Crowdfunded Book Reveals Staggering LEGO Group Secrets

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Back in 2020, there was a crowdfuding effort to produce a book called “The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks” where people could pre-order it before the book was written, and recieve it when it was finished. After two years of waiting, the book has finally been shipped out to those who have pre-ordered it, and the behind the scenes information that was revealed in it is pretty staggering…

Here are just a few of the of the most notable pieces of imformation revealed in the book:

  • Bionicle was initially planned for a 20-year run, but was cancelled half-way through.

  • The Bionicle team at one point proposed turning “Constraction” into an independent brand that would be completely separate from the rest of LEGO, would comprise multiple action figure themes that would be separate from Bionicle, would specificlally target older audiences with edgier and more mature stories.

  • Unique LEGO part molds are destroyed after 5 years of not being in use, and a “strong case” must be made to keep them around. It is “more ecconomical” to destroy molds than to keep in storage.

And few less important, but equally interesting facts:

  • Back in the early 2000’s there was an idea called “Project Genesis” that was intended to support multiple Constraction themes, but it was killed because of Galidor’s failure.
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  • The original idea behind Power Miners was actually “Miners vs Zombie Dinosaurs.”
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  • The original idea behind Alien Conquest was “Farmers vs Aliens.”

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Those were only a few of the staggering new, previously unknown facts that were revealed in this new book. If you are interested in learning even more, the book has thankfully been uploded online for free as a PDF:

What do you all think about those new revelations? Discuss!

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I was one of the book’s backers and was disappointed by a lot of the things it didn’t talk about. Nothing on Znaps, CCBS not even mentioned, a ton of stuff either just given a single name drop or not even a mention.

It did confirm a lot of things that were either rumors or just speculation. Such as ritual part and color sacrifices. In my friend groups where I shared screenshots of my copy and telling’s of certain sections, it has left them confused, angry, and horrified by how the LEGO Group operates and thinks.

There is a lot more I could say about it, as I have in many other places. But the biggest thing to me personally is what it revealed about Technic. To quote:

“…to which every LEGO Technic model must adhere: Authenticity, Functionality and Challenging building, known internally as the ‘AFC promise’. Every LEGO Technic set must meet this promise, which is partly the reason that there are no historical or highly futuristic LEGO Technics sets, since it is difficult to make something feel authentic when people don’t see it around them in their daily lives.”

To me, not only does this imply they disown prior Technic subthemes like CyberSlam/Competition, but things like Throwbots, Roboriders, Bionicle, and more. It tells me that the LEGO Group hasn’t been doing more or all it can possibly achieve with Technic on purpose. This stagnation and refusal for anything more creative, like animal/creature replication, like this frog, is not permissible under the current regime.

For awhile now, I thought they were avoiding it due to Hexbugs already having that market. And one of my too many projects in the background has been a Lego Worldbuilder pitch for a line of Technic-based battle critters (based around a modular/core system like Ninjago CORE/EVO) and just normal animals. While I will still work on and eventually release my efforts in this, knowing that it appears to be an impossibility within the LEGO Group itself is disheartening. They try to paint themselves in a very positive light in this book, but it’s incredibly evident, especially if you’ve consumed so much other works talking about the company and their practices, how cowardice, shortsighted, and purposefully blind they are.

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You know, i get the feeling that it being cancelled after 10 years was a good thing, because the story would probably have dried up after that long

General Kenobi

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I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not shocked by these “revelations”. These are all business practices that keep LEGO from doing all the stuff that led to a deficit in the early 2000s. Things like sets containing loads of one-use specialized pieces, themes that are relatively incompatible with mainstream LEGO parts, and storylines that are more mature and less child-friendly.

The latter especially is not surprising, given that Hasbro has taken its share of damage due to the problems with the original Transformers live-action movies, as well as with their products such as GI Joe, an action figure line glorifying the military through various media and storylines, some of which are rather violent.

