Duncan McKenzie's
 CHEESE AND LEGO PAGE 
Welcome to the Cheese and Lego page, where I will try to answer some of your
questions about everybody's favourite food and the way it interacts with everybody's
favourite construction toy.
 Did you guys know that you can buy these cheese Lego
things. They are called Candy Blox and they are made by Concord Confections Inc. I'm not
sure what cheese it is, but it's hard and sweeter than many. It reminded me of Havarti.
Brian Nail
Minneapolis, Minnesota
There has been quite a bit of excitement in the cheese and Lego community about this
product, but we're sorry to inform our readers that Candy Blox are not cheese at all. They
are, as the name of the product suggests, candy. The confusion with may stem from the fact
that many of the bricks are yellow or orange -- colours traditionally associated with
cheese. We have written to Concord Confections Inc. asking them to change this confusing
colouring, and we encourage all our readers to do the same.
While assembling a Lego diorama depicting the Martyrdom of
Saint Sebastian, I wanted to give the saint some cheese to eat. At first, I used a yellow
2x4, thinking it would look like a block of cheddar, but it just looked like he was
holding a brick. Then my wife suggested I use a quarter-circle piece. It looks just like a
piece of cheese! (Except that it's blue.)
William Headley
Burk's Falls, Ontario
Thanks for the great suggestion, William. And don't worry about the colour -- just
pretend it's a piece of Danish Blue!
I have some of the older US-manufactured 2x2s, and a couple
of them seem to have a blob of some gray-white stuff stuck inside the central column on
the underside. It's been there for years. Is this likely to be cheese? If so, what sort of
cheese is it?
Frank Tupper
Tuscon, Arizona
We see this quite a bit in the older Lego sets. It's possible that you have
cheese there -- probably a processed cheese food, such as Velveeta. More likely, however,
the substance inside the Lego brick is dough or pastry which some child has
"stamped" with the Lego brick. I suggest you scratch some of the substance out
with a pin and taste it. That should settle the matter once and for all!
I've found that, if I turn Lego bricks upside down and blow
on the holes in just the right way, I can make music. Are there any good tunes about
cheese that I can play?
Jack R. Hammarlund
Buffalo, New York
Ah, there's certainly nothing like the homemade fun of creating your own Lego music.
Among the cheese-flavoured songs you might consider are: Aiken Drum ("his
hat was made of good cream cheese"), The Farmer in the Dell ("the cheese stands
alone"), and Three Blind Mice (who were probably fond of cheese). Do any
readers out there know of any other good cheese songs?
I'm puzzled by a green substance that seems to be jammed
into one of the circular bits on the underside of a blue 10x2 Lego brick. I thought at
first it might be cheese, but now I just don't know.
Monty Johnson
Cambridge, Ontario
From your description, I doubt very much that this is cheese. In the first place, most
cheeses are yellow, not green. And even if the cheese had gone green from mould, you
should see a wispy hairlike growth coming from within the Lego brick. I'd guess that what
you have there is some green Play-Doh, or possibly Plasticene, which some child has
"stamped" with the Lego brick. I'd suggest getting a pin, removing a small
sample of the green substance, and tasting it. If it tastes salty, it's probably Play-Doh.
If it has no taste, but has a friendly, plasticky smell, it's probably Plasticene.
Can you settle a bet between me and my brother? He says
that the guys who make Lego once made a set where the bricks were made all of cheese. I
say no way. Who is right? There is $10 riding on this.
Vera Kurninsky
Montreal, Quebec
Looks like your brother owes you $10, Vera! My friends at the LEGO Group assure me that
they have never manufactured any building bricks made of cheese (more's the pity!). In the
early 70s, Trigger Cheese Ltd of Stowe Vermont marketed a product called Cheezy Briks,
which was a set of children's building blocks made from various types of cheese. These,
however, were simply square and oblong shapes, and not interlocking bricks like
Lego. The product was advertised on Saturday morning television around Christmas 1972, and
was withdrawn from the market shortly afterwards. Again, it was cheese, but it was not Lego, or even Lego-like.
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