Dali House

It’s amazing how facts can ruin a terrific story, which probably explains why you can find the original yarn about “the giant Lego man who washed up on a beach” repeated all over the Web without seeing the slightest effort being made to discover what it really was.

The story was picked up by news outlets around the world and dozens of blogs and socialising sites, and only one at the outset, as far as I can tell, suggested an explanation. It was still only a suggestion from the BBC, though. Readers were left to giggle or possibly wonder if this was an updated Klaatu or The Man Who Fell to Earth.

The Lego beach boy even has his own website, GiantLegoMan.com, but, other than a short version of the tale of the discovery in Holland, it seems to be just a Google ad vehicle.

Perhaps it’s a classic case of things being best left to the imagination. Because when the truth eventually emerged, it was fundamentally boring.

That’s not to say there aren’t many people who admire Dutch artist Ego Leonard for dreaming up this elaborate policy statement, but it did cause a lot of other people to simply shrug and get on with their lives, while muttering gloomily about viral advertising scams.

Briefly, in August 2007, some holiday-makers in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort pulled a 2.5-metre-tall Lego man out of the sea. It had a yellow head and blue torso and bore the message “No real than you are” in quasi-English. It was “floating towards the beach from the direction of England”, a witness said.

Then, in October 2008, another one washed ashore on Brighton beach on the English coast. “It’s got some Dutch writing on it,” a witness said, although another, seemingly more reliable source claimed it carried exactly the same message.

In both cases, children danced around the castaways and the news media danced around the possibilities. The Dutch case coincided with the actual Lego man’s 30th anniversary, one outlet noted. Maybe it floated over from Denmark, which has a Legoland park, another ventured. See the rest.