Oct 15, 2020

The funeral home convention season is upon us and for many, it’s been hard to LEGO of what our expectations had been at the start of this year. With the pandemic forcing our profession to move to a virtual platform, ASD has not had an opportunity to spend time with our clients in person or to watch funeral directors’ faces light up when they see our funeral-themed Lego sets. We’re definitely dealing with a little separation anxiety!

As the months have passed by, our supply of these popular and beloved Lego sets has increased and we didn’t know what to make of it. We have not had an opportunity to raffle them off to funeral directors. UNTIL NOW! This month, ASD will be giving away more of our exclusive funeral-themed Lego sets than ever before! We’re giving you multiple ways to win one for your desk. Whether you’ve been hoping to snag our Lego Cemetery, Funeral Service, Hearse or Embalming Room, we have plenty of sets to LEGO.

1. Visit our Virtual Booth at the NFDA Convention

For the past 8 years, ASD has raffled off our funeral-themed Lego Set at the NFDA Convention and we’re not about to break that tradition this year. Normally, funeral directors are lined up for blocks to see our sets and enter our raffle drawing at this annual event. But just because we can’t gather together in person this year doesn’t mean we’re going to deny funeral professionals their chance to win their choice of one of our popular funeral-themed Lego sets. We will be holding raffle drawings every day of the convention so be sure to register for NFDA 2020 and stop by our virtual booth! We can’t wait to make a lot of connections!

2. Enter ASD’s Fall Photo Contest

For the 2nd year in a row, ASD is giving our social media followers the chance to win our popular Lego Embalming Room set by entering our Fall Photo Contest. To enter, share a photo on social media that shows how you and your staff decorate for Halloween and celebrate the Fall season using the hashtag #ASDFallPhotoContest (you can also enter by leaving your photo as a comment on this post). One lucky winner will receive our Lego Embalming Room set. The contest will close at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, October 31st and the winner will be announced shortly after. Good luck everyone!

Last year’s contest winner:

3. Take ASD’s Client Testimonial Challenge

Can’t attend the virtual NFDA Convention or decorate for Halloween this year, but still hoping to snag one of our Lego Sets? Take the ASD Client Testimonial Challenge! To participate, share a video to our Facebook page explaining why your funeral home chose ASD to be its answering service. As a thank you for sharing your video testimonial, ASD will send you one of our funeral-themed Lego sets while supplies last. Be sure review the official rules and to upload your video before 11:59 EST on Thursday, November 5^th.

The History Behind ASD’s Funeral-Themed Lego Sets

As you might expect, there aren’t a lot of novelty gifts out there for funeral directors. You can find just about any type of occupational-themed item for medical professionals, teachers, lawyers, etc. However, funeral directors must look far and wide to find their work represented in this way. In 2013, ASD stumbled upon an eBay page for a gentleman that had created a Cemetery Lego Set. We shared the image on our social media and were completely astonished by the huge number of funeral professionals that expressed interest in owning the set. We found the seller on eBay’s contact information to find out if he could make a cemetery set for us according to our custom specifications. Thus began our wonderful relationship with “Dan the Lego Man” (as we jokingly refer to him internally).

Dan worked with us to create a brand-designed cemetery set that included a green base plate, white wrap-around fence and a headstone that featured ASD’s logo. A year or so later, we worked with Dan to customize a Funeral Service Lego Set which featured a casket, guest book, organ, tribute video, memorial blanket with easel, and so many other amazing little details like a tissue box and a “Last Will and Testament” piece.

Then, in 2016, Dan created a Hearse Lego Set that included a casket and two funeral director mini figs (not to mention a cool ASD logo license plate!) Last year, Dan truly outdid himself with an incredible Embalming Room Lego Set. The set is the most detailed one yet and has created the biggest reactions from funeral professionals on social media.

Just about every week, a funeral director will contact us and ask if they can purchase a funeral-themed Lego Sets. However, the sets are not available through Lego. Dan creates them by finding and ordering different pieces from many different Lego websites. He customizes all of the sets with decal stickers as well, making our sets truly unique and special. The downside to this is that because Dan is just one person, we can only get a limited number, so while we can’t sell our sets, we give away every set we can through convention raffles and contests on social media.

Since 2013, we’ve given away about 200 of our sets to morticians across the country. It’s been amazing to see how much joy it has brought to funeral directors who are thrilled to finally see a novelty item devoted to their profession.

This month, ASD plans to give away more Lego sets in one month than we ever have before as we find ourselves with a huge supply of our sets for the first time ever. Due to the pandemic, ASD has not been able to give away our Lego sets at state and national funeral conventions. We have also been blocked from holding any social media contests due to our entire team working remotely from home, unable to package and ship out our Lego sets. It definitely feels like there’s been a piece missing from our year! Now that we’re starting to come back to the office on a limited basis, we can finally get back to showing funeral directors some Lego love.

We hope you’ll take part in our month-long block party and try to win one of our funeral-themed Lego sets! Best of luck to everyone!

BONUS: How many LEGO puns can you spot in the blog post? If you can find them all, we’ll send you a mini Lego cemetery set (pictured above) while supplies last. Email your answers to jess@myASD.com.