LEGO LANDING: New store offers parts, sets and creative space

WASILLA — It’s a parts store, part workshop and part toy store — but it’s all Lego.

Step into Wyatt Christianson’s AK Brickz store in the Creekside Plaza and it is easy to imagine a scene where desperate parents find replacements for long-lost spaceship pieces and kids discover a retired Lego set — think “Harry Potter” — they may have missed.

From mini-figures to tub after tub of pieces and parts, fans of the Danish toymaker’s seemingly ceaseless brand of imagination can find quite a bit to dive into.

“Legos are timeless,” said Christianson, a Valley resident who opened the store at the end of October after closing a similar shop in downtown Anchorage. “People really get into it. I get engineers who will come in and get a bag of parts to build something and of course for kids, they have an idea and it is just limitless what they can create.”

AK Brickz buys Legos and Christianson works with a Lower 48 supplier as well to keep an inventory of pieces. Those pieces are kept in either specialty bags — wheels, doors, control panels — on a wall of the store or in tubs and a table filled with every size and shape imaginable.

The “choose your brickz” table has three bags of varying sizes that customers can fill with whatever suits them.

Rick Bristol, who lives on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, made the drive out to the Valley Friday to fill up a bag for his kids.

“I’m trying to my best to replace some of what the kids have lost,” Bristol joked. “They love the sets and love building them.”

Christianson said kids build for free at the store, and have the option to buy their creation once finished. He said whatever is built usually gets photographed and posted to the store’s Facebook page.

“We have had some really creative works,” he said. “It is fun to see what the kids come up with.”

One wall of the store is devoted to mainly retired Lego box sets that include the Star Wars, Super Heroes, Cars and Harry Potter lines. Christianson also carries the Lego City and Creator lines as well. A cabinet near the front of the store holds a range of pre-built sets that Christianson has bought from customers and are available for purchase.

The store also has a wall of mini-figures that range from Batman to “The Simpsons” characters.

“Lego has gotten more creative with the mini-figures,” Christianson said. “There are welders, pizza guys, hot dog vendors — you name it.”

In fact, the figurines were one reason Christianson started the initial business in a mall on 4th Avenue in Anchorage in the summer of 2014.

“I was selling parts on Craigslist — especially mini-figures — and I found myself meeting people in parking lots to hand off Legos and it was getting a little weird,” he joked. “So I figured I might as well get everything in one place and start a business.”

Christianson said he had his eye on space in the Creekside Plaza for a while and moved on the opportunity once something opened up.

“We live out here, ” he said. “It was a 100-mile round trip every day to run the Anchorage store.”

Christianson said business at the new store has been steady, and he has plans for more offerings in the coming year.

“I would like to get some Lego user groups meeting here that involve adults, teens and smaller kids,” he said. “Everyone has their own thing — some are into figures, others are into scenes or big kits.”

He added that expansion plans in the back of the store will allow for bigger birthday parties.

And yes, he had Lego creations as a kid.

“My big accomplishment was building the helicopter from the ‘Airwolf’ television series,” Christianson said. “ I remember being amazed that I found enough sloping black pieces for the top and enough sloping white pieces for the bottom (of the helicopter.) It probably wasn’t as great as I thought it was, but I was happy with it.”

Contact reporter Steven Merritt at 352-2269 or steven.merritt@frontiersman.com