Lego Website Lectures Anyone Who Thinks It's Legos

from the chill-out dept

Legos may be a fun toy, but it seems that some of the marketing folks there are fairly humorless when it comes to their website. The company wants to protect its brand, which is fine, but if you accidentally type in legos.com rather than the more appropriate lego.com, the company doesn't just forward you to the proper website -- it gives you a lecture on how to properly spell their name. Oh yeah, they also want to focus on the fact that the brand is completely capitalized, but we're not going to give in to that either.
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Reader Comments

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  • identicon
    Charles Jolley, 6 Sep 2005 @ 5:02pm

    We want passionate users...

    unless you don't spell our name right, of course.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    DGK12, 6 Sep 2005 @ 5:04pm

    LEGOs

    Wow now that's interesting. Lego my ego.

    That's one way to fix someones grammar. Although I don't believe the people in the TV marketing crew have caught on to this one.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Todd, 6 Sep 2005 @ 5:14pm

    No Subject Given

    not only that, but they expect you to read the diatribe in under 10 seconds.

    you have to rapid tap the ESC for 10-15 seconds to avoid a redirect. in firefox at least.

    sheesh, could someone hand me a kleenex.
    i think katrina may have brought the flu to cleveland.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Sep 2005 @ 5:27pm

    No Subject Given

    Of course, if you type in "kleenex" or "q-tips" you get a sadder redirect:
    "because we were branding idiots, we never defended our brand names and thus have little control (and shrinking market share) over the innovations we brought to market"....

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Jamie, 6 Sep 2005 @ 9:16pm

      Re: No Subject Given

      I agree! If they don't put up those annoying notices once in a while, then they'll have a hell of a time protecting their brand name if it ever becomes a court issue.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      malhombre, 7 Sep 2005 @ 5:10am

      Re: No Subject Given

      Heard that back in the 80's, Xerox was sending out letters asking their customers to not to use their brand name in place of the word "copies", or as a verb:

      "I'm going to xerox this report"

      "I'm going to make some xeroxes(sp?) of this report"

      Apparently, they feared the X word would slip away and become public domain. I don't know what the law says, but I worked for a competing brand at the time, and we thought it really curious, seemed like the kind of brand recognition that most companies would give a left one for.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Hans, 6 Sep 2005 @ 5:29pm

    rofl

    excellent... and so you should to ashamed for spelling it wrongly!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Sep 2005 @ 7:34pm

    No Subject Given

    legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos
    legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos
    legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos
    legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos
    legos legos legos legos legos legos legos legos

    Somebody in Denmark is having a heart attack now.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Gar, 6 Sep 2005 @ 10:05pm

    More than one

    When I'm talking about those bricks, I'm usually talking about many of them, not only one - hence, Legos .. more than one Lego. They should be happy for the publicity

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    dorpus, 6 Sep 2005 @ 10:21pm

    Because they got burned

    Anyone remember the Polish artist who built the Lego Holocaust Camp, because he deceived Lego into believing that he was making "Lego art"? I can see Lego being more paranoid since then.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Skip, 6 Sep 2005 @ 10:24pm

    Legos

    It's a part of America!! Fight the Lego Power!
    I was just thinking about how snooty they must be cause you can't just go out to wal-mart and buy a huge bucket of them like you could when I was a kid. You have to buy some dino-movie-maker-bio-astro-knights-amonga kit to get anything...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      eeyore, 7 Sep 2005 @ 4:26am

      Re: Legos

      Yeah, but you can buy a giant tub of generic Lego-compatible blocks at Wal Mart for about what the giant tub of real LEGO used to cost. I use them to build mold boxes for pouring RTV molds because it's easy to build them to a convenient shape. And I don't have to pay like fifty bucks for a brand name. You'd think if they want to enforce a copyright they wouldn't have let anybody sell blocks that use the same interlocking pattern. Otherwise, what's the point?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 7 Sep 2005 @ 8:52am

      Re: Legos

      You can go to a LEGO store and buy basic buckets of bricks. Just because WalMart doesn't stock it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
      And good for LEGO for protecting their name. It's only America that tries to call it Legos anyway. I think there's also legal precident where they can lose their trademark if it's used incorrectly too much.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        eeyore, 7 Sep 2005 @ 12:06pm

        Re: Legos

        Sure, for about sixty bucks. You don't see LEGO stores in the U.S. If you don't get it at Wal Mart you have to go to TOYS "R" A MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY and get it there.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Sep 2005 @ 4:12am

    legality

    They're doing it to protect their copyright status. By law if you don't make an effort then you can lose it. Effort is the key word though, they don't really care if people say legos I bet but in the future they may need to tell a court that they've made efforts in protecting their copyrights.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Sep 2005 @ 8:04am

    No Subject Given

    Adobe did the same thing with Photoshop.

    "Correct: I just finished editing an image with Adobe(TM) Photoshop(TM).

    Incorrect: I just photoshopped an image.

    Incorrect: I just finished editing an image in Photoshop."

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Parker Mason, 7 Sep 2005 @ 10:20pm

    Lego? Who cares?

    Who the fuck cares about legos anymore, ever since they started coming out with these pre-fab blocks that have just about zero creativity-inducing quality?
    Buying new lego is an investment in brainwashing.
    Building stuff with the old school blocks will make you a genius.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anynonamous, 23 Mar 2006 @ 4:25pm

      Re: Lego? Who cares?

      Your a silly moose. And by the way,geuss who cares about LEGO ? That's beep'n right. You guessed it, me.So who cares about you anyway? hmm?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    AJ, 19 Oct 2005 @ 1:52pm

    They changed it after these articles...

    Its been changed, instead it just says "you're probably looking for the lego Brick and Toy company, we are redirecting you to www.LEGO.com

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Shamus, 26 Nov 2006 @ 9:35am

    Lego

    Look at all the snows outside. Think I'll have me a nice cup of hot chocolates.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Derek Bredensteiner (profile), 5 Jan 2011 @ 10:34pm

    Dear lord

    Five and a half years later and they're still showing a similar "error" message?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Ben (profile), 6 Jan 2011 @ 2:35am

    LEGO bricks

    They're not "legos" (grief, that was hard to write!), they're "LEGO bricks" (bricks made by the LEGO company). Using the term "one lego, two legos" is like saying "one sheep, two sheeps" - just makes you sound ignorant.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    lrobbo (profile), 27 May 2012 @ 3:07pm

    2012 and they still can't let it go . . . "You are probably looking for www.LEGO.com"

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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