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Play is important, even for us adults, as it helps keep the mind open and prevents us from losing touch with our own imagination. Additionally, it can bring together people from the most diverse backgrounds and social classes – reason enough for LEGO to celebrate yesterday’s World Play Day as a company. Among other things, employees received a great little duck magic box, whose instructions and parts list we’d like to share with you here.
Play is part of LEGO’s DNA and, despite all criticism of some developments such as the current catalog, is still valued more highly in the company than in most other firms. For World Play Day, LEGO employees therefore get a day off that’s used for playing together instead of working, as you can see beautifully in a video from LEGO CEO Niels B. Christiansen on LinkedIn. Additionally, employees receive a small LEGO set to build – and this one turned out particularly well.
It’s a small magic box with a pull-out drawer made from 127 pieces, whose top is adorned with a stylized version of the LEGO wooden duck, one of the company’s very early toys from the 1930s. Inside is one of the small, yellow ducks in minifigure scale, which you can make disappear or reappear when opening the drawer again using a cleverly hidden function. You can see this, for example, on the Instagram channel of LEGO designer Isabelle van Vleuten alias isibricks, who posted a video of the function there. You can get to the video by clicking on the following screenshot.
How the whole thing works can also be seen in the instructions, which were shared on Reddit and which we’ve also included here as a gallery below. Alternatively, you can download them as a PDF from us. A second, smaller drawer slides back and forth inside the main drawer, but this is only recognizable with very close inspection. If you hold this in place with a finger on the bottom of the model, you pull out the large drawer empty because the small one stays behind in the rear part of the box. This is a classic magic trick that you’ve seen similarly in many toys or magic sets, but made from LEGO bricks, the whole thing is naturally still something special.
Unfortunately, not all parts you need for the model are currently available at LEGO Pick a Brick, some are even still very new and therefore barely available even on BrickLink. We’ve therefore rebuilt the model in Studio for you and recolored the body of the box – after all, there is light wood too. 😉 We’ve also changed the plate where the duck’s wheels are attached from dark blue to black and modified the border of the lid a bit. This way, all parts are available at PaB for about $23 US and you can start building if you’d like.
You’ll find two buttons below: The first gives you the parts list for our version as a CSV that you can simply upload to LEGO Pick a Brick. The second downloads the original parts list, where, as mentioned, some elements are currently hard to obtain.
If you use the following button with our affiliate link to access LEGO Pick a Brick and order your parts there, we’d be especially happy, as we then receive a small commission from LEGO.
For those of you who want to build the model from your own parts collection or, for example, only buy some parts, you’ll also find all parts of our modified version with their required quantities as a table below.
We hope you have fun building and amazing your loved ones with the little magic box.
How do you like this little World Play Day set? Does this “holiday” also play a role in your life or perhaps even at your workplace? Would you rather wait for the availability of parts for the original version or can you also warm up to the lighter version? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
*As an Amazon Associate and member of the eBay Partner Network, and other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases you make through our links to the retailers. By doing so, you support us – thank you!