Best of BrickNerd: Weekend Highlight — Article originally published September 9, 2021.

In this guest article, Steven Canvin tells the story of the rare golden Mindstorms pBricks and how they came about. The epic tale involves trips to the US and Billund, a Technic dinosaur, a local jeweler, a group of AFOL superfans and lots of cake.

Preamble: I am part of an online LEGO User Group called SortLUG, and we meet virtually every week on Fridays to “sortalize”, a portmanteau of ‘sorting’ and ‘socialising’. You can choose to sort parts or just chat, which we do throughout the 12-hour Zoom call. The length of the call is set so most people from around the world can participate—and they do.

It is a great space to meet like-minded people and we are very inclusive. Great stories get told and I have shared a few of my own, and recently the indomitable BrickNerd, Dave, encouraged me to write one of them down. Here it is.

The Golden pBrick

I have a very rare part of LEGO history on my desk, a golden pBrick.

In case you are wondering what “pBrick” stands for, wonder no more—it is the internal name used at the LEGO company for the programmable ‘bricks’ that came out of the LEGO MINDSTORMS product line. LEGO MINDSTORMS is the name of the revolutionary product line and brand that first introduced kids to the world of robotics, using LEGO elements, motors, sensors and a central ‘brain’—a CPU.

Various central brains were created for the MINDSTORMS robotics products, and the first official unit was called the RCX, which came out with the flagship set #9719 LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotic Invention System 1.0 in 1998. I have this rare golden version of an RCX. I really should not have one, but I do. This is the story about how I got it.

From a Dark Age Into a New Age at LEGO

I lived in Denmark at the time the MINDSTORMS product line was first announced in January 1998. Access to the internet was in its infancy (in Denmark) and Google was muscling in on Altavista. The LEGO company was also exploring the possibilities of this newfangled way to communicate, and nothing could be more rad to announce than a new line of products giving kids the ability to build their own robots! I remember first seeing the news sitting at a computer at the Odense Central Library, spending my allocated 30 minutes just exploring any homepages I could find. It was very appropriate that the first thing I saw from LEGO online was news about this—it kicked me out of my dark age and back into the world of bricks—bricks that now had brains. I was stoked! I wanted to build LEGO robots!

However, it was through very analogue means that I learned about the job openings at LEGO a few months later. See, I was in between jobs in the early months of 1998, so my daily routine consisted of beating old retired men in the race to the fresh newspapers at the library. The Wednesday and Sunday editions were when the job sections were fullest.

One day in April, there was a whole page full of LEGO job postings; new kinds of jobs in a newly formed group working with digital LEGO elements. They were looking for a team manager, a designer and programmers specifically for the LEGO MINDSTORMS brand. BINGO! That was the kind of job I was looking for! Are you crazy? Getting to play with LEGO toys all day? Sign me up!

I sent in my application and crossed my fingers. After a few weeks I received a letter inviting me to an interview at LEGO HQ in Billund. I got to meet my future boss, Søren Holm, head of the segment in the design department covering the TECHNIC line and now MINDSTORMS. For the interview, I had brought a dinosaur built out of TECHNIC parts. Originally, I had wanted it to walk on two legs, but ended up with legs stuck to big wheels that made the legs cycle in a walking motion, making it look like it walked… I remember parts of it were held together by strings. (What can I say? I am not a good builder.)

This LEGO Technic dinosaur from the LEGO House in Billund is a bit bigger than mine was. Image via LEGO.

Søren told me at the interview that LEGO had hit a hiring freeze that spring for budget reasons, so he wanted to offer me a freelance position. But first, I had to be tested. (No, I did not have to build a ball out of bricks as many LEGO applicants are challenged.) In the older segment of the design department, designers are more into mechanical and technical constructions. Søren could see I was not the best TECHNIC builder but asked me if I knew about carburetors, crank axles and boxer motors. “Of course!” I said. I lied. I wanted the job—learning about motors could come later.

My summer was spent trying to build new models and explain concepts which I would send by mail to Billund, so the feedback process was slow. Really slow. They had sent me the parts for a TECHNIC BarCode truck and a Space Shuttle, plus a dummy CyberMaster brain. Among other things, I built an amphibious, programmable vehicle, and sent a video of it being tested in my infant son’s bathtub. Fun times!