All in all, this books sounds to me more like a hit piece on LEGO (pun not intended), trying to make it sound like they hate fans’ original ideas and would prefer to play it safe. If you owned a multimillion-dollar company, you would find that that is actually a good practice. You don’t want to sink thousands or millions of dollars into a new theme or product if you don’t already have a good idea of how many customers would be willing to buy it. For the Worldbuilder pitch above, think of how many people outside of your immediate friend group would actually want to spend $20 on just one of the creatures. If it is some significantly large number, there is a chance that it could still be considered by LEGO for production, given that they would actually have a market for the product. If not, there is no good likelihood that LEGO would bend their own rules to listen, as they would end up losing money on a line that few would buy. @ajtazt , I hope you aren’t offended. If so, I can edit this.

Anyway, that’s my two (too many) cents on this book. If there are any problems with my post, don’t hesitate to ask me to edit it.

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That’s the thing though, you have a valid opinion and you bring up good points
there is no reason to edit the post just because someone disagrees with it

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I just wanted to be safe. I’d rather not be flagged for a disagreement if I can help it.

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Hence why I said my friends had these reactions, not myself. My education is in business, I ran a small company myself, I speak to the presidents of companies (various sizes) as IT rep for my employer; I am well aware of the typical practices at this scale. I don’t state my feelings on the matters specifically regarding Technic out of ignorance but disappointment. Hence my statements about the Hexbug comparison as well, I know the market I’m trying to hit and the challenges thereof. The only thing I don’t know for certain is which bar of success the LEGO Group would want.

As do recall, it is not the ability to make a profit, but how much of a profit that is a primary concern. In which from another source, the Bits N’ Bricks podcast, an official LEGO Group sponsored podcast talking all things LEGO Games, in their episode about Nexo Knights stated that the bar of success for new themes, most likely story-action themes (Legends of Chima, Nexo Knights), is that they have to meet or surpass Ninjago’s sales in their first six months to a year. So I am certainly more aware than your average Lego fan and, quite honestly, closer to a toy enthusiast watching the entire industry.

However, there were many things I still didn’t know, despite all the books, magazines, employee interviews, official podcasts, and other materials I’ve consumed. And the book did confirm plenty other things, for which I am grateful to know. Especially how scale is determined and used within Lego and that I’m pretty much vindicated in saying that Minifigs don’t fit the system or scale well. Alongside the general oddities of Lego’s incomparable building scales to pretty much anything else.

But it also confirmed something else that I had figured for years and years, despite popular narrative. Especially here in the Bionicle fandom, it is believed that Bionicle’s downfall was having too many specialized molds, pieces, one-off parts, etc. Yet, even after Bionicle’s time, even themes like Ninjago would continue to do exactly what Bionicle did. And, ultimately, it was the LEGO Group who decided to make the pieces that way. Can it really be a failing if that was part of the plan, if that cost was already accounted for in the budget?

And the book confirms that it wasn’t a primary factor. The LEGO Group has been operating on a system known as “Frames” decades before Bionicle was even a thought. They have a limited new parts budget, this is already taken into account. In terms of part design, there are quotes from designers explaining why specialized, only one-way/one-time use pieces are good. That quite frequently, they’ll make pieces less viable for other options on purpose as it makes the building experience easier for their target audience. This is all done on purpose and wasn’t really the practice that got the LEGO Group into its financial trouble.

You see it more so in Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry, than in other sources, but the LEGO Group didn’t do what are today basic industry standard business practices. No tracking or having a library of parts, poor inventory, not tracking sales and certainly not tracking sales of individual sets, not understanding how to market or sell their sets with the box art (why Technic sets were skeletal for so long, to show off their functions because marketing was too hard), failing to explain their product to retailers (see the Galidor sections of the Secret Life of LEGO Bricks for that), etc. The LEGO Group’s financial troubles were the results of their decisions in the early 80’s and reacting poorly, learning all the wrong lessons until lucking out into financial stability and finally able to nail down some problems.

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point. As for being offended…

looks around at my posting history

Trust me, I’m not one to who gets offended easily. Though the reverse could not be said.

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I apologize if I have offended you or sounded reactionary in my post. All I meant to say was that the book seems to be very accusatory to LEGO, especially regarding their business practices.

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Nah, the book is neutral at its most biting. The most negative it gets is the lamenting of things that never came to pass. It’s otherwise very positive and praises a lot of the LEGO Group’s efforts. And that is not without merit, there is a lot of excellent things they’ve done and this peak into how they reached those is wonderful. I highly recommend what I recall being the last chapter, which largely covers Creator and all they’ve done. It is the most heartwarming, which is probably why it was saved for last.

