Lego Storage Bricks are storage bins shaped like gigantic Lego bricks. I recently did not receive any of these from Lego for review purposes; however I did find two on clearance for $9.98 each at my local Fred Meyer and was unable to resist buying them because I am constantly growing older and feel an ever-increasing sense of nostalgia for toys from my childhood. In this review, I will cover several key aspects of the Lego Storage Bricks to help you decide if they meet your building-toy-shaped storage bin needs.
Size and construction
Lego Storage Bricks come in a variety of designs corresponding to the shapes and shades of classic Lego bricks. There are one, two, four, and eight knob bricks available in a wide variety of colors. The storage bricks are made of a plastic material that feels and smells very similar to the ordinary sized Lego bricks you may remember playing with or stepping on when you were little.
The storage bricks stack on top of each other securely; however, unlike actual Lego bricks, Lego Storage Bricks merely stack, they do not lock together. So, for example, if you lift up the top brick of a stack, the bricks below it will not also lift up. The lids of the storage bricks fasten on with just enough friction to keep the lid in place when moving or stacking the brick, but not so much that it is difficult to remove the lid when the time comes to open it.
The four knob brick is 9.75 inches square and 7.25 inches tall, which is approximately 30 times the size of a regular sized Lego brick. The inside cavity of the brick is 9 inches square and 4.25 inches tall. This is enough space to hold over 10 mint-condition, unopened Hot Wheels cars.
Price
Prices range from approximately $20 for a four prong storage brick to $35 for an eight prong brick. For $814, you could build a pretty sweet wall of these big enough to cover up a doorway. For $10,185, you could build a whole room and feel like a life-size Lego person who can take apart and rebuild his house whenever he wants, and never has to eat or change his clothes, and can never have his heart broken again because he’s made of plastic. However, if you are like me, at these prices, you will never own enough of these to truly hide behind.
Utility
The nominal purpose of Lego Storage Bricks is to store Lego pieces. However, they can actually be used to store anything. You can tell your wife that you need to buy them because your home office doesn’t have a closest and you really need something to put your extra cords and screwdrivers in.
Also, it looks like it would probably float, so maybe you could use them as a caddy in the bathtub. (Disclaimer: I’m not sure if they actually float.)
Also, if you want to start your kids off with Lego at an early age, you could give one of these to a baby and they could not possibly choke on it because it is literally bigger than a baby’s head.
User experience
Lego pieces suffer from what economists call “network effects.” For example, if you were the only person in the world with a telephone, it would be totally useless because you wouldn’t have anyone to call. However, for each other person who purchases a telephone, the number of possible calls increases exponentially. (Well, technically not “exponentially,” but I’m not sure if there is a precise mathematical term for this type of growth. “Triangular numerically?”) As a result, the value of a telephone increases proportional to the number of other telephones in the world. Unless you’re an introvert, in which case you probably agree that it sounds like sweet bliss to live in a world where you don’t have to worry about people calling you unexpectedly.
Anyways, the point is, Lego pieces are very similar to telephones in that the value of any one particular Lego piece is dependent on the number of other Lego pieces that you can connect it to. After you’ve purchased one or two Lego Storage Bricks and the initial euphoria of holding giant pieces of Lego and feeling like you’re Ant-Man has worn off, they’re just going to sit there on your shelf and you will look at them and think to yourself, “Before I bought these, I probably should have considered how much fun it would be to play with Lego if I only had two pieces of Lego.”
Final thoughts
You can hide your collection of Pez dispensers inside them. Also, they serve as a persistent reminder of the tragic, circular nature of human existence… When you were little, you couldn’t afford the Lego castle that you wanted. Now that you’re an adult, you just need some storage solutions. You discover that they make Lego Storage Bricks. Even though $20 no longer seems like the unobtainable sum of money it did when you were little because now you spend hundreds of dollars on bills every month, $20 a brick is a lot to ask when you could get any size of plastic tub at Big Lots for under $5. Still, if you see one of these, you’ll probably spend the money because there’s just something about Legos. And these aren’t just any old Legos. They are Legos that can hold onto your memories even as your memories are still holding onto Legos. They are Legos that can hold the detritus of your life.