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When I was a kid and full of enthusiasm for Legos, I bought a very small pirate set---a rowboat, a canon, a pirate and a soldier---with money I'd earned, becaus
by jkepler 5y ago
When I was a kid and full of enthusiasm for Legos, I bought a very small pirate set---a rowboat, a canon, a pirate and a soldier---with money I'd earned, because my friend had a larger set with the canon, and it fired a piece via a spring mechanism. To my great disappointment, Lego had changed the design and the canon wasn't functional. I wrote them a letter (pen and paper, back before the Internet), and when they replied it was legal-speak about liability concerns if the small piece ended up in someone's eye.
On top of my disappointment, they criticized me for having written "Legos" and told me that their products should be called Lego bricks or Lego toys... great way to give an elementary-aged boy a poor impression of Lego's customer relations.
- AltorX 5y agoWow, are you me? I had exactly the same frustration for that specific cannon after seeing a friend's shoot across the room. I wrote them a letter also, my parents helped me, and I included the "defective" cannon in the envelope. They sent me it back with the same reasons (safety concerns). Hah!
- trulyme 5y agoYour use of word "Legos" in the first sentence is pure gold. :)
- jacobolus 5y agoUp to about 1990 pirate legos had shooting cannons. Then there were a few years in the early 1990s where the cannons had the necessary plastic parts to fire cannonballs, but you had to first disassemble them and add your own ballpoint pen spring. I’m not sure when they switched to non-shooting cannons. From a web search it seems like they have since switched back to shooting cannons.
- yAak 5y agoAmusingly, the resulting pen-spring cannons I made were much more powerful and “dangerous!”
- Aeolun 5y agoI remember having shooting cannons, and I must’ve had sets after 1990. Seems like this may have been a thing only in the US?
- fortysixdegrees 5y agoI have shooting cannons from post 2000 (New Zealand)
- technobabbler 5y agoIn America, kids are only allowed to play with real guns.
- gambiting 5y agoI was born at the start of 90s and I definitely had sets with shooting cannons and they were bought new.
- Xylakant 5y agoThat's sad-funny because the cannons nowadays fire pieces again.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]