The Great Brick Heist: Museum Representation in Children’s Toys

I love LEGO. There’s a good chance that you, dear reader, are also a fan of LEGO. Even if you aren’t, statistically there’s over 80 LEGO bricks per person in the world. So why am I bringing up LEGO? Well, museums as a medium are quite often depicted in children’s toys, but exactly how are they represented? Is there a trend in what play sets are in terms of size and content? Do different companies have a different view on what a museum playset should be? Whilst scrolling LinkedIn, of all things, I saw a post from a museum professional that got me thinking. They noticed that a lot of museum representation features thievery, and I’m not talking about the British Museum plundering artefacts from colonial nations! Rather, they feature thieves breaking into museums to steal the objects. This got me wondering – how often are museums depicted as being broken into with children’s toys?

Let’s start our search with LEGO, since I brought it up in the opening paragraph. Over their time, LEGO has made eight museum-themed sets, the most recent one at the time of writing being the Natural History Museum (set number 10326) in 2023. However, excluding the Architecture line of miniature museum buildings, a total of three sets depict break-ins and stealing from museums. In particular, set 60008 of the LEGO City line is quite literally titled “Museum Break-in”. A few other sets we can discount, such as the Animal Crossing museum set and the Scooby-Doo mystery set. However, the two Marvel sets featuring part of a museum (sets 30707 and 40343) both feature robbery.

Figure 1: The museum break-in, set 60008 (Bricklink, 2025).

If we turn our attention now to Playmobil, another big brand, we can find another four museum-themed sets that are based entirely around robbery. There are a lot more museum sets to choose from with this company, however many of them are more "historical figures," leaving us with just a handful of museum playsets, all of which depict thieves and robbers. Sets 6281, 9451, and 71876 all feature thieves stealing gems or precious artefacts such as crowns. Set 9451, “Museum Heist,” even features a whole half-building for the theft! If you wanted more, set 71347 is an advent calendar dedicated to museum theft for your little Playmobil figures!

Figure 2: The Museum Heist advent calendar, set 71347 (Klickypedia, 2025).

Moving away from the big brands and brick-based toys now, we can find the Roblox series of sets, which are made from the most popular user-built games on the platform. It’s here we can find Jailbreak: Museum Heist, a set based on the minigame of the same name. You will never guess what the aim of the game is.

Figure 3: Jailbreak: Museum Heist set

Of course, this is all sounds very negative and doom and gloom, but is this universal? Do all brands only make museum play sets (not display sets like the LEGO Icons Natural History Museum) that feature robbery and theft? No, of course not. Bigger name brands such as COBI or Bluebrixx rarely feature museums, only things in particular ones, which is mainly down to what their brand specialises in. COBI in particular, thanks to making largely military sets, feature wonderful examples of tanks from the Tank Museum in Bovington without ever mentioning theft or stealing. Museums themselves often sell all sorts of gifts and toys that feature no stealing whatsoever, and there are plenty of third party or minor brands that make lovely museum sets for kids to play with. All sorts of children’s books, too, make no mention of heists or thefts from the museum they feature.

Which brings me now onto the final thing for us to think about – “Why?” Why are museums depicted by these major brands - LEGO and Playmobil - as being broken into and stolen from? Why feature sets that only show these museums being targeted by brigands and criminals? Well, I can’t say for certain, but I have a good idea. It’s fun.

We must remember that, at the end of the day, these sets are for kids. The LEGO City sets have the ages of 6-12 on the box, and our friends at Playmobil feature an age of 4+ on their Museum Heist set. Children want things to do, they want goodies and baddies, cops and robbers, and as much as we like to go around and look at museum contents, children will get bored of this. They want a story to play out, something to make them think and engage and have fun. A criminal break in gives them so much potential for fun and enjoyment, as they can use other sets like police cars and trucks to make their own story and their own fun. A museum just happens to be a universal setting that contains valuables, and this is not just something that museum sets struggle with alone. Banks are often also the target of criminal capers for the same reason. They are big, hold valuables, and give so much potential for kids to play and enjoy.

In the future, maybe there will be museum play sets for children that do not feature robbery, but for now we can just let kids be kids and enjoy their cops and robbers.

Berengar Needham is currently a student on the MA Museum Studies program at the University of Leicester.