IAmA guy who sells LEGO at a store where that's all we do. AMAA.

Are you a: "old-school-builds-with-many-corners" or "these-rounded-and-specialty-pieces-have-changed-my-life!" kind of guy?

When I was a kid I was a lot more focused on the story than the building, as much as I loved putting things together.

With that said, I appreciate old-school builds with a lot of regular bricks a lot. Any time a kid is able to build something cool and symmetrical, I always get a little bit excited.

Would you rather assemble 1 horse sized duck or 100 duck sized horses?

Are they lego-sized or real sized?

If they're lego-sized, the latter. If they're real sized, the former.

I, a burly 28 year old male, recently discovered one of these stores in a Portland mall. I may have let out an uncontrollable squeal of excitement. Is this a common occurrence?

Yes. Yes it is.

Where do you fit on this scale?

I Like Building By The Instructions -------- Ooh, More Parts For The Lego Bin
1..................2..................3..................4..................5

That is, are you more inclined to look at a set as a new set of build instructions to follow, or are you more inclined to look at a set as a heap of new parts to add to your big bin of lego stuffs?

Well, the thing was more that I liked integrating new sets into what I already had. My lego, when I played with it, was a space odyssey. Knight set? Knight planet. Ninja set? Ninja planet.

Usually my sets stayed together so long as they were useful to my story. Once they weren't, then they were disassembled and then would later reemerge as something new!

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Well, there's Hero Factory. And the new HF line is actually pretty similar thematically to the ideas in Bionicle.

But as far as I know it isn't coming back. Which makes me sad.

Do you get many girls interested in the non-girly legos, or is it pretty much Lego Friends and nothing else?

Yes, actually! Friends dominates that demographic, but not as strongly as one might assume. And there's one major reason for that: The Friends line was not meant to coax girls who already like Lego into playing with it. It was meant to get girls who otherwise wouldn't be interested in Lego to try it, with the hopes that they would then branch out. I've seen it happen a bit, but we'll see how successful it is to that end. Personally I'd love to see the Friends line continue to make sets like the Karate Practice, Magic Show and Soccer Field. Let's get the girls doing stuff that kids do, not that girls do.

Girls who like Lego besides Friends tend to favor City and Creator quite a lot, unless they have nerdy parents or older brothers, in which case it's not uncommon to see them checking out Ninjago or Star Wars.

But with that said, the one that surprised me the most was that a lot of young girls really like the Monster Fighter series! Especially the ghost train, or anything with Ghosts, really.

Which is totally awesome. I think it might be a combination of Monster High, older girls liking Twilight and just a natural appeal of the supernatural, but hey, if that's what it takes to get them interested in Lego and Mythology, I'm willing to give credit where it's due. The more 8 year old girls asking me to show them where the Frankenstein's Lab sets are, the better. :D

Ha, that's really cool. I asked because we bought a Lego Friends thing for a friend's daughter, and before then I didn't even know it existed. I... I might have gotten the inventor set for myself as well. ALL THE SCIENCEY THINGS, OMG

I agree it would be nice to see it branch out a little more into general kids things, but I guess it's a hard line to walk with girl's toys, being surprisingly traditional, or even if more "modern" have a very "girly" twist to them (i.e., a doctor play set with glitter, hearts, and pink all over the goddamn place). The balance between girly and "progressive"(though not really, more just realistic...) I think is shown pretty well by the heartlake vet set. It's girly because it's about animals and taking care of them, but you've also got the science aspect and a woman being the doctor (also looks like secretary, but whatever). Anyway, I like what they've done with it so far, speaking as a formerly frustrated girl who wanted better toys :)

Olivia's Invention Workshop is actually a really cool set. She's even got a little dang-ass Robot in there! How cool is that? It's a shame they felt it necessary to make the tools purple. That just felt over the top for me.

Actually the only male minifig in the Friends line is Olivia's Dad. Every other character is a woman or young girl.

also worked in a LEGO store. Gotta disagree with you. I loved the purple tools. I have gray tools, yellow tools, black tools, and even some silver tools. But now I also have purple tools!

