A LEGO Bouquet On The First Date. Would You?

An unconventional review of the LEGO 10280 Creator set

That’s a genuine question, by the way. Decided on a whim the other day to walk into Smyths Toys and get a couple of LEGO sets. Over the last couple of weeks, since the whole Ukrainian invasion began, I felt like I needed something to distract myself from everything that was going on, to stop me thinking for a couple of hours or staring at screens. Having gone through a pandemic and now the geopolitical events — or let’s call it what it is, a bloody war — is just taking a toll on my mental wellbeing. The world desperately needs a fucking break already, and so do I. So LEGO it was. I ended up getting two sets, one of them was the 10280 set, a flower bouquet.

Walking back from the shop with my friend Natalia Für, we started talking about the viability of a LEGO bouquet on a first date. Fun fact is, I did actually do this once in 2020 on a first date, albeit at a much smaller scale, and gave my date a tiny bunch of LEGO flowers, as during lockdown there were no flower shops open.

It worked, though unfortunately, not for long. The question remains, though. How does a potential date see someone showing up with a bouquet of LEGO flowers?

While LEGO has an entire botanicals line, the 10280 set is probably the most impressive one there is. As far as I’m aware, launched in 2021, it’s still considered a fairly new set, and surprisingly few people know about it. I myself found out accidentally as I was looking to replace the ones my ex never gave back. I am a huge LEGO fan and collector, but this one I kept putting off purchasing for quite a silly reason really — shame.

I’ll say it like it is. I felt, that as a man, purchasing and displaying a set of a bunch of flowers in my flat would take away from my perceived manliness in the eyes of women mostly, but also some of my male friends — sexism affects men too, we’re just taught to take it like a man, and move on. But if the pandemic taught me anything, it’s that life is short, way too short, and I owe it to myself to live it as best as I can, and take a dump 💩 on whatever others might think about it. I am a man, and I see beauty in flowers. For the life of me, I am utterly incapable of keeping any of the real ones alive, unless it’s a cactus, but I see and appreciate their intricate beauty. So with that in mind, got the set, and built it.

It’s not a huge set for an adult, just over 750 pieces. My 12-year-old self would have considered it massive, but it’s a fairly easy build, all things considered. A very colourful mix of system and technic parts, and man, some of those colours are pretty damn unique. Purple, cyan, pink, orange, salmon, fluorescent green, you name it, it’s likely there. Some of the parts I have never seen before in any other set, and the stems are incredibly long technic axles, longer than any of my technic sets ever had.

While there’s a fair bit of repetitious effort involved in building the set, it’s a lot less difficult than it looks. Perhaps tedious at times, but nothing really challenging. It’s meant for adults, but most young teenagers would still tackle it no problem. It took me just about two hours to build. That makes this quite a decent value set, given that it cost me just one cent short of 37 euros. Usually for that kind of money, you get somewhere around an hour’s worth of build time.

But this is a flower set, so perhaps it makes sense I touch on what you’re actually building, no? There are six different flowers and some greens. Three roses, two snapdragons, a lavender, a China aster, two common daisies and a California poppy. The greens are nondescript, but certainly add to the authenticity of the arrangement. Speaking of authenticity, I found the flowers to be surprisingly life-like and easily recognisable even though they’re made of plastic LEGO parts. Fun fact, the little bush-looking greens are actually made of plants! Given the energy-crisis going on the moment, that actually made me feel a little better as it’s proof we can create plastic from renewable sources if we really want to, so in yo’ face Putin, keep your oil and drown in it for all I care!

I know LEGO has been looking into transitioning entirely to plant-based plastic, and so far, it’s doing an outstanding job. We definitely need more of the world’s leading corporations to innovate in ways that enable us living in a more sustainable environment with less dependency on fossil-fuels and implicitly unhinged politicians — and no, I’m not referring to just Putin here.

The LEGO 10280 set is a fantastic excuse to remove one’s self from everything that’s going on, find a couple of hours away from the screens in total serenity where the only noise you’ll hear is the rattling building blocks as you’re looking for the correct one, and maybe not even that if you’re using a large enough baking tray to spread them all out on as you’re building the set.

I won’t be taking this on any date, as I love the outcome too much to give it away to yet another lady who cannot appreciate them enough, but the question still stands. If someone showed up on a first date with this LEGO bouquet, what would your reaction and thoughts be? 😁 💐

While you’re at it, here’s another LEGO story, and if you like LEGO, subscribe as I have a few more unconventional reviews coming soon!

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer! Read my Hello story here! Subscribe for more stories about LEGO, tech, coding and accessibility! For my less regular readers, I also write about random bits and writing.