Anyway, after a long period of waiting for responses, and calling Søren many times a week to wear him down, he eventually took me on as a freelance designer. I had gotten a foot in the door in the holiest of holies in the LEGO company, the design department, back then aptly named LEGO Futura.

I started in early September 1998: My primary mission was to develop the concept for the next version of the flagship product in the line-up, the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotic Invention System (RIS)1.5, #9747.

Things started to roll fast—by January 1999 I was hired full time as Senior Concept Designer and a year later I was promoted to run the design team as Design Manager. We launched the RIS 1.5 set in the summer of ‘99, and while working on the coming year’s products I was also tasked with creating show models for a demo tour all over Europe—and actually plan the tour in coordination with various PR agencies. It was hectic and exciting at the same time. My early years in the R&D department ran by like a blur!

It is easier to say what I did not work on, explored, tested or developed during those years because the LEGO R&D department is a creative person’s paradise! We did crazy things. I mean, crazy things. Think real flying LEGO planes, biodegradable LEGO parts for outdoor play, water toys (robotic fish, anyone?), wearable, intelligent parts, controlling your toys using brainwaves, lasers (yes, real lasers…), musical instruments and much more.

The Shake-up, Going to the Golden State, and Then Not

The company went through one of many re-organisations in 1999, and it was decided to form three distinct product groups called ‘Segments’ based on three age brackets: the 0-5 segment, covering PRIMO, Baby and DUPLO; the 4-8 segment, covering all SYSTEM product lines; and finally the 7-16 segment, covering TECHNIC and MINDSTORMS.

(The astute reader will have noticed how the age brackets overlap. Don’t ask. Just don’t… if it doesn’t make sense to you it is because it doesn’t... The internal conversations about the overlaps between the brick systems is for another story, another time.)

The wisdom of upper management had also led them to move the marketing and design management of these segments out of Denmark: the 0-5 segment formed its base in Milan, Italy, which was a hub for early child development expertise. The 4-8 segment got billeted to Slough in the UK, where LEGO had recently moved its UK operations to. Finally, the 7-16 segment was a different kettle of fish. The TECHNIC development did stay firmly in Denmark, but the MINDSTORMS part got a headquarter in Novato, California, USA.

This made my job a little more interesting: our new product ideas would be born and incubated in the Novato office and then taken to Denmark to be finalised. So, I started doing a lot of traveling to sunny California with my designers to work for a few weeks at a time, brainstorming new concepts, getting models started and then carrying them back to Billund for completion.

But, my boss Søren Holm decided that it would be cheaper and easier if I sat in California rather than commuting all the time. So, plans were drawn up and, as the year 2000 drew to a close, I was slated to relocate to California in early 2001 to be stationed there for two years with my wife and two kids.

We had spent two weeks in Novato in the summer to scope out the area, and a little research revealed that Novato county was the most expensive county to live in in all of the continental US, so Søren had to convince management that my salary had to be more than doubled in order to support my family and me.

But alas, fate (and the company’s financial and managerial trouble at the time) would not have it. The day I was supposed to sign my contract for my new life overseas, I was told that the California office would be completely shut down within two months as part of the cost-cutting measures… Damn!

This meant also that the development of LEGO MINDSTORMS stopped—the team members in the US and Denmark were fired, dispersed or reassigned to other projects. Attempts to launch new robotics products during the following years, e.g. the Spybotics sets, failed miserably.

For the following three years, I was meandering in the LEGO R&D department, working for a while on a host of weird never-to-materialise projects in the secretive Concept Lab, and eventually ended up as Design Lead on a DUPLO theme (the aptly named LEGO Ville) in the amazing DUPLO group. Working with DUPLO and the designers in that department was so much fun! (Good thoughts are sent to those guys who are still there—I miss you!)

Anyways, in Spring 2003 the company had another cost-cutting headcount session and they cut into the bone; it was the year where the company nearly went bankrupt. I got laid off from the DUPLO department. (Guys, they were asking designers to save money by not printing in colour! That’s how bad it was...)

I landed some other jobs and slowly got over the divorce from Plastic Heaven, but missed all my friends in the company.

The Return of the pBrick

Fast forward to February 2006. I got a call from an old friend in the company asking if I wanted a freelance gig—working from home, managing an international online forum of beta-testers for the new generation of LEGO MINDSTORMS (LMS for short from here on out). I have to note that at the time I was working a not-so-exciting job placing graphic elements for print on cardboard or carton stock. My day job was dreary, so working a LEGO-related gig after hours was truly a boon!

