‘The LEGO Movie’ Build Event a Total Turkey

After seeing the film, The LEGO Movie fever was upon our family so we made plans to attend the building event at the Toys “R” Us store in our area. Scheduled from noon to 2 p.m., it offered the chance for kids to build Emmet’s car and to participate in a raffle as well as earn a ticket to the movie with a purchase of $50 or more.

We arrived seven minutes after 12 p.m. to see a line of more than a hundred people. No concerns. We’ve queued up for Comic Con, we can queue up for this fandom too. People filled in behind us, making a line of more than 200 people just a few minutes after the event had started.

At 12:25 an employee who was walking through the line handed us a raffle ticket and said there were no more kits — LEGO had only shipped 100. (Another disappointed person on Twitter said that her store only received 50.) The movie tickets were already gone. Most families were dealing with less forgiving children and ending up purchasing something LEGO, even though the store in Exton, Pa., was already running low on most sets related to the film.

Still, to have an event scheduled for two hours that ended almost before it had begun was disappointing. To turn away more than 60 percent of your attendees showed poor planning.

The raffle was at 2 p.m., so we stopped back and were handed a LEGO kit, which I thought they had found in the back. Someone made a joke that the Emmett car was probably so rare that people were selling them on eBay by now. I looked down and saw they were handing out turkey building kits. Yes, Virginia, LEGO’s Thanksgiving leftovers are still being served in February.

Go here for my review of the LEGO Movie.