Unless you have Lego building kids, Legowish.com has probably passed under your radar. This is an official Lego website where kids can add products to a wish list, watch videos and trigger assorted animations by clicking around and exploring the site. Every played video and animation will earn points, and the more points harvested, the greater the chance to win in a product lottery. There’s both the short term payoff of seeing your points increase, and there’s the carrot - a shiny toy dangling somewhere in the distance.

Seen in action, this comes down to kids getting addicted to the collection of points. The currency kids spend to acquire these points is two-fold: time and exposure to propaganda.

Having spent countless hours myself building Lego as a kid, I have a warm fuzzy place in my heart for this particular toy brand. Thus, my guard was down and it took my a while to acknowledge that legowish.com really is just a disagreeable corporate brainwash engine.

So, the kids and I built an engine of our own to beat Lego at this lame game of clicking and logo worship. Our natural weapon of choice: Lego.

Behold! A mouse clicking robot!

I believe we succeeded in several ways. The three year old appreciated the geared machine which makes Yoda move and the on-screen animation play continuously. The six year old got the dawning realisation that his engagement could be reduced to that of a mindless robot. For my own part, I was once again reminded that when forced to play somebody else’s stupid game, always try to break free and rewrite the rules.

I guess we owe Lego our thanks, their sinister site made us build something cool :-)