Lego Secret Vault Contains All Sets In History
Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:22 pm
Gizmodo: Lego Secret Vault Contains All Sets In History
I have to confess that life hasn't been very good lately. Work around the clock, not enough free time, trying to have kids and crashing badly... all while moving to a country I don't particularly like, away from my best friends and family. Maybe that's why visiting Lego's Memory Lane—the secret vault guarding almost every Lego set ever manufactured—touched me in a way I didn't expect. This wasn't amazement or simple awe. I was already astonished to no end by the tour of the Lego factory. No, this was something else, something bigger than the impressive view of the 4,720 Lego sets inside this lair. These weren't just simple boxes full of bricks. These were tickets to ride a time portal to emotions and simpler days long forgotten.
I didn't know that when I was curiously ogling the oldest sets, from the 1950s. Jette Orduna—the curator for the Idea House, Lego's history museum set in the old family house of the owner, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen—was explaining the first Lego sets, obviously enjoying my enthusiasm. "Here's the wooden box that some shops around Denmark had, usually hairdressers or general stores" she would say while carefully opening it for me to see its contents, simple red and white bricks without tubes, some of them with windows on them, "they contained individual Lego bricks. Back then, parents bought them regularly to their children, so they could keep expanding their Lego system." Then she would turn her attention to another set, as I kept asking what was this or that. "Yes, it's called 'electronic' because this train could be activated by whistling," she would explain, whistling herself.
Full Story / Video / Pix
I have to confess that life hasn't been very good lately. Work around the clock, not enough free time, trying to have kids and crashing badly... all while moving to a country I don't particularly like, away from my best friends and family. Maybe that's why visiting Lego's Memory Lane—the secret vault guarding almost every Lego set ever manufactured—touched me in a way I didn't expect. This wasn't amazement or simple awe. I was already astonished to no end by the tour of the Lego factory. No, this was something else, something bigger than the impressive view of the 4,720 Lego sets inside this lair. These weren't just simple boxes full of bricks. These were tickets to ride a time portal to emotions and simpler days long forgotten.
I didn't know that when I was curiously ogling the oldest sets, from the 1950s. Jette Orduna—the curator for the Idea House, Lego's history museum set in the old family house of the owner, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen—was explaining the first Lego sets, obviously enjoying my enthusiasm. "Here's the wooden box that some shops around Denmark had, usually hairdressers or general stores" she would say while carefully opening it for me to see its contents, simple red and white bricks without tubes, some of them with windows on them, "they contained individual Lego bricks. Back then, parents bought them regularly to their children, so they could keep expanding their Lego system." Then she would turn her attention to another set, as I kept asking what was this or that. "Yes, it's called 'electronic' because this train could be activated by whistling," she would explain, whistling herself.
Full Story / Video / Pix
