April Fools!
Posted by Huw,
Yesterday was 1st April and a couple of articles we posted were not true. Did you guess which ones? :-)
- Mattel is not buying AFOL sites and I haven't sold Brickset.
- LEGO isn't going to make a series of City sets based on real world police forces and events.
I was touched by the following email I received from a lady in the USA as a result of the first story:
"I was sadden to read that you will no longer be running this site. It was so nice to have a way to inventory my own sets and to see all the news that you had acquired regarding LEGO. I understand that first and foremost you must look out for your family. Thank you for all your time and information you have let us be a part of.
"If I may ask one question. Is there a way for me to print my list of sets that I have stored in your data base so I can have it for my records?
"May you have a wonderful and blessed life."
Most of you saw through it but it seems others took it as written, so if I caused you any heartache, I apologise!
So, what other LEGO related April Fools did you see yesterday? They seemed a bit thin on the ground this year. I only noticed:
- Allen announces he's no longer going to run his site The Brick Fan. At least, I hope it's an April Fool's joke!
- Toys N Bricks to change its focus to clone brands
Were there any I missed?
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The Brothers Brick had an article about LDraw suing Bricklink for copyright infringement.
http://www.brothers-brick.com/2014/04/01/ldraw-to-sue-bricklink-for-copyright-infringement-news/comments
Looks like April Fools to me!
This video from The Guardian was posted in the forum.
http://www.bricksetforum.com/discussion/14563/lego-and-scottish-independence
I like how they've gone to the trouble of making a (presumably) deliberately bad LEGO model!
Wait, so I'm not going to be able to use the site to catalogue my mega bloks?? NNNOOOOOO....guess I'll just have to keep buying Lego instead :-P
I'm STILL hurting from the year you wrote a fake LEGO press release announcing the re-release of the UCS Millenium Falcon. They were a joyous 20 seconds or so.
^ I did indeed, sorry!
Very good, but the UK price would be £499,999.99, not 500,999.99 :-)
I'll buy one for something to do on my tropical island :-)
I must admit, my heart sank for a moment when I read your AFOM article...then it hit me! In all sincerity, we'd be lost without you Huw!
Don't forget that not everyone is on a UK time zone, so may not have twigged it as being April Fools day when you posted or indeed received the news after midday (and hence you are the fool)
r
I thought the LDraw / Bricklink one was a bit tasteless myself.
Yes, having just read it, it is a bit odd and too close to the bone.
Darn, I would have loved to have some of the corrupt officials. :-)
I believe there was one on Brick Fanatics
The most recent Iron Builder matchup was announced:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/32482342 @N05/13554195583/
using the Duplo grass piece, and even the first MOC was posted:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/legocy/13558428604/
but it turned out to be a prank.
^ That is brilliant, and what a great MOC! It is almost a shame that this Iron Builder challenge was not real, getting a part like that completely out of left field would spice things up nicely!
Internet April Fool pranks are the norm. I loved both of them.
I don't want this to sound as though I don't have a sense of humor, but I don't think I'm really that amused by the April Fool's Day articles. It's not that the purpose is bad or anything – you're trying to entertain and so forth, but there are legit efforts by some companies to buy up any fan sites and so forth.
As for the article on Lego City, actually, I'm surprised that hasn't already actually happened – a focus on exclusively police and fire sets (and possibly construction types as well), given that Wal-Mart is a big seller of Legos and would suggest that kids like "exciting" (i.e., action) vs. "mundane" suburban sets. I think someone, who dealt actually with model cars, once said that the reason we didn't see more everyday-type/family cars as kits was because of Wal-Mart suggesting kids liked customized sports cars far better.
But that's just me.
^^^ There will be, it's tradition...
I always love AFD jokes from the LEGO community. I don't understand how anyone can be bothered by it. It makes me wonder how they react in their everyday lives when something doesn't go the way they planned. It's sad when you can't just crack a smile and move on. I wish Classic Castle would have pulled a prank. Typically they do something neat with their website, but not this year. I don't remember if Eurobricks ever did anything, but I wish they would have this year.
I thought the double VIP point and free Duplo apple was an April fools joke. :P Need me some double points.