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Thank you. I apologize, then, for my uninformed statements based on the conflation of third-party opinions and official statements which were at worst opposite to each other. I think I am done in this discussion, seeing as I have only managed to spread confusion with my thoughts.

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Honestly, I have to agree. If not for Stars, I imagined maybe 3 more years to wrap it up, Another year of the Bara Magna team, a year for Reign of Shadows, and then a finale. If they kept introducing more plot threads at the rate they did, with no plans of halting until 2021, I think the current ending was for the best, if incomplete.

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Having so far read from the Technic section through to the start of Ninjago, there’s some cool little bits of information in there. For starters, I had no idea that the smooth Technic panels were first introduced specifically for Bionicle.

Next, this is hilarious:

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Finally, I really want to know what was going on here:

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Granted, there’s no way of knowing if the “biggest model ever” title would hold up today, but I’m still curious as to why they’re so secretive about it after over two decades.

I kind of disagree. In a bit of a self-contradiction, I would argue that the story could have been extended for another ten years only because Lego decided to end it after the first ten.

To be more specific, I absolutely think that the Spherus Magna arc that was being set up could have lasted ten years; saying that the current story couldn’t be sustained for another ten years is like saying in 2001 that Bionicle couldn’t run until 2010: we were just at the start of another entire arc when the story got cancelled. It’s not like it would just be ten years of Gelu’s team fighting Marendar.

However, at the same time, that whole new arc was only being set up because Lego cancelled the sets and wanted to end the original “Matoran Universe” story. If they decided to keep the original idea going for another 10 years without the Bara Magna “soft reboot”, I’m less sure that that could have been made to happen.

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Something else to consider is that the author did not clarify what the LEGO Group meant by Bionicle running for 20 years. If I can remember which ones it was from, I’ll source it later, but internally at Lego they referred to the buildable action figures of that type as…Bionicle.

Yeah, contrary to what even TTV has said, Bionicle was thought of and referred to as a building system within and by the LEGO Group. Without Greg Farshtey’s input, the 2009 story wouldn’t have connected or involved the prior years of Bionicle. It would include the parts, but no story connection. Because Bionicle was the brand name for a building system, not just a specific theme. Even in some later stages of Hero Factory’s development, the title of Hero Factory was a subtitle of Bionicle. It would have been Bionicle: Hero Factory just as '09 would have been Bionicle: Mythica, or something along those lines.

We don’t really know why it switched. I suspect that selling Hero Factory under the Bionicle name is what worried retailers. And why they made a big deal about CCBS when it was introduced to further separate the two. Which, CCBS became what the LEGO Group was planning to turn Bionicle into. What, as revealed in the book, Galidor was just the start of before its swift end. But even taking that into account, if we take G1 Bionicle and the last Star Wars Buildable set released, that still isn’t 20 years. Almost was, just not under the Bionicle name.

Again, speculation, but that’s probably why they still keep the trademarks and such for Bionicle. Aside from it being an original setting, they can’t copyright “constructible action figure” or “buildable action figure.” That and the LEGO Groups also refers to Minifigures as “buildable figures.” So just calling all of constraction “Bionicle,” just like a lot a customers and fans make sense. A nightmare for classification and definition reasons, but eh.

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I’ve heard contrary; while Lego had originally intended to completely restart the story in 2009, it was still meant to be a reboot of the Bionicle theme, not just a new theme with a similar building style.

As for this part:

There are a great many quotes from the early years of Bionicle where Greg Farshtey confirmed that the plan was for 20 years of Bionicle story, not just 20 years of constraction:

It was also stated in this article in 2004:

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Hence why it would have a subtitle in '09. It would still be called Bionicle, just as Hero Factory would have been called Bionicle, just not the Bionicle we would have known storywise.

Though I suppose in my mind, I had already dismissed the idea of 20 years of story as the LEGO Group itself had done by '07. They might have had long term goals in '03 and '04, but things changed pretty quickly. During that time is when the LEGO Group was purging itself of outside influence and starting to go back to tradition. Which is one of several reasons why World City was axed and City took its place, the death of Jack Stone, and much more. By the time it’s '05, the Lego that made those statements had completely altered plans.

