Two sorts of Lego builders stalk this world.

Aaron Fike, owner of Bricks and Wheels, a Kent store specializing in second-hand Legos, caters to both.

“Some of the parents come in and say, ‘Aw, my kid just builds by the instructions, I wish they’d use their imagination more,’ while the others come in and say, ‘My kid builds by the instructions, then smashes it and builds other stuff,’ ” said Fike, 33. “We try and tell people it’s all great. There is no wrong way. Lego has so many educational and formative aspects to it.”

For nearly a year, Bricks and Wheels, which sells Hot Wheels cars too, has been the local spot for full sets of Lego fun, or for that special brick a builder needs to finish a creative project.

Fike has been a fan of the building system ever since he was a kid.

“Me and my older brother had what we thought was all the Legos in the world,” Fike said. “But looking back, most of my customers have way more than we did then. But we had half of a tub and could do anything with them.”

Although most of the time Fike and his brother used their bricks with other toys, like G.I. Joe and Star Wars action figures, one particular set stands out.

“The biggest one we had by far was Victory Lap Raceway,” Fike said, pointing to the already-built, 1988 Formula One racing set on a display cabinet. “My aunt bought it for us. It’s nothing we would have gotten on our own. I built that so many times as a kid.”

Fike said his love for the toy continued into adulthood. It even captured the imagination of his four children, aged 11, 8, 6 and 5.

“They’re all Lego fans, so we had a lot in the house,” Fike said.

Until a few years ago, Fike had a solid career in manufacturing and marketing, but he wasn’t satisfied.

“Most of the companies were too big to appreciate what we were doing,” Fike said. “We would go save somebody tens of millions of dollars, even if they had to change three types of paperwork to do it, and they wouldn’t do it. So I traded that for a completely different brand of customer here.”

Originally, Fike – who on the side buys the contents of abandoned storage units – planned to set up a combination thrift store-Lego shop in the space he leased at 12135 Southeast Kent-Kangley Road. But soon enough it was clear what the shop’s real draw was – the bricks.

By last August, the thrift store offerings were on the way out, and the Lego Star Wars wing was open.

“There is more of it than anything else. It’s the strongest genre and saved the company when they had their trouble in the ’90s,” Fike said. “The super heroes are huge, too. There is a lot that’s huge for them. All of the different stuff has its fans, but Star Wars is definitely a formidable category. They’ve been doing it so long, there is so much out there. There is more of it than anything else.”

Even if the shop’s been open for less than a year, Fike said, it has been a roaring success.

“Most of (the Lego hobby and specialty shops) are really geared towards collectors, but as a builder and a father, it didn’t offer a lot for me,” Fike said. “The secondary Lego market is gigantic. It’s multi-millions of dollars on Amazon and eBay and places like that. And if you’re the 40-year-old guy rebuilding your sets from when you were a kid, or building a huge Star Wars ship, those places work out great. But if you’re an 8-year-old looking for a piece, you’re having to pay top dollar. I felt like it shouldn’t be that way.”

Despite the mainline thinking that said targeting collectors was the way to make money, Fike went with his gut feeling – he aimed for the builder.

“We get a lot of stuff traded in,” Fike explained. “The M.O. of the market is to squeeze everything you can out of that, get every penny and dollar out of it. We don’t invest the time to sort everything, inventory it and put it on the Internet. As long as we can get the customer the thing they need, it doesn’t have to cost that much.”

Although there are pieces that can fetch up to $100 because they were only made in one set, Fike said he prefers options such as his store’s fill-a-bag, where customers purchase bricks in bulk from large bins. Fike said it counts for at least 1/3 of his business.

“It costs $15 for a quart, $25 for a gallon,” he said.

Besides the retail side of the business, Bricks and Wheels has sunk its roots deeply into the life of the Kent-Auburn community..

“We’ve done some Lego nights with the schools around here,” he said. “We’re just a Lego family that wants to be the type of place that we wish was around for us. We had an idea of how to do a store right, and it’s taken a lot of  personal and family effort to get it right. It’s taken some time, but it’s all been validated for us.”

And at the end of the day, Bricks and Wheels is all about family.

“Family is the main motivation behind every aspect of what we have tried to do,” he said. “It was my wife who said that we have to do a store in the first place. She thought that, whether it was profitable or not, it would provide us and others a lot of joy.”

“And my 5-year-old (Michael) has come to work with me every day for almost a year, and often builds four-to-five sets a day. (He) is our ‘employee of the month’ for 11 months running.”