Lego: the Old, the Good, the Bad & More

Today Lego is officially 50. What means middle age for a person, means amazing for a toy. Not so many toys can become a classic that can endure half a century of continuous sales, and EVERYONE is celebrating.

From Google (that has made his logo/lego) to bloggers, we have all become "Lego" for one day (and we both have lego in our names!).

I will be no exception, even when in my country we used to play with the well known "Rasti" that was as good as any Lego^(*).

As UglyDoggy is all about ideas, advertising, products and surprises we will be celebrating by going through some of the milestones of their advertising and their product.

The Old: Not too much to say, just a classic of an era.

The New (and Awarded): Originally from South Africa, this ad was a Cannes Print Grand Prix 2006 winner, which makes it the best print ad of 2006 (Agency, FCB). Only word in the ad, "Imagine..." (while it is suppoused to be a periscope I know people that have seen some other things, so I guess the imagine part is pretty accurate!)




The Bad (and fake): A series of ads that ended up with the creative guys getting fired from Saatchi&Saatchi, China. No, the agency didn't approve the ads, no, Lego wasn't even a client. They were just playing, brainstorming and they came up with these ads, twin towers included. All hell broke loose and apology letters were sent, creatives were fired and ads where (almost) out of circulation. Note: the slogan here was changed from "Build it", to "Rebuild it"


And More: You can tell that a product has gone far and beyond when they can start selling products that represent their original product in a different environment, like you can see here... (instead of just bricks, ice bricks!)

The Lego Ice Brick Tray with real colored ice bricks, as seen in Blogadilla

I hope you find this small hommage good enough. If you want more, here is the Lego Man that swam ashore in Netherlands or you can see another type of ad where Legos were used to deliver a healthy message.

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^(*)Psssst: Meanwhile if you are a Rasti fan, I have good news for you: they are still selling and now there is a Rasti Fan Club (just in Spanish, sorry!)