
Lego Finds Discontinued Set For Boy Who Saved Up For 2 Years - wyclif
http://consumerist.com/2012/12/03/lego-finds-spare-discontinued-set-so-boy-who-saved-up-for-2-years-wouldnt-be-disappointed/
======
gonzo
We make a LEGO-compatible case for iPhone 4, 4S and 5 (and the 4th-gen iPod
Touch). (I'm sure that one admission will drive my karma into the basement.)

Shortly after we began shipping, LEGO called. They were very gracious, and
only had a couple of TM-related issues they wanted fixed. Nothing
unreasonable, really.

When were were done, I offered to send the attorney on the other end of the
call a BrickCase. He declined, as he already had one on his phone.

So it's not just kids that they have a great interface with.

~~~
j_s
I'll downvote you for not linking to your product on Amazon with your referral
code! (j/k, :P, etc.)

Based on what I've learned here, it's my understanding that shameless self
promotion is a spectacular way for individuals to provide for their own needs
and for people important to them. It is foolish to begrudge anyone this when
they are contributing value to the conversation.

~~~
sixothree
And the context is certainly appropriate.

------
scrumper
Lego is fantastic, and it's worth re-discovering if you haven't played with it
since childhood. My wife bought me a 2,500 piece Star Wars kit last year (the
Emperor's Shuttle) and it bought me to a place of zen-like calm for the two
weeks it took me to build it. I'd sit down, and _bang_ , instant flow. Best of
all, I could carry that over to the computer if I wanted to do some
programming. It's almost drug-like in its power.

There's something amazingly satisfying about unquestioningly following
detailed instructions and seeing something tangible emerge before your eyes. I
love it.

~~~
scrumper
I'll add something else for balance here: I went to see The Avengers after
studiously avoiding any marketing for the film. I wanted my mind free to
experience every scene for the very first time, like a pledge-ring wearing co-
ed looking forward to her wedding night. I didn't even know that Loki was the
villain, that's how innocent I was.

My friends and I arrived at the cinema early, secured great middle seats and
sat back to endure endless local commercials (Annie got it done no less than
four times.) Then it was time for the very last advert before the trailers
started: Lego. A Lego set featuring the Avengers. An animated Lego set where
the various characters recapitulated the plot of the film in thirty seconds.
Many, many angry voices cried out, to the general tune of, "That better f-ing
not be in the movie." It all was.

It tainted our experience pretty badly. Even if the advert had featured a
completely different story we'd still have been looking out for similarities.
This was a few days after opening weekend, too!

I still love Lego, but she's given me my first disappointment. I guess I'm
growing up.

~~~
JoeCortopassi
Had this exact same experience, and you are the first person I know of that
saw it as well. I distinctly remember (SPOILER) when they were on the roof,
about to disable the device, going "I can't believe that Marvel allowed Lego
to do this _before_ their big movie blockbuster". For that matter, who was the
marketing genius who thought that surmising the entire story arc would make
for a good commercial at any time?

~~~
scrumper
His name is Mads Nipper and I wrote to him and Jorgen Knudstorp (the CEO) over
email the day after I saw the film. Sadly despite a day's research I couldn't
find an email address for either of them that wouldn't bounce so I left it. I
could have killed a tree, but in the end something came up and I moved on.

I just dug it out again. I was _really_ angry. I'm almost glad it didn't get
through. Here is a short excerpt:

 _What in Thor's name were you idiots thinking? Did you seriously believe that
you'd engender goodwill in the audience by spoiling the film as it was
starting? It's EXACTLY as if you'd shown an advert before a 1980 screening of
The Empire Strikes Back featuring Yoda, a handless Luke and Han Solo in a
block of carbonite.

For great shame, Jorgen. May your bare feet always find bricks._

~~~
gknoy
> May your bare feet always find bricks.

That is the best kidsafe curse I have ever heard. Bravo!

~~~
simon
Yes, nice one.

My favorite kidsafe curse is from an old BBC radio show from the late 40's and
early 50's, called The Goon Show. The main character would say "curses and
naughty words". The BBC at that time was super-strict and you couldn't say
curses and naughty words, so he would literally say it instead. Very funny.

------
nicholassmith
You know, I don't think I've ever seen anything negative about Lego as a
company in any serious way. Staff reports are uniformly 'this place is amazing
to work', customers love their products, they've kept their product line
diverse and with a wide, wide range of prices so there's no exclusionary
practise. Good business practises for sure.

