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40oz

Can you wash legos?

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Uh oh.

Another "I gotta lot of shit in my basement" thread.

Okay so I have these two huge bins of legos. I'm definitely not throwing these out. I remember legos to be a huge part of my young life, and contributed a lot to my creativity in mapping. When I get married and have kids I'd like my kids to be playing with these legos.

That said, These legos are pretty close to 25 years old. They've been used a lot, and also been sitting in the basement getting dirty and collecting dust. If I'm gonna pass these down to my children I wouldn't want them playing with dirty nasty legos. I think I'm going to sort the legos out and remove all the broken pieces, k'nex that managed to get mixed with the legos, and the other random toy pieces that look like legos but really aren't.

I want to clean these so they look new (despite the little scratches and stuff). Preferably a method that:

1. Doesn't discolor the lego pieces,
2. Doesn't wash off the printed images (like the faces and clothes on the lego people, the numbers on the race cars, or the computer console pieces)
3. I don't have to wash every single piece individually.

I'm thinking about just dumping them all in a bathtub and filling with water and a bit of dish soap, but I'm not sure if the dish soap will come off those hard to reach areas, and I don't want slimy legos either. Any ideas?

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40oz said:

I think I'm going to sort the legos out and remove all the broken pieces, k'nex that managed to get mixed with the legos, and the other random toy pieces that look like legos but really aren't.

Heh, I actually did that not too long ago.

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Heh. I just recently, like two days ago, hauled out all my old legos and started playing with my step siblings with them. Good times. I'm missing a lot of shit though. :(

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The LEGO Website said:

We recommend that you clean or wash your LEGO parts only by hand at max. 40°C or 104 degrees (F) Fahrenheit. Higher temperatures may affect the quality of the LEGO parts. You can add a mild detergent to the water, followed by rinsing with clear water. Please don't put your bricks in the washing machine or dishwasher or attempt to dry them in ovens, microwaves or with hair dryers. Any electrical parts, such as cables, motors, battery compartments, can only be wiped off with alcohol. Air-dry parts at room temperature. For disinfecting please use mild bleach.


I understand this isn't quite what you're looking for, but this is the 'official' advice.

Cleaning legos is a pain in the ass, given that over time they get quite a few scratches making them look dirty, no matter how much you clean them. Before I sold my legos, I put them in a bathtub full of lukewarm water and added a little dish soap. Prior to that I removed all the parts with decals so that wouldn't wash off.

EDIT: In retrospect, I wish I hadn't sold all of them, I fucking miss playing with those. I think its time to get a small kit of new ones to pass the time at work.

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I threw away all my legos a while ago. I was keeping them in a small dresser with a bunch of other stuff from my youth. Just dumped the whole thing in a container.

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I still own a wealth of LEGOs -not a huge collection compared to some hardcore collectors out there, and not in "collector's" condition- and have washed them several times in the past.

That being said: older (<86?) LEGO figures may indeed wash out, and the older transparent "glass" blocks tend to whiten and fog up permanently. However old "blue glass" blocks hold better against time, and transparent made after 1990 hold a LOT better. Same for figures and blocks with decals: those made after a certain period hold up much better vs time and washing. For old collectible pieces I'd go with a delicate manual, per-piece cleaning using cotton swabs and the such.

For bulk pieces, I used warm water and hand soap, keeping all LEGOs in a cloth sack and letting them dry normally. I usually don't wash LEGO Technics parts.

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I'd go for the "in the bath with warm water and a bit of washing up liquid" too. Stir it up a bit and leave them a while, then let the water run out (filter it somehow to avoid the little lights and bits going with it), then wash them with cold shower water to remove the foam and let them dry.

I still have my lego in the garage somewhere, in a "pirate chest" with some power rangers stickers on.

Didn't it suck when Lego started to use stickers for everything rather than printing designs on the pieces?

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Doom Dude said:

Well did you wash the frigging things or not? :p


No not yet. I've been at work a lot this week, and being as though i don't have any children yet I am in no rush to get them cleaned.

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fraggle said:

That's "LEGO bricks", not "Legos".


This was the 200,000th post in Everything Else.

*clap clap clap*

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fraggle said:

That's "LEGO bricks", not "Legos".


Why do you care? You're not even Danish.