The robot is incredible though. No doubt.

That's fine for you, since you're a Lego fan, and not a little girl, though. I dislike they felt the need to "girlify" the power tools.

Thanks for answering,

As a Target employee, I've only seen one family really get excited over Lego Friends (apparently they were collecting and building all of them). Besides that, I either see boys get excited over other Legos or Parents without their children get Lego Friends. I had the same question on my mind for awhile now.

I'm definitely not suggesting that girls aren't into Friends. Because we get so many young girls fawning over Lego Friends. They love it.

well Lego's been doing a great job since their attempts after "Paradisa."

On a side note, I always wanted those shore side base boards.

I thought Paradisa was kind of cool, actually. It worked really well with the City sets.

But they did try something else in between Paradisa and Friends, though...

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Clikits

We don't talk about that though.

my niece got a Friends set and i was surprised at how really Lego-y it was, compared to the first sets aimed specifically at girls, where there was hardly anything to build. they finally realized that girls like to build too. although, maybe they just forgot and then realized again, they used to know it apparently

That's pretty much exactly how I feel as well.

Do you really sell them? I mean it seems like LEGOs would sell themselves.

You might think so, but LEGO's constantly launching new lines, which people do in fact need to be sold on, so to speak.

That said, my job isn't actually to sell anything. I'm just there to help people make decisions and inform them, and basically to be friendly to kids. If I don't actually sell anything all day, it's still a good day.

...I mean, I still like to sell things, though. Since I need to pay rent and eat.

Didn't mean to suggest that you don't add something. It's just LEGOs are so awesome. I wish I could build my real house out of LEGOs.

Oh, I'm sorry if that sounded defensive. I didn't mean for it to be.

LEGO is awesome, yeah. No denying that.

I'm very very sorry that in your reply you did not inform me that LEGO now offers real house building sets.

Well we do. My personal favorite is Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

But it's kinda small. It'd be more of a house for ants.

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This guy!

on the rare occassion that someone is caught stealing, do you make them take off their shoes and step on legos as punishment?

I'm not allowed to answer this. But yes.

What's your favourite kit?

Do you have unknown or rare kits?

My favorite set to sell is probably The Desert Skiff. It's a fairly small set with a lot going on, and features fan favorites Boba Fett and Luke Skywalker. It appeals to kids and older fans as well, so it's usually a sure-fire bet.

My favorite one that I own is harder. I seem to recall playing with my Sith Infiltrator a lot as a kid. The B-Wing was pretty cool too.

Are you asking if I personally have any, or if the store does?

First one, then t'other.

Ole Kirk Christiansen's house is pretty rare.

As for sets we have...

The Orc Forge can be pretty hard to find, I'm told.

It's not that hard to find.

http://www.target.com/p/lego-lord-of-the-rings-the-orc-forge-9476/-/A-14018146

http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Lord-Rings-Forge-Exclusive/dp/B000076CY6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358123609&sr=8-1&keywords=lego+the+orc+forge

http://www.amazon.com/LEGO%C2%AE-Lord-The-Rings-Forge/dp/B007456F3U/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1358123609&sr=8-3&keywords=lego+the+orc+forge

Look at the numbers though. Between those two amazon links there's only ten in stock.

Does your initiation process involve a week walking around work with no shoes on?

Hahahaha. That's sort of a running joke of sorts, but initiation is mostly catching up with the latest products.

In my case I really had to hit the ground running. Thankfully I'm a big fan, so it wasn't too hard.

What's the employee discount for working at a Lego store?

I don't know if I'm actually allowed to say this, but it's pretty substantial. More than a quarter, but less than half.

Most of the time.

Awesome. Anything exclusive that you have available to you that the average consumer doesn't get access to?

My Boss is pretty great and runs promos a lot to keep us involved and motivated, and we got pretty cool Christmas presents, but if you're asking if I can access some secret part of the LEGO website and order sets that have been discontinued or anything awesome like that, then no.

