Lego has obtained the license to produce sets based on all available mediums
in which Batman appears, and will most probably produce sets based on the 2008
film The
Dark Knight (film) and subsequent films in future waves.
By Julia Spitz/ Daily News columnist found at metrowestdailynews.com
Sunday, November 5, 2006 - Updated: 01:04 AM EST
First gas, then Extreme Elmo, now this.
Danish toymaker Lego said it might not be able to meet holiday demand for plastic building blocks.
The news out of Copenhagen hasn’t set off worldwide panic yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
Blaming corporate restructuring, a spokeswoman on Tuesday said Duplo bricks and Lego City, Star Wars and Lego Technik sets could all be in short supply.
"Many of our most popular products are sold out," Charlotte Simonsen told theAssociated Press.
Surprisingly enough, local residents appear calm.
There were plenty of the pricey kits on Wal-Mart’s shelves two days after the announcement. An employee at Toys R Us in Framingham was actually adding boxes of Batman Lego sets to well-stocked displays late Thursday morning.
And there wasn’t a single crazed hoarder in sight.
But, as I said, it’s only a matter of time.
Even if this is merely a marketing ploy to boost sales, shoppers will eventually take the bait.
Once word gets out, there’ll be gaping holes in the Lego landscape and eBay hucksters will command top dollar for last year’s Harry Potter sets. By the time Christmas rolls around, parents will be paying $56,000 for black market Bionicles.
There’s only one way to stop the inevitable.
We pull together like our parents and grandparents did during World War II.
If the Greatest Generation could defeat the German army by saving scraps of tin foil, surely we can save Christmas and Hanukkah for our children.
And if you’re in a house or apartment where a child has lived at any point since the mid-1960s, you have all the pieces you need to be part of the solution.
We don’t need Lego to make more interlocking bricks.
The world already has all the Legos it needs, and then some.
They’re under beds and sofa cushions, behind radiators and refrigerators. They’re embedded in baseboards and lint traps and rugs. They’re stuck in vacuums and air conditioners.
No matter how many times a home’s been thoroughly cleaned, Legos lurk everywhere.
It doesn’t matter if your youngest child left for college in 1978. You still probably step on a stray Lego each time you walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
We’d never be able to capture all the itty-bitty plastic pieces hiding and multiplying like bacteria.
Then again, we don’t have to.
All we need is 10 or 20 per family to save our future.
Cities and towns across the nation could set up Lego redemption centers for the stray pieces, which would then be packaged willy-nilly in batches of 100 to create the All-American Hodgepodge collection.
Patriotic, n’est-ce pas?
But will kids go for it, you ask? All it would take is a lone instant message to a lone random pre-teen to launch buzz and fuel frenzied demand.
"Do U have A-AH?"
Since there wouldn’t be much overhead, the sets could be sold for as little as $9.99. And since most of us would gladly pay to get rid of the nettlesome little bricks, we could put the profits to good use.
Virtually every community across the country needs more cash in the coffers for police, firefighters, schools, libraries, tax relief or trash removal. A few hundred A-AHs could make a big difference to a town’s budget or local charity.
Win-win, and more win.
Gift-givers save money. Worthy causes get funding. And kids can make whatever they want, just like the good old days.
Somewhere along the line, Legos shifted from being a bunch of blocks youngsters could use to build anything they envisioned to kits with detailed instructions to construct what designers envisioned.
Learning to follow directions is a worthwhile skill.
Thinking outside the box is better.
Perhaps there’s a connection between the lack of young people going into engineering fields and a generation’s worth of Lego kits that encourage you to build only what’s pictured on the box.
Perhaps without instruction books, we’d get more people like the Rev. Brendan Powell Smith, creator of
www.thebricktestament.com , a Web site that uses Legos to depict scenes from the Bible.
Although whether that would be a good thing is certainly up for debate. Unclothed Lego figures acting out "The Seduction of Lot" isn’t for everyone.
But that’s a matter for another day.
First we have to head off the Lego crisis, nurture the next generation’s creativity, boost local revenue and save ourselves some cash.
We can do it all. Lego’s loss will be our gain.
All we have to do is move our couches.
(Julia Spitz can be reached at 508-626-3968 or jspitz@cnc.com.)
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