Yes, a new version of the robotics product line had been in development since 2004. Management had decided the LMS brand was too strong to kill off, so it was better to give it another try.

The new pBrick, programmable brain was called the NXT and was quite a novelty and confusing to the group of beta-testers. See, the NXT did not have any studs on it. None at all. It only had TECHNIC connection points. It was a work of art! The new LMS NXT product line would go on to scoop up dozens of prestigious awards in many categories and created a PR buzz never seen in LEGO history up until that time.

My freelance job as an administrator for the online forum was essentially to herd 100 adult fans and luminaries spread all across the world, once the online forum opened up in mid-March 2006. They were picked out of a pool of nearly 10,000 hopeful candidates who had signed up to test some new and exciting technology product from LEGO. The online group forum was called the MDP—short for the MINDSTORMS Development Program—making the members MDPs in colloquial terms.

The MDPs had early access to the full parts of the new LMS NXT set #8527, and the hope was that by engaging with them—asking their thoughts about the product and parts assortment—they would become enthusiastic advocates for the product once it was launched. Pre-ordering was scheduled for June and full launch and availability would be 1 August 2006.

The members did not disappoint: at the time of the launch many of them had prepared alternative models, web content like blog posts, and had finished book drafts. The launch of this new generation of LMS products generated more PR than the whole company had accumulated in its lifetime up until then, measured in (free) airtime hours, newspaper/magazine pages and web content. It also garnered dozens of awards for the design, for the clever marketing and PR campaign and several TOTY (Toy of the Year) awards, given by toy industry leaders.

I was kept on as the online forum admin after the launch, and we changed up the format of the group. Many had left the engagement now that the product was official, so we set up a smaller group with fewer players. We started the MCP: the MINDSTORMS Community Partners.

The MCP had a few of the MDP members and a bunch of new ones—some of them friends of original MDP members. The purpose of the MCP was to keep the buzz of the new product alive and to be active advocates and product experts in the LMS community that had grown with the launch.

By early 2007, my friend who had hired me as a freelance admin asked me to come back on board to help keep the LMS brand moving. It was an offer I could not refuse. I quit my job in the cardboard printing company, and by March I was back in Billund, this time as Business Development Manager, heading the LEGO MINDSTORMS retail product line.

Billund Airport to scale for visualization. Image via LEGO

Now is a good time to explain that the LMS retail product line only had one product. One. That one set that was released in 2006 was it. How hard can it be to look after one box, right?

Still, my job involved working on new concepts, managing the contact with the MCPs, creating content for the brand’s website, managing the business, interfacing with my fellow marketing associates around the world, engaging with existing and new business partners, and much more. Again, it is easier to say what I didn’t do!

I was thrown directly into the deep end: I was a creative person with next to no experience with marketing and product management. As I started in March, one task presented to me was developing the next set that would come after the 8527, while keeping 8527 on the shelves for an additional two years! At the time, a typical LEGO novelty product had a maximum shelf-life of two years.

Developing this new set would be my biggest test in my new role—because its success or failure was directly on my shoulders.

Time to Celebrate

2007 flew by in no time and 2008 came around. Right after New Year’s, math would have it that 2008 would be the 10-year anniversary for the MINDSTORMS brand. It was decreed that we should celebrate it in style. Two things came up: we should have an exhibition showing the history of LEGO MINDSTORMS and a day where we got together to celebrate the brand with those who had contributed to it. We settled for a two-hour celebration on 20 November 2008 where we would have a formal function and officially open the exhibition.

My first directive was to liaise with the team running the LEGO Archives, sitting in the oldest buildings in the company, called Løvehuset and Knophuset respectively. In English, those two names translate to ‘The Lion House’ and ‘The Knob House’ (or ‘Stud House’ if you swing that way). The Lion House is also called Ole Kirk’s House after the company’s founder. Two stone lions guard the old front door, hence the nickname. The Knob House is so-called because it is clad with cement frames with protruding circles looking much like a LEGO plate with studs/knobs. Those buildings house the company’s internal museum among other secrets… You do not get much closer to where it all started than this.

Notice the lions out front. LEGO Idea House via BrickFanz

My two good colleagues, Jette O. and Inge were my points of contact that would help me get the anniversary celebrated. Inge had allocated one of the rooms in the Knob House for a month-long exhibition of LEGO MINDSTORMS memorabilia and had started to collect materials for it: media clippings (newspaper/magazine stories about LMS) and TV clips, as well as old products.

