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Years ago when I had a manual engraving machine and made door signs, traditional name badges, and electrical box plates for a side business, my older son was into LEGO® kits. He of course built himself a car. At the same time personalized license plates were first coming along ("vanity plates") and I thought he should have a vanity plate for his awesome creation. So I tried engraving "Heyward" on a brick--and be darn if it did not work. I then figured out how to fill them in, and it really looked spiffy ( a 70's word for very very nice). But on a manual machine, they were a real pain and even though I thought it to be a great idea, I knew that there was really no way to produce them economically, and the internet had not been invented as a marketing mechanism. About three years ago, my younger son "Peyton" had just graduated from UNC and was looking for a job. At this time we were doing those little mini-license keyrings and made dog tags still on that same manual engraving machine. We worked ham fests and flea markets and craft shows. I convinced him that we could probably make a little money if we bought a "real", i.e. computerized machine while he went to technical school to get trained to make a living. As we were setting up the machine, we had to move Heyward's old LEGO® collection to make room for our new workshop, and the old idea popped up again. I took a few of his old bricks and tried out the idea on the new machine. It was a frustrating experience but we finally worked out the process with a bit of what I think is some innovative LEGO® engineering and persistence and I was ready to try the internet to see if any interest out there. Low and behold I discovered that for some reason no one else--at least no one I could discover--had come up with that old idea. And I discovered a whole culture of creative really smart people previously unknown to me. Matt Gerber, the coordinator of the first BricksWest® thought the idea of engraving on the bricks was good and I said they would make great name badges and keyrings. He jumped at the idea and envisioned a contest for badge enhancement by the participants and they seemed to really take to it. Peyton and I went to BricksWest® to see what the possibilities were. I was of course in hopes of being able to wow the LEGO corporate guys present with my incredibly simple but brilliant idea and get permission to set up a kiosk at LEGOLAND, move to California to make my fortune. (This idea is too good and watch--I bet The LEGO Company will soon be offering them at their spiffy theme parks and their company stores). Well it was a success anyway as I got to go to the Tucson Mineral Show, see Southern California, go to the zoo, and meet a bunch of interesting people that like to play with LEGO® bricks. But in this context, play is like Jordan "plays" basketball or Peyton Manning "plays" football, or Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe "played" tennis. I of course was becoming immersed in TLC ("The Lego Community") and learned of BrickFest. I contacted Christina and started doing their badges. I must say it has been fun. This year, 2004, I set up at BrickFest 2004 and stayed pretty busy cranking out all kinds of things that people wanted from logos on mini-fig torsos to trophy bricks to building names to edition number bricks for MOCs. I was so excited about the enthusiasm that I came home and registered this domain name which will I hope be the portal for all kinds of ideas I have and have been given to me and will be given to me for new products. |
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