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Last week the news surfaced that a pop-up bar made of over a million Lego bricks would be coming to Montreal and other cities (including New York, LA, and London) — but now it turns out that the Lego company itself does not appear to love the idea.
The bar was initially named Legobar, although a disclaimer on its website noted that “we are not associated with Lego®”, referring to the Danish company that created the brick building toy.
We noted that the bar likely would have had to ask for some kind of permission to use Lego’s brand name, since Lego is a registered trademark. But it appears they didn’t do that, and it looks like they have now been forced to change the name to eliminate any reference to Lego.
When queried about the bar’s use of Lego’s name, a representative for the toy company highlighted that the bar had no connection to them, but also that it was not in their interests to be associated with an event where drunk adults would frolic with a large number of choking hazards:
As a manufacturer of children’s toys, it is not within our remit to partner with brands or individuals operating the food and beverages sector. Our primary focus is on inspiring and developing children through providing fun and engaging play materials.
The bar is obviously intended for adults: while it will feature bricks for customers to play with, it will serve alcohol and feature DJs, and is overall intended for those who are legal drinking age — in short, not Lego’s target market.
Legobar has since changed its name to “Thebrickbars” (all one word), eliminating all mention of Lego from its page, and simply referring to the plastic building materials as “building blocks”. It appears that the bar will still be built from Lego, but without any explicit reference to the company — the same route as Montreal’s “Harry Potter bar” Lockhart, which is ostensibly themed around the books about a teenage wizard, but shies away from actually invoking the name of the series and other elements that could cause legal trouble.