Has Lego Sold Out? 425
Hugh Pickens writes "Matt Richtel and Jesse McKinley write in the NY Times that for generations of American children, Legos were the ultimate do-it-yourself plaything. Little plastic bricks, with scant instructions, just add imagination. But today's construction sets are often tied to billion-dollar franchises like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and invite users to follow detailed directions, not construct their own creations from whole brick. It's less open-ended, some parents and researchers say, and more like paint-by-numbers. 'When I was a kid, you got a big box of bricks and that was it,' says Tracy Bagatelle-Black. 'What stinks about Lego sets now is that they're not imaginative at all.' Lego loyalists are quick to defend the company. Josh Wedin, the managing editor of the Brothers Brick, a Lego blog, called complaints that they are less creative 'simply ridiculous,' adding that Legos always included some instructions, though he says he misses the alternative designs that used to be on the back of the box. But Clifford Nass, a sociology professor at Stanford University who studies how people relate to the physical world versus the virtual world, says some essential qualities were lost when Lego became more like other toys. 'The genius of Lego was, you had to do the work.' Learning about frustration, Nass says, 'is a hugely important thing.'" (And watch soon for a review of The Unofficial Lego Builder's Guide, a book intended to help Lego users escape the tyranny of block-by-number instructions.)
It's just training for future geekery (Score:4, Interesting)
The first step is to completely ignore the manual, and this is what they're teaching children. This is a skill I wasn't able to master until I was in college, but today's kids will have it done by high school.
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:5, Funny)
The first step is to completely ignore the manual, and this is what they're teaching children. This is a skill I wasn't able to master until I was in college, but today's kids will have it done by high school.
Today's kids are doing creative block-building online, and paint by numbers in Legos. What a strange, twisted world.
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:4, Insightful)
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http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=1lb+lego&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313&_nkw=1+lb+lego&_sacat=0 [ebay.com]
Going rate seems to be some ~$10 for common bricks.
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At least for me, it was never the 'common bricks' that made LEGOs awesome. Yes, they were necessary, but they weren't why you wanted a set, and weren't the "cool part" which allowed you to make certain kinds of vehicles, buildings, etc.
For instance, the 'space wheels'. Surely I wasn't the only person who fought with my siblings over the 'better' pieces?
(Those common bricks aren't all that common anymore, anyway.)
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:5, Informative)
Now? Lego has always been extremely expensive.
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Legos were primarily meant for children. When Mom and Dad bought legos for these guys, they didn't wonder, or ask, how expensive the toys were. It was just, "Thanks Mom!" and dump the bricks to start building.
Even those guys who found out what Mom paid for those bricks ten, twenty, or even forty years ago, had little understanding of the value of a dollar. Three bucks? No big deal - Dad gets a hundred and twenty dollars EVERY WEEK. Add inflation, today toy stores are selling sets for fifteen dollars an
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You speak like that hundred and twenty goes as far as it did. It doesn't.
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:4, Insightful)
Times may have changed since I used to play with Lego, but let me tell you what it was like. I didn't get an allowance until I was a teenager and even then it was only 25 cents a week. Mowing a lawn in those days was worth $1. Paper routes paid better, but the point is that none of this was available to an eight-year-old child whose creative imagination had exceeded what he could do with a small shoebox half full of bricks. When the smallest box of Lego bricks cost three bucks, any progress on that front entailed a lot of saving and self-denial in other areas.
My friends and I used to pool our collections, of course. Our ambitions weren't entirely frustrated. And we would often get them as gifts, which is how we had any sort of collection to begin with. But no matter how hard we tried, we never had enough to really do anything. So did we, at age eight, understand the value of a dollar? Oh yeah, you bet we did.
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't get an allowance until I was a teenager and even then it was only 25 cents a week. Mowing a lawn in those days was worth $1..
You were lucky! We didn't have lawns when I was young.
We lived in a small shoe-box by the side of the road. Every night before bed our dad would thrash us and kill us and then dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah!"
