Have you ever heard a Lego "fact" that really set off your BS meter? And wondered how it could be true, and if there is any evidence or proof anywhere?

I have. Multiple times.

Here's one: "they put holes in the top of minifig heads so kids won't choke on them". Like what? So why did they stop, did they decide it's okay if kids choke now? And why don't the put holes in all the other small pieces kids can choke on? And what if the head got stuck in some kid's throat sideways and the hole isn't letting any air through? And how could anyone, even a kid, breathe threw a 2 millimeter diameter hole? That's not enough to breath through. I guess a small hole could in theory prevent a piece from getting sucked into the throat as hard somehow, but that doesn't answer all the other questions.

Another: "They stopped putting alternate builds on the back of boxes because too many parents complained." Or alternately "mother's groups sued Lego because there were no instructions for alternate builds." I just can't believe any of that without proof. And no, a Lego PR person saying so isn't proof and should be taken with a shaker full of salt. I did google this and couldn't find any documentation of a lawsuit. And I just can't see any parent in the 80's actually calling in to complain about this, even less writing an actual real letter. This was before the internet and getting a large group to do any sort of coordinated letter writing campaign was not easy. Also it was pretty well understood that there were no instructions for these and you were supposed to figure it out. Me, and every other kid I knew, thought they were cool and the parents encouraged us to figure things out ourselves. There is absolutely no basis for a lawsuit. So I don't believe any of it. If a Lego PR person says it's true, I will believe it even less.

I heard another doozy today. "The original yellow castle was yellow instead of gray so people wouldn't build war tanks out of the bricks". What? Then why did they make this two years later and all the other gray Space sets? Wouldn't tanks typically be green anyway? What's stopping people from making "desert camo" yellow tanks?

Anyway. I'm not saying anything above can't possibly be true, or partially true. They don't make sense to me though. And I won't just believe them without serious, incontrovertible proof.

Edited October 21, 20231 yr by danth

On 10/21/2023 at 12:47 PM, danth said:

Another: "They stopped putting alternate builds on the back of boxes because too many parents complained." Or alternately "mother's groups sued Lego because there were no instructions for alternate builds." I just can't believe any of that without proof. And no, a Lego PR person saying so isn't proof and should be taken with a shaker full of salt. I did google this and couldn't find any documentation of a lawsuit. And I just can't see any parent in the 80's actually calling in to complain about this, even less writing an actual real letter. This was before the internet and getting a large group to do any sort of coordinated letter writing campaign was not easy. Also it was pretty well understood that there were no instructions for these and you were supposed to figure it out. Me, and every other kid I knew, thought they were cool and the parents encouraged us to figure things out ourselves. There is absolutely no basis for a lawsuit. So I don't believe any of it. If a Lego PR person says it's true, I will believe it even less.

I'm sorry, why are you judging whether parents "in the '80s" would do this when alternate build pics on the backs of sets lasted well into the early '00s, when the internet was readily available and a lot of Lego's customer service was still handled by phone?

I have never heard of the lawsuit claim so agree that sounds dubious, but the customer service claim sounds reasonable to me, at least as one part of a multifaceted issue. As I understand it, the issue was (at least) twofold.

1. Lego's designers made the alternate builds as a side project that was done quickly and without the robust testing done for "main models". This meant that there were many instances in which the alt builds weren't up to the same standard and were fragile or otherwise less satisfying, and that they were mostly built and photographed in one session instead of going through the lengthy process of producing instructions.
2. Lego's customer service DID get calls asking for instructions, which because of the aforementioned design process, did not exist. Lego's customer service reputation at that point was very focused on sending every customer away happy, even if it cost them more to resolve (I remember as a kid my family got a lot of freebie keychains because of troubleshooting calls about the then in-house Lego video games). So call volume spent on unresolvable issues was something to avoid.

I also wouldn't have the same faith you seem to have in anything about Lego being "common knowledge", either back then or today. Just a couple years ago when I was at the Lego store, an older woman came in with an ancient Technic set expecting they could provide her with instructions. If somebody was willing to go to the length of physically bringing a set to a store, I have little doubt there were plenty who would make a phone call asking for instructions for a model pictured on the box of the set itself.

In any case, the eventual decision was to keep alternate build pictures for sets like Creator or Technic that actually included alternate instructions, instead of adding to the workload of other theme designers to hold alternate builds to the same standards and workload of main models. I don't know if the customer service issue was the only reason for that but it was certainly a factor when it came to weighing the positive versus negative impact of producing those alternate build pics.