That would be cool though!

Dang it, I already had my application 3/4 filled out! Will have my first kid in July and would have started filling the closet...

We did just launch a whole bunch of new DUPLO sets for very young children. You may want to check them out. :D

Will do! I think I must have been the last child born before the invention of Duplos (Born in 1982), so they never jump to my mind, but yes, great idea. See, I'm glad you did an AMA!

I just became an Uncle, so I'm in a similar boat.

Do you realize that every time you sell a Duplo set, you're making a Lego packager cry?

With the way our freight comes in, they deserve to cry.

could you post a picture of your favorite lego piece (single block)?

here ya go

What is it?

It's a light brick! :D

What is the added benefit of buying legos from a lego store vs. from another big box store? It seems awfully specialized for something that you can get anywhere (especially the internet) for less probably.

Selection. You go to a place like Wal-mart or Toys-R-Us and yeah, they'll have some lego, and sometimes they might even have lower prices, but you just can't beat the selection we have at the LEGO store.

We also have exclusive sets and the Pick-A-Brick wall, along with various promos.

As for shopping online, well, the LEGO store basically is the Lego online store, just a real, physical place. So the advantage there is pretty straight-forward: You get to buy it and then take it home. Wait an hour, rather than several weeks.

what's a Pick-A-Brick wall?

The Pick-A-Brick wall is a section of the back-wall that has a huge selection of various Lego pieces, which we sell by volume. We rotate the exact pieces a lot, but the pieces can range from bricks to axles to antennas to transparent 45 degree 2x2s to flower stems. It's a great way to get a lot of one piece, or a little bit of everything.

We sell it by volume too, as opposed to by-piece online, so it's way cheaper.

Who takes several weeks to ship anything? Max within the US is 5 days.

Keep in mind a lot of sets actually ship from Denmark, not the US. That and the online store is very frequently sold out. Of everything. All the time. Forever.

It can be a hassle, haha.

Sounds like they need to build some gorram warehouses in the US

I can't really vouch much for the US, since I'm in Canada. We do have a few warehouses here, but everything still has to ship from Denmark.

Toys r us here. Jesus fuck, we have a ton of legos. They're all licensed kits or ninjago here, though.

Toys-R-Us is actually the first place I suggest people look if we're sold out of something.

Unless it's old. Then Wal-Mart.

Which is the most painful brick to stand on when you're barefoot?

Probably a 2x2 brick. I probably have scars on my feet from those little bastards.

I've noticed that the lego kits in the corporate LEGO stores are the more expensive, "higher end" ones. Do you get more people that are nostalgic and want the more "sophisticated" Legos, like the architecture and aerospace lines, or people shopping for their kids?

Our stores is one of the smallest of them all, actually, but as long as we're not sold out of something (We're always sold out of *something), generally speaking, we usually have every Lego set still in circulation. Which isn't actually as many as you might think.

That said, most of our clientel by and large are parents/relatives shopping for small children. Our core demographic is probably 6-12 year old boys. I'd say we have more pre-teen girls than older, nostalgic fans.

Unless you count Dads buying things "for their kids". We get a lot of those.

I went into the local Lego store a few months back. Felt odd looking just for myself so I said I was shopping for my nephew. The employee kept asking me questions. By the end of the conversation I had to have the gift by that coming Saturday for my imaginary 11 year old Nephew named Brandon who was really into space exploration. I just wanted to check out that sweet looking Space Shuttle kit.

Still might pick it up for a day when I'm bored.

Dude, I can't imagine why it would be embarrassing. Lego's awesome. It never stopped being awesome.

Does make me wonder how many people have pulled stunts like that though.

R u in Canada?

Indeed!

My boyfriend buys kits; sorts them in his LEGO room and then builds original creations.

He's done a city of 2-3 foot high buildings, a skyscraper that's about 7.5 feet tall that opens up, an ice castle that lights up.....I could go on and on.