You try telling the geeks of today that, and they won't believe you . . .
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, simple solution, a FOSS brick required. Free as in the design and many companies can compete for the supply. So FOSS LEGO promoted to replace proprietary LEGO and to make the creativity of design and assembly open to far more children from all over the globe.
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:5, Informative)
I have been told there is a reason for the expense. Legos are built to extremely tight tolerances, something up to 10 micrometers. Tight tolerances means everything is more expensive (the dies have to be swapped out more, quality control, etc).
The reason for tight tolerances is that it has to be backwards compatible with all the other lego sets out there. They just have to fit.
You could buy the alternatives, like mega bloks, but the creations often fall easily apart and don't have quite the same fit, even if the pieces are from the same tub.
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:5, Interesting)
I personally consider mega bloks to be a ripoff. The quality difference is astonishing. I'm not saying that Lego is always perfect -- I've had some sets in the 90s where some blocks were markedly loosely-fitting compared to same shape/size blocks from other batches. I haven't seen any of that recently, though, and my daughter has several of the most complex Hogwarts sets. I've also recently got a nice large Technics motorized excavator for myself, and it's quite a step up from the smaller pneumatics one I had as a kid. The design is pretty damn good.
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:5, Informative)
I remember lego space started out pretty generic, but over time the pieces got more and more specialized to the theme. Eventually you got these flying saucers [images-amazon.com] with big alien logos on the pieces that you couldn't use for much else. The only difference between now and then is you have Galactic Republic logo instead. This may be "selling out", but I don't see how it would have much of an impact on a child's creativity, as I got along just fine with the old imaginary brand sets.
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Lego, a steal at twice the price. (Score:5, Interesting)
LEGO is expensive now, ...
Ok, I have to say this is simply flat out wrong. As a serious collector of Lego for over 30 years, I can authoritatively say that the price of Lego sets has held almost constant at ~ .10 per brick. Some of the newer licensed sets break that rule and go over that figure, but Lego has also introduced the Creator lines and similar sets with lots of basic bricks where the price falls well below the .10 a brick average.
But don't believe me. Go check out the prices on Brickset [brickset.com], a site that has a massive comprehensive catalog of old Lego sets and instructions. I looked up a few random set MSRPs from the early 80s to make sure I was remembering the prices right, and it looks like I was dead on. Holding steady at ~.10 per brick over 30 years is an amazing feat, doubly so if you adjust for inflation.
So, no Lego isn't expensive now. Its higher quality and less expensive than ever before. And Unlike 99% of the toys I had as a kid, it still works just fine.
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Does Minecraft have 2x1 pieces? Duplo does.
Re:It's just training for future geekery (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know. I always built them with the instructions, just once and never again to see it as they imagined it, and then I never touched the instructions again. I'd then tear it down and do my own shit.
Really two varieties of Lego (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, the Technic/Mindstorms type still focuses a lot on creativity, with alternate directions for different models included, and lots of resources available for idea books and programming and such. If you look on the Lego education site, they seemed to almost have moved in the opposite/more creative direction, with resources for bodging together Mindstorms electronic components with a metal frame & RC servo-based robotics construction system (vertex? Tetrix? I forget what it was called) that another company makes.
Bottom line, if you want to emphasize creativity, go Technic early, then maybe branch off to mindstorms.
Re:Really two varieties of Lego (Score:5, Interesting)
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I played with Lego as a kid, some 50 years ago and my daughters, adults now, played with them as a kid. As you found, those 'unimaginative' kits get added into the mix to create things that neither the plain brick variety or kit pieces alone could make. When someone is sick, the blocks still come out. When the grandkids come ( someday ), they will have an ungodly number of bricks.
BTW, I am not a Lego purist. I have added Duplo ( Lego too, I know ) and Mega-blocks. The Mega-blocks are cheaper, but they
Re:Really two varieties of Lego (Score:5, Funny)
Read the directions? Huh? You're kidding, right?
