[twitter]Lego Store – Chinook Mall
6455 Macleod Trail SW
(403) 252-5346

The Lego Store is to children what the Apple Store is to dads.

Check that, kids and dads alike love them both. Calgary is lucky enough to be one of a few cities in North America (only 4 in Canada) to have a specific Lego Store, and while the prices are often higher here than at other retailers it is a certain slice of nirvana for little boys and girls. You don’t need to buy anything there, just like at the Apple Store, you’re more than welcome to just go in and play.

There is a long calendar of events running at the store, and one of the most popular happens first Tuesday of every month – Mini Build night. From 5-7, 200 kids will get to build a miniature object and take it home for free. The lineups in the summer started more than an hour before the build happened, and often sold out. Now that we’re into the fall, the line can still be long in the earlier part of the run, but if you come after 6 you won’t have to wait as long.

The comparison to the Apple Store is a fair one. The Lego Store staff are just as jacked, geeked, and excited about their product. They love rolling up their sleeves and digging through the minifigs, talking about cool things the kids have built and just having fun.

I took my 2 yr old to the Mini Build night and it didn’t matter if we got to build the cat of the month – he just loves visiting The Lego Store at Chinook Mall. He digs in the bins of bricks, he mixes and matches mini figs, he runs around and looks at the display cubes, dreams about getting the big boxes from Santa for Christmas and has an all around blast. We were there for an hour, in the end we did the Mini Build and went home with the biggest smiles on our faces.

It was a great father-son date night that didn’t cost a dime.

The next Mini Build will be on Tuesday November 6 – rumour has it they’ll be building turkeys.