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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.
Okay, I could not care one tad bit less if I never see another lego Harry Potter set. But the loss of Mindstorm is nearly unbearable! The things people have done with this simple but effective robotics set eclips even more ambitious sets like the ER1. This is a sad day.
SCO must be behind this somehow!
David Whatley
the movie tie ins were horrible...but it saddens me to see mindstorms go....
I've been a Lego fan most of my life too, but I have to say that I'm not surprised or terribly upset about the way this has turned out. Lego sets have become so ungodly expensive over the years (many $100+ sets having nothing to offer for their high price points other than "collector's series" or some other buzzword), it's no wonder more people aren't buying them.
Glog!
Though I've never played with them because I'm a grown up now, I've never hesitated in recommending them as fun and educational toys for friends' kids.
What really impresses me more than just the base set is the amount of hacking towards making the programming of these little toys simpler with stuff like Mindstorms VB and Python.
It's sad to see this stuff just pass away. How cool would it be to have a way to pitch in and get Lego to keep the Mindstorm factories open.
I have been pwned because my
Plus Lego is Danish for "play well"
Just a few Lego facts.
I would say that it might send a message if you buy as direct as possible from them.. but I would make sure that they are all bought up by the end of the month. Even if Lego cant keep the product.. it might inspire some other company to do so.
-- SJS smooge at smoogespace dot com
Somehow, I can understand why they are stopping the production of MindStorms. Let's face it, the basic "Robotics Invention System 2.0" set cost $200 and probably contained $250 worth of parts. I mean, a microcontroller with three inputs and outputs, 32 kB RAM, and some ROM (512 kiB IIRC) has to cost at least $100. Add that to the cost of making the plastic blocks themselves... I can understand why they are stopping. P.S. I'm gonna miss them.
With the increasing cost in producing these new expensive, logo'ed, computerized, and/or automated sets, they sold more units... but lost money because the units cost so much more to produce.
As the father of a young child, I also wonder how much the lego clones have killed the market. Out of the many "lego" sets we have been givenas gifts, the majority of them are not official "lego" legos.
Davak
The mindstorms were cool toys, for a little while. But Lego never upgraded them- realistically, they had not released a significant upgrade of any type in the now 6 years since they released the product. They could have made them either more powerful (and hence more appealing to the adults who bought tons of them early on, but got frustrated by HW limitations quickly) or they could have made them simpler (and hence more appealing to the kids who they normally try to target.) They did neither, and let the product stagnate. And that's why they have to kill it now. Shame, really- they could have been really, really great. [I used to maintain legOS, so I fall into the category of 'adults frustrated by the limitations.]
IAAL,BIANLY
have you seen their product line lately? Congratualtions to the board on finally figuring out they have lousy execs who were driving the line away from what people wanted. You can hardly buy a decent set (lego builder sets are the exclusion) that doesn't have half of its pieces as special components, non-lego coloring or exclusive stickering. The result is a bunch of pieces you can only use if you are building a particular set - counter intuitive to the whole lego concept. The whole Jack Stone thing - the guys are twice the size of the old 'mini-fig' guys. What, is Jack Stone a giant? Are the old mini-figs halflings? Are old my old mini-figs obsolete now? How is jack stone suppoed to drive the car with the tiny steering wheel - from the old set. Its most irritating because, if you are like me you already have a good sized pile of these and its like Lego moved the ball on you. It will be sad if they quit mindstorms - hopefully it will be picked up by an educational company on licence. What I really miss is the set that had all the gears and socketed I-beams. That was a great mechanical engineering kit. This will not destroy Lego - they will endure. As any 5 year old (mine included) what his favorite thing to do at school.
When I was a kid, there were very few specialized blocks. Even the railroad kit didn't have any except for the lego motor modules (I have always had a soft heart for the 70's-era motor modules) and the railroad tracks. Even the railroad track ties were standard 8x2 thin blocks.
In those days the vast majority of legos were sold in generic kits. You could even get small boxes of 50 or 100 generic blocks, up through the large 400 and 600 and 1000 block kits. All generic. They'd come with a little booklet of suggestions but the possibilities were endless.
The 70's-era house kits had doors, windows, and roof blocks all of which tied in with standard blocks. You could build a wall of doors or use an architectural door in your Moon Rover. You could use your roof blocks to make an Aztec pyramid.
Now you buy a little kit for, say, a TIE fighter and it costs $20 and there's not much you can build with it except things that look a hell of a lot like TIE fighters. The big generic kits aren't even sold any more; if they were they'd probably cost $1,000 and nobody would buy them.
Lego should go back to making the generic kits, price them reasonably, and let the kids think of stuff to build themselves again.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I think that it was time to retire the current incarnation of Mindstorms anyway. It would be nice if the next gen. robot toy featured:
wireless (802.11x or cell)
a linux based os (of course)
more sophisticated moving parts
cooler ai modules...
I definitely think that there is a market out there for such a product.
I'm sure Mindstorm Lego people must have some similar tails to tell, and await a few replies.
Letter To Iran
I'd think it may have inspired by the way that our children play today versus how they played twenty years ago.
Actually, the main point of the lego mindstorms was to change the way kids learned... to make learning and playing the same.
The prototype for the mindstorms toy was built at the MIT media lab by roboticist Fred Martin. (who teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell at a budding robotics lab). Fred really wanted to know about how to use computing to educate kids, and lego offered a sum of money to the media lab in order to foster a new type of marketable toy that had "engaging computing" potential. So he built a lego brick with a computer inside, which was the base of the toy.
