Brick buffs bond Lego-lovers work to build creative community, block by block By: David Sanderson Posted: 10:50 AM CST Friday, Nov. 28, 2025

By his own admission, Jason Poturica was a bit of a handful as a youngster.

When he wasn’t being reprimanded by his school teachers for carrying on in class, he was often frustrating his parents by neglecting to do simple chores around the house, such as tidying his room.

Looking back, it’s clear he grew up with ADHD, the 47-year-old says, noting it wasn’t until he received his first set of Lego plastic construction blocks at the age of six that his behaviour began to improve.

“Lego became a very safe and calming place for me to explore my imagination and creative side,” Poturica says. “Thankfully, my dad caught on to that fairly early and the two of us would build together for hours on end. I don’t know if what I was making was any good, but it was always fun coming up with my own ideas and designs.”

Some 40 years later, Poturica is co-owner of Little Brick Market, a specialty shop offering new and used Lego. He and his longtime pal Justin Durkin founded their enterprise on the second level of a building at 680 Watt St. in March, before moving into an expanded, 1,200-sq.-ft. space on the building’s main floor earlier this fall, ahead of what they were hoping would be a busy holiday-shopping season.

“It started ramping up a few weeks ago, and from the look of things, it’s going to keep on going, right till Christmas,” says Durkin, 46, seated next to Poturica near their premises’ pick-a-brick bin, a rectangular storage unit stocked with thousands of individual Lego pieces of every shape and shade, which customers are able to purchase by the scoopful.

“We feel very fortunate because besides already exceeding our first-year sales expectations, we’ve also been cultivating relationships with really amazing people who share our love of Lego,” Poturica pipes in. “Quite often, kids bring in their builds to show us, and that always takes me back to when I was their age, getting my own start.”

Poturica, a photographic artist whose work has been displayed in galleries across the country, and Durkin, a former collectibles-store manager, met 25 years ago, when Poturica began hosting board-game nights at his home in the Maples. Durkin also played with Lego as a youth, but by the time they became friends, each one’s interest in the National Toy Hall of Fame inductee — Class of 1999, together with Barbie and Monopoly — was pretty much non-existent.

For Durkin, that began to change about 10 years ago, when while out shopping with his wife he eyed a series of Lego sets based on architectural marvels such as the Acropolis of Athens and the Statue of Liberty. Given their children were still toddlers, his wife openly wondered what he was doing when he reached for a set depicting the Eiffel Tower. Wouldn’t their kids be interested in something more whimsical than that, she opined? As a matter of fact, the model was going to be for him, he let her know. Pretty soon, whenever somebody asked what he wanted for his birthday or Christmas, a Lego architectural set was the first thing out of his mouth, says the father of three.

In Poturica’s case, he became re-engrossed with Lego in the spring of 2024. Inspired by a Lego Dungeons and Dragons set he spotted online, he set out to create a Lego rendition of Warhammer Quest, a board game he, Durkin and their buddies played during their still-monthly get-togethers.

“I spent close to four months designing a three-dimensional version of the board itself along with all the characters. It took around 8,000 pieces to finish and during the building stage, I ended up falling in love with Lego all over again,” he says.

Following the completion of that project, Poturica ended up acquiring a large assortment of retired Lego sets from a collector who was downsizing. He researched their value and upon determining that they were highly sought after on the secondary market, he began considering a venture that would allow Lego hobbyists to buy, sell and trade everything from full sets to individual blocks and figures. In November 2024, Poturica invited Durkin over to discuss the idea, and to pore through a 40-page business proposal he’d compiled. Durkin’s response: “When do we start?”

For a while, Durkin had been renting a 100-sq.-ft., self-contained room inside the House of Local on Watt Street, a spot meant for a second-hand video-game business that wasn’t really panning out. Despite the rather cramped quarters, they agreed to utilize the space for Little Brick Market, the tag they’d settled on. First, though, they would have to attain enough stock to make it a viable entity.

For the next few months, they invested in collections from across the country, including one from a fellow in Quebec that consisted primarily of what they feel are the three most popular Lego niches — Star Wars, superheroes and Harry Potter. By March, their shelves were full enough to begin welcoming customers, people who were hearing about them through word of mouth, or from videos posted on social media by other Lego aficionados.

Matt Fabri was six years old when his parents gave him a Lego kit mimicking a medieval castle with a functioning drawbridge. The Winnipeg high school teacher eventually grew out of Lego, only to return to it around eight years ago after his two oldest children, now 17 and 16, expressed an interest.

“We’d go shopping together. They would get the generic sets while I would pick out Star Wars kits and Brickheadz (buildable figurines similar in design to Funko Pops). For me, it was basically childhood-mode unlocked,” says the married father of three.

Over time, their mutual purchases began taking up an inordinate amount of space in their Sage Creek abode. To combat that, Fabbri’s wife eventually instituted a household rule: no new Lego could enter their home until other Lego had departed.

“So you can imagine how excited she was when she heard about Little Brick Market,” Fabbri says. “Suddenly she was like, ‘The girls have a bunch of sets they don’t use anymore that they could maybe get vacation money for,’ which got me thinking about trading in stuff I wasn’t using to get things I really wanted.”

Fabbri says visits to Little Brick Market have proven to be a valuable lesson for their 10-year-old son, whose area of expertise is Lego Technic cars — scale-model vehicles with working parts. His son has learned if he takes proper care of his treasures, they will retain their value if he ever chooses to swap them for something else, his father says.

“The other day when we came home from the store, I said, ‘OK, we’re going to open the boxes really carefully and not tear any corners.’ He looked at me and said ‘Dad, I’m 45 steps ahead of you.’ Then he showed me his closet where he keeps all his intact boxes, together with instruction sheets and spare pieces,” Fabbri says, adding that visiting Little Brick Market feels more like calling on friends than a shopping excursion.

“Jason, Justin and their staff are all wonderful people. It’s not like visiting one of the big-box stores where it’s all about sales. They happily sit down with you for 15 or 20 minutes to discuss what you’re building, plus they do their utmost to find stuff you’re looking for, that may not be in stock at the moment. I’ve told every Lego person I know they have to go there.”

Now that they have room to grow, Poturica and Durkin hope to further develop their relationship with the Manitoba Lego Users Group, a club formed in 2011 by local Lego enthusiasts. The pair have also hosted so-called build nights, when couples are invited to the store after-hours, to work on sets they’ve never attempted before, in a social setting.

“I’m not saying we’re not money-driven — at the end of the day, we have to pay our bills — but our drive is more about fostering a community,” Durkin says. “We’ve heard the sentiment many times from people who are selling or trading sets, how they want them to go to a good home where they will be loved and appreciated as much as when it was theirs. To be a part of that — helping to pass on enjoyment from one collector to another, or from one kid to another — has been very rewarding.”

For more information, go to littlebrickmarket.com

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca