LEGO My Hero

Alexander peeking from behind some LEGO CITY pieces

I've been playing with LEGO since I was a young child - lately, with Alexander continually excited about the LEGO Star Wars offerings, I've had another round of fun exploring the magic of creating your own toys to play with using the "Automatic Binding Bricks" as they were originally called back in 1949.

I could go on and on talking about how great it is to have a toy that allows you to create virtually anything and where you're limited only by your imagination. That in and of itself is pretty darn specular and something I loved about LEGO.

But that's not what this particular post is about.

This particular post is about my admiration for the incredible quality control behind LEGO.

If I had to guess, I'd say that I have likely personally opened the plastic on several dozens of LEGO sets over the years and followed the included visual manual to construct the specialty item on as many different sets.

And one thing that has NEVER happened to me, is I have never been short a single piece in any of the kits I have worked on. No, not even all of the really tiny pieces that are included in the LEGO CITY or LEGO Star Wars sets that Alexander and I have built in the past few years.

Seriously - with each set, most of which contain hundreds upon hundreds of tiny pieces, some of them containing pieces numbering in the thousands, you'd think there would be a mistake made.

Alexander and I playing with Dad's old "Space LEGO" sets

But the only consistent "mistake" made is there are often about half a dozen extra tiny pieces included in the average set. I have never encountered a set that was short a single piece. And with each new set Alexander and I build, there's always a point, when trying to put together the model while following the directions that I think "oh, we're missing a piece that we need." But then we find the piece, either hidden underneath something else in the pile or perhaps used in error in an earlier step in our construction.

I don't know what kind of quality control measures they put into their sets, but it is absolutely amazing. In terms of quality control, LEGO is my HERO.