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It seems funny to call them bricks when so many lf them really are nothing like bricks. A huge number of the pieces don't even have the bumps on them to connect to the regular bricks.

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I've boiled the pieces without any negative effects. This was before small sized pieces like Technics introduced, or any painted piece for that matter.

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The only lego pieces I've considered bricks are those bulky 2x4 bumps sized ones. The rest are legos.

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I've always called them "LEGO pieces." "Legos" bothers me but it seems to be such a prevalent pronunciation that it's futile to fight it, and, arguably, language is one area where what is correct actually is a majority decision.

But I'll never accept misuses of "borrow," ie. "I'll borrow it to you." These irritate me to no end.

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Creaphis said:

I've always called them "LEGO pieces." "Legos" bothers me but it seems to be such a prevalent pronunciation that it's futile to fight it, and, arguably, language is one area where what is correct actually is a majority decision.

This is not arguable at all. Language has rules, these rules can be followed to produce a legible sentence, or broken to produce inane crap best left for insertion into the YouTube comment box.

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Super Jamie said:

This is not arguable at all. Language has rules, these rules can be followed to produce a legible sentence, or broken to produce inane crap best left for insertion into the YouTube comment box.


Ah, the prescriptive-vs.-descriptive grammar debate. You'll find that kids are taught prescriptive grammar ("you must use language this way!"), but if you decide to become a cunning linguist and continue studies in that field past the time you can be described as a kid, what you'll be taught is descriptive grammar ("people use language that way.").

Which one is correct? Neither, or both, actually. English doesn't have any official body having a say in what is its correct form. So, the British-vs.-American English differences cannot be ever settled. Even in languages that have such an official body (e.g., the Académie Française, but there's plenty of others), it has no actual power, and is more of an observer of the language's evolution than an enforcer of correct usage.

For example, what's the correct spelling between island and iland? (That's a trick question. Etymologically, it should be iland because there is no reason for an s to be put in this word. It's not pronounced, and never was, and the reason it was added to the spelling was the influence of Old French "isle" and Latin "insula".)

Back to legos vs. LEGO® elements. Calling them "legos" is short and simple, and can be compared to turning Adobe® Photoshop® into "photoshop". The company itself discourages it, but common usage, rightly or wrongly, always ultimately prevail. Do people say "this image was retouched by Adobe® Photoshop® or another software with similar capacity" or do they say "this image was photoshopped"?

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Gez said:

Ah, the prescriptive-vs.-descriptive grammar debate. You'll find that kids are taught prescriptive grammar ("you must use language this way!"), but if you decide to become a cunning linguist and continue studies in that field past the time you can be described as a kid, what you'll be taught is descriptive grammar ("people use language that way.").

I always wondered about that. I was pretty much taught one type of grammar in elementary school a second in high school, then a third when I took English 101. The end effect is that I became horribly confused and just use whatever the hell grammar structure I feel like because I don't even want to bother divining the correct one.

Do people say "this image was retouched by Adobe® Photoshop® or another software with similar capacity" or do they say "this image was photoshopped"?

They usually say "This was photoshopped. I can tell because of the pixels and having seen quite a few 'shops in my time."

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I just call it lego. "Put the fucking lego away!" "Real men play with 80s and 90s lego, not the prefab bullshit 2000+ lego" "Oh whoops, you left the lego out so it went up the vacuum. Suck it up" "Not another pile of lego everyone will stand and trip on"

"legos" to me, sounds like minimal brain power is being used, and lego brics or pieces is often redundant due to the way lego is. Original lego really was almost entirely bricks, while in today's shitty lego, it seems like you get five bricks, and 9001 prefab shapes you plug other prefabs into.

As you might guess, I grew up with the cool 80s and 90s lego (Anyone remember the annual catalogues? They put so much effort into those, and all the subsets, back when normal lego was "Lego System". I would look at all the amazing scenes they had built and dream of having enough to build it. These days its just...crap) and passed it all to a younger person.

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Gez said:
English doesn't have any official body having a say in what is its correct form.

I hereby appoint myself the "Academy Of The English Language".

And I say "lego" is fine for one or more bricks.

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DuckReconMajor said:

Lego my Eggo!!!

(I know it's "Leggo", but I always thought that would be a nice promotion)


?

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