The set was LEGO® Fabuland 328 — a small, cheerful thing with rounded bricks and bright colours, designed for young children. It came from my uncle. In Poland in the late 1970s, LEGO® bricks were not something you found in an ordinary shop. If you wanted them, you needed foreign currency. There was a special kind of store called Pewex where you could buy Western goods — but only if you had dollars or deutschmarks. My parents didn’t. Most families didn’t…

The other way was to know someone who lived abroad, or worked abroad, and was willing to bring something back. My uncle was that person. I don’t remember the occasion — birthday, name day, Christmas, I genuinely can’t say. What I remember is the set itself, and the feeling of it.

Twenty-two pieces is enough

Today’s children receive sets with thousands of pieces. They build something, display it for a week, and move on to the next one. I say this without judgment — the world is different now, and abundance is not a sin.

But I played with those twenty-two pieces for nearly a year. You learn something important when you have very little: you learn to see possibilities that aren’t obvious. You turn a door piece into a tail fin. You build a rocket, or try to. You build it again differently. You discover that the limitation is never really the pieces — it’s always the imagination.

I was careful with every piece. You were, when you knew there would be no replacements. I never lost one. I still have the set today — it sits in my exhibition in Krakow, the only piece in the entire collection that is not from the LEGO® Technic series. It is there because it was first.

The brother who didn’t catch the fever

My brother is six years younger than me. He played with the bricks too, of course — they were there, in the flat, and he was a child. But the obsession didn’t take hold of him the way it took hold of me. Some things are like that. Two people can touch the same flame and only one gets burned.

I was the one who got burned.

The certificate with a distinction that changed nothing

Every year at school I received what we called “świadectwo z paskiem”, a school report with a distinction stripe, awarded to the best students. It was considered a significant achievement. I was proud of it.

It made no difference to the question of LEGO® bricks. There was no budget. The Pewex store existed for people with foreign currency, and no grade on a school report changed that fact. My uncle remained the only source, and his visits were not frequent.

I tell this not to complain — my childhood was happy, and the twenty-two pieces were genuinely enough. I tell it because I think it explains something about what came later. When you wait a long time for something, and you finally have the means to pursue it, you pursue it completely.

What happened next

The Fabuland set was followed, eventually, by the set that changed everything: LEGO® Technic 853 Car Chassis, released in 1977. But that is a story for another article.

What I can tell you is that between those twenty-two childhood pieces and the collection I have today — over 800 sets, more than half a million bricks, gathered across 23 years — there is a straight line. It runs through a boy building rockets from door pieces in a Polish flat in the late 1970s, through decades of searching, and ends, for now, at ul. Kościuszki 47 in Krakow.

The Fabuland 328 is there, on the shelf, exactly where it belongs.

Come and see it

The exhibition is open daily from 10:00 to 20:00, at ul. Kościuszki 47 in Krakow, a short walk from Wawel Castle. Every set in the collection is displayed — from 1977 to today. I am usually there, and I am always happy to talk about the bricks.

You know, some stories are worth telling in person.

Świat Małych Techników — World’s Largest Exhibition of LEGO® Technic Bricks

Krakow, Poland | smt.edu.pl | Open daily 10:00–20:00

LEGO® and LEGO® Technic are registered trademarks of the LEGO Group. Świat Małych Techników is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the LEGO Group.