You’ve heard that LEGO has a copy of every product they have ever made, right? Nope, not back then. As part of accumulating the collection of all LEGO products, Inge would frequently put out calls, either internally in the company or to the greater fan community, searching for rare sets that would not be in the company’s archives to either borrow, buy or copy for the collection.

I helped amplify the call by asking our MCPs for their help with old LMS sets, but also for models. We wanted to have examples of all key models from the sets but also iconic, awesome and groundbreaking models from users around the world.

Likewise, I extended an early invitation to many luminaries in the extensive MINDSTORMS fan community. I tried to contact Kekoa Proudfoot from Stanford University, who hacked the RCX shortly after the LMS RIS 1.0 set was released in 1998—who not only hacked it but released ALL the details of the hardware and how it operated! All the data he revealed is still available on his page.

I reached out to Jin Sato, whose amazing MIBO robotic dog made from the RIS 1.0 set was the first fan-created model to be featured on LEGO packaging (backside of the RIS 2.0 #3804). We wanted to have his model there, and have him attend the celebration, if possible.

A formal invitation also went out to our international group of MCPs to come to Billund for a day of celebration in November. The more the merrier.

Going for Gold

In dialogue with my boss, Søren Lund, we decided that we should create some commemorative items that would honour those who had influenced the creation of LEGO MINDSTORMS as well as having taken it to the next level. So, the idea of using RCXes for the ‘founding fathers’ of the brand came about.

The ‘founding fathers - and mother’ were those people who had been instrumental in the creation and development of the brand. First to be recognized would be MIT Professor Seymour Papert, whose 1980 book ‘MINDSTORMS - Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas’ was the inspiration for the concept of intelligent LEGO bricks. Next would be his prodigy, Professor Mitch Resnick who continued Seymour’s work and co-created the first intelligent micro-computers used with LEGO parts at the MIT Media Lab.

From the LEGO company, we had owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen who got inspired to take LEGO to the next level following seeing Seymour in a TV interview; and Torben Ballegaard Sørensen, EVP in charge of the 7-16 segment, and a very instrumental leader of the LMS development. Tormod Askildsen and Søren Lund were both powerhouses in developing the educational traits and leading the product marketing in the early years, facilitating the connection with the FIRST organisation, leading to the very successful FIRST LEGO League robot competitions and much more.

Director of development, Mike Dooley, and our intrepid brand manager, Linda Dalton, who both sat in the Novato office during the heydays of RCX development also were there. (Mike and Linda left for other pastures when the Novato offices were closed down. Torben Ballegaard Sørensen moved to Bang & Olufsen as CEO in 2001.)

The NXT generation and the continued support for and the existence of the brand would not have happened without the fans—so we wanted to honour them and give them something special. It seemed natural to also create a limited quantity of golden NXTs, to represent the new generation.

We wanted to use the programmable bricks as part of the ‘trophies’. I also knew that I could not just spray paint them with gold paint. That would be cheesy. And it did not look good—trust me, I tried it just to see how it would come out.

Shiny, heavy Gold. Image via Public Domain Pictures — Shiny, heavy gold. Image via Public Domain Pictures

No, I wanted the RCX to be gilded, with real gold, and have the heft of a gold brick…
So I walked down to the local watch and jewelry shop in Billund—yes, there is a jewelry shop in small-town Billund—because I knew that they could get toddlers’ shoes gilded in silver or other precious metals.

Inquiring about what it would take to gild an RCX or NXT cover, the store owner told me that the process would use 12-carat gold as a minimum, which would cost about 1,000 Danish Kroner ($200 USD) per cover and that the studs on the cover would barely be recognizable because of the thickness of the metal, even though it would be a thin layer.

The cost and the expected end result made that option a no-go. I had it in my mind that the ‘LEGO’ lettering on the studs on the cover should still be visable, and the studs should somehow still be functional. Furthermore, I did not have the budget (I didn’t really have ANY budget) for it so I went for the next best thing.

At the time shiny LEGO parts were still made using a method called drum-lacquering or metal-plating. Base parts would be covered with a thin layer of colours looking like chrome, gold or silver. I turned to my project manager, Henrik, who as a seasoned employee knew everybody in the company. I mean everybody. He told me to go to see Bo Kristiansen. He was the person who could get things drum-lacquered.