~~~
michaelt
Some people [1] have linked the rise of Lego and the decline of Meccano [2] to
the decline of manufacturing in the western world, as Lego doesn't teach
Meccano's lessons about L section beams, diagonal braces, gantries in tension
and compression, and so on.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1333215/Why-
Britain-n...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1333215/Why-Britain-
needs-more-Meccano-and-less-Lego.html) [2]
[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8Q-tdV67Suc/TfhcQxf63JI/AAAAAAAAAT...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8Q-tdV67Suc/TfhcQxf63JI/AAAAAAAAATk/h32oKyL6xa0/s1600/MAWH_MECCANO.jpg)

~~~
xentronium
These Meccano constructors are similar to what we had in post-soviet Russia,
although I've never heard that name. Then about the end of 90-s LEGO gained
popularity, and indeed, 'soviet constructor', as we called these sets, stopped
being sold.

I always wondered whether they were really suitable for smaller kids,
considering smaller parts et al.

This is what our constructors looked like:

* Constructor parts: [http://blogarchive.ru/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/konstruktor...](http://blogarchive.ru/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/konstruktor-01.jpg)

* Photos of the manual: [http://vasi.net/community/kartinki/2009/08/25/sovetskijj_kon...](http://vasi.net/community/kartinki/2009/08/25/sovetskijj_konstruktor.html)

~~~
imissmyjuno
I was reminded of those too! I had the set in the 2nd photo, and remember
building some of the things in the manual. Of course, as a kid, I quickly lost
most of the bolts and nuts, so I can see the value of LEGO in the long run…

EDIT: Of course, in the spirit the typical ru-net, a lot of comments at that
link are along the lines of "LEGO is for idiots, look at what we played with
as kids".

~~~
pavel_lishin
But the beauty of things like Meccano is that if you lose bolts and nuts...
you can just go down to the hardware store and pick up some replacements!

Although nowadays, it's trivial to order replacement Lego pieces online.

------
generalpf
As the parent of a child with Asperger's Syndrome, I know what this must have
meant to him, and I'll continue to be a Lego customer for life because of
this. Kudos to Lego.

~~~
tmh88j
Any child who has the willpower to save for over two years would be crushed.

------
bluetidepro
While often seeing so many posts with a negative connotation on HN, I love
seeing posts like this. I realize some of the negative posts _need_ to be
heard, but it's optimistic/awesome posts like this that can brighten the past
100 negative articles I may have read. Well done, LEGO. This is the definition
of a great company with great customer satisfaction! My faith in humanity has
been fully restored, for the time being. ;) _Ha_

------
polshaw
Heh, lovely story, but isn't this type of post what Reddit is for?

Which is where i saw it on Friday, and 'shockingly' is the source (well,
originally youtube).

On the topic; it is surely obvious to anyone in marketing/PR these days that
doing something like this is almost always going to be a profitable move. The
guy provided the story, even if they had to do something like this 10 times
for it to 'go viral' it would be one hell of a lot of promotion for the money.
It's not going to harm the recipient's Lego buying habits either.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Bah humbug, don't be snobby about these things, it's not as if HN is overrun
with them.

Just enjoy it as a break from the norm.

------
uptown
Good job LEGO. The kid looks thrilled.

On a related note, when did LEGOS become absurdly expensive? I've noticed that
most of what they market these days are themed sets with price-tags well
beyond what I can imagine the plain blocks used to cost. For instance - their
Lego Ninjago series can command anywhere from $10-$30 for a little miniature
figure - you know - the guys that are about 3/4 of an inch tall. What am I
missing? Have they just figured out how to create artificial demand by playing
the "limited edition" game, or have plastic toys suddenly got more expensive
to manufacture?

~~~
sareon
There is reason for their seemingly high prices it is because of how
accurately the bricks are built. They are meant to be a precise size to
something like 0.002 mm and you can see it is a quality product compared to
Mega Blocks which just feels cheap.

I'd say a normal set goes for about $0.10 a piece, prices will go up if they
require a license (Star Wars) or have lots of special abnormal pieces.

Minifigs cost a lot more to make, they are also collectable themselves. I have
collected sets since I was three years old and I have only recently discovered
how valuable and collectable just the minifigs are to some people.

~~~
icebraining
Yeah, they may be expensive, but I've played with multiple "clones" as a kid
and none got even close to their quality. Even the colors were often off.

------
Jupe
I'm 46 and have a collection of over 18,000 Lego pieces. This includes several
of the 1200 piece buckets they were selling in the US for $20 about 10 years
ago, and the sets my kids have collected.

When I was their age (~10) I only had a few hundred pieces, but I learned to
build and re-build those same 100 pieces in many different ways (sheds, space
ships, bull dozers, you name it). Lego's certainly had a hand in shaping my
future as a developer/engineer. I'm extremely happy to see my kids enjoying
them as well.

