Thursday, September 28, 2006

Brick Central Terminal

The most surprising part of the NYC trip was a chance visit to the Toys R Us in Times Square. We had some time to kill before a movie, so we went in and headed for (what else?) the LEGO section.

That's when I first saw "Brick Central Terminal".

This corner of the LEGO department contained dozens of clear plastic bins with batches of LEGO pieces. Each bin contained a specific type and color piece. While I stood staring at this, slackjawed, Mrs. Mosley spotted the sign off to the side that explained how one could purchase a bag of LEGO for 19.99. The bag, almost the length of a subway footlong, had a zipper seal on top to settle what one could get away with in terms of "a bag full" in this scenario.

Believe it or not, I hesitated. Fortunately, Mrs. Mosley was there to prod me on and insist I get a bag. So I did. In fact, two nights later, I got a second one.

And here they are:



Big yellow bags just about to burst with LEGO goodness. Here's the combined pile of them:



Ooooh, Baby!

For those of you not understanding the significance of all this, let me explain. When you buy a set, and you plan to use those piece to make other things, you may end up with a lot of pieces you don't have a lot of use for. An opportunity to buy exactly what you want is, therefore, pretty damn cool.

But allow me to express this in economics. The total cost of the two bags was 40 dollars and the total amount of bricks was 1,761. Now, lets take a sample set like the 4881 Robo Platoon (which Mrs. Mosley got for me sometime back). It has lots of small pieces, which I leaned heavily towards in my choices, and few really specialized parts. That set currently goes for $10.00 and has 218 pieces. If I bought 8 of those sets, I'd have 1,744 pieces, which means that I got twice the amount of LEGO for my money in Toys R Us.

Pretty slick.

LEGO FANS REJOICE!

2 comments:

Elisabeth said...

honey, the two bags cost $40, not $80. :)

Alonzo Mosley (FBI) said...

D'oh!

It's fixed now.