As it’s my birthday next week I planned a trip to the nearest Lego shop, which is in Liverpool One, the big shopping centre here in Liverpool. I had worked out what I definitely planned to buy, and what sets I wanted to have a look at for future consideration – and maybe one of them would end up coming home with me as well.
Having not been to a shop before I was joyful to be surrounded by Lego, boxes, displays, a wee table for kids to have fun assembling things, and even a giant Lego Friends figure midway into the shop!
Not sure I want to think about how long something that big would take to assemble, it’s certainly striking, being nearly 6ft tall. And I love the wee doggy she’s holding also.
Of course, Lego is mainly aimed at children, which explains why most of the displays in glass cases in amongst the boxed sets were at kid-height. About the eye level of an 8-year-old, maybe. Being no longer 8 that meant about waist-high on me so there was lots of twisting and bending to peer into the cases, but I got to check out some of the sets I wanted a preview of, and could see at once that a couple of them weren’t as enticing in real life at all.
One thing I did love was the augmented reality 3D display screen. If you hold up a Lego set box in front of it, as well as seeing yourself and the box, it also somehow reads the details of what you’re holding and loads up an animated 3D version of the box contents, so in my case with the Turbo Track Racer that I was coveting, the blue and white car assembled itself, came “alive”, drove around the screen at a logical angle to the box I was holding, drove back onto the box, disassembled itself, turned into the fork lift, moved around then did the same with the go-kart.
If that doesn’t drive sales up I don’t know what would – I could have happily grabbed box after box and taken them to the screen but I behaved myself! Definitely a fun thing to play around with next visit though.
I’ll not go into what I bought for my birthday just now, but I did visit the Pick a Brick wall (which will get its own post at a future date) and managed to fill three cups as I wanted to be sure and get the 60th birthday limited edition set
I’d planned on two PAB cups and then another set but the sets I could afford I didn’t fancy, and while I’ll likely get the blue racer I admired zooming round the virtual screen, that’s for another time, so a third cup it was.
I had a great time at the store but other than the PAB wall it’s just as convenient and a lot cheaper to check out stuff and buy online. Still, I’m sure I’ll be back there, and be sure to say hello to the Friends figure if she’s still there.
Lego Blue 