LEGO shows off 15 years of exclusive employee holiday gifts

This year’s LEGO employee gift marks 15 years of exclusive holiday freebies, and the LEGO Group has celebrated by sharing an image of all the sets you’ll probably never own.

4002022 10 Years of Friendship is the 14th unique gift designed for and distributed exclusively to employees of the LEGO Group, just in time for the holidays. This year’s set celebrates 10 years of LEGO Friends, and acts as a bookend to the theme’s current cast of characters: in 2023, LEGO Friends will be rebooted with an all-new line-up of mini-dolls.

To celebrate the reveal and distribution of the 1,209-piece set – which includes unique variants of Andrea, Emma, Mia, Olivia and Stephanie, plus a Santa mini-doll – the LEGO Group has shared a rare insight into how the employee gift comes together. “A small cross-functional team works on this top-secret project for a whole year, until it’s finally revealed in November,” the LEGO Careers account tweeted.

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“This year, the gift celebrates the 10th anniversary of LEGO Friends, one of our most successful and beloved play themes. Fun fact: It’s the last LEGO model that comes with the five original LEGO Friends characters, because in the new year they’re going to grow up and make way for the eight new LEGO Friends characters.”

Accompanying the tweet is an image of project director Mogens Brynning, who leads the design of the annual gift, with student worker Beatriz Isca, whose first gift is 4002022 10 Years of Friendship. They’re standing behind the full line-up of unique employee gifts, released from 2009 to 2022. The 15th gift was a polybag version of 2009’s Heart, numbered 2008 to reflect the year it was given away.

As these sets are not available for sale through regular retail channels, they command significant sums on the aftermarket – especially if they’re linked to popular themes, like 4002019 Christmas X-wing, which celebrated the 20th anniversary of LEGO Star Wars. That set is currently available on BrickLink for an average of £695 new or £501 used.

It means the image above features not only one of the rarest selections of LEGO sets around, but probably one of the most expensive, too. If you want to get your hands on any of these models, your best bet now is the aftermarket. Failing that, you can ensure you receive future gifts by getting a job with the LEGO Group in time for next Christmas. Talk about the long con…

Here’s a complete rundown of every LEGO employee gift, from 2008 to 2022.

Year	LEGO employee gift
2008	2008 Heart
2009	2009 Heart
2010	2010 Happy Holidays – The Christmas Game
2011	2011 LEGO Duck
2012	4000007 Ole Kirk’s House
2013	4000013 A LEGO Christmas Tale
2014	4002014 LEGO HUB Birds
2015	4002015 Borkum Riffgrund 1
2016	4002016 50 Years on Track
2017	4002017 Nutcracker
2018	4002018 Santa and Reindeer
2019	4002019 Christmas X-wing
2020	4002020 40 Years of hands-on learning
2021	4002021 The Temple of Celebrations
2022	4002022 10 Years of Friendship

Featured image: LEGO Careers

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