I'm a guy. I never need directions, behind the wheel, or playing with Legos. It would be unmanly to start now!
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I second that. I am writing this in the attic, where my tech stuff is surrounded by a hard to traverese landscape of brightly coloured bricks. Even the most specific ones get repurposed: the telephone as a showerd head, the life bouy as a toilet seat.
And the kids still love the standard bricks. Last time I went to Cologne, where
Waste of space. (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't the NYT have anything more important to publish than people bitching about legos? If you just want a bag of bricks, you can still get them. In fact, you can order them in bulk now, which wasn't offered when I was a kid.
Re:Waste of space. (Score:4, Insightful)
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+1 this. Lego needed to move in this direction. Megablocks gained market share by sleeping with large franchises. In the face of rapidly shrinking market share, Lego had little other choice than doing the same.
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No one else has come up with anything half as good as their Technics stuff though. That was always their strong point for me. Complex machines with hundreds of parts, but easy and quick to reconfigure.
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Dude, everyone at the NYT went home for Christmas. All they have left in the building is two interns and a janitor.
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And the janitor wrote the piece?
I've felt like this for years, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, I agree so much. I had my fair share of legos when I was a child and the building blocks were nice and generic. Nowadays, all the pieces are molded to shape whatever you're supposed to make much better, resulting in a nicer looking whatever-it-is-you-were-making, but taking it apart, I wonder if there's much of a point in trying to make something else out of it, even beside the alternatives listed on the back of the box.
I'm glad I kept most of my legos for when my son's old enough for them. Other than that it looks like I'm stuck remembering the old days fondly.
Re:I've felt like this for years, too (Score:5, Insightful)
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resulting in a nicer looking whatever-it-is-you-were-making
It could be far better looking is it wasn't made of Lego.
And it wouldn't permanently have bits falling off it for kids to lose and parents to step on.
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Blasphemy!
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They've had the molded pieces for at least 20 years now. They used to be more generic things, like pirate ships and such, but they were still molded pieces designed to make a particular object that came with instructions on how to make that object.
You can still buy just regular legos.
Re:I've felt like this for years, too (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, that's probably just selective memory...
From a Q&A with LEGO [gizmodo.com]:
Q: I would like to know why they are using so many specialized pieces in their sets now instead of using more "basic" bricks that allow for greater building outside the set the pieces came in. Why have Lego sets for the latest few generations been dummied down?
A: This is an impression that many people have but, in fact, the piece count has been reduced drastically and there's a move back to roots in Lego, not only for creativity but to save money. Lego went from 12,000 different pieces to 6,800 in the last few years-a number that includes the color variations.
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In fact your post could quite well support his point, and perhaps everybody bitching about it was the reason why lego went to fewer pieces.
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Ah, I agree so much. I had my fair share of legos when I was a child and the building blocks were nice and generic. Nowadays, all the pieces are molded to shape whatever you're supposed to make much better, resulting in a nicer looking whatever-it-is-you-were-making, but taking it apart, I wonder if there's much of a point in trying to make something else out of it, even beside the alternatives listed on the back of the box.
I'm glad I kept most of my legos for when my son's old enough for them. Other than that it looks like I'm stuck remembering the old days fondly.
I think they have always sold them in theme sets. I think you didn't realise that they were in theme sets when you were young. I did not know that the pieces of paper that came with Lego were building instructions. I don't know if that was the case for you.
Re:I've felt like this for years, too (Score:5, Informative)
>> I'm glad I kept most of my legos for when my son's old enough for them.
> I take it you threw the grammar book out?
As "son's" can be a contraction for "son is", I fail to see the problem.
It's not a complete loss (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens in my house: my son gets a Lego set. He excitedly spends hours building them (or one hour, if it's a small one). then he plays with it a little. A few days later I find it in pieces and deconstructed all over the playroom. A few days later, something else comes out as he institutes his own creations and modifications.
It's not a matter of lacking the manual, as we have kept every manual for every set he ever received. He knows where those manuals are, too.
