When you are a child of the 80s there are always those memories you look back on and really cherish. We all wanted our own alien to hide from the government, just like we hoped to someday race towards a slowly closing door, just make it through, and then reach back and pull our hat out just in time. And, of course, we hoped to someday feel the wind blow through our hair from atop our very own hoverboard.
When we had a toy battle, it was all out war. Optimus Prime would crash through a Lego wall and destroy not only the Decepticons, but also Skeletor, Gargamel and Cobra Commander.
So when I heard there was a Lego Back to the Future set coming out on August 1st, my inner child went nuts. I had to have it. The set premiered at SDCC this year, and while those lucky few who found one in their hands were asking $70+ for it on Ebay, I decided as exciting as it is, I could wait until the official release this week. And here it is.
The best part of this set was how it came about. After a bit of research I found it was a Lego CUUSOO set, and I wondered what that meant. Turns out it’s an ongoing project by those clever people over at Lego to give fans the chance to get their own ideas made into sets. It’s simple (no, not really). Fans come up with an idea for a set, create a prototype, and post it over at Lego.CUUSOO.com and see if they can get 10,000 people to support it. Every month, creators look at every set that recieves enough support, and if they like the idea, it gets made. And then the creator gets 1% of the sales!
So getting back to the Back to the Future set, it is outstanding. I expected it to be one of those overpriced sets, somewhere around $49.99 (or even more), but it’s only $35, which is a fair price for such a cool set. It comes with parts to create any of the different versions of the DeLorean, plus the added bonus of seeing Dr. Emmett Brown and Marty McFly as minifigures. It even comes with Marty’s skateboard! Sure, I’d rather the hoverboard, but what can I do, right? The doors open like a real DeLorean and the wheels even fold up for flight mode.
I guess what has me most excited about this isn’t just the fact that they took something from the 1980s instead of all of the high-tech toys coming out today. It’s also the anticipation of the possibility of any other classic 1980s films being picked up and made into official Lego sets. Who wouldn’t want to see a Peter Venkman vs. Slimer set, including all of the other Ghostbusters, the firehouse and of course the Ecto1? And if this can be made, why not a Big set with Tom Hanks playing the giant floor piano? Or even better…Fezzik, Inigo and Vizzini carrying Buttercup up the Cliffs of Insanity with Westley chasing them up the rope? The possibilities become endless when a toy creator like Lego is willing to listen to their fans.
And for those of you who might be wondering, yes, the DeLoreon comes with a flux capacitor.
A native of the Philadelphia area, Dennis Finocchiaro is the author of The Z Word, a collection of flash fiction that takes place during the apocalypse, and is a lover of all things Lego.