Lego museum with five million pieces opens

Lego from over the years is on display at a museum in Milton Keynes

A museum featuring more than five million Lego pieces has been opened by a collector.

Jason Joiner, 55, who has been collecting the plastic bricks since he was seven, is the curator of Brickz in Milton Keynes.

In recent years he has travelled around the world to find rare sets to display in his museum.

He said: "There's nowhere in Britain you can actually see all the Lego kits we had as kids."

"I'm regaining my childhood and I wanted to share it."

Jason Joiner has collected Lego since he was a child

Visitors to the museum will find a re-creation of Hogwarts, bricks from the 1960s and a space station model made up of 15,000 bricks that took 200 hours to assemble.

Although not officially affiliated with Lego, Mr Joiner is hopeful he has done a good job of "showing what the company is made of".

Wooden toys made by the Danish firm in the 1930s, such as yo-yos and ironing boards, are also on display.

Milton Keynes already has links with Lego, with exhibitions often put on in Middleton Hall in the 1980s

Visitors can see the first ever mini-figure, depicting a policeman, which came out in 1978.

"We've gone out there to find everything we could – all the missing links, prototypes, unreleased items, mint sealed boxes, original toys," Mr Joiner said.

"It's been a real chore to find it all. We travel all over the world – we've been out to Denmark many times."

The curator oversaw the National Film and Sci-Fi Museum next door, which also featured items he had sourced himself.

Mr Joiner said he was inspired to become a collector after his father collected fire engines, including a real one.

"I was always around collectors and it was a normal thing for me, so I generally try not to do things by halves," he said.