Bricks in a tub

A musty scent burps up from the Sterilite container as I pry loose the lid- it's not unpleasant, more of a cousin to the dry skin odor that creeps into your grandparent's home. A tub filled with old LEGO bricks is part treasure hunt, part time capsule, and part junk removal. I figure that top hasn't been opened in at least a decade, so I'm curious to find out what's inside.

"Aah..." screams my wife Kate in mock horror as she holds up a disembodied head from a minifig (LEGO man/figurine).

"Aah..." I cringe as she waves the severed head.

"Here. I'll just put him on a body. Give him a helmet for protection."

"Right," I look at the torso to which she's attaching the yellow head," But he still doesn't have any arms."

"Right," says my wife before the conversation dissolves into laughter.

We sift through the box, beginning to sort through thousands of LEGO pieces. In and among the bricks are interlopers- plastic pieces that resemble LEGO, but are of inferior quality.

"You could always tell which ones were fake," says Kate, "They never snapped together right and they would never come loose from a real brick."

We begin to set the fake pieces aside before I come across an old Nintendo gameboy plastic case. Inside are three LEGO minifigs, trapped behind plastic, perhaps in an homage to the space prism prison of Superman 2. If General Zod couldn't escape, what hope do these poor souls have?

[We believe the rubber shark pictured above is responsible for the decapitation of at least one LEGO man. If you see a tiny rubber shark near your desk, kindly store your LEGO men somewhere safe and consider wearing gloves for the rest of the day].