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I’ve heard talks about this fact thrown around in regards to the GWP recently, and I don’t get why this is so staggering for people to learn.

Digital files of pieces are incredibly easy to save or remake. The millions of fan-created pieces you can find online should be evidence of that enough. Designs for pieces are ubiquitous.

But molds are production components. They’re actual giant pieces of metal that need to be inserted into likely hundreds of machines with moving parts and heat. They need to be physically created multiple times to have enough to produce the number of parts necessary to create millions of sets. And most importantly, the need to be maintained in order for that production to go smoothly.

There is absolutely no point in keeping around molds if LEGO isn’t going to be selling the piece. You can’t keep just one because one isn’t enough to make millions of pieces. You also can’t keep your entire inventory of molds because they take up loads of space and all need to be maintained. So it’s cheaper and easier to just melt them down and use the material to make new molds they will be using.

If you ever needed that piece to come back, it’s quite possibly easy to find or remake the digital files used to make the molds. The investment comes with the time and cost to remake those molds. This is super convenient for more well-used parts like the hand connector (which have been redesigned multiple times as well), but things like the original masks or limb pieces?

Why would LEGO spend the time and money to recreate those molds for one set that they aren’t even directly selling?

I didn’t mean to turn this into another GWP discussion, but that specific “revelation” doesn’t surprise me, and I don’t think it should surprise anyone else.

That being said, a lot of these concepts are really cool. I love getting to see concepts and the development process, and it’s amazing how drastically plans can change over the course of a project.

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This has been widely rumored and speculated about in the community for years, but now we have official confirmation, on top of confirmation on the specific amount of time of a piece not being in use that needs to pass before it is disposed of.

This is very interesting for several reasons. Around 5 years have passed since CCBS was last used in 2018 . If this rule is strictly applied all the time, that would mean that the CCBS pieces have only been destroyed very recently, or potentially may even be still around, but will be destroyed soon. Which is very interesting, given how people were speculating that the molds have been already destroyed as early as 2020.

This opens up even more questions, such as, does LEGO destroy molds they deem less useful even earlier than 5 years? Given how quickly the old G1 system seems to have vanished as soon as CCBS came around, and how today even the very generic CCBS pieces like the protector feet seem to have been phased out already, it would seem so.
So it seems like the decision to destroy molds isn’t purely economical, but it has something to do with weather LEGO deems certain pieces worthy of being kept in use. Because, practically speaking, getting rid of all the CCBS parts, even the generic ones like bones and shells so quickly, seems rather short sighted, and dare I even say, anti-econimical, since that would force them to develop entirely new parts, with all the associated costs of that, if they ever wanted to produce another Constraction-like line again.

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I find it worth noting, the Gurahk staff used in the Stars wave came back in Bionicle 2015, so that mold hadn’t been destroyed after 5 years.

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It hadn’t been five years.

Bionicle G2 would have been in development in 2014, if not earlier; seeing as the Stars sets were released in 2010, it was definitely less than five years after the previous use of the part when the G2 team pulled it out of retirement.

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Meant to add on this earlier, but didn’t have time. According to the book, some pieces/molds are destroyed after their intended set wave or theme’s end. These are gimmick pieces, one-off collectables, or items very specific to on theme/product. So sometimes it is a very swift death.

Other things to keep in mind is that, just because they can recreate a mold, doesn’t mean they will. Either because they had better things to spend their “Frames” on or other reasons. You can see this in Ninjago anniversary and Legacy sets, where specialized head pieces weren’t correct or brought back for certain years. Likely due to the mold for that piece already being destroyed and not finding value in bring it back for one set just to be accurate. This is the practical nature of part sacrifices, being more encouraged to use existing parts and/or new pieces for the wow and inticement factor.

And if the LEGO Group would ever do a dedicated system for constraction again, unlike through most of its history, it does have another operation in place outside of “Frames.” They have what the book called “Platforms.” This Platform system is how we got the rollercoaster parts, which otherwise would be impossible or require a lot of other lines to sacrifice their Fames for that year. Although the book never states it, I’m guessing that CCBS was also one of these Platform projects. So they may never well bring back CCBS and might instead create a new Platform. But based on the current Marvel figures, maybe not any time soon.

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