To me, it seems like Lego has stuck a good balance.
And since when has Lego not done sets? (Score:2)
I remember that my parents basically never got me just raw Legos. It was always a set that you could build a specific thing with, complete with directions. Sometimes I would, most of the time I'd just pour the pieces in to my ever-increasing pile and build whatever I pleased.
They weren't co-branded but they were still sets. And why not? It gives people a starting point, and can help for children that aren't as creative. If you take someone who has difficulty with creative tasks, and set them adrift with not
Who uses instructions? (Score:2)
Completely agree. First off, one is fully entitled to throw their instructions away. One of the things I like about the playsets is that you get a diversity of interesting pieces to use. So you build it their way the first time, then it just becomes an interesting bag of parts.
Not to mention which, they do still sell bulk bricks, and bulk specialty pieces. So if that's what you want for your kids, buy it. Of course, if the same kids who lack the creativity to make their own designs have parents who la
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... I built them a 36" square recessed table for them - just for legos - so they can build things and not have to worry about cleaning up, or about the legos falling on the floor. I love coming home from work and seeing how their designs have evolved.
Nice. We need more good parents fostering creativity.
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I wish slashdot had an api that I could access all postings. Slashdot is decomposing right now. I think you would be able to exactly pinpoint the death blow by analyzing posting histories and seeing where the crossover point from informative-individuals-posting-information to clueless-individuals-posting-nonsense happens. We're currently in the middle of a surge of the emergence of long-time clueless lurkers starting to post n
Not the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
They have had detailed instructions that you could follow for almost as long as Lego has existed.
The problem with today Lego I that they made they completely out of proprietary big pieces that do not really fit together any other way.
You used to be able to buy some castle set, with step by step instructions, but it was made with the exact same pieces as every other set out there. So at the end of the day you could take it apart and build that castle into a space ship. Now Lego is basically just action figures and video games.
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The actually acknowledged that they had that problem a few years ago, and since they have been moving back towards generic pieces instead of these specific pieces. It might still be worse than back in the day, but things are certainly improving.
Last time I went to the Lego Store... (Score:5, Informative)
Mostly, yes (Score:3)
When shopping for presents for kids it seems all of them have tie-ins to other products: Barbie, some movie, cartoon characters, etc.
Simple toys that exist on their own seem a rarity now (Spirograph, Rubik's Cube, Mechano (sp?), etc.) that I frankly hate shopping for something for kids.
Even Crayola products seem to be tied to Dora or whatever. Or come with coloured markers that seem to expire instantly, unlike crayons.
I don't remember it being so bad back in the dark ages when I was a kid. Was it Star Wars that brought us this trend? McDonald's Happy Meals? Where did it start?
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This article is the opposite from a few years ago (Score:2)
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Response to customers (Score:2)
Through various customer surveys, Lego found that most kids are just building what's in the main instructions anyway. It's a sad state of affairs, but not necessarily stemming from Lego themselves.
Here we go again (Score:2)
Lego have always included instructions with their sets. What has changed is the number of specialized pieces in a set. Some of these are single-purpose, replacing a bunch of bricks with a single large moulding, so some sets end up being less versatile.
There still are plenty of sets that consist mostly of standard bricks. What you end up with after buying a bunch of sets, is a pile of bricks and a pile of specialized pieces that can still be combined to your heart's content.
Old news (Score:2)
It's been like this for a very long time. I remember playing with Lego when I was a kid- I had a box set with a big picture of a spaceship on the front. There were instructions for how to make the spaceship in the picture, as well as pictures of about 5 other spaceship designs with no instructions. You could make the one with the instructions, of you could try to make one of the non-instruction pictures, or you could go nuts and use the spaceshipy style blocks to make any futuristic structure you like.
Same
Lego was not the ultimate do-it-yourself plaything (Score:5, Informative)
That title must go to Meccano [wikipedia.org]. With this you could build real things that worked and would not fall into bits at the first knock. With strips of metal held together with nuts and bolts you could create great things. I loved it.