Bo was sitting close by in the DUPLO team’s area in the R&D, so I walked over to ask Bo about the prospect of getting 10 RCX covers and 30 NXT covers processed. He told me the result would be a crap-shoot. For surfaces the size of an RCX cover (8x12 modules) or an NXT (9x12 modules) the coating would possibly create flow patterns and it would not look good. Also getting all these NXT and RCX covers processed was a one-off. I would not have time or favours left to redo the whole batch if something went wrong.

As there were no internal charges for getting smaller batches of parts lacquered, I made a mental note to get a cake for Bo and his colleagues when we were done. Cake was an integral part of the internal favour economy wherever I worked with people! It worked well—especially when the recipients did not expect it. Just sayin’...

The golden RCX as a commemorative piece in itself was not enough. I needed a way to make the pieces personal. I knew some diploma-style letter with a calligraphed name would not cut the mustard. It had to stand out. So I went to one of my favourite departments in the R&D: Ebbe’s workshop. This is like Q’s workshop in the James Bond universe, this is the special ops of the R&D department. Ebbe Lerhardt made things happen. If some mechanical dummy contraption or function was needed for prototyping, this was the place we would go to. They could make anything happen!

I loved visiting his little department. I had many fun brainstorms there, ranging from creating ocean-going robotic sailboats and flying cars—some of these ideas became some wicked working prototypes too! Ebbe suggested embedding the RCXes in acrylic plates, engraved with the names of the ‘founders’. Set at the right angle the RCX would stick through the plate and make the whole thing stand by itself.

Neato! I had a plan now. Next up was to find my stock of RCXes and NXTs for this project. Initially, I had thought it would be cool if all these units could actually work, but it was a stretch. So, I settled for units that at least looked OK without too many scratches or broken innards.

In the Technology department of the R&D, there’s a room where all electronic and mechanical parts get tested. There you can find bins full of LMS motors, sensors and brains. Many of these parts were returns sent by users to Customer Service, often in the belief that something was broken or not working. And in many cases, it was a fluke and the parts worked perfectly.

Anyway, I went bin-diving and found a bunch of old RCXes and returned NXT units and took them home for disassembly. Working from home one day, I unscrewed all parts, connected to the cover, and bagged up all the bits individually. Both the RCX and the NXT have a clear plate over the little displays, and those I could not take off. So, I had someone print out stickers in the shape of the displays that I then stuck on as precisely as possible.

I brought Bo all the covers the next day, and the project was in motion.

When I got the gilded NXT and RCX covers back I started to do some triage. As mentioned earlier, lacquering surfaces of this size could produce some uneven results as the metallic layer was added to the plastic. I had to limit the RCX covers to 10, of which I needed 8 good ones.

One was totally off; the flow of the metal layer was very visible, and it looked bronze in some parts. I threw that one out. The ones with the best results would be given to the people with the highest rank, so I had my work cut out for me, choosing who deserved which. The ninth cover was a reserve, in case something should happen during the insertion into the acrylic plate. As you can tell, my margin for error was pretty much nil!

Let’s Get Ceremonial

The big day arrived. It was time for our official day of celebration. We had invited the eight founding persons, but the American contingent could not attend. Luckily our owner, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, and Søren Lund, Torben Ballegaard and Tormod Askildsen had responded positively to being there. Torben, then CEO of Bang & Olufsen, was supposed to give a lecture at the Copenhagen Business School that day, but chose to come to our special day instead! Yay!

Invites had gone out to the internal departments that were most involved in the general development and maintenance of MINDSTORMS as well as local (Danish) external partners—we had great attendance.

Jette O. gave the first welcoming introduction to all guests and then yours truly took over to present the golden RCX trophies to the quartet of ‘founding persons’, seen beaming in the photo below.

Happy recipients of the ‘trophies’: L to R: Søren Lund, Torben Ballegaard Sørensen, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and Tormod Askildsen. Photo credit: Mike Brandl.

Each of them regaled us with their fondest memories from the early MINDSTORMS days. One particular story was connected to Torben Ballegaard, who in a TV presentation was demonstrating a Table Robot—an RCX-controlled robot that could detect the edges of a table and stay on it. Well, on live TV, Torben’s robot did NOT stay on the table and fell off and came apart. But, Torben was cool as a cucumber and picked it up, put it back together, and fixed it. (Some wires had been crossed so the robot had been reacting the opposite way—it wanted to jump off the table. Crisis averted!) The particular model was later dubbed ‘Torbot’ and was featured in a set.

