Lego YouTubers are building massive followings and creating a unique genre of content that taps into viewers' nostalgia

• Lego building is a hugely popular genre on YouTube with hundreds of millions of views.
• Uploads can range from complex constructions to timelapses of simple builds.

On March 16, a California-based YouTuber who goes by SacredBricks online posted his favorite video to date, which he dubbed a "Lego WAR."

The upload, which was just shy of 15 minutes long, showed the anonymous creator building two armies from Lego pieces which he clashed against one another in a stop-motion, animated battle, complete with play-by-play commentary in a voiceover.

Sacred, who asked Insider not to include his real name or age due to privacy concerns, is one of a number of successful online creators who are tapping into their viewers' nostalgia and going hugely viral by using the famous kids' toys to rack up viewers.

The videos aren't simple to produce, but it's worth the effort

Sacred told Insider in an email exchange that videos like these can take anywhere between 100 and 150 hours to make when you add up the planning, filming, and editing, but the hard work paid off. The upload reached its intended audience and blew up, with over 6.3 million views.

The brick-building creator, who wears a yellow Lego mask when he appears on camera, said he started making Lego-themed videos four years ago, but he really began to take it seriously in January 2022, and his channel quickly took off.

To date, Sacred has over 962,000 subscribers, and over 292 million total views thanks to similar Lego animations and elaborate builds he's shared with an enthusiastic audience.

He told Insider there are multiple ways to make a Lego video successful — you could include pop culture references or come up with a unique build — but ultimately the videos tap into memories of childhood, and he thinks that's the key appeal for his audience.

"Kids who are growing older now played with Lego a lot as a kid and watch my videos to feel nostalgic," he told Insider. "Lego is something many people can relate to."

Viewers seem to connect to these types of videos, and mainstream creators are taking notice

Among those who compliment the time and effort Sacred has put into his videos, viewers share how the brick building reminded them of their own experiences growing up.

"It's almost like this video is a visual representation of what went on in all our minds when we made Lego battles as kids. Seriously well-done video, really impressive," one viewer wrote beneath Sacred's Lego war upload, in a top comment that received over 450 likes.

Sacred isn't the only creator catering to the huge appetite for plastic bricks either. TDBRICKS, whose YouTube bio reads he wants to "make Lego cool," has amassed over 2.2 million subscribers recreating moments from history out of Lego and building characters from popular TV shows such as "Stranger Things."

Then there's Brick_Science, a YouTuber with over 1.2 million subscribers who has made everything from a lightsaber to power tools using Lego as a key component.

Conventional creators have gotten in on the popular genre as well, including MrBeast, the most subscribed to YouTube creator on the platform, who received 142 million views on a single video back in 2020 when he attempted to make the world's largest Lego tower, and said he filled a friend's house with 10 million Lego bricks in 2019.

Sacred doesn't expect the appeal to diminish any time soon either, and told Insider he thinks there's a "bright future" ahead for the world of Lego YouTube. If his mounting views are anything to go by, he may well be right.

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.