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Moreover, Meccano taught important lessons that Lego could not: understanding engineering tolerances. Lego bricks just snap together, and unless you are building something pretty infeasible that's generally the end of it. Meccano was all about lining up plates and brackets by eye (the holes were bigger than the screws), making sure things weren't too loose or too tight, ensuring that load-bearing parts were properly cross-braced, and so on.
On the other hand, Meccano was pretty perishable. It didn't take lon
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That title must go to Meccano [wikipedia.org].
Meccano is still available. Toys-R-Us carries it. I have a Meccano set I use for prototyping linkages. It's not unusual for first-round engineering prototypes to have some Meccano parts.
Never had a box of bricks (Score:2)
Back when I was a kid, some 25 years ago I never had an "open-ended" box of bricks, it was always sets of some fire station, police stuff, space ships, pirates or whatever with detailed instructions and all that. No different then what you have today. Some sets came with instructions to build different things from the same set, but that's about it as far as open-ended is concerned. Of course all those sets ended up being disassembled after they got boring and turned into something else, ultimately ending up
In defence of Lego... (Score:5, Funny)
But today's construction sets ...invite users to follow detailed directions, not construct their own creations from whole brick...
Absolutely sensible approach. Today's child is growing up in today's environment, and will become a designer tomorrow. Today, if you create a design for which some idiot possesses a design patent, the latter will sue you for billions of dollars. If you have a brick with rounded corners, is glossy or black in colour, even God cannot save you from litigious thugs.The child needs to learn this lesson very early, and learn to 'behave' and 'obey' and 'conform' rather than be creative.
So Lego has researched and come up with designs which are not encumbered by prior art or patents; and given detailed instructions for kids to follow. 10 years from now, a design company would have about a 100 lawyers for every 5 designers. These lawyers would tell the designers exactly what to design, what not to design, and how not to be too successful and gain the wrath of patent holding Big Businesses.
The new MAKER generation is here (Score:3)
Because of this, we have the "maker generation" today. These are kids of any age that build stuff out of anything they have laying around. What can be more creative than that? Lego is no different, except it was made with the very idea that you could make anything you want out of these building blocks. Just take a look at Lego Mindstorm to get an idea about what I'm talking about here. (And of course, google make magazine, and makers everywhere).
American kids are just as curious and impressive to me as they where back in the days where we used electronics kits to build stuff with. Many of the kids today make LEVELS for video games and that is just as creative or advanced as what we did back in our days. (I'm in my mid forties and grew up with Lego and Electronics).
Idiotic article (Score:2)
Legos have had detailed instructions on building specific items in every set I've ever bought since the mid 80s. There's nothing inherently different about the licensed sets vs. the generic sets. They both give you exactly the pieces needed to build the thing on the front of the box, and license to do whatever you want with the pieces otherwise.
I Blew a Friend's Kid's Mind... (Score:2)
On a slightly differen
Comment removed (Score:3)
Never had LEGO (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, the thing about the Erector Set was that it not only exercised your imagination, as does LEGO, but it also exercised your manual dexterity, which LEGO does not. When you have to use little nuts and bolts to put things together you get good at manipulating small parts, which is excellent for improving hand-eye coordination, improving delicacy of touch and learning patience.
If you make things too easy for kids how are they to learn?
Yes they did, yet not really (Score:2)
IMHO, the "sell out" to franchises were needed to attract the attention of the kids. And it is a great idea, because at first the kids do have to follow the instructions, sorta. But after that, they hopefully start experimenting, building bigger, and more complex structures and games.
Lego were in trouble, the franchises did indeed help save the company.
