Four-year-old destroys £10,000 Lego Zootopia statue

A Lego statue of a character from the film Zootopia was shattered by a four-year-old boy just hours after going on display in Ningbo, China.

Constructors spent three days and nights building the effigy of fox Nick Wilde, the charming con artist in the film, which was named Zootropolis when it came out in the UK. The statue is said to have cost more than 100,000 yuan (£10,382) and, as the construction was only partially glued, cannot be easily reconstructed.

The boy climbed under the ropes surrounding the exhibit for a photograph, ignoring the "no touching" sign next to the statue.

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According to reports, the child's parents offered to pay for the damage but the statue's creator, known as Mr Zhao, said he would not accept any compensation as the incident was accidental.

"The child did not intend to break it," he said, adding that a youngster "couldn't really comprehend the cost of such an accident".

Zhao posted before and after photos of Nick online, where it became a hotly discussed story. Following the incident, the hashtag #ManSpends3DaysAndNightsBuildingBlocks has appeared more than 13,000 times on Chinese social media.

A similar incident in China hit the headlines last month, when CCTV caught two young boys grabbing the fragile angel wings of an exhibit in the Shanghai Museum of Glass in China.

Two adults accompanying them were seen filming the boys on their phones before strolling away after the wings were smashed, reports the BBC.

Artist Shelly Xue had spent 27 months building the work as a dedication to her newborn daughter. She decided not to fix the damaged piece and instead renamed it Broken.