How Legos went from humble toy to criminal black-market item

The hooded man darted past shattered glass, his headlamp illuminating the rare collectibles housed in display cases that lined the walls of Bricks & Minifigs in Whittier, California.

Those sought-after Lego mini-figures — “Ninjago” Ultra Violet, Percival Graves, Velociraptor with Sand Green Back — were among about 600 stolen this spring. In a predawn spree that lasted little more than a minute, the thief stuffed a garbage bag with about $10,000 worth of figures before sprinting to a waiting car and speeding off.

The heist was one of seven carried out at Bricks & Minifigs outlets across the Los Angeles region in a two-month period, a $100,000-plus crime spree that, on the heels of other similar incidents, has rattled the world of Lego collectors and merchants.

“Ten years ago, I just couldn’t have imagined it — I did not think our little hobby was the kind of thing that would attract that kind of crime,” said Graham E. Hancock, editor of Blocks, an enthusiasts’ magazine. “The idea that they are taking advantage of really dedicated collectors and resellers . . . it is just scary for the hobby and for these businesses.”

PRICES ROSE DURING SHUTDOWN

The COVID-19 pandemic turbocharged the Lego collecting hobby, with homebound collectors blitzing online resellers in search of coveted items. That drove up prices, experts said, and attracted criminals.

Bricks & Minifigs, a franchised chain with more than 100 locations nationwide, including one in West Babylon, maintains a unique position in the Lego economy. Unlike official Lego stores, Bricks & Minifigs outposts carry valuable sets and figurines no longer in production. Some are sold in their unopened boxes. Others are displayed in glass cases.

The roughly 1.5-inch figurines — known as “minifigs” — can trade for upward of $1,000 and are especially enticing to thieves, said Katie Leuschner, owner of the Whittier store.

“You can’t steal a 1960s Mustang and hide that,” she said, “but you can hide a mini-figure and stockpile them for years.”

These days, Lego encompasses a sprawling, multibillion-dollar ecosystem of toys, video games, retail stores, television shows, films, amusement parks and more.

It’s easy to forget the days when children designed their own spaceships and castles out of a stew of mismatched blocks spilled on the living room shag.

Or that even more recently, Lego Group, a Danish company founded in 1932, appeared in jeopardy.

According to David C. Robertson, author of the Lego history “Brick by Brick,” the company foundered in the late 1990s as it made ill-fated attempts to enter the digital space. By 2003, he said, things were dire for Lego.

“It is really hard to overstate how close they were to bankruptcy,” he said.

BACK TO BASICS

But the company corrected its course by getting back to basics — and understanding it needed “to innovate around the brick,” he said. That largely came in the form of storytelling.

“They had to create worlds and characters,” said Robertson, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “They had to tell those stories with things outside the box: comic books, young adult fiction, movies, apps and ties to other [companies’] intellectual property, like ‘Batman’ and ‘Star Wars.’ ”

It worked. To some Gen Xers’ disdain, children were no longer content building their own creations out of the same bucket of bricks. They wanted new, evermore costly kits.

Today, Lego is the rare toy whose appeal transcends childhood, and it maintains a strong base of devotees who are known as “AFOLs,” or “adult fans of Lego.”

According to BrickEconomy.com, the most valuable mini-figure is a limited-edition Spider-Man version given out to attendees at Comic-Con in 2013 that’s now worth $5,500.

BLACK MARKET

The past few months have seen a string of Lego-related crimes across Southern California.

In April, days after the Bricks & Minifigs burglaries began, the California Highway Patrol arrested four suspects after finding them in possession of stolen Legos worth $300,000. They’d allegedly taken sets from retailers including Target. Then, in early June, Los Angeles Police announced they had broken up another alleged theft ring, arresting two people and seizing nearly 3,000 boxes of Legos.

Authorities have not linked those crimes to the Bricks & Minifigs heists.

Pilfered items are routinely offered on internet platforms including eBay and Facebook Marketplace, according to experts. That means that hobbyists have to rely on their own judgment — and ethics — when buying online.

Veteran Lego dealer James Burrows said red flags include sellers who “have a tremendous amount of something — and they are not a collector.”