Do you buy Lego for future offspring?

[Duckman]

I've always wanted to know if I'm the only one but...My friends laugh at me, and my family think I'm crazy (except my wife), but so far these last 2 years I've bought my son:

Brickbeards Bounty, Loot Island
RC Freight Train Set
Cafe Corner, Market St, Green Grocer, Medieval Village
UCS AT-ST, UCS Millenium Falcon, Imperial Star Destroyer, Battlepacks, HOTH Rebel Bases
All the Construction sets, and many multiples
An absolute tonne of city sets
A tonne of castle

Now, just the above has probably cost me somewhere around $4000 or perhaps more.

However, this is the odd part.... .my son is 10 months old. I'm buying them now on the assumption that I would have great difficulty in acquiring these when he will actually presumably want them later on. I mean, what 5 yr old boy wouldn't like Star Wars, or Trains, or Construction or Pirates etc. I recall when I was younger, and the forest men series came out, or the original pirates, I would have had to wait something like 20 years or so for them to do something similiar.
Perhaps I'm spoiling my son too, but my wife and I have talked about this, and we will only give him one big set per birthday / xmas / special event etc. I just remember how fantastic it was when I was a child and my father built me enormous play scenes from his imagination. My wife is also hoping to have another son aswell, so I guess this further reduces the chance of the boxed sets becoming a dusty annoyance.

Do other people on here (clearly the older variety), purchase sets for their future family members aswell?

[Bertramtalespinner]

My boy has just turned 5, and I've been slowly allowing him access to my Lego. His first toy, as in at the hospital, was a Lego Apple music box thing. And I didn't even buy it! (I'm pretty sure there was a photo I posted here that day) He's been a huge Duplo Thomas fan, we still build massive layouts. But now that he's 5 he's moving into big boy Lego. I recently did a trade for the ISD and we had lots of fun assembling that sucker.

I'm very tempted to buy more Lego than I would with the belief that it's for him, but Mom, my wallet and common sense slow me somewhat. As a train fan, it's been hard to not dive into that stuff for him, but it's pricey.

[LL918]

Well, I don't have any kids yet, but I must confess to using the idea of future kids as an excuse to justify buying LEGO myself. I used to think that I would prefer a daughter, but later realised, after buying a Bionicle for a friend's boy that a son would be ok too. (At the party I was the adult helping all the kids with the little sets that they each received in the treasure hunt - unfortunately they were not real LEGO, I have since explained the error to my friend.) I do have a habit of always buying LEGO for my friends' kids for birthdays etc.

[rocksteady]

I'm 27 and I have one massive lego collection (Most of them are Lego Legends). I have alot of old themes like the orginal Pirate collection, luckly that i took great care until today and never took apart. I come to think of it that oneday I'll pass it to my future children, when I find that they're the right age to look after them. I don't think much of it that i'm old and still buy alot of Star Wars Lego or other theme sets, I would think that it would pay off later when I give it all to my kids. If the chance that my kids are not interested I can always sell my Lego collection for big $$$$. I actually recentally sold The Batman Invasion set that I got at winners for $30 bucks clearance for $175 on Kijiji, it's ok cuz I actually have multiple sets of it.

[Gumby]

Wow - are you guys interested in adopting a 31 year old son?

I've also thought about this - buying cool sets now for my kids in the future. Currently, my son is 13 months old and I just gave him his first Duplo set. I'm scared that he won't like LEGO the way I do, so I haven't bought him any other sets. I already have a significant amount of LEGO myself (over 200k pieces) and don't have very much extra space. If I see something now that *I* like, I'll buy it for myself. How can I predict what themes he will like? If there's something from before his time that he likes, well - there's always Bricklink...

Once he's a bit older, if he shows interest in LEGO of course I'll buy him sets. He'll have his own collection, and I'll have mine.

[hatcher]

I've bought some lego for my children. Most of it is too advanced for them yet (my daughter is 3 and my son only 14 months), but my daughter loves the duplo I've given her, and she is proving quite adept at putting together "daddy lego", the stuff I buy for myself. I am totally with you Duckman, and think that when my kids are old enough for it, all the currently cool sets will be long gone (except for bricklink) and I want them to be the envy of all their friends. "You've got Star Wars Lego? Can I come over and play?"

[thepatient]

Duckman you are a genius. I wish I would have thought of that one. I'm gonna start saying that to my wife, "ya' know, this would be a good set for the kids when they get older... I'll put it together first so I know all the pieces are there." At that point, I'll just claim it as mine. Usually I use the This hobby might pay for the kids college some day line, but your idea might work better.

