Growing up, our house was always full of LEGOS. Boxes and boxes of LEGOS. There were elaborate trucks made out of LEGOS; strange flying machines; entire cities constructed out of LEGOS. Friends would come over and spend hours playing with LEGOS. Grandparents, aunts ans uncles would marvel at the creations. It was fun. It kept us out of Mom’s hair. As entertaining as this was, we never knew that every time we uttered the word LEGOS, we were pissing off a member of the LEGO brand management police. That’s right. LEGO has no ‘S.’ It’s just plain LEGO. Though, since time began, it seems kids the world over have been abusing the LEGO brand by calling them LEGOS. We know of no one who “plays with LEGO.” Everyone “plays with LEGOS,” of course.
While there’s nothing wrong with a company protecting its brand name, LEGO is chastising customers who refer to the company as LEGOS (with an S) when visiting the incorrect URL, LEGOS.com, and asking that their product be referred to as LEGO bricks or LEGO toys. Visit LEGOS.com and you will see what we mean. Rather than simply, and blindly, redirecting people to LEGO.com, LEGO inserts a ten second wrist slap to those visiting LEGOS.com before auto-progressing to them to LEGO.com. We can’t fault LEGO for protecting its brand but in our entire life, we, and everyone else in our life, have never known the brand as LEGO but, rather, as LEGOS. Of course that’s an entirely unscientific and, therefore, worthless statement but, even so, we marvel at the irony of spending our entire career, to date, in advertising and screwing up a brand name as popular as LEGO since birth. We apologize profusely LEGOS, uh, LEGO.
UPDATE: As many of our non-U.S. readers have helpfully pointed out, this seems to be an Americanism. Our propensity to slap an ‘S’ on the end of anything to make it plural is not the usual practice in other English speaking countries around the world. It’s Sport in Britain. Sports in America. Etc.