 

Also, from what I've heard the yellow castle claim sounds legit to me too, knowing the tension in that era between designers and higher-ups. This was during the same ownership in which a designer's humorous and rudimentary Lego skeleton in a castle dungeon display earned him a dressing down from the owner for being too morbid for Lego (source: the designer himself), only about a decade before a genuine Lego skeleton made by that same designer made its way into sets. It's far from unbelievable to me that grey castles could be forbidden a couple years before the then-owner of the company eventually relented and gave the designers the go-ahead to use grey for the new space theme.

Edited October 22, 20231 yr by Lyichir

1 hour ago, Lyichir said:

I'm sorry, why are you judging whether parents "in the '80s" would do this when alternate build pics on the backs of sets lasted well into the early '00s, when the internet was readily available and a lot of Lego's customer service was still handled by phone?

That's just when I grew up so that's what I experienced.

I actually didn't realize (or I forgot) that the alt builds continued into the 2000s when the internet existed. The story is more plausible if the complaints happened then.

2 hours ago, Lyichir said:

Lego's designers made the alternate builds as a side project that was done quickly and without the robust testing done for "main models". This meant that there were many instances in which the alt builds weren't up to the same standard and were fragile or otherwise less satisfying, and that they were mostly built and photographed in one session instead of going through the lengthy process of producing instructions.

This right here makes way more sense than the "parents complained" story.

2 hours ago, Lyichir said:

Lego's customer service DID get calls asking for instructions, which because of the aforementioned design process, did not exist. Lego's customer service reputation at that point was very focused on sending every customer away happy, even if it cost them more to resolve (I remember as a kid my family got a lot of freebie keychains because of troubleshooting calls about the then in-house Lego video games). So call volume spent on unresolvable issues was something to avoid. 

I'm sure they got calls for replacement instructions, probably hundreds of calls for those for every 1 person asking for instructions for alt builds. I can see an occasional "by the way do you have instructions for those alt builds online?" question but only a total weirdo would actually complain about the obvious answer to that question. There's no way that was a common occurrence.

Unless....

2 hours ago, Lyichir said:

In any case, the eventual decision was to keep alternate build pictures for sets like Creator or Technic that actually included alternate instructions, instead of adding to the workload of other theme designers to hold alternate builds to the same standards and workload of main models.

See, I think the advent of 3 in 1 Creator sets could have been a bigger reason to get rid of non-instruction alt builds. Both being on shelves together gets confusing. Then you'd have sets where the alt builds have instructions mixed with sets where they don't. Though that was the case earlier anyway with Basic Sets. But I could see Lego anticipating confusion or resentment over that.

2 hours ago, Lyichir said:

Also, from what I've heard the yellow castle claim sounds legit to me too, knowing the tension in that era between designers and higher-ups. This was during the same ownership in which a designer's humorous and rudimentary Lego skeleton in a castle dungeon display earned him a dressing down from the owner for being too morbid for Lego (source: the designer himself), only about a decade before a genuine Lego skeleton made by that same designer made its way into sets. It's far from unbelievable to me that grey castles could be forbidden a couple years before the then-owner of the company eventually relented and gave the designers the go-ahead to use grey for the new space theme.

Well they were making gray & blue space ships in 1978 with all the gray parts needed to make fighter jets.

And this was 1979 with everything needed to make a mini tank. Though Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen took over in 1979 so maybe he changed things?

I guess his dad could have been a real weirdo. What kind of person withholds certain colors from kids to prevent them from making things he disagrees with? Maybe he was that kind of person. And too dumb to realize kids could still make gray jet fighters or desert camo yellow tanks.

4 minutes ago, danth said:

And this was 1979 with everything needed to make a mini tank. Though Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen took over in 1979 so maybe he changed things?

I guess his dad could have been a real weirdo. What kind of person withholds certain colors from kids to prevent them from making things he disagrees with? Maybe he was that kind of person. And too dumb to realize kids could still make gray jet fighters or desert camo yellow tanks.

Yeah, from what I understand Godtfred Kirk Christiansen was a lot stricter about anything pertaining to war and death than his son. Perhaps because he lived through the second world war in his early years? It was under Kjeld that things like skeletons and ghosts became allowable subjects for Lego figures, and that colors like green and grey became more commonly used instead of being limited largely to things like trees and baseplates.

3 minutes ago, Lyichir said:

Perhaps because he lived through the second world war in his early years?

