Daddy can you fix this ?

My son was holding a single piece of LEGO but I knew exactly what set it came from and what it had looked like before being dismantled.

I searched through the collection of building instructions which had survived numerous moves, fishmoths and the march of time. Then I got that sinking feeling – the building instructions were missing.

Trying to find the relevant pieces in a storage box containing pieces from multiple sets is difficult enough even with the help of building instructions. Without instructions it is almost impossible.

I have the internet …

After calming down to a mild panic in the face of a 4 year old’s tantrum I thought – “LEGO must keep an archive of all their building instructions”. Visiting the Building Instructions section of LEGO’s Customer Service page revealed the following:

We currently have over 3300 building instructions available online which date back to sets packed in 2002.

2002 ? That wasn’t going to help me !

Life savers

Google saved my life and provided me with links to the following sites:

Happiness restored

Using the Brickset site I visually browsed through their catalogs and found the set information I was after. I used the Peeron site to find the building instructions and the set inventory. Happiness was restored.