Lego Obsession Builds and Builds in Adulthood

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Calling All Lego Enthusiasts

Todd Web, creator of Brickfair, describes the show for lego fans of all ages.

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"It didn't take my wife long to figure out I was buying them for myself as much as for the kids," said Fairbanks, who works in computer support at the National Institutes of Health. "I'm a much bigger fan now than when I was a kid."

In a room off the main floor Sunday morning, Philip Eudy was trying to get a string fixed so that a giant Rube Goldberg-type contraption he'd brought from his home in North Carolina would work again. Eudy is in the subset of Lego fans fascinated by the company's robotic line, called Mindstorms, and he came to show off his latest machine that uses all sorts of ingenious mechanical strategies for moving a plastic ball around a circuit involving tubes, strings and levers.

It's almost showtime, and the pressure is on to get that string fixed: The crowd of kids and grown-ups is stretched across the front of the hotel, and the doors are about to open. When the crowd comes in, "it's like a Metallica concert," he said.

Not every serious Lego fan attending the show was lugging a bin of bricks, however. Orion Pobursky, a 30-year-old Navy man who works as a submarine electrician, is a mover and shaker in the virtual Lego community. He's always loved the brick, but he travels a lot and can't really take his collection into the cramped space of a submarine, so he got involved by running a Lego fan site that offers special software for those who want to design Lego models on their computers.

"That way, I could play with Lego wherever I go," he said.

So what's with all the tech guys and their Lego obsession? "I think an appreciation for Lego pushes you towards that type of field," said Richard Schamus, one of the organizers of BrickFair, who works as a computer security consultant for the government.

No doubt some of the kids packed into the Sheraton Premiere will grow up to be engineers, electricians and techies, too. Eric Desman, a dad from Clifton attending the show with his son, said 9-year-old Noah has recently expressed an interest in growing up to be an engineer -- so that he can play with Lego bricks forever.

Not every kid is taking such a straightforward career-planning approach, though. After tagging along with me at the show, my 7-year-old stepson now says he wants to start a rock band so he can get rich and buy every Lego kit in the world.

I hope it works out for him, as I probably can't afford to buy him that Death Star set this year.