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Lego to Stop Producing Mindstorms
nick58b writes "Lego, in response to the worst financial loss in its history, has announced they will stop making the electronics and movie tie-in products. This would include Mindstorms, one of the greatest educational toys ever produced." It saddens me greatly to see the toy that was such a mainstay of my childhood to be in such dire financial straits. If I were a more qualified sociologist, I'd think it may have inspired by the way that our children play today versus how they played twenty years ago.
they charge twice as much for the same stuff you can get from other brands. Of course, the high value of the Euro isn't helping. Those are the reasons why the company is having financial problems.
Not low sales. Low profit margins. They're cutting the electronic, and licensed sets primarly. Which are the more expensive ones to make, electronic ones due to the cost of componates, and licensed sets for the costs of licensing.
One could only wish that they would license out the mindstorm excluseive items to be built and sold by someone else.
If you want just plain bricks, they sell them. And those sets aren't that expensive.
From wikipedia:
The company's name was coined by Christiansen in 1934, from the Danish phrase "leg godt", meaning "play well". It is a myth that the word also means "I put together" or "I assemble" in Latin. "Lego" is in fact a Latin word, but it means "I read".
Tellingly, the Make and Create sets are apparently a bright spot for the company; reportedly they're among the few things they do really well, which seems to indicate their customers do indeed want general, nonspecialized sets that encourage imaginative, free-form building and unguided play as much as possible (though I do know one of the Harry Potter sets was apparently their biggest seller last year, but I guess that's an aberration). If nothing else, those sets also have some of the better price/piece ratios among all their current offerings...
But LEGO Dacta, the educational division of LEGO will still sell Mindstorms stuff. Pitsco is the distributor of LEGO Dacta in the USA, and will sell to anyone anywhere within an area that isn't already serviced by another regional LEGO Dacta supplier.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Very sad, to lose Mindstorms, although I never tried it myself. However, one maker of similar toys is Fischertechnik. They come from Germany, and they don't have much distribution here, but I had a set as a kid, and it's the absolute best quality I've seen for any mechanical tinkering. Imagine the best of Legos and Erector sets combined.
I've never tried their robotics kits, but it may be just what you're looking for. Eight digital inputs, two analog inputs, and four motor outputs. Also the quality of the gears, motors and structural pieces blows Legos away. Price is expensive, but not outrageously so. In the same ballpark as Mindstorms.
If this was a chinese company they'd sell 5lb buckets of assorted pieces for $5.
And each brick would have a lifetime of less than one year, developing cracks and warp. Of the 5 lb, at least 4 lb would be out-of-spec, either fit too loosely or too tight, and they would have sharp, annoying warts where they were carelessly ripped from the molding sprue. The color would vary extremely from batch to batch, be rather dull, and fade rapidly when exposed to the sun.
The problem with LEGO bricks is not that they are overpriced, but that they are overengineered. They are just too good. And quality is just not generally appreciated these days, especially when we're talking toys.
As a child, I had quite a few Matchbox, Corgi and Dinky cars, very accurate models, well made, often in England. Sure, you can still get those brands today, if you want to pay collector prices. The toy stores, at least here, abound with lousy chinese produced stuff, that breaks when you look too hard at it.
Mind you, many of my toys I had inherited from my older brothers. And many of my toys are still in such a good shape, that my son now continues to play with them. That's good for the customer, but it's just not good for sales: either kids inherit a toy (= no sale) or parents don't care about long life, and therefore buy cheaper toys.
I build plastic models (aircraft, military vehicles etc), and I can tell you that precisely molded plastic parts, even when they come in just one color and still attached to the sprue, as plastic model kits do, are *quite* expensive. *Even* when produced in China.
-Lasse