Well now you made me feel bad for what I said about him. I guess it could have been PTSD.

On 10/21/2023 at 12:47 PM, danth said:

I heard another doozy today. "The original yellow castle was yellow instead of gray so people wouldn't build war tanks out of the bricks". What? Then why did they make this two years later and all the other gray Space sets? Wouldn't tanks typically be green anyway? What's stopping people from making "desert camo" yellow tanks?

I'm pretty sure that was included in LEGO episode of The Toys that Made Us. I would need to rewatch the episode to make sure, but I think the LEGO historian they are interviewing gave that reason.

*edit*

Found the subtitles for the episode

"There's a reason why the first Castle is yellow. It's because the Kirk Kristiansen family were worried if we made it in gray, the children would start to build, uh, tanks... We didn't want that."
[narrator] "However, this idea tanked the very next year. And Castles have been tank gray ever since."

 

Edited October 23, 20231 yr by CallMeCarbiz

Yes, the designer himself got a real telling off for a doodle of a skeleton in the dungeon, he is a super chill guy to meet in person, really nice. Heard that story in person over a beer. 

As for the grey bricks: LEGO as a whole was against grey and green bricks so no overt tanks etc could get built. Ole, the founder, lived through both World Wars and Godtfred through the Second. Kjeld would have had this influence and grew up in a post war era where all of Europe was recovering. 

Myth Confirmed as the great ones said.

LEGO actually still did some "alt-build" suggestions for 11030: Lots of Bricks with some of the larger builds pictures in the instructions/box but not step-by-step.

But that set is like an exception, likely because it just uses basic bricks and fairly easy to follow from a single picture, compared to other Classic 2023 sets.

The castle suggestion from that set is probably the most complicated build, that doesn't have instructions.

Classic theme also isn't about building a main model so it's a different category to begin with.

Edited October 23, 20231 yr by TeriXeri

1 hour ago, Peppermint_M said:

As for the grey bricks: LEGO as a whole was against grey and green bricks so no overt tanks etc could get built. Ole, the founder, lived through both World Wars and Godtfred through the Second. Kjeld would have had this influence and grew up in a post war era where all of Europe was recovering. 

 

I guess the real issue with stories about why such and such happened is that there is no paper trail of proof, just what the company now says or what people that work or worked for the company say. I can understand there being the idea that green and grey bricks could be turned into tanks or other military vehicles, but there is unlikely to be anything written down to prove it and so we have to go on what is said by people maybe years afterwards.

The two big myths for me are these - one unlicensed and one licensed:

Why are minifigures yellow.  The company now says this decision was to avoid assigning any specific ethnicity, hence avoiding all race issues. To me, this is a retro-fitted story. I assume it was because of the colours available at the time, it was either yellow or white and they went yellow. And they had been using yellow for homemaker figures for some years before that too (aside from the very red Red Indians). Yet they managed to have realistic skin tones in Duplo quite early on in the 1980s, replacing the colour white used for a few years before that. They also did not shy away from racial stereotypes in the printing of faces on yellow heads.

Why are there no Star Wars CMF / single figures sold. I have never seen anything concrete about LEGO not being allowed to produce and sell single SW minifigures. There are myths that it is down to Hasbro stopping them due to their action figures license but there is no proof of this. To me, there is little similarity between a minifigure and an action figure, no more than an action figure and a Funko pop or similar toys. LEGO did stop doing the normal minifigures in the SW magnets, instead gluing them and this is often cited as Hasbro's fault for demanding they stop producing individual minifigures as they encroach on their action figure license. But was that because of Hasbro, or was it because people were buying the magnets instead of sets that the minifigures appeared in. For me, it was the latter. LEGO benefits from this as fans assume that the Hasbro license stops LEGO from producing single minifigures, when the alternative could be that LEGO doesn't want to do SW CMFs (or even battle packs containing characters such as Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, or Vader, Emperor and 2x stormtroopers) because it would stop people buying the large sets that those characters appear in.

Sometimes facts are misconstructed, myths and urban legends are born….

Edited October 23, 20231 yr by Lion King
Typo

One I'm curious about is the claim that retired brick molds are buried in concrete in the foundations of buildings in order to keep them from being obtained by competitors. It just seems so outlandish and over the top--surely there are simpler ways of rendering a mold entirely unusable? What would that kind of adulteration do to the structural integrity of the resulting building?

9 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

Myth Confirmed as the great ones said.

Yeah I think I'm mostly convinced.