Screen Shot 2021-08-03 at 9.44.42 AM.png — The ‘trophies’ belonging to Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and Søren Lund. Photo credit: Mike Brandl.

After these formalities and speeches were over, cake and wine were served. The cake was from the local bakery and sported the logo we had created for the event. It was a good cake. I chose the cake. It was yummy. Very.

The cake. You have to have cake for such an occasion. Photo credit: Mike Brandl.

After the very awesome cake had been served, we took the fab four founding people upstairs to see the MINDSTORMS exhibit and, together with Inge, I got to present all the cool stuff we had on display. It belongs in this story that MINDSTORMS was Kjeld Kirk’s baby—he had personally shown great interest in the development of the product line and backed the process all the way.

A related tale from the early days fits in here: Søren Lund had given the company’s board of directors a presentation of the LEGO MINDSTORMS products. Kjeld Kirk had shown how much he actively knew about the hardware and the programming, which led the rest of the board members to scramble over to Søren (after Kjeld had left the room) to learn what they could about this new-fangled thing, lest they would be caught with their pants down. Oh, the good old days!

The Exhibition

Inge had done a fantastic job finding all sorts of materials from the early days of MINDSTORMS. She had decorated the main room for the exhibit with large photostats of newspaper and magazine clippings from the first generation of MINDSTORMS. Since the media coverage for the introduction of the NXT generation was primarily through websites rather than printed media, the first two years of the second generation were represented with screenshots from websites.

The centerpieces of the exhibit were of course robotic LEGO models and other physical paraphernalia: we had the first LEGO brains created in collaboration with MIT’s MediaLab, prototype hardware like motors and sensors for the NXT platform, produced through STL (stereolithography, where objects are formed layer by layer, much like today’s 3D printers).

Inge had worked hard on finding one of each box from the MINDSTORMS product line, and likewise the main models from those sets—it was quite a feat. I remember that we actually built several models from scratch to fill the line-up. I wanted the exhibit to have some of the most amazing models on display—models that would express the extent you could go to with LEGO robots.

So, we had a copy of the first MINDSTORMS model to go to space; it was a little RCX-controlled model made to represent the robotic arm that was going to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS). The model was built by Mission Specialist Dan Barry who took it up to the ISS for testing. A few years later, I got Dan to sign copies of that model—and one is now on display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Another item on display was a big RC model plane, which had also taken MINDSTORMS flying. Then-Chief Editor of WIRED magazine, Chris Anderson wanted to see if he could make a standard remote-controlled model plane into an autonomous drone. He had installed an NXT with motors in the plane, plus a cellphone and a GPS module. Suspended under the plane was a camera. His project worked: getting the plane airborne via remote, he would turn the plane autonomous by sending GPS coordinates to the cellphone on the plane, synced with the GPS module. The cellphone would communicate with the NXT which would use its motors to control the plane’s rudder and ailerons. Thus the NXT was driving the plane!

We had another flying NXT model on display; a model called Li’l Joe. It was sent up to the edge of the atmosphere under a high-altitude balloon, then unit was dropped from a height of 28 kilometers (17.4 miles) and was supposed to come down using its own parachute. (Long story short, the parachute did not deploy as planned and the model came crashing down in the Nevada desert. Still, the NXT and its sensors survived!)

Here are a few photos from the exhibit and the celebration. All photos of the activities are courtesy of Mr. Mike Brandl, one of our fervent MINDSTORMS fans from Vienna, Austria.

A Wall-E robot controlled by the NXT. Built by Marc-André Bazergui, Canada. Photo credit: Mike Brandl

(Check Mike’s website for all the photos and details about the activities. It is a goldmine with great pictures of all the things that happened, and I could not have written this story without this resource! Danke vielmals, Mike!)

The very first RCX to come off the assembly line - owned by Søren Lund. Photo credit: Mike Brandl

To top off the exhibition, nothing would be better to exemplify the start of LEGO MINDSTORMS than the very first RCX to have come off the assembly line. Søren Lund had had the foresight of the importance of that device and secured that very first unit.

It is truly unique and rare, and I worried that it might possibly disappear from the exhibit if we were not careful! I suggested to Søren that we could create a copy, but we ditched the idea and took our chances with having his unique pBrick on display for several months… It was safely returned to him at the end. Whew!