I think Lego is the best toy in the world! (and an excellent company).

------
EliRivers
Many years ago, my youngest brother had some kind of Lego train set game on
the PC. He built little Lego train layouts on there. Maybe it's like Hornby; I
don't know.

The game had a network play option. A player could play together with someone
else over the internet who had the same game. I don't recall how many years
ago this was, but I've got the idea in my head that there was no central game
managing server. You had to already know who to play with. Possibly even
knowing their IP address.

Anyway, he didn't know anyone. He really wanted to play, so he wrote to them
asking if they knew anyone he could play this game with.

Someone wrote back, apologising for not knowing anyone he could play with, and
included a mousemat and a pack of lego.

I'm welling up here. I'm going to go out and firebomb the Duplo factory.

~~~
jmharvey
Duplo is made by Lego (and Duplo bricks are compatible with Lego bricks).

------
jellicle
Speaking as a parent, Lego is a terrible toy. Legos are only available in
build-one-thing sets now - 100+ tiny pieces which build one thing, and if you
lose a piece, you can't build that one thing any more, and the pieces aren't
suited to building anything else. Plus the resulting toys are terrible - you
can't play with them, they fall apart! I suppose I could glue every piece
together, but that seems tedious. It makes for very profitable presents-from-
grandma, but it's a crappy toy. I've embargoed Legos in my house.

Speaking as a marketer, HN should understand that this is a piece of viral
marketing from Lego. It was created by an ad agency, not by good customer
service.

~~~
mdc
I didn't realize you couldn't reuse the Legos from the specialized kits. I
better go tell my kids who have built all kinds of crazy contraptions over the
years. Frankly, I think having a bin full of parts that used to be a few
different kits makes for a lot more creativity than having a bin full of
standard Legos. There are so many more options.

~~~
Legion
Repurposing special kit parts for your own builds is one of the best parts of
Legos.

It's an early age manifestation of the hacker ethos - taking some thing and
finding all the ways you can use it outside of its original intent, and then
putting those disparate things together to build something entirely new.

------
djt
I heard an interesting story that Lego faced a crisis where they were losing
market share and profitability and so they decided to do some licensing deals
which have had a very positive effect on their bottom line.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lego>

~~~
sareon
Yeah it was in the late 90s I believe that they were almost going bankrupt.
Part of it too was the number of special pieces they would use for only one
set. I have the Lego Book and it's a great read, goes into a lot more detail
than that Wikipedia page.

~~~
djt
which book is it? I'd be interested to read it!

~~~
sareon
Literally ``The Lego Book'' - [http://www.amazon.ca/Lego-Book-Dorling-
Kindersley/dp/0756656...](http://www.amazon.ca/Lego-Book-Dorling-
Kindersley/dp/0756656230)

------
darrenkopp
Lego is great. A while back they had something where you could design your own
hero factory on their website, so my son started saving up and doing chores so
that he could get one.

Well, after a couple of weeks, we went to build one, but we couldn't find
anywhere where we could do it. The website said we could, but we couldn't find
where to. My wife emailed Lego and asked them how to do it, but it turns out
they were no longer doing it, but the website had not been updated (in fact,
they had stopped doing it before we had even seen it to begin with).

My son was very sad of course, but Lego sent him a $20 gift card and a bunch
of stickers and some stuff so that he could buy some other hero factory stuff,
which made his day and allowed him to get much more than he could of with what
he saved up.

------
Avshalom
As far as I know LEGO actually has a vault with a couple sets of all their
products. Which of course means some body has the job description of official
LEGO librarian.

------
b3b0p
Regarding Lego's in general. I love them! I had a ton as a child. My best
friend had all the castles and my cousin was obsessed beyond anyone I have
ever met, even today.

Currently I am into the Mindstorms sets. I buy them all. Right now I have 2 of
them and I want very badly some of the 3rd party accessories to make some
unique fun robotic machines or robots. The possibilities seem endless. There
are so many neat ones I can't decide what I should build to use them now. I
find my self thinking of robots that could do something only to make an excuse
to buy the part and build it.

This situation that the boy was in reminds me of Nintendo games.

1\. A new fun game I wanted would come out.

2\. I would save up the funds to buy it or I was currently playing something
else I would need to finish first.

3\. By the time I got the money or finished the previously mentioned game, the
game I wanted would be out of print and the prices would be in the
stratosphere.

4\. Sometimes, Christmas or birthday would come around and mom would be the
savior. I would drop my jaw she was willing to and paid so much money for some
of my games. I keep the ones she bought me not only to play again, but for
sentimental reasons.