My kids are 3 (boy) and 6 (girl). I buy Duplo for him, and last year I started buying LEGO for her. I make it quite clear that they have their LEGO and I have mine. I let them touch my LEGO, but only if I'm in my LEGO room with them. I have a deal with my daughter, (to encourage her to clean up her room) if I have to pick-up the mess in her room, I keep any LEGO pieces that I find as a "tax" for having to clean up her mess. I now have a lot of pink pieces I didn't have before. I haven't figured out what to do with those yet. My daughter has caught on to my plan. She will not pickup all of the mess, but she makes sure the LEGO is always put away.

I never buy sets for the future to give to them later, they can have my sets when I'm six foot under ground.

[Puddleglum]

My son is three, and he has a nice supply of Duplo (mostly garage sale finds). I have bought him a few LEGO sets here and there for future use, but I haven't spent anywhere near that much. (Actually, that's more like my entire LEGO budget for 3 or 4 years!) I feel pretty confident that LEGO is always going to have plenty of great stuff to get my son in the future, a but I don't blame anyone for wanting to stockpile some of the awesome stuff they're making right now. Plus, as others have said, it's pretty much impossible to lose money buying LEGO sets and stashing them in the closet MISB. (Speaking of which, I would have to rent some storage space if I wanted to set aside so many huge sets like that!

[meeotch]

My daughter has plenty of Duplo right now. She's three. My wife would know that it's a complete sham if I were to buy her (or our son, who's only 7 months) any sets. She'd know that they're for me! But even if they really were for them, we don't have anywhere to store them right now in our apartment. As far as what I have, all the Star Wars sets stay assembled and on display. However, I'm thinking of taking apart and reassembling some of them soon for cleaning (especially my 4504, that thing is dusty, I tell you!) and I am not against allowing the kids to disassemble for reassembly those sets when they get older. When they are older, I'll probably be a lot more lenient than the average parent as far as letting them get some of the more expensive sets, just because I understand where the value in $100 worth of those plastic pieces is. But they will have their Legos, and I will have mine. Although they will be free to play with my loose pieces as they wish if they exhibit responsibility. I think it would be cool if they had a nice size collection to pull from to let their creativity explode.

[Robzula]

"daddy lego", the stuff I buy for myself.

Love that term now.

As for buying for your kids for the future, I'm only 17 (so no kids) but I think it's a great idea. My parents hated LEGO ("you just throw it all over your floor") so I rarely got any as a kid, and so I missed out on a lot of neat old sets that are expensive now.

[donneyboy]

OMG! If my dad bought me 10179 I would die! lucky boy.

[Jedd the Jedi]

I sincerely hope to be able to pass on at least some of my Lego to any children I may have in the future - and keep the rest (ie the bulk of my collection) safely away so that, when nobody is looking, I and only I can swoosh those around.

[Faulconbridge]

I actuallly stopped buying sets for myself recently to focus on getting stuff for our boys.

Our sons are 5 and 3 and have been bitten by the LEGO bug. We have some Duplo blocks that the boys have enjoyed, especially the Thomas sets, but they've been steadily moving to standared LEGO sets. I brought out some of my Classic Space sets the other day for them to play with. They're disassembled and the smaller pieces have been removed until our younger one stops putting things in his mouth. They've been added to the general LEGO bin for both of them to play with. I've also got some old Town sets that will go in there as well.

Our older son is also into Star Wars, so he and I play with my Death Star from time to time. He's also gotten some of my old SW sets as well as some of my father's old SW sets (3 generations!). My plan is to keep a few of the larger sets (probably one from each film) as "mine" and give the rest to the boys when they're both old enough.

[Crusader]

I'm not sure if I ever bought any Lego for future offspring, but I've purchased plenty of Lego sets well before my kids were able to really play with it. In particular I've picked up sets on clearance that have showed up as birthday or Christmas presents years late. Santa Claus has scored a few points over the years by delivering sets that my boys didn't know to exist.

I wouldn't be worried whether or not your kids will like Legos. They will, and they will most likely like the same things you do. Just don't be crushed if they don't like them quite as much as you do. My older son really took to Exo-Force over Star Wars and Castle for a while, but now he's swung back. My younger son liked Castle but wasn't that impressed by the Pirate sets.

One word of caution however. It is very easy to over stockpile, especially on the bigger sets. I know I bought a few big $100 or so sets in years past as future gifts, but I failed to foresee that my sons would also want the big $100 sets that are out now. Eventually it gets hard to pass out those big sets without spoiling your kids if you're only doing one big set per birthday/Christmas. I've also had my sons ready to spend theior own money on sets that I had previously bought on sale, but haven't given out yet. Take heed.

