The Lego Imagination Center a world of creative genius

If there was ever any question that Lego was an important part of my childhood, it was completely erased yesterday as I entered the Lego Imagination Center in the Mall of America. I was visiting southern Minnesota on business this week and we capped off the trip by visiting the country’s largest shopping mall. I couldn’t care less about the four stories worth of shops. I wanted to see the Lego store. And boy, did I ever.

I was in Lego nerd heaven. According to the Lego website, it was the first Lego store in the United States, built in 1992. The Imagination Center wasn’t just a store for Legomaniacs, it was a store for me. I had two loves in my childhood. One was Lego, the other was Star Wars. My heart fluttered when I saw the Lego Star Wars Death Star II (retail price: $269.99). But even that was dwarfed by the magnificent 25-foot-tall Lego clock tower. Just imagine that… two and a half stories worth of Legos!

The store also features a large Lego blimp (reportedly made with 130,000 bricks) hanging overhead next to a scale model of the International Space Station—also built with Legos. Another entrance is guarded by a near life-sized statue of Boba Fett, the famed bounty hunter from the Star Wars movies. Inside is a towering figure of the animated version of Batman. There’s plenty more to see, so anyone who’s ever loved Lego play would be at home in this store.

The store, located in the large atrium of the Mall of America, was filled with children of all ages. Just outside one of the entrances was an area where visitors could build Lego soapbox cars and have impromptu races. The entrance itself is a shrine to Lego that is surrounded by large Lego dinosaurs and Lego teenagers.

Inside the store were several aisles worth of Lego products that span their collection. Everything from the City collection to their popular Technic collection to the ultimate merging of my childhood fantasies: the Lego Star Wars collection. Why, oh why, couldn’t this have happened twenty-five years ago? I so wanted to buy the LEGO TIE Fighter, but the $99.95 price is a little too steep for me at the moment. It’d be a heck of a Christmas present, though, hint-hint.

The store features a “buy your own bricks” setup which allows you to fill a provided cup with as many pieces as you can for a fair price. There are mugs and t-shirts available as well (I couldn’t resist the Lego Vader vs. Lego Kenobi shirt).

There are now 25 Lego stores across the country, including California, Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, Oregon, Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts. There’s another Imagination Center in Anaheim, California, but there’s just something about being first. The Mall of America can claim those rights. While the other stores have their own attraction, the Mall of America’s Imagination Center is a destination in a class of its own.