Death, it’s a pretty heavy topic and one that children tend to have a lot of questions about. The conversations are never easy, which is why Bestattungsmuseum, the Funeral Museum in Vienna’s central cemetery sells custom made LEGO sets to help kids understand the funeral process and cope.
The sets are not official LEGO products, though they do use LEGO components and were developed with the help of an Austrian company who works with the museum to come up with the designs and then develops the toy’s packaging and manual.
The museum began production of the sets in 2016 with the release of the Leichentram, a historic funeral tram that was used during World War I and World War II to transport the bodies of the dead to the Vienna Central Cemetery. The museum followed up the release with a Fourgon, a truck used by the cemetery to pick up the bodies of the deceased and a historic hearse.
In 2018, the museum expanded its collection to include a cremation oven, cemetery with an excavator, a mourning family with male and female dead body and skeleton, and a historical horse-drawn buggy.
To ensure the LEGO sets are effective in helping children and families work through the funeral and grieving process, museum spokesperson Dr. Florian Keusch shared in a Bored Panda interview that the museum has worked with the Viennese Association of Psychotherapists to ensure the sets would be helpful in explaining the process in a therapeutic way.
The full collection can be seen and purchased on the Bestattungsmuseum website, but unfortunately, for those of us outside of Europe, the museum only ships the custom sets to Austria, Germany and EU / Zone 1 countries. So if you want to get your hands on any of these sets you’ll need to find a friend in Europe who will ship them to you or take a trip to Austria.