I still think the policy of no gray/green bricks doesn't make sense, and never made sense, for reasons I've already given. And I invoked Judge Judy's "If it doesn't make sense it's not true" rule.

But I guess what doesn't make sense to me did make sense to Godtfred Kirk.

What's funny is that in 1979, the USA started producing the Abrams tank which is famously tan and closer to yellow than any other Lego colors at the time.

9 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

Yes, the designer himself got a real telling off for a doodle of a skeleton in the dungeon, he is a super chill guy to meet in person, really nice. Heard that story in person over a beer. 

I want to hear more about this! How did that come about, and what else did he say? Assuming you are inclined to and at liberty to share, of course.

7 hours ago, MAB said:

Why are minifigures yellow.  The company now says this decision was to avoid assigning any specific ethnicity, hence avoiding all race issues. To me, this is a retro-fitted story.

Agreed!

1 hour ago, Karalora said:

One I'm curious about is the claim that retired brick molds are buried in concrete in the foundations of buildings in order to keep them from being obtained by competitors. It just seems so outlandish and over the top--surely there are simpler ways of rendering a mold entirely unusable? What would that kind of adulteration do to the structural integrity of the resulting building?

Sounds like something they'd say to get people to shut up about the goat. Or bringing anything back that Lego doesn't want to bring back.

5 hours ago, Lion King said:

Sometimes facts are misconstructed, myths and urban legends are horns…

Uh what? Did you mean "myths and urban legends are born?" 😁

Edited October 23, 20231 yr by danth

4 minutes ago, Karalora said:

One I'm curious about is the claim that retired brick molds are buried in concrete in the foundations of buildings in order to keep them from being obtained by competitors. It just seems so outlandish and over the top--surely there are simpler ways of rendering a mold entirely unusable? What would that kind of adulteration do to the structural integrity of the resulting building?

It would likely be infill or like any other form of rubble used in levelling a plot. Or, a vault was designed into the foundation to specifically hold the moulds. 

The geological makeup of Denmark as a whole probably demands plenty of material anyway.

@danth, yes  i meant to say that. Typo, lol.

1 hour ago, danth said:

Uh what? Did you mean "myths and urban legends are born?" 😁

Maybe Lion King is also talking about the goat...

1 hour ago, Peppermint_M said:

It would likely be infill or like any other form of rubble used in levelling a plot. Or, a vault was designed into the foundation to specifically hold the moulds. 

The geological makeup of Denmark as a whole probably demands plenty of material anyway.

It still seems like it would require a lot of difficult coordination between otherwise unrelated businesses. The design of actual life-sized buildings would be constrained by the size and shape of LEGO's assets.

Nah, have you seen the moulds themselves?

(source)

A few junked parts like that can be dumped into a pit with a substrate mix with no issues. It probably wouldn't be used as actual calculated concrete ingredients like gravels/sands needed. It wouldn't be considered as structural metal like the rebar either. While there has been recent research into plastics as a replacement for aggregates in concrete, there hasn't really been though of using metals as they are too valuable. 

Considering this tale was told about the "new" (now old) facilities in Billund, bespoke facilities that TLG were getting constructed from their own contracts. The Contract Tender process could have actually included a clause about "concealing retired moulds". For real, a lot of odd stuff is known to be used to create stable land for building (Like how much Bristol is under New York City) So, a bunch of, say, the 70s LEGO moulds being dumped and buried and not hurt anything. (Source: I have a HNC in Civil & Construction Engineering and worked in Civil Engineering offices, on design and Tender processes :D) 

Oh hey! (Just found these as I checked details)

https://www.lego.com/en-us/history/articles/d-disposal-of-obsolete-moulds/

Photos! 1950s - 1970s moulds. Found under the old HQ in 2016.

Actually would have loved to get one of those as a curiosity for my hoard of LEGO stuff.

 

3 hours ago, Karalora said:

Maybe Lion King is also talking about the goat...

That goat myth will be no longer myth as goat makes comeback in Medieal Village set.

5 hours ago, danth said:

I want to hear more about this! How did that come about, and what else did he say? Assuming you are inclined to and at liberty to share, of course.

I'm pretty sure it's safe to share details, as it's a story Niels tells pretty regularly in interviews and presentations such as the one he gave at the LEGO Inside Tour when I went back in 2015. Here is how he describes the story in an interview from BrickJournal Volume 2, Issue 4:

Quote

"The first time I made and put a LEGO-figure skeleton in a LEGO Castle dungeon was in 1981. Godtfred (owner of the LEGO Group at that time) himself was very displeased! I got a regular dressing-down (scolding) because he certainly did not want the kids to see a dead LEGO-figure!!

