Rebuilding the World

In 2019, LEGO® launched a new campaign – their first in decades, which was aptly named ‘Rebuild the World’. It resonates with LEGO enthusiasts, and is informative to those who are not familiar with LEGO® (do any exist?!). The almost 2-minute clip, however, is not what you would expect to see, but plays cleverly with many aspects for the LEGO system.

Credit: LEGO Rebuild the World by LEGO. YouTube video.
LEGO, the LEGO brick and LEGO minifigures are a trademark of the LEGO Group. ©2019 The LEGO Group.

No text can ever be unique. Bakhtin (as cited in, Allan, 2012) argues authors are influenced by their own biased social and cultural experiences and practices. Barthes (as cited in, Allen, 2011) further acknowledges the same is true of readers meaning an author’s message is always altered. Readers bring unique textual awareness to decoding, which prompts intertextual connotations unintended by the author. Although potentially unintentional, I made intertextual inferences between the advert and The LEGO Movie because of my knowledge:

The LEGO Movie (2014) uses animation for storytelling until the climax of the film, where it switches to live action. Audiences discover the animated action is the result of the child’s imaginative play. The advert begins with live action (and CGI), until the climax, where the characters and townscape morph into actual LEGO. Again, the action is the result of a child’s imaginative play with the LEGO bricks.

As a reader, my inferred intertextual knowledge devised an implied intertextuality based on style similarities, achieved through imitation and adaptation, or reinterpreting the movie – Hutcheon, 2012. Did you spot the similarities previously? Or only now you have been influenced by this text, affording you your own intertextual relationship play between this blog, the advert and movie?

A deliberate attempt to associate the advert with real-world LEGO was made through direct reference to the characters’ actions, and LEGO minifigure characteristics. For example, people bend at the waist, have rapidly changing hairstyles, fully rotating heads, and costumes with printed details. Piece elements, like oversized cups also appear, along with whole LEGO sets.

Similar to ‘Easter Eggs’ in digital games, these obvious, and not so obvious, elements are appreciated by those with suitable intertextual knowledge. The viewing of those who are unfamiliar, however, is not negatively impacted.

Given the campaign’s theme, you would expect live action scenes to be representational of  ‘rebuilt’ LEGO creations, featuring new creations or adaptations, but instead see many pre-existing sets included. It could be argued that their inclusion is counterintuitive to the campaign. So why include them, if not to deliberately allude to the rich and diverse history of LEGO products?

Either way, the sets and elements are there, and it is great fun trying to spot them! So, here, in no order, is a list of sets I have managed to spot so far:

• Volkswagen Camper Van
• Big Ben
• Detective’s Office
• Pink Car (from Diner) Note: the licence plate is actually for set 60138!
• Harley Davidson
• City Fire Brigade
• City Police Force
• Fabuland Characters
• Lighthouse
• Build-A-Duck
• Mini Cooper (different colour)
• Volkswagen Beetle (different colour)

I am sure there are still ones I have missed. Did you manage to spot all the ones I did? What else did you find?