My New Hobby Is Posting Retrogaming LEGO Pics On Instagram

LEGO and other competing building blocks now have a very strong presence in our household. My boys have received several sets as Christmas and birthday presents over the past couple years. I subscribed them to the LEGO club and they anxiously await their magazine now every other month. Plus, I must have seen the LEGO movie at least a dozen times and the Ninjago series is a popular Netflix choice for them.

So with all the kid peer pressure, I decided a few months ago to collect some of the G.I. Joe Kre-O figures and sets. I guess it's therapeutic for me to sit down and put together these sets. And since I started collecting while they were on clearance at Toys 'R Us, I'm not breaking the bank on a fun little hobby.

Fast forward to a couple nights ago, I was watching TV and if I'm not that into a show, I typically like to do something else while I watch. I usually just mess around on my tablet, but a box of LEGOs was staring at me in the living room. I recently just setup my Nintendo and Sega Genesis in the boys room on a 13" TV, so I had 8-bit video games on my mind I guess. I decided I'd try to build some classic video game characters and here's what happened...

A photo posted by Jason Gross (@great2bgross) on Apr 6, 2015 at 7:15pm PDT

After looking at some photos on the web, I decided to go with the Atari 2600 version of Pac-man. The console adaptation paled in comparison to the arcade version, so I figured I'd give it a little love. (Plus it looked fairly easy.) And it was, so after the boys approved of my new hobby I decided to go a little bigger during the NCAA championship game the next night...

A photo posted by Jason Gross (@great2bgross) on Apr 6, 2015 at 8:58pm PDT

Even though my wife didn't recognize them, I felt like my Dig Dug creations were pretty fantastic. It was always one of my favorite games and I wasn't about to go Atari 2600 with these characters which are awful. So last night, the TV wasn't even on and my mind was churning on the next creation. Unfortunately, the colors in our LEGO collection are limited to mainly the primes so I had to make a some concessions with the images I was using from the web...

A photo posted by Jason Gross (@great2bgross) on Apr 7, 2015 at 8:11pm PDT

My Galaga ship was spot on, but very delicate with not many connection points. The concession with the colors was made with his enemy and tractor beam...

A photo posted by Jason Gross (@great2bgross) on Apr 7, 2015 at 8:23pm PDT

I doubt I'm gonna continue at this pace, but with the requests piling in from the boys there will be many more to come. And it will give me something to post on Instagram which I haven't really utilized until now so connect with me if you like! (rediscoverthe80s) You'll be seeing some familiar ones, but I also want to build some uncommon characters too.