SteveD wrote:And Slippy - you worked for Lego??? Surely that's one of the best jobs in the world ever!
Was your desk, chair, the watercooler and everything in the whole office made of Lego? I certainly hope so!
Hah - it certainly was. A cool job I mean. I could remenic...remenisce..remenice... basically I could yabber all day about what a great time I had! The pay was lousy as it was an 18 month student placement, but I got to do so much cool stuff like marketing, photo shoots for catalogues, product testing with kids, copywriting and of course, it was like living in Willy Wonka's factory at times!
Better than that, I had a couple of Welsh mates who were 'master builders' (actual jobs!) whose sole purpose was to sit in a small room surrounded by buckets on each wall filled with every element known to man or child... they had to get spares for kiddie requests, as well as make all the models for shops/expos using GBL temp glue and also test the Danish instruction steps. In my opinion though, having it at your fingertips 24/7 kinda takes the fun/aggro/whole point of LEGO away.... that 'rooting-in-the-box-for-the-last-specific-piece-to-complete-the-model' event. Oh the joy when you find it!
Trust me when I said I 'acquired' a fair few freebies and special LEGO related goodies, including some larger models, A4 box files shaped like LEGO, shed loads of unique and rare character key rings (some of which are on sale to public now) and yep - my desk name plaque made out of LEGO! Best of all, a prototype P-Brick/RCX Mindstorms unit of which 6 were made worldwide - heheh!
No watercooler though.
So yeah, cool job and helped me break into the advertising and design industry.... almost as cool as being at Palitoy in the '80s I'd imagine!
Steve
PS: Almost forgot: the best/worst thing during my time at LEGO, was that there were only 80-odd UK employees and back in '98 we all found out about the LucasFilm licence being acquired and had to all agree to a sort of NDA (non disclosure agreement) to keep quiet.
Of course being an impatient geek, I drove straight home that night and blabbed to my housemates the minute I got in...
"we're gonna do star wars LEGO we're gonna do star wars LEGO - I want to see Indy as LEGO!!" I have to admit I was a little worried I'd get fired, but they kept my secret for a few more months until it was leaked unofficially. We all know how great the SW line went down, but that the sad thing is, it took almost 10 years to get the Indy stuff sorted due to the film issues - the 'adventurers' set was based on the early Lucas Indy designs when I was there, but that doesn't count!
So basically, I'm not to be trusted when it comes to massive geeky news.....
