Lego, Lego everywhere but my kids couldn't care less. This week we have been shifting our kids into a new room. It's been a nightmare. So many toys. An arsenal of plastic weapons, a team's worth of sports gear and four clean sacks worth of soft toys. But what we found in the top shelf of their cupboard shocked, embarrassed and disgusted me. It made me feel like a bad parent. It made me fear for the future of humanity. Four unopened large sets of Star Wars lego. Sets that had been sitting gathering dust for two years. Each worth well over $100. A massive AT-AT Walker untouched, a huge Millennium Falcon unopened, Darth Vader's gigantic Star Destroyer unloved and, most beautiful, awesome and cool of all, a big intricate Imperial Shuttle Tydirium.
All toys I would have killed for as a child. I would have done anything for anything Star Wars. Let alone Lego Star Wars. Like me you probably spent nights lying awake imagining a world where toys could be this cool. I had two bags of Torro, a squishy Lego imitation. That was it. But boy did I love making spaceships out of it. I made the world's worst looking Tie Fighter out of Torro house parts. It was awesome. I played with it for three years.
My kids have the greatest Lego sets in the history of the world and they can't even be bothered pushing a chair 1m to climb up get them down. Little ratbags. I wish my 6-year-old self could travel forward in time and give them a hiding for being so lucky.
But the unmade sets are just a small part of the Lego tsunami that is destroying middle class lives. We have way too much Lego in general. It's everywhere. Huge plastic boxes, piled on top of huge plastic boxes of it. Where the hell did it all come from? Ninety per cent of any room cleaning is spent picking up Lego. Every friend I have with kids is suffering a debilitating avalanche of Lego. Our lounges look like Lego refuse transfer stations. It's everywhere and it freaking hurts when you stand on the little bits.