On the positive side, my kids have a Lego collection that blows their friends' away.

[thepatient]

On the positive side, my kids have a Lego collection that blows their friends' away.

That's cool. Currently, I'm the big kid with the awsome LEGO collection. I've come home from work to have my daughter showing her friends my collection, and my son (3) will be the "tour guide". He has managed to memorize most of the ships and characters. You will hear him telling other kids, "...that's an AT-ST, that's an AT-AT, and you see that guy...that's Jabba." I've also heard,"You can look, but don't touch, or my daddy will beat you up." It's like having a well trained security guard that's three and a half feet tall. He feels the passion on keeping my sets nice and he'll tell other kids. I wouldn't beat up a little kid for touching my LEGO...well not too bad anyway.

It's amazing to me how much my son retains on all the names for the stuff in my collection. We keep my sets on display, but he always wants me to go over every character and vehicle with him (pretty much on a daily basis). Those are really some special times. I think my son will be a Star Wars fan too. If he doesn't... well that really works in my favor.

[Daz Hoo]

I also have a 20 months old son, and no, I haven't bought him any standard LEGO sets yet. I did gave the two buckets of used Duplo bricks that I had, and bought him two more buckets, but I'm waiting to see if he really does have an interest in LEGO before I go all out.

If he does like LEGO, then we'll have plenty of fun together (even if we have to use my own collection). If he doesn't, well, I'll encourage him in any way I can. He's the most important thing in my life right now, so I will be interested in whatever he will like later on.

But, from what I've seen, usually, if you're passionate about something, there's a good chance that your kids will at least be interested in what you're passionate about (well, until the ungreatful years of adolescence, that is). So far, I love hockey, and my son seems to like hockey too. So there's hope I guess!

[buriedbybricks]

I'm right there with you Duckman!
I started before my son was born and he's 18 months now. I had set aside a couple of cool Star Wars sets that I thought he'd like when he was old enough (we had known it would be a boy) and then decided that I would pick up more when they went on sale. The picture below is the first haul I tucked away for him after a trip to the States. I got a couple of US exclusive sets on clearence only to find out when I returned that one of my local store was clearing out all their Exo-Forces sets at crazy discounts. Well it grew from there...

Since putting these away, I've begun to keep track of the sets I package up for him and have stored away more than 50 additional sets the last one being the S@H General Grievous.
I don't count the Duplo we have set aside for his birthday and Christmas this year. He'll be starting his LEGO journey with an almost complete Thomas & Friends train collection and various Dino and Standard sets. I always used to do my Christmas shopping for my nephew in January when the LEGO deals are the deepest around here and this past year was the first time he recognized that a set was older (it was an early 2007 set), but he still loved it. He turns 13 this month.
The fact is if you want to have some Star Wars sets for your kids to play with and you don't want them drooling all over yours, you'd better buy extra now!

[stawas]

My oldest son was born in 2000 and the LEGO Star Wars stockpile began. His brother was born in 2002 and they have been LEGO enthusiasts every since. They have Primos, Duplos and Quattros. Then they moved on to minifigs and have been building System LEGOs ever since. I quickly learned that you were limited by the LEGO themes that were currently available and thanks to Bricklink and storage closets - we now have Space, Pirates, Adventurers, Castle, Trains, Ninja and Vikings waiting in the wings. Our biggest challenge is keeping the rarer sets together so there are sets they can mix and match and sets that are kept together.

[porkwine]

Not a bad idea but the problem is after about 5-6 years of storing them it may be hard to open the set especially if it turns out to be a hard to find or very desirable item.

[Michael]

I have a 10 month old boy too, and an 8 year step-son.
I have been buying SW LEGO since it commenced and have quite a stash. I never bought it with a child in mind. However somewhere along the line I got married and now have a little boy. I must admit I did buy the 10179 last year and put away, to one day build with him (but more as a Dad/Son thing than as an actual present). I did buy a few kits from the Castle line last year and although I built them, it was more about putting them away for him.

With his first birthday coming up I have been thinking about some Duplo for him. But I think he's too young, he does already have 1 Thomas kit, but he only chews it. So have decided will get wait till Christmas to buy some more kits. I have now come to the conclusion that I'll just buy him kits that he likes when he gets old enough. LEGO does such a great job with new lines that I don't feel like I need to stockpile them now (storage is also an issue, I really didn't have room for those Castle kits I bought). I also don't really want to push my tastes onto him. I'm sure he'll be into LEGO and no doubt SW (I do try to get him t sit and watch CW with me, but he's just to active) but as for other themes, I'll let him pick.