape, or form, so I don't know the exact terminology for it, but there's a thing where you can visualise something and when you actually complete it, that process, the happiness that brings in the sense of satisfaction.

"The difference with what we're doing is the level of complexity - that feeling is multiplied many, many times. You build a little Lego kit, like a little car, you still get joy in that. But when you have to build something like an automated, life-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex, for example, that is a couple of tonnes worth of Lego, and takes half a year. That's a whole different release of endorphins."

There might be something to the endorphins thing. During the pandemic, Lego released mindfulness kits aimed at the adult market. An 878-piece bonsai tree and a beautiful flower bouquet enabled builders to switch off from the everyday stresses.

There was even a book, Build Yourself Happy, by Abbie Headon, which suggested playing with Lego bricks led to improvements in cognitive thinking and collaboration; the idea of giving a happy thought to each brick as you connected it, resonated with many.

"What we've seen over the past few years is that it's okay to be creative again," says McNaught. He talks about the rise of crafting and making, not only in the home, but television shows such as Making It and Blown Away, even Bake Off and Sewing Bee and Pottery Throwdown, which have all been popular during the pandemic.

Why does he think Lego Masters has been so popular? In 2020 it was Nine's top-rating regular program, averaging 1.369 million viewers across its season.

"Lego is immediately relatable to most people - most people have had some relationship with it, they played with it as a kid, or have bought it for their children, so everyone has a rough understanding of how much is involved in the challenges, how complex the builds actually are. People are always going 'How did they make that?'," he says.

"The second thing goes back to that creativity aspect of it. We give the contestants a challenge, they're ordinary people bringing their ideas, their skill sets, and every one is different.

"You watch a child play with Lego and they go here's where the pirates live, and here's a tree, and this is a car ... when you watch adults do that, I think it's captivating."

Stephen Dann is a senior lecturer in marketing at the Research School of Management, at the ANU's College of Business and Economics. As part of his remit, he facilitates Lego Serious Play workshops, which use Lego to prompt dialogue and develop problem solving skills.

"We use Lego for story-sharing in groups where the flat-world thinking of white boards, sticky notes and computer screens weren't getting the job done," Dann says.

"The LSP process invites people to use their hands in an unfamiliar way during the process, you're set a question, and then tasked with making a visual response through the Lego, stories are shared through the explanations of the model, and parts and pieces take on the meanings for the storyteller.

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"The biggest thing the process does is change a whole lot of the social dynamics of sharing ideas - you're challenged to respond, make a model, and then, once everyone's had time to build, the stories are shared around the group.

"Nobody gets to dominate the conversation by building faster or bigger than someone else - the story through the bricks is the key, and we strictly observe the golden rule of Lego Serious Play which is 'Builder owns the meaning of the model. What you say it is, is what it becomes'.

"Taking away the ability of people to shoot down ideas, correct their peers, or overlay their ideas on to other's work makes a massive difference in raising the comfort level for sharing ideas in a room."

He works across classrooms and boardrooms, and each workshop has three elements: an initial introduction to the blocks, building from a plan and telling that story, and then participants are given free rein.

"The third part is one of my favourite elements because it brings home the idea that the Lego is secondary to the story teller - it is what we say it is" Dann says.

"Seeing the growth in people's confidence in their storytelling from the first exercise to the third is that moment of magic.

"You'll often have people apologising for their builds in the first round, and then by the third, they're just straight into the story. That's the creative magic boosting the confidence."

But it's not all work and no play for Dann. He too is an AFOL. For the record, his favourite brick is the separator, the universal screwdriver of Lego.

"It means people never have to bite my bricks," he says.

"I joke these days that it's my job to help other people play with my Lego."

I laugh when he talks of biting bricks. My favourite separation technique was throwing bricks against the wall. My teenage years were spent in braces and my fingernails have always been flimsy.

We all have our Lego memories - another wild fact is that on average there are 80 Lego bricks for every person on earth. It might have started with Duplo, the larger bricks aimed at toddlers, with kits of our favourite franchises as such Harry Potter or Star Wars, or taking over the loungeroom floor during the school holidays building a Lego city that became your world for the summer.

For Jake Radloff, president of the Canberra Lego User Group, it was a train set.

"I was about six and I got this train set and it was fantastic," he says.

"I still have it today, it's still set up, and it still runs."

Radloff is on the committee for the ever popular Canberra Brick Expo which is on at the Hellenic Club, Woden (April 9-10, 9am-4.30pm, both days).

He says there are still plenty of tickets available for Sunday sessions and that, after a hiatus in 2021, the expo will be bigger and better than ever, with close to 100 tables covered in creations.

"It's the 11th expo and for us it's a way to really embrace what Lego is about," he says.

"While there are all the fantastic builds and exhibits, we like that it's a great day out for the family and that generations come along to experience it all together."

He says the Canberra Lego User Group has about 184 members, young and old, and as well as supporting the Brick Expo, the group runs monthly meetings and different events during the year.

He admits the most he's ever spent on a kit was the Star Wars Ultimate Collection Millennium Falcon - about $1200.

All of a sudden I am curious about the idea of a Lego group. Do you have to prove your building credentials? Do you have to be as spectacular as, say, the contestants on Lego Masters? What if I air my grievances with the franchise kits, admit I'm a brick-built kind of person? Will my instruction manuals from 1978 give me any instant sort of street cred?

What is it about Lego that fascinates us still? Dann sums it up nicely.

"Lego is one of the companies that remembered the core idea of toys - play," he says.

"When the founder focused on wanting to make playfulness happen through the toys they were making, they set the Lego corporation onto that success story - it's okay to be happy, it's okay to want to have nice things, and playing is fun, and rewarding.

"When you focus on a core value - play - and bring it to an audience, it's got that sustainable longevity because children are encouraged to play, and even if those kids give up Lego along the way, then they may well come back to it."

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to tip out a tub of Lego. That rushing sound of a clinky waterfall - you know what I mean (there is a Lego-endorsed white noise playlist on Spotify) - takes me right back to my childhood and we all need a little of that.