He thinks its not a big deal and doesn't understand why I think it's so cool he can do this.

Is this a unique thing to him or do many serious collectors do this?

I guess when you've done something your whole life it feels mundane to you. It's like when an artist does a really good portrait. To them, it's just another day.

I think that is part of it. He is incredibly talented and artistic in this way. He can tinker with stuff and it blows my mind and he's just like "Meh."

He's been collecting since he was 5-6, I believe.

I take every chance I can to tell him he's amazing. Eventually he'll believe me.

He may never say so, but rest assured he appreciates every word.

What's the biggest purchase that you've experienced? And what was it for if you know?

We sell way more Death Stars than you might think. Those run up at around 500 bucks a pop, plus tax. Which isn't anything to sneeze at up north.

The biggest purchase was probably some Lawyers who got 50% off during Black Friday. I seem to recall them spending around 2k by the end of it. There was at least one Death Star and four other very large sets in there. They had a hard time carrying it out.

What is the plural of Lego? Lego, or Lego's?

It's Lego. I cringe any time I see or read "Legos". It's like saying Mooses or Deers.

Although technically we're supposed to call them Lego Bricks or Lego Pieces. Just, you know, for the record.

Do you work at the store in Vancouver and did you help me during Christmas?

That's a mystery for the ages.

Do you guys sell NXT? All the Lego stores in my country don't.

Yes, but we're usually sold out. We'll get around 10 in at a time, and they'll then sell out within the week, usually.

Wow! I always thought NXT are hard to find due to low demand!

Nope, really popular here! We have a hard time keeping them in stock! :O

So do you get to play with LEGOs while working?

Yes, actually! I get a bit fidgety if I'm not doing something with my hands, so I usually always am building something while I'm walking around talking to customers. It also makes people inquisitive, since they want to know what I'm doing. If a kid is playing with LEGO in the play area, I always ask what they're building, and if it's slow I always offer to help, too.

Sometimes when we get new sets with new functions, like the new CHIMA Speedors, we get to play with them before they launch to understand how they work, and then show kids how they work as well in-store.

We also have monthly mini-builds where kids can come in and build a set with us for free, which they then get to keep. This month's set was an Igloo with some penguins.

Also, any displays for sets in store are all made by employees. I personally made the display for the Star Wars ship The Malevolence.

So yes, yes we do.

Pretty sure that's one of the best jobs to have. Thanks for the AMA!

It's not my dream, but if I never wake up, it wouldn't have been for nothing.

You're welcome. I hope you got something out of it.

I'd rather work in a LEGO shop than a bookshop, tbh. But then again I played with LEGOs probably about 12 years ago, and only had the multicoloured blocks in my collection, and two wooden boards with a green LEGO sheet thingy pasted on to build my stuff on.

My friend has some of The Hobbit collection so the concept of having something that's not just the blocks is foreign to me.

It's a great place to work, don't get me wrong, but Lego has very high standards about everything and it's also probably the most intense retail experience in existence. Because standards are so high, I basically have 1-2 minutes to give someone a tenouttaten experience.

Imagine the Apple Store. But with a quarter of the employees, a store half the size, but the same customer numbers. And half of those customers know nothing about the product, or what the person they're buying it for wants.

It's not easy. Fun, yes. But not easy.

I can imagine what that would be like, though we only have one Apple store that I know of, and no LEGO stores (we do have stores that stock LEGO products though).

If school's in session it's not too busy. But once the kids are out, every day is boxing day.

How do you carry around the pieces? Do you get to carry around an awesome tool belt with different compartments for all the pieces of lego? That would be AWESOME!

Uh, yeah, kinda. It's an apron, rather than a super-cool utility belt, but it feels like the same thing when I'm walking around.

Well, maybe more like a Kangaroo than Batman. But yeah.

Did you choose this job and actively seek it, or was it more like you needed a job and applied at a bunch of different places?

What kind of experience did you need, and what kind of training did you go through upon being hired?