The International Gathering of MCPs

Sixteen members from our MCP forum had accepted the invitation to come to Billund for the celebrations, hailing from Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the US. They were invited to be part of the day we had the actual celebration and opening of the exhibit.

But, to make their trip worthwhile, we arranged a playdate with us, in the form of a brainstorm session on new tech-related products. Partly, it was to give them an insight into some of the brainstorming methods used in the R&D as well as get their thoughts on what new things they would like to see coming from the company.

Though all MCPs had signed NDAs (non-disclosure agreements), unfortunately we could not tell them that we actually had a new line of MINDSTORMS products in the pipeline. Personally, I had wanted to share that news with them and get their input as early as possible, but management vetoed that approach.

Brainstorming in LEGO R&D happens in many different ways. Back then, there were actual idea books filled with ways to get inspired. Our process included handing out sheets with generic themes, mood boards, or concepts that we encouraged participants to get inspired by, expand on and visualise on big paper templates. We gave them a time limit after which they were expected to present their work to the group.

L to R: Joe Meno, Jay Kinzie (USA) and Laurens Valk (Netherlands). Photo credit: Mike Brandl

After the brainstorm exercise and presentations, we let them loose. Now they could build the ideas they had come up with! (Or, whatever they wanted to build—I could not herd these cats!) We brought in a bunch of LMS hardware and lots of TECHNIC sets, and off they went. Below you can see Philo and Andreas work on a robot that could read markings on a roll of paper and play tones accordingly. It was a pretty sweet little music machine.

L to R: Phillippe ‘Philo’ Hurbain (France), Andreas Dreier (Germany) and David Schilling (USA). Photo credit: Mike Brandl

On the second day of the MCPs’ visit, we took them on a tour of the internal museum, followed by a factory tour. Later in the afternoon, we met up again to give them an update on the ongoing development of the updated NXT set we were going to release in 2009. The MCPs were involved in giving input on the development in our online forum, but having some of them present in Billund gave us a unique opportunity for direct reactions and comments. It was always good to talk to people face to face in these situations.

I always asked them to be frank with me and not hold back. They didn’t! Our relations and interactions were like being friends. Working on ‘secret projects’ together made it very intimate—the MCPs were let in on most of our progress and plans and could add their ideas or comments. We could not always accommodate their input, but sometimes they hit the jackpot. Either the comment or idea was something we had already thought of and not implemented, or it was something we had not thought of. The input from and our cooperation with this great group of AFOLs was absolutely invaluable. (MOre often than not, we could not tell them that their ideas were good or not. I trained my poker face during those sessions… AFOLs like poking around for any new info!)

L to R: Dave Schilling (USA), Gerrit Bronsveld, Daniel Wittenaar, Martyn Boogaarts (Netherlands), Steven Canvin, Henrik Hougaard (LEGO, Denmark). Photo credit: Mike Brandl

The Golden NXTs

Capping off our time together, I had the pleasure of personally handing out the golden NXTs to the MCPs who were present. The rest of the NXTs were allocated to those MCPs who could not participate and who had contributed to the celebration by sending models. They received their golden NXTs by mail. From what I remember I had asked the group that came to Billund to keep quiet about their little gift until all other recipients had received theirs. I wanted to keep the surprise intact.

All in all, the whole journey of getting the 10-year anniversary celebration for LEGO MINDSTORMS going was really exciting, and I am quite proud of how the “theme that was left to die” got its comeuppance in golden splendor,. It was worth the long days and nights and too many people to name helped make it a big success.

And that, my friends, is how I ended up with a rare golden pBrick.

Post Scriptum

I only realised during the writing of this story that my golden RCX does not have an engraved serial number on it. This reminded me of the process we went through back then; I did not have a way to fill in the engraved numbers before the gilding, so we left it at that. It shows I had a raw RCX cover that had not been used in production. This makes my golden RCX truly the only one of its kind. Woot!

Note: Should there be an avid collector of rare LEGO memorabilia out there, I am willing to part with this golden RCX. As much as I cherished my time working with LEGO MINDSTORMS, I do not have any use for this unit, and I believe it would be valued more by someone who is into collecting rare LEGO parts. Send a message to dave@bricknerd.com who will get us connected if you are interested.

What are your early memories of LEGO Mindstorms? Do you want the Golden RCX? Do you have any crazy stories to tell about the early days of LEGO? Let us know in the comments below.

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