Their patents expired (Score:2)
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I'm not so sure about that. I recall my brother and I getting a bunch of really cool looking Mega Block sets one year for Christmas. There were colors and shapes we had never seen before, and neat themes like dinosaurs and moon bases. In theory it was all compatible with the absolutely huge amount of Lego blocks that we had in our combined collection. What we quickly found out however was that Mega Blocks were cheaply made. They barely locked together with each other tightly enough to build with, let alone
My experience as a father (Score:2)
My 15 year old stopped with the legos about 3 years ago (I will always remember the day he had $20 of birthday money to spend and ultimately chose a CD instead)
At least in our house, after one of the fancy kits got built once, the instructions were promptly lost or eaten by the dog, and all the legos ended up in 1 giant bin. Then the real fun started (the creative part)
No, consumers have sold out (Score:2)
Lego would be bankrupt today if they were still just focused on generic sets. Today's kids need to have their imaginations spoon fed.
This article makes even my mod points redundant. (Score:2)
This is the most ridiculous complaint I've ever heard. Greater variety in LEGO bricks? STOP IT NOW! EVERYTHING MUST BE RED 2X4!
I grew up with LEGO and I still regularly purchase, build and play in my late 20s. The new pieces are AWESOME. So are the new colours. Pick a brick and LDD make prototyping, buying and building your own creations a snap (though you have to manually generate a parts list these days). If that ain't enough to keep LEGO fun and interesting, trade in your kid.
Didn't RTFA because WTF.
A cheaper Mindstorm (Score:2)
As others have said, Lego's had kits for decades. I was jealous of my cousin's off-road buggy kit from the mid 70s.
What I would like are less expensive computer-programmable and remote-activated pieces so that I can make those same buggies from the 70s but be able to control them via remote (or even via my phone with wifi!). Maybe to do a demolition derby sort of setup with my kids.
Lego Friends (the girl Legos) (Score:2)
My daughter (4) loves them. And interestingly, they are a lot more like the Legos I remember from my childhood (early 80s) than the kits I see now. Very few specialized pieces, much more of the generic block that you then turn into something interesting. The instructions that are included are very similar to how I remember, and some of the larger kits also feature the alternate builds that I again remember.
The topic poster has a point though. Wander through the Lego section and ooh-aah over the cool kits, b
Really? (Score:3)
I'm in my 40's and all the kits had instructions when I was a kid. There were odd kids that just built what was on the cover and then never took it apart. That singular lack of imagination had nothing to do with the Legos themselves - most of us dumped all our kits into a big bucket and then just created our own stuff...
However you could accuse them of selling out with all the co-branding. When I was a kid they were space sets and medieval sets, not Star Wars or LOTR sets. All the movie tie-in crap is annoying but a sign of the times I guess...
One way in which they can fail is, as other folks have mentioned, specialized parts. There's a fine line between making something new and different and cool, and making parts so specialized that it becomes hard to build other things out of them. But you know, I'm sure the purists were up in arms when my space kits in the 70's and 80's had wing-shaped parts and other such monstrosities. And maybe some proto-nerd of the era went on his local BBS and whined about how they were destroying Legos, that they weren't allowed to be anything other than cubes...
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The thing is they have the Star Wars and lord of the rings sets. But they have a castle set that is like it always was. I was at the Lego store and they have 2 lines of space sets that aren't tied to any movies or franchises.
Stepping on things in the dark of night (Score:4, Funny)
Use the instructions once (Score:3)
I always put the set together the way the instructions say once. It's a good way to see what techniques they use for certain things (building trees with some of the recent sets, for example). After a while it gets recycled back into the bins of Lego to be reused. I'll often buy a set specifically because it has new pieces or minifigs I want. When I was a kid, I'd often start with one of the spaceship or boat sets and just keep adding pieces. Ended up turning a tugboat into a 4' long freighter once. :)
OMG - The Tyranny.. (Score:3)
The Tyranny of "block-by-number" kits... That Lego fans choose to buy more often than not because they want to build the deathstar, Millenium Falcon, whatever as shown on the box.
If they wanted the "big box of blocks" experience they can still buy them, and now there are Lego stores that sell bulk Legos - something unheard of when I was a kid (early 70's/late 60's).
