Lego fans, brace yourselves for some heartbreaking news.

A giant fox figurine of Nick, from the movie Zootopia, that was on display at the Lego expo in Ningbo, China, was completely destroyed by the hands of a young boy.

To make matters worse, the intricate model of Nick was knocked over within an hour of the expo’s opening in the Chinese city on Sunday (May 30).

The artist who constructed the figurine, only known as Zhao, had reportedly spent three days and nights to finish his masterpiece.

CCTV News reported that the Lego figurine was worth more than 100,000 yuan (S$20,920).

Zhao had taken to Chinese social media site Weibo to post pictures of himself hard at work when he was still creating his figurine.

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

Sina Weibo

Sadly, he had also included photos of how his human-sized figurine looked like after it was messed with – and it was not a pretty sight.

The artist, however, refused to accept any form of compensation from the young boy’s parents as he had insisted that the child did not mean to destroy his displayed work.

This is not the first time whereby an incident like this happened in China. Just last week, two kids made headlines for destroying a glass sculpture at the Shanghai Museum of Glass.

Not only were they caught on camera, the children’s adult minders were also seen to have not intervened even when the kids stepped beyond the roped-off boundary that was meant to protect the glass artwork.

The adults were spotted filming the children as they wrecked the fragile display, which was a pair of glass wings entitled ‘Angel Is Waiting’ by artist Shelly Xue.

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

YouTube screengrabs

Xue had reportedly handled the matter very coolly and chose to rename her artpiece to ‘Broken’.

No word on whether Zhao will be giving his destroyed Lego figurine a new name, though.

ssandrea@sph.com.sg