While vainly searching for hot deals for this up coming holiday season at Lego
Shop at Home, your author shockingly stumbled upon a shocking discovery. While the Cargo Train Deluxe set,
7858, may seem like an ordinary train set, upon further inspection it seems the Lego designers have blatantly ripped off a fan's design for the boxcar included in it. The boxcar to which your author refers is in fact several boxcars, all sharing similar characteristics, but built by one person: Reinhard "Ben" Beneke, known simply as "Ben" on your favorite and ever reliable site Brickshelf.
Here, readers, is an image of the boxcar included in set 7858 and following it are several images of the boxcars on whose design it was based (note the similarly sloped roofs, doors, and number of wheels):
It is really unfortunate when Lego designers resort to blatantly stealing fan's designs, without giving them any compensation, let alone credit.
Didn't he help designing the Hobby Train set? So wouldn't he perhaps be a designer of the LEGO set? I'm not sure, though. And all the boxcars look alike.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's a boxcar. Of course they're going to look similar. The only things I can see that make that one similar are the door and that it's six studs wide. That's not exactly "blatantly stealing fan's designs".
ReplyDeleteI love that you guys think he's serious.
ReplyDeletethis post was lame in my opinion...
ReplyDeleteNO ONE GETS ME
ReplyDeleteAll of the boxcars built by Ben are seven studs wide, Nicodemus.
ReplyDeleteFYI- the second anonymous post wasn't mine, but I made the first one. I actually enjoyed the post.
ReplyDeleteAh, I didn't really notice the sarcasm here.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, I only knew this post to be sarcastic because I've been reading the blog for awhile. I'm no expert, but something seemed to be missing, it really did come off as too serious. Maybe a link to a discussion somewhere might have helped. This post was obviously inspired by similiar, and far more serious, discussions on Flickr.
ReplyDelete<3 u, hound
ReplyDeleteTHERE IS NO DENYING THAT LEGO GAVE US TRAINHEADS (BEN IN PARTICULAR) A SHOUT OUT WITH THE CARGO TRAIN DELUXE!!!
ReplyDeletehow dare lego steal his technique of using boxcar door parts as boxcar doors
ReplyDeleteIf you read the this post and thought it was serious past the first word, I hope you do not reproduce.
ReplyDeleteObviously Matt is being sarcastic, he can't 'be' anything else after all.
I think that because of this, we should all quite the Lego hobby.
Is sarcasm still funny to anyone?
ReplyDeleteYes, sarcasm is still funny.
ReplyDeleteThis post reminded me of this article:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_221/6582-Why-Your-Game-Idea-Sucks.4
Though it is about games design it applies almost as well to other types of design. Though it makes it's points largely without sarcasm it's still a good read!
I always love when fans get all entitled
ReplyDeleteWHY DOESNT LEGO GIVE ME MONEY WHEN THEY USE AN IDEA VAGUELY SIMILAR TO MINE THAT I MADE USING THEIR PRODUCTS, AN OUTRAGE
There's a good chance this one could stand up in a court of law. Ben should definitley take legal action. This way Lego will have less money to spend on ripping of people's designs.
ReplyDeleteMy plan is pretty much perfect.
Also, I talked to a couple lego designers this weekend and they told me they pretty much just steal all of their designs from this group
...
ReplyDeleteWow, I'm an idiot. Usually I'm fairly good at getting sarcasm...