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Lego Secret Vault Contains All Sets In History
An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has an exclusive video and feature of one of the most heavily guarded secrets in Lego: the security vault where they store all the Lego sets ever created, new in their boxes. 4,720 sets from 1953 to 2008. Really amazing stuff and a trip down memory lane to every person who has played with the magic bricks. All combined, the collection must be worth millions, not only because of the collector value, but also because Lego uses it as a safeguard in copyright and patent cases."
I like how each of the storage isles are compressed against each other initially and can then be opened with a crank.
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When I first read it, I assumed it was going to be a data store of all possible combinations of every Lego block ever created so that all possible designs were prior art and their property.
Lego needs to work on this.
Oh man, the Galaxy Explorer was the best! Seems like after the space sets, all the pieces started getting to specialized. Giant plates that could hardly be used to make anything other than what the instructions said.
I remember having dozens of little bins full of the hinge pieces, light bulb looking things, and space man helmets.
Good times.
That was fun to watch.
I never followed any of the Lego instructions, though. So while I owned many of those sets, I never built any of those things.
Was there anybody else who would just dump open the packages, mix it in with all your other pieces, and build random crap...like flying boats that deploy ninjas?
By far, the Auto Chassis. Rack and pinion steering, v-4 motor with moving pistons, 3-speed gear box, fully independent front and rear suspension, oh and adjustable seats. Was an awesome kit to put together.
Insert funny smart-ass comment here.
When I was a kid, LEGO decided to license out their manufacture to a Samsonite factory in Loveland, Colorado (right next door to the Hewlett Packard facility that was the first place HP had outsourced from its birth in Silicon Valley, as it happens.) The factory also made luggage and kids' bikes. It was cool because up until 2006 it still looked like it had been made of LEGO bricks: the windows were 2x4 clear bricks on-end, 12 feet high. They made all sorts of weird LEGO stuff, and I wonder sometimes if it was all official -- the injection molding dies came straight from Denmark, and were very, very carefully accounted for, but the plant also built other unusual LEGO sets like big crude-looking gears that only sort of meshed with the standard LEGO bricks.
My childhood was filled with disappointment because no matter how many LEGO kits I managed to get, some of my friends, whose parents worked at the plant, had trash-bags full of floor sweepings and could make playhouses we could crawl into with their bricks. (Including a lot of weird off-colors and bricks that weren't shaped quite right.) The local library had, and probably still has, several LEGO buildings the size of cars, beautifully designed and put together. I was upset that they were glued together, making all those parts worthless. Okay, I'm still upset by that.
Anyway. I've just always wondered if the rumors were true and the little Colorado plant did create some graymarket LEGO kits that Billund doesn't have. LEGO yanked their license after only a few years because they were doing a poor job, but maybe, just maybe, I have a couple LEGO pieces that aren't represented in that vault in Billund.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
i would love to have a set of metal legos
get them in diffrent alloys.. make a car.. could be fun
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I'm wondering what Lego holds patents on? Also, what patents they once held that have expired? I remember Legos from when I was a kid, and I'm over 50. The design patent on the original blocks has to have expired long ago.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Building instructions from 1958 to 2007 on this site:
http://www.hccamsterdam.nl/brickfactory/year/index.htm
The vault is hardly a secret if you're an avid Lego fan. For additional pictures and some fairly interesting discussion about unreleased sets, etc., check out this discussion (from 4 years ago):
http://news.lugnet.com/general/?n=47132
(please don't kill Lugnet or Brickshelf, /.!)
At least now I have item number 40 on my "list of things to do when I am the last person on the planet". How cool would it be to build a life sized house out of these legos???
'Modded "Informative"? Really? It sounds like it was meant to be a joke.'
You obviously don't know Microsoft ;^)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I imagine it must be rare, but does someone want to put some context on it? How rare is it? How valuable is it?
One of my friends wrote a fan letter to the company when he was very young, basically just a "I really love Legos, they're my favorite toy, I like building castles and spaceships!". Something like that.
The response he got was a brief reply along the lines of: "Please refer to our product as Lego-brand building blocks." I don't know the exact wording, but it was a rather terse trademark defense letter.
I understand you have to defend your trademark to keep it, but it's one of those sour feelings that he's remembered ever since.
Mr Slacker, you have made me unbelievably happy. The first one was it, as soon as I saw it, I remembered the whole thing, standing there, being given this by my folks. For a split second, I was 4 years old and it was like the happiest moment of my life, again.
Thank you Thank you Thank you.
Awesome.
[ ]Half Empty [ ]Half Full [x]Twice as big as it needs to be
That's one thing I've started noticing with the re-releases of the Star Wars kits. When Episode One came out, my brother and I of course had to have everything Lego and Star Wars, the combination of the two was deadly on my parents wallets I'm sure, because no Christmas or Birthday was left without a few sets of Lego. I remember getting my Naboo Starfighter very well. I also remember how blocky it looked once completed, and was pleased with this, as it still had it's trademark Lego look and feel. And I could retrofit it with whatever armaments my creative mind saw fit. Now I stroll through toy aisles occasionally, looking for a bit of Lego to satisfy the urge I get from time to time to indulge in my childhood. All the old kits have been re-vamped with large, rounded, one piece 'skins'. Sure they look a lot more 'like the movie models' but lack the Lego look. Not only that, but it reduces the number of pieces needed to complete the kit, and takes away from the fun of putting it together yourself. I'm finding this a lot more with other toys as well in my browsing, nothing is as cool as it was when I was a little kid, nor is it as well built. That's why I've got all my old toys hoarded away for when I eventually spawn, my kids will know what quality was.
These aren't toys any longer; they are artifacts. If you're serious about keeping your artifacts around, you need to remember this.
I volunteer at the Computer History Museum, and they're very particular about this. Wearing white cotton gloves as you pick up an old Atari joystick may seem silly, but that's the rule. There's very little information about how long plastics will last, so keep your grubby little fingers off.
The United States of America: We mean well.
Actually I played with all of my toys quite a bit and some of them got destroyed in the process. That's not the point, and as others have already countered... These are not toys. This is an official corporate archive of products.
These are effectively one of a kind items for their intended purpose so you would think that extra care would be taken with them in this context.
The oils on human skin are quite destructive. Case in point, don't wash your hands for part of the day and then pick up any magazine and smudge your thumb across a page with black ink. The soy/vegetable based inks used in most printing will breakdown and smear from the contact. There is no repair for this kind of damage.