My sister has most of my Legos at the moment (I have the 9V train). I'll be taking them back when she tires of them (I bet the family will want to get rid of it when they move in a year or so).

Man Lego has come a long way, hasn't it?

Lego Pinball Machine!

Nice but I LOL at that
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sguthWUDhzg&feature=related

I like how the guy just says "cool" at the end like it's no mean feat.

Lego was my toy of choice when I was younger, and I still have the massive Lego collection I acquired. I was mostly into the various space Lego sets, and spent a massive amount of time using Lego to build my own ship designs. I ended up making replicas of the Pyro GX from Descent, various Star Wars fighters (this was before Lego started putting out their own Star Wars stuff), and of course a ton of original designs depending on what struck my fancy at the time. I'm hoping I'll be able to pass that Lego collection on to either my own kids or my brother's kids in the future (depending on which of us ends up starting a family first).

That's the brilliance of Lego, isn't it. You can just pass it on and it remains as much fun as it was 20 years ago. Come to think of it, when I was a kid, my father used to love to build all the Lego stuff as well <.< I don't think we were allowed to build it ourselves until we were several years older. Tssk tssk dad ...

I never had any of the cool blocks, just the standard 6 sizes or so and a couple of rectangular green bases. The robotics stuff they have now is cool as hell. I was going to invest in a kit for my daughter and me until I saw these: http://littlebits.cc/ which are probably more along the lines of what I actually want to build with her.

The tolerances on Lego blocks are really good, which is what makes them so great, 3rd party blocks are always inferior. Always go Lego:)

That is also true because LEGO still keeps quality/durability standards. Having two kids I have a some experience with contemporary toys and I say that nowadays toys’ quality/durability is just plain sh..t - kind of ‘use it once and throw it away’. The design and ideas are cool but toys are a good example of ‘designed to fail’ items. Few months ago my son was gifted with cool looking, radio guided car. It was driving very fast, turned rapidly – by and large – great fun for – until it hit walls a few times – and fell apart. You know what? The body was attached to chassis with only 3 thin scrubs in soft plastics tubes. With the speed car moved it was obvious that they will not last long…It not only pisses me off because such toys are a waste of money and are environmentally harmful but also teach my kid ‘it’s cheap – if it breaks throw it away, buy another one’ pattern we can observe almost everywhere.
LEGO is expensive – yes – but at least if I purchase it I know that my son will play them, my 3 years younger daughter will play them and after that – they can be passed on another kid.

This amazes me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z1SsCl5OPY