Forbidden Lego was written by a pair of Lego master builders, who used to work in designing advanced Lego sets (e.g., Mindstorms). While they obviously got to work on lots of cool things while they were there, there were certain projects that just turned out not to be suitable to be made into kits released by the Lego company. They wrote the book to give some kind of a tantalizing hint at the kinds of things that go on behind the scenes at Lego, and the kinds of neat things that might get released in a world without product liability suits.
The book starts out with an short introduction that explains the authors’ motivation for writing the book, and an interesting discussion about the process of actually getting a model designed for production. You don’t normally think of bureaucracy when you see a Lego model, so it’s surprising in some ways. I particularly liked their comparison of the instructions included with Lego kits to dishes at Taco Bell: In both cases, you want to make several different things with the same, small set of ingredients.The Lego product safety standards are (of course) discussed in some detail, and more or less boil down to the question “could it poke an eye out?” (And poking eyes out is frowned upon.) There are also apparently other Lego design rules and guidelines—models might be considered unsuitable for production if they require cutting bricks, using non-Lego components, or so forth. But, creativity has its ways of oozing around rules, hence the book.
Forbidden Lego features five projects spelled out in the sort of excessive detail that you expect from a set of Lego instructions. In fact, it’s an interesting hybrid between a book for adults and a book for kids. While the introduction is clearly aimed straight at the adult users of Lego, the instructions are in classic Lego style: (nearly) wordless and including every step—even the ones that could be instead written out as “repeat for the other side.” On the third hand, these projects all involve cutting up Lego pieces, using non-lego objects in the design, and/or a good probability of poking an eye out.
It was on the 12th of March this year that I first heard about, and placed my order for, Forbidden Lego, a new book by Ulrik Pilegaard and Mike Dooley, $24.95 from No Starch Press.
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