Thanks for doing this AMA, really interesting stuff :)

I needed a job pretty desperately, actually. I was going any electronics store I could get to in less than an hour and applying there, and in between a Source and an EB Games there it was, the Lego store. I had never seen one before, so I checked it out. I dropped off a Resumé there just in case, and got lucky. No regrets.

Retail experience is a must, especially good customer service places. Normally you're trained pretty thoroughly on the product and the inner workings of the store, but I was hired during a holiday rush and there was no time for me to get eased in at all.

is it cheating to use structural supports inside buildings?

Only if they wouldn't be there in real life.

What's your opinion of the LEGO mindstorms set(s)?

What kind of people buy that? Is it just adults? Do kids ever go for that sort of thing?

Kids go for it all the time. Well, they look at it in awe, anyways. It's kind of expensive. But yeah, kids dig it. I once had a little girl save up to pay for half of it. I was so proud. Which is a silly thing to say. But I digress.

Robots are awesome. That's my universal law.

I sell Lego too at Legoland Windsor, the 2nd biggest in Europe apparently!

You guys have cool uniforms.

I'm almost afraid to ask this dreaded question. What's your opinion on Megablocks? (Heaven forbid!)

Megablocks: Made in Canada, so that's cool. They have really cool licences, which is also cool. Their minifig-like action figure guys have a lot of articulation, which is really cool too.

Their bricks don't fit or hold together nearly as well, their more recent sets revolve too strongly around their licensing so there's not really much to build, and their sets don't encourage imagination nearly as much, I find.

They're not RoseArt or anything, but there's a reason why they're so much cheaper.

What's the most recent set you've assembled?

The most recent set I assembled myself was Ole Kirk Christiansen's house.

It was very, very complicated. The whole time I was building it I kept thinking to myself how difficult it would have been if I hadn't spent my entire childhood playing with Lego.

One of my childhood hobbies was collecting, building and playing with Bionicles. What did you think of the Bionicle franchise? Also, why do you think it was cancelled - was it selling badly, or was there another reason for canning it?

Bionicle was one of my favorites as well. I had a bunch of the Ice ones, as well as this big dead dragon lookin' thing that shot out. It was awesome.

Bionicle was cancelled because it had been running for so long and they wanted to make room for something new. In this case, Hero Factory. New ideas, new directions.

To be perfectly frank, I think Bionicle was objectively cooler. But that's really just my opinion.

Did the switch to Hero Factory work out for you, financially speaking?

Yeah! The show's been pretty popular, actually. I think it might be winding down soon, though.

Interesting. I guess the boys who were buying Bionicle when it debuted were in their late teens by the time it ended; maybe a new franchise every few years is necessary to keep attracting new kids in the target age range.

That's pretty much it.

do you guys have those giant life size Lego characters? if so who builds them?

If anything especially crazy needs to be built then it's up to a Master Builder. But we don't have one in Canada so that kind of stuff doesn't happen very often up here. :O

What exactly is a master builder?

A professional lego builder and designer hired by Lego to do promotional stuff. Anything amazingly awesome made out of Lego that wasn't Fan-made was most likely made by a Master Builder.

Thanks for the AMA! Do you put together any big kits for display(s)? I'm thinking like Star-Destroyer size.

Also, what is something you wish would change about the LEGO industry? A new series? Lower prices?

Any displays for sets in store are all made by employees. I personally made the display for the Star Wars ship The Malevolence, but we've had The Super Star-Destroyer on display, as well as the Rebel B-Wing, both of which are several thousand pieces.

If I could change anything, it would be their marketing! Lego should be enjoyed by anyone, and that means not just 10 year old boys. So, less war/fighting/etc and less segregation and reinforcing gender roles.

Lego's starting to do that for the most part, but it's still kind of faltering a bit. We're better than a lot of other toy companies, and I'm not blaming them, but you said anything, and that's what I would change. :D

Did you guys get the blue aprons? What do you think of them?

I like the color but they're too long.

How callused are your hands?

