The closest LEGO normally comes to arousing fury is when a parent steps barefooted on one of its small plastic bricks. But the Danish toymaker’s decision not to sell its product directly to China’s best-known dissident artist has stoked a wider row. LEGO always shuns any association with “political, religious, racist, obscene or defaming statements”. That includes Ai Weiwei’s planned LEGO portraits of political prisoners. With his noted flair for marketing, the prizewinning artist (himself jailed and repeatedly harassed by the Chinese authorities) responded by posting photos of LEGO blocks in a toilet, sardonically captioned “Everything is Awesome”—the theme tune of “The Lego Movie”. He could of course buy his bricks from a shop. But thousands of former LEGO fans are handing in bricks at collection points in museums all over the world, with new ones announced daily on social media.