We waited almost ten years before we dared show one again!!"

At the LEGO Inside Tour presentation I mentioned, he showed off the skeleton figure in question — although I can't remember if it was just an old photo or the physical figure itself. It was a very rough mock-up, glued together with a 1x1 round brick for the head, a 1x2 plate for the pelvis, and I believe some antenna pieces cut short for the legs. According to Niels, he did this mostly as a joke for his colleagues, and left it in the dungeon of a Castle sketch model a fellow designer was working on so he'd find it the next day.

What he hadn't counted on was that Godtfred Kirk Christiansen would be offering some visiting business-people a tour of the premises (including the design department) the following day, and so he ended up seeing the skeleton before Niels could remove it from that display. Niels paraphrased Godtfred's words to him as something to the effect of "if I ever see a dead LEGO man here again you are fired!"

 

The issue of building tanks is also a very real thing that Godtfred was concerned about, according to another story Niels told. If I remember the details correctly, at one point one designer had been putting together a LEGO tank in his off time for a friend who was a military history enthusiast, and then when Godtfred Kirk Christiansen came by the workshop unexpectedly they hastily removed the cannon and slapped some wing pieces on to try and convince him it was a prototype for a new LEGO spacecraft. Apparently Godtfred was not at all convinced but was still relatively good-humored about it, while still making it clear that it shouldn't happen again.

However, while I believe this is part of why LEGO discouraged green bricks for a long time, it's unrelated to why the Yellow Castle was yellow. That was more because the Yellow Castle was a big, expensive set with a huge piece count for its time, and LEGO Castle as a concept was still unproven, so designer Daniel Krentz and his colleagues were encouraged to do as much of it as possible using only grey elements which had already been introduced instead of relying on recolors. It was only after those first few Castle sets proved successful that the designers were permitted a more generous budget for new recolors (as well as for large and complex molds like the LEGO horse).

2 hours ago, Aanchir said:

However, while I believe this is part of why LEGO discouraged green bricks for a long time, it's unrelated to why the Yellow Castle was yellow. That was more because the Yellow Castle was a big, expensive set with a huge piece count for its time, and LEGO Castle as a concept was still unproven, so designer Daniel Krentz and his colleagues were encouraged to do as much of it as possible using only grey elements which had already been introduced instead of relying on recolors. It was only after those first few Castle sets proved successful that the designers were permitted a more generous budget for new recolors (as well as for large and complex molds like the LEGO horse).

Did you mean to say yellow here?

15 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

 

 

 

They look like prototypes for Minecraft heads, one even has a face!

12 hours ago, danth said:

Did you mean to say yellow here?

No, i meant they were encouraged to stick mostly to existing grey elements (such as the plates they ended up using for the upper walkways) instead of introducing a lot of new elements in that color like they'd need to do if they wanted grey walls or parapets. Sorry my wording was a little unclear there!

24 minutes ago, Aanchir said:

No, i meant they were encouraged to stick mostly to existing grey elements (such as the plates they ended up using for the upper walkways) instead of introducing a lot of new elements in that color like they'd need to do if they wanted grey walls or parapets. Sorry my wording was a little unclear there!

Ah I see. I think I still understood your point somehow. Yeah, what you're saying makes more sense to me than the "so kid's can't built tanks" story. Except it sounds like the lack of existing gray bricks was really so that kids couldn't build tanks.

Related to the color of the yellow castle, they also had difficulty getting approval to include any weapons. The official story is that they were only allowed to make the swords by calling them cake cutters and not depicting any kind of violence in the box art. They also weren't allowed to make bad guys for many years, so they started making factions in different color schemes so kids could fill in the story themselves and decide which ones are the baddies (like the black falcons). There are a lot of interesting stories like this in red book that was published a year ago.

35 minutes ago, jodawill said:

They also weren't allowed to make bad guys for many years, so they started making factions in different color schemes so kids could fill in the story themselves and decide which ones are the baddies (like the black falcons)

Which I think was a great thing. I loved how there were the Lion Knights and the Black Falcons, and nobody telling you who was "bad". I always imagined the Lions as the more powerful and authoritarian faction, and the Falcons as underdogs and upstarts.

I felt similarly about Blacktron. They were dark and mysterious but not evil. However they may have operated outside of Space law, considering their treatment by the Space Police later.