Yep, call me what you want – I am proud to be an AFOL.
“Whats an AFOL?” I hear you say?
It stands for Adult Fan of Lego, and its a label I am proud to wear. Ever since I was a child I have loved the famous bricks, and have enjoyed many an hour building everything from cars to castles – and then enjoyed smashing them all to pieces so I could build something new.
I dont know what it was about LEGO that drew me to its colourful blocks, but Meccano and K’NEX didnt stand a chance. I was LEGO Till I Die.
Shoot forward a few decades, and I am still drawn to LEGO in every form. My kids regular LEGO or the couple of LEGO Technic kits I have bought or been gifted over the years – nothing quite beats a few hours clicking bricks together to make something cool.
Dad AFOL
I was over the moon when my kids started enjoying LEGO building, as it meant I could relive my own childhood through them. They were naturally gifted builders from day one, I wonder if I somehow passed it down to them through DNA? (lol) Perhaps my bodies “building blocks” have evolved to be more brick shaped, like LEGO itself – and so my children were dreaming of becoming master builders before they could even say the word minifigure?
AFOL Problems
For all its benefits there are a few things that put a damper on being an AFOL – or being a fan of LEGO at any ages I suppose. One of these negatives is the cost. A good LEGO set can cost you upwards of £100, and many of the kits I want are just simply out of reach re pricing and/or having the room to actually put them anywhere once built. I did see a cool LEGO Technic wall mounting product that was being sold specifically to mount large LEGO Technic builds on, and each mount had been colour matched to certain kits.
They do so many of the mounts and they look AMAZING, butttt… you’ve still got to have a lot of walls to mount them on and if you’re like me and get bored of things quite easily so I’m quickly on to the next build – meaning I would have Technic LEGO covering every single wall in my house. And whereas that does sound pretty cool, I’m not sure my wife would be too thrilled about it. Also, they are gonna cling on to some serious dust, meaning they are likely to just become another thing to stick on the never ending list of jobs we have to do – on rotation – in our homes.
AFOL Saviour
Its for that reason I was quite glad to stumble upon Brick Club, which is a UK based LEGO Technic Subscription service, allowing me to build the kits of my dreams without having to fork out £100’s for the privilege. A kit arrives, we build it and enjoy the process, then we break it apart – being careful not to lose any pieces!
Then we send it back for free and wait for the next one to arrive. Its a simple process and so far its been a blast. Me and my kids have had fun building the Lambo, the Landy and many of the other kits they have in stock, I hope to get the huge Liebherr excavator next!
The only issue I have with the service so far is they sometimes take a day or two to get back to me (my second kit was a model we actually own so I emailed them about how I block out certain kits from rotation) but I have learned they are a small team running it around families and stuff – so I don’t mind too much giving them a bit of slack.
So anyway, I’m an AFOL and I’m proud. Now, pass me a red 2×3 block please…