April Fools articles are fun. It is a delicate balance to make them convincing enough to draw people in, yet have the cues to make sure *most* people will have the dawning realization that it is a joke. "Lego group announces 10 year Brand strategy" was quite convincing and very funny. "Mattel acquires key adult fan sites" wasn't believable from the top, but I did enjoy the image of Huw sunning himself (hopefully with an adult beverage in hand) on a tropical island. You deserve it Huw -- if you take a laptop and continue running Brickset.
I don't know, but maybe the "joke's on you" with the email. :P
As for other April Fools, all the Eurobricks moderators changed their usernames to Looney Toon characters.
Scared me at first. I hope mattel don't check brickset. Would be a bummer for us AFOL's but would be a good marketing idea for them
The webpage for the University of Rochester in NY was completely recreated in LEGO, claiming the university had been taken over. If you clicked on a link, you would be redirected to a page and subsequently 'B'rickrolled, but since the joke has now passed I can't seem to find the link.
You couldn't fool me, but it was hilarious nonetheless!
It was limited to our TexLUG Google Group, but one user posted a (non-shopped) picture of Pick-a-Brick cup prices with $19.99 for large and $10.99 for small, also telling us that the K2 boxes would be going up to $100.
After a few hours of worry, they fessed up that they had taken the picture in CANADA.
During our conversation, it turns out that American PaB cups *will* be increasing by $1 each on April 4, and the K2 boxes WILL be increasing to $100, and only certain ones will be allowed to be sold as a box. Also, the Canadian SMALL cup will go up $1, but their large will remain the same.
Some people are just too gullible for the internet. People seriously believed that? Wow. Faith in humanity=lost.
It's funny that you, Huw, use tradition as your defense. The Brickset blue background was tradition, but it is gone now. Times change. People grow, eh?
Huw, would you ever consider selling Brickset for real? If you really were given an offer you couldn't refuse, would you accept?
Next year on April 1, we will post an article detailing how we've decided to forego any more April Fools Day articles.
2012 was my favorite, though. :o)
http://brickset.com/article/2887/lego-to-rerelease-ultimate-collector-s-millennium-falcon
Does anyone else see the irony in April fools complaints coming from 'The Riddler'?
I appreciate the jokes on April Fool's - they're just for fun! ;)
I was fooled by the LEGO City one (and disappointed and confused), but as soon as I read the Mattel article below it, I realised what was up... :P
And yes, gregg-grug, I saw the irony ;)
@ericjohn Are you aware that you can choose a blue background in your profile?
A couple of additional ones I saw:
Tommy's BrickNerd blog switched over to BrickJock. He added an American football helmet to his little brick icon and featured a few sports-themed creations.
Several people on Flickr, including a couple of fairly prominent builders, announced they were quitting the hobby, selling off their bricks, leaving Flickr due to recent format changes, things like that.
The Telegraph ran an article about a Polish priest who says LEGO is a tool of the devil, mostly because of the zombies, vampires, etc in the Monster Fighters theme. I assume this was a prank, though I suppose it might not be. Searching Google News, it looks like other papers (and commenters) have taken the story up as real (running this as a news story on April 2 and 3), but I don't see any stories about this priest from pre-April-1, so I'm guessing it was a prank story that a lot of people fell for.
April Fools pranks in the AFOL community go back, as far as I can tell, exactly a decade. Late 2003 is when LEGO changed their color palette, particularly affecting gray, dark gray, and brown. April 1, 2004, Holger Matthes posted a picture of a "new set" that was just hitting stores of a basic castle builder set - a large tub full of basic bricks in old gray, along with arches, gates, other castle-friendly parts, and Black Falcon minifigs. Since internet AFOL pranks were a new thing, tons of us fell for it, and as a castle guy I still hurt a little over that one. :)
Kliq above ^ thanks for the praise of past Classic-Castle pranks. This year we were busy with the recent change of servers (our forum was down for several days and are still finding some features that need fixing), so we didn't have the energy to do an April Fools. I'm still very proud of the year we switched over to a cow-themed site Classic-Cattle, but those take a lot of work to do.
Bruce
The UK Girlguiding had a minifig take over...
https://storify.com/Girlguiding/minifig-mayhem-at-girlguiding-hq
Well you got me. [Some April Fools]
I deleted the link to this, and washed my hands of the site.
Though I didn't hate Huw for taking the money.
Can't think why I decided to view the link now.... Oh yes. The first Connecticut (US) Lego Store opened this weekend, and I wondered if you had a review.