Some people want the end-product (the item on the cover of the box), some want the process (the frustration the one researcher noted), and some want to raw material to build what is in their imagination (the big box of blocks) - none is the only "true" reason for Lego.
Lego Today (Score:3)
Yes, Lego has completely sold out. Actually, that's not true. That implies that that there was a time that they hadn't sold out. It's a for-profit company. They are in it to make money. Nothing wrong with that, but that is what they are, first and foremost.
They will do what they need to do to survive. In their opinion, they cannot sustain their business by using the value proposition of 40 years ago. As much as I admired that value proposition, I personally agree with them. They could not survive turning out the basic building blocks, or even more advanced building kits, or even robotics kits. They wouldn't have the market share, or the advertising appeal, or the patent protection. They are fighting for their existence every day. They've got constant competition for kids' time and for M&D's dollars from endless and ever-increasing sources, and competitors willing to race them to the bottom every step of the way.
There was a time that Lego said, "we'll never make Lego guns". That is long gone. There are Lego guns, ray guns, knives, swords, scimitars. Heck, space ships with laser cannon. They've made endless marketing deals with entertainment conglomerates in order to stay relevant. They have not yet found their bottom. They have not yet found where they will not go to stay in business.
To me, as much as I still love the company, and the product, they've lost their soul, and they are walking dead guys, however successful they are currently. The color palette is out of control. The types of pieces have grown to be absurd. Although there is still play value, it becomes harder and harder for any pile of n Legos to have general playability. If you have a Luke Skywalker, and a wookie, then that is your story palette. It becomes that much more challenging to make a house. If you have the batmobile, it becomes difficult to make a regular car.
One could hope they'll split the company, and spin off a company focused only on the basics for ages 0 through 10, without marketing tie-ins, and another company focused just on robotics, and let the main company battle it out in pop culture land. But it will never happen.
Perhaps the 3D printer world will take over the basics niche. I could see a not-for-profit doing very well making it easy for people to print their own sets for their 1 year olds or 5 year olds.
Just my 2 bricks.
This is funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Now we swap back to our world where Lego is constantly innovating to make kits that work with 95% of existing Lego pieces, tie ins with current pop culture, even Lego video games that are actually good and we need to complain how Lego isn't the same as it was 20 years ago. Go figure.
The 1980s called, they want their news back. (Score:5, Informative)
What a load of rubbish, Lego sets have included detailed instructions to make the specific thing on the box for decades! The main difference now is that sets are tied to specific films like Starwars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter and so on rather than just generic themes like space, pirates, castles etc.
How is this pirate set from 1989 [brickset.com] any worse than this Pirates of the Caribbean set from 2011 [brickset.com]?
It may be a movie tie-in but you've still got to build the thing yourself and you can take it apart and put it together again any way you like.
Re: (Score:3)
I was a kid when that first pirate set came out, and to me, that was a step down for lego. The pirate ships series had the hull in massive brown sections that only had a few studs for connections, and weren't really modular and reusable. The pirate ships were pretty much the only models that, once made, weren't then pulled apart an reused, because the hulls couldn't really be reused for anything but ships.
So no, I wouldn't say there's much difference between the two.
Qualified to comment ... (Score:3)
As a 30 year old guy who has gone back into his old childhood Lego sets recently, as well as recently bought himself some new ones I uh, feel sadly qualified to comment on this story. My recent purchases were one LOTR set, and a Lego City set. In response to the lack of "creativity" in these sets, it's not the sets that have gotten less creative. It's the engineering in the brick placement amongst everything that has gotten better.
If you compare the brick selection and design of say, a 2012 LOTR set vs my early 90's Pirate sets you can easily see this. The 2012 sets use a number of small, angular pieces from what I've noted, that fit together in creative ways that the early 90's sets could only dream of. The pieces in question in the 2012 sets did indeed exist in the early 90's set, so it's not a case of simply making "less flexible" pieces.
