The Toy and Brick Museum is filled with displays that delight old and young alike: Two of the prize pieces are a working air conditioning unit and a once-record-setting boat built by famed Lego Master Nathan Sawaya (left two photos); Dora the Explorer simply showed up on the museum’s doorstep one day, while Spider-Man, Scooby Doo, and Hagrid were once used to promote various movies and TV shows. A red creature whose identity is best decided by the individual viewer is one of the few pieces that was built on-site. Meanwhile, a three-piece band moves and dances to the old Lego theme song, “Just Imagine.”
as elastic. A portrait of Harry Potter, a Hagrid sculpture, a pachyderm physician attending a bedridden elephant, and a Yoda at the controls of a starship are only a few of the sculptures that fill today’s Gravel Hill school. One sculpture was created in the museum itself, by an artist visiting from Alaska. “The most creative people make such cool things,” Conrad Brown says. Its actual identity is open to interpretation — could be a dragon, could be a molting chicken or a space creature or maybe a fluffy robot. In the former principal’s office, near a man in the moon bearing the warning “unglued prototype,” hang the schematics for a trio of leggy musicians — a Lego band that has played gigs all over the museum — currently on a stage in the basement gymnasium, overlooking the giant Lego mosaic created by Dan Brown, Korte, and hundreds of local helpers. When turned on, the band figures light up, play instruments, and sing “Just Imagine” — an old Lego theme song.
A party room is lined with chalkboards, filled with scribbled signatures and comments by celebrants. The gift shop, where visitors also buy tickets, offers a variety of Lego products as well as a bin of loose pieces. Visitors are invited to fill the bag size of their choice. Still, the focus is on displays that run the gamut from a 13,000-piece Glass City Skyway bridge, a collection of all-white architectural pieces made in China, and a lassoing cowboy on a bucking horse. Lego fanatics will be delighted, and even those who don’t know that “Lego” is derived from “leg godt” — Danish for “play well” — will play very well here.
Toy and Plastic Brick Museum, 4597 Noble St., Bellaire, Ohio, www.brickmuseum.com. Open Tuesday–Sunday, May through August, and select hours during the off-season. Tickets are $8 for adults, $6 for children.
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