Direct your browser to www.legos.com (as opposed to lego.com) and instead of being redirected to Lego’s main site, you are treated to a ten-second view of a screen in which a lawyerly paragraph scolds you viciously for abusing the Lego trademark by calling the toys “Legos.” They ask you to stop calling them Legos and switch to the far more mellifluous “Lego Bricks or Toys.” You know what? Real people in the real world call the toys Legos. Real customers. People don’t rearrange their idiom to suit trademark lawyers. Deal.
(Thanks, Dan!)