------
snake_plissken
Best LEGO sets ever? GO!

SPACE POLICE [http://paperspaceships.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/04/lego.j...](http://paperspaceships.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/04/lego.jpg)

and

Early-Mid 90s City jump offs [http://www.onetwobrick.net/2008/08/set-
database-6541-interco...](http://www.onetwobrick.net/2008/08/set-
database-6541-intercoastal-seaport.html)

------
douglasfshearer
When they say it was out of his price range, many mint-boxed sets are
available on Bricklink that are the same as or less than the original retail
price.

[http://www.bricklink.com/search.asp?pg=1&q=10194&sz=...](http://www.bricklink.com/search.asp?pg=1&q=10194&sz=10&searchSort=P)

------
bwag
Kudos to Lego. I think the majority of us agree their product is full of
awesome, and to see them providing this level of customer service is awe-
inspiring.

That said, I think we're missing the crux of the story here. These parents let
their child save every penny for _two_ years. There's something to be said for
teaching your children to save money for something they want, but to let it go
on for two years seems overly cruel. As a parent, you need to make sure they
get enough money in birthday cards, allowance, etc. to cover the total in a
reasonable amount of time.

------
bobochan
My kids took part in the First Lego League robotics competition for this first
time this year and it was one of the greatest things ever. For those that do
not know, it is a competition where teams build Lego robots to navigate around
a board and solve different challenges. The teams also do a project (complete
with a market survey, product design, testing, and then a product pitch) as
part of the competition.

The Lego robots are easy to build and fun to play with. The default visual
programming language is pretty limited, but it is very easy to get started
with.

------
nlavezzo
This kind of amazing customer care is something every company can aspire to -
and not just for the obvious reason of making people smile. This cost LEGO
maybe $300 and has netted them an incredible amount of positive press and
rekindled emotional connections with their brand.

If you want to read two great and inspiring books about this, read The Thank
You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk and Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. We're
working to build a culture of over the top customer service and these books
are our bibles.

------
richardlblair
My faith in humanity has been restored.

Lego did a really great thing here. It could impact this young man's life
forever.

Also, shout out to his parents. They seem like they have done a great job in a
tough situation.

------
outworlder
This is not the first time I've heard good things about Lego, the company.

A friend of a friend (I will try do double-check the story) wanted to use
photographs of situations built with Lego to use as illustrations in a
internal campaign she created for a company. She wrote to Lego headquarters
and they authorised the use of the bricks in her materials, after some minor
requests, such as attribution and trademarks.

------
headbiznatch
Cool story, legendary toys.

Their manufacturing practice is also impressive, paying special regard to
their consistency: tolerances like 2 micrometers, ~18 fails in a million
bricks (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego#Manufacture>). Any LEGO fan knows
the difference between the real deal and "compatible" sets.

------
Zanyinj
Tears in my eyes after reading this, seeing the "What it is is beautiful"
commercial and remembering. Everything.

------
xsace
Brings me back when I was a kid. Playing my new set of Lego every single
minute of the days following Christmas.

~~~
larsmak
Yeah, I can relate as well. Spending countless, restless hours building small
lego-cities. I have no doubt in my mind that that's what got me into an
engineering-career. Except now I'm spending countless hours designing complex,
high availablity, high scalability, backend systems..

~~~
paulbunn
At the age of 30, I still get a sense of excitement when I see Lego. I don't
know of any engineers who never played with Lego as a kid (or even Meccano to
a lesser degree)

~~~
xsace
Actually I remember hearing over the radio some statistics like over 70% of
engineer and architect played lego being kids.

------
smokinjoe
It's stuff like this that not only makes consumers love LEGO, but also just
gives the impression that you want to work there when you grow up.

Such a perfect method of satisfying customers while ensuring a steady pool of
enthusiastic potential employees.

------
jamesjguthrie
Lego definitely are a great company. I lost a few pieces of a train set I had
as a kid and when I put in a request to Lego (it was either by e-mail or their
website) they sent me the pieces for free!

------
joshaidan
I'm assuming something that was not mentioned in this story, the kid also got
to keep the $100 he had been saving all this time? :)

~~~
unreal37
The video mentions that his parents allowed him to buy another set, but he
still was sad that he didn't get the set he wanted.

So the $100 was spent on Legos.

------
jkonowitch
That's the most delightful random act of kindness that I've seen in a while.
Bravo Lego!

------
dllthomas
Awwwww...

------
jebblue
There are 18 on Amazon? Did he not check there?

~~~
ygra
Priced $229. Which is more than twice the price he expected. As noted in the
article.