You can tell that the designers of these sets have gotten really, really good at their jobs, in no doubt likely as a result of the difference in computing power between the early 90's and now. To suggest that the sets have gotten less "creative" is asinine. Have we gained more themed and licensed sets? Absolutely. However, the pieces they are equipping these sets with are simply fitting together better and looking more streamlined. You've still got your 4x2 bricks, your 3x3 plates, there's just less usage of them as the primary shape of a vehicle/building, and they are enhanced by the smaller 1x2 45 angle bricks say that really help bring out the details in the design.
In the end, they're still freaking Lego you can put together any way you want. It's simply the brick selection has changed for the better.
LEGO sold out a long, long time ago (Score:3)
I cannot really pinpoint the moment, but somewhere in the last 30 years (i.e. when I started playing with it 'til now) they did.
I was into LEGO. Big time. It was pretty much all I played with between the age of about 6 and 14. And I built everything with it. Every cartoon that had its own toy line? Forget buying those, I build them. I built pretty much everything with them, including a Battlestar (of course with two working Viper launchers). Repairing the launchers when the rubber bands ripped was a hassle and a half, but it WORKED!
Fast forward to today. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but I miss the "generic" parts. They don't exist anymore. There are at best a few filler parts between the "special" ones that work out for that piece that they're supposed to be built to, and for that ONLY. You cannot simply take them and build something of your own imagination with it, it just doesn't work. They don't even fit in other ways than the "intended" one.
And, bluntly, LEGO was never about how anything was intended to be. It was about how I WANT it to be!
Many 1970's sets did NOT include detailed instr. (Score:3)
Re:Buy plain bricks.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They sold kits in the old days. They even sold kits with various themes and special (non-brick) parts.
All of this nostalgia and angst is misplaced. These people are running off on a tangent based on some idealized notion of the past rather than what actaully happened.
Re:Buy plain bricks.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah I remember space theme lego back when the space shuttle was still new.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Space [wikipedia.org]
Plenty of themes back then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lego_themes [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Even the themes are a relatively new thing in my mind. When I saw 'Lego Space', I immediately thought of the kit I had as a child
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3484/3763177988_97c0d70d6a.jpg [flickr.com]
I think there's some merit in the article, to me, Lego Space was too specialised, particularly compared to the model I had that had very few if any specialised bricks.
Re:Buy plain bricks.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Tons and tons of them. Look on Lego's site for the part number.
Re:Buy plain bricks.... (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know about kits but you can definitely still buy Lego by the tub. There's a big Lego store at the Mall of America near where I live. They sell lots of licensed kits but there's lots there for freeform building. A few shelves are dedicated to tubs of plain bricks as well as some utility sets. Last Christmas we bought for my cousin a box of nothing but wheels and windscreens. They also have an entire wall they call "Pick-a-Brick" where you can fill up a cup with any assortment of bricks that you please. We're giving him a cup of those this year to provide him with some of the pieces that tend to get overlooked in the boxed sets.
Re:Buy plain bricks.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this story is a non-issue. I recently built the Millennium Falcon [lego.com] for work (yes, you read that right). It's an expensive set, but I was surprised that it only had two non-standard pieces (those comprising the cockpit). You could easily make something else with the pieces, if you so desired, or you could follow the instructions (which seemed barely more detailed than when I played with the Space Police sets) and make a cool, recognizable ship.
The only way I would think that Lego has sold out would be if a significant number of the pieces in any given set were non-standard and hard to incorporate into a custom design. Maybe that is a case and the set I built was an outlier, but it seems the option is still there to built whatever you want. In other words, Lego seems to be pretty much like it was when I was a kid, only with more brand recognition.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sod it, I'm off to play with my meccanos. Or is it meccanoes?
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He *could* care less, so he does care for them then?
Here's a quick explanation [youtube.com].
Re: (Score:3)
A neighbor dropped a small portable radio. The case was broken and ceased to work. I fixed the electronics part of it, but the case was in small pieces. I built a new case
I'm not sure where that thing wound up. :(
How about here...http://windupradio.com/trevor.htm :-)