I grew up in the woods, so compared to that, Lego's pretty easy on my hands.

Why is lego so expensive?

Partially because of licensing. Partially because of the plastic made.

Why don't you talk about clikits? They used to be my favourite toy as a kid!

Haha really? Most people weren't really fond of them. Plus they deviated pretty strongly from the Lego paradigm.

Have you ever worked on anything that went to the Mall Of America or have you ever been to see the Lego displays at the Mall Of America?

I don't live in America. So no.

What's your favorite Technic set ?

I got a set as a gift for christmas (The motherfucking unimog), and with it I got a "Fill this box with the bricks & elements of your choice at the lego store pick a brick wall, between december 26 2012 and march 31, 2013" box. Is it free ?

What is your opinion on star wars episode 1 and the lego that goes with it ?

Technic was never really my thing, because I always liked to tell stories with my sets. Not a lot of stories you can tell with a lego remote-control car, sadly. The pieces themselves are really cool though. The Malevolence had a technic rig inside for structure. Worked really well.

It is free! I recommend putting bricks together if you fill it with any. Pack that sucker snugly. And if you can, come when school is in session. So it's not super crowded.

One of my favorite sets as a kid was Darth Maul's Sith Infiltrator as a kid.

Disney buying all the rights from Lucas was one of the best things I've heard in years.

I think that says everything I want to say about that subject. :P

Whats it like to be a dirty SRSer?

I was actually banned from SRS because of something I said without thinking way too late at night. If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have phrased it the way I did. As a result, I haven't really looked at SRS in months.

But that said, I may not agree with their tools and all of their fronts, but I agree with the war. I'm not fighting with them any more, but I'm still fighting the same enemy.

This however, has nothing to do with my employment! :O

whats it like to work there, do you get a discount? and are you hiring part time

It's about as fun as you can imagine, and twice as intense. I've worked retail for a long time, but nowhere are you pushed as hard as at the Lego store.

Because everyone who works there loves Lego though, pretty much all of my coworkers are awesome, so that's a nice perk.

We do get a discount. I believe someone asked that earlier.

We pretty much only hire part time.

how many legos do you step on in a day

Lots! Sometimes so many get embedded in my shoes that I grow an inch.

Just kidding.

Do you miss bionicle?

Yes. Yes I do.

Ask me almost anything? What do you have to hide?

I don't want to lose my job for revealing some kind of trade secret or something. I happen to quite like my job. :P

What are the most rare legos?

Out of things still in circulation or out of everything ever?

What rival companies fit with yours? I went looking the other day to relive my childhood and couldn't find too much that I enjoyed. I like the lego city lines, reminds me of what I had. I saw the Mega Blocks line looked very similar, but didn't get it because I wasn't sure if it would fit together with regular legos? Also I noticed Lego has several different types, like Duplo, do they all fit together? I assume the bigger ones won't mix with the smaller ones I remember from childhood.

Megablocks is the closest comparison, but our biggest competitor in general is either Mattel or Hasbro, but for the demographic probably Playmobile.

Duplo and Lego actually do fit together, surprisingly enough! A 2x4 Lego brick fits evenly on a 1x2 section of Duplo.

Ah yes, tyco. I always felt a little bit dirty when I had to use one of those pieces.

I always felt bad for Megablocks because they had cool ideas, but their pieces just didn't fit together nearly as well as Lego bricks did.

Alright, and I really love the lego city line, what else would you recommend for me?

Well we just got a whole bunch of new 2013 Lego City stuff. The Museum Break-In is actually really cool! :D

But as for other lines, the Lego Batman sets can integrate into your city pretty well. If you want something a little bit more challenging the exclusive Modular line is awesome for that.

Wow thanks, the Modular line looks perfect for me.

Right on. Glad I could help.

Because they're to scale.

Well I know that.:P

Can you hook me up with a discount or coupon? Well, not for me but for my son so he can spend his allowence on something nice?

If I had one, I would give you one.

I do not.

Sorry, man.