Interesting enough, Fred Martin also built the handyboard, which is a great way to get into amateur robotics. As shameless self-promotion, the work I did in Fred Martin's class can be found here.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
While the MindStorms series was cool and all, Lego did themselves in by marrying themselves to the idiotic first trilogy of Star Wars. I haven't met an eight year old yet who thinks Episodes I and II are anything but crap. So now we're supposed to go and plunk down $20 for a Lego kit that can build... this stupid, doberman-headed droid thing that fought the frog people in Episode I... and nothing else. Great. And that's ALL they make now - MindStorms and THIS. If you scour the aisles at a Toys R Us, you might be lucky to find an old school castle kit or something, but for the most part, you're getting Star Wars, dammit. We paid millions for this license, and damned if we aren't ramming it up your butt until we make it back.
Pass.
"Oh, well I'm sorry if you don't appreciate my random murders!" - Crow T. Robot,
It did, however, have a patent.
And yes, LEGO's patent has expired... at least with regards to the building brick. The patents on the Technic parts are still alive and well afaik.
Megabloks, a company that makes a building brick that is essentially compatible with LEGO, opened up shop almost to the day that LEGO's patent expired on the brick and has been slowly and steadily improving the quality of their own product ever since. They aren't half bad right now.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I got my son a couple lego sets for Christmas and one of the Mega Block sets. The Mega Block set was a pain in the ass to assemble and all the pieces just kept popping apart. I think there is still an issue with quality even though the pieces look the same.
Of course one of the Lego sets was missing several pieces, so they aren't without their problems.
Alas, I also got frustrated with the hardware limitations. There's only so much one can do with three sensor/actuator channels, and I was never able to come up with a decent method of I/O expansion. An I/O expansion unit or expansion connector would have made more I/O's possible, vastly expanding the RCX's capabilities and potential market (the geeks with $ and their kids). Processor power was certainly not the limiting factor on the RCX.
That said, NQC and LegOS really rock. Many thanks to you who developed and maintained them!
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
1. Price - wow. Am I stunned when I see legos in the store now. Multiple hundreds of dollars. The most expensive kit I owned as a kid was 60 bucks for the lastest and bestest. Which leads me to...
2. The kits themselves. I got Technics as a kid and made *everything* with them. The manuals were thick, had many different things you could make with them. Now - the kits are one project. There's no imagination to them. My 60 dollar kit was a red dump truck. It had the frame of a windshield - imagination filled in the rest. Now the windshield comes with the set. Who needs to stretch their thinking? I liked it when *I* made the choice of what the pieces were for.
3. Bionicles. Ironically, that brought legos to my attention (free toy at Burger World), but when I investigated, it was lousy. Hey look, I put this part here and *nowhere* else. Isn't the reason behind legos being able to place a piece wherever you want it? Gahh.
Put all these together, and what do you have? Someone who would like to buy legos, but the kits I want aren't around. I'd love to use legos in a more industrial manner (say building a case for something) but the basic sets are few and far between.
Three things that keep me from busting out my legos:
1. Cats.
2. Cat hair. (I can just imagine it sticking out of the seams and it makes me freak :)
3. Not enough room/time to mess with them. House is too small after the holidays and time is always short. Not like the halcyon days of my youth.
LEGO! Go back to the basics! Give us the old Technic sets, the massive 'generic' kits. Fire the Bionicle guy. You are digging your own grave. The more specialized you make your toys, the more people will just buy toys that are already 'done'. And that was never the point in the first place.
BTW - No. I won't sell any of my extensive collection of Technics or my wonderful zillion piece basic set. If ever there was something to be buried with, its my legos. You can try and pry them out of my cold, dead hands, but look out for the transforming watchdog I just made. His mouth moves and he's looking at you.
Check this out: http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asp?page=pres s
See the Jan 8 post. Nothing there about Mindstorms being cancelled.
I just read something on LugNet as well that was an interview at one of the Lego shows, and one of the Lego reps said that Mindstorms 3 was in development.
Here's hoping!
I've got a mass of lego that's 20 years old hidden away in a box. It's still perfectly servicable. SOME of that set is a generation older. Why would I bug a new set for my kids, when I have them? The product is too durable, I think, for it's own good.
Rokenbok is pretty cool too. My son (and I) get very creative with it.
It's like an Erector set, combined with wireless remote control vehicles, and chutes and hoppers for moving little plastic balls around. It's hard to explain until you've seen it. Some people really take it to extremes.
It's pretty expensive, though. We have spent over $1000 on all our sets and vehicles.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Thinks ...
:)
.... Nah.
1) Snap up LEGO discontinued lines.
2) Sell on e-bay at hyper-inflated price.
3) Profit.
Seriously tho.
LEGO Mindstorms is/was a great introduction to mechatronics and it would be a
pity to see it bite the dust. All is not lost though, it's relativly easy to
build your own RCX controller thingy using PICs or a Basic Stamp etc...
LEGO has always been a useful source of parts for hombrew bot makers. Come to
think of it hasn't the Scout Mars rover got some LEGO incorporated into it?
Now if only the Beagle engineers had used
Presumably the Technics and Mindstorm stuff will still be available via
LEGOs educational division. (I hope)
siggy played guitar
I hear many people in here complaining that Lego has become too 'specialized' and they need to get back to simple blocks. This is absolutley rediculous. You can still buy simple bricks. They haven't stopped making them, they have just expanded their product line. You hear about the specialized sets more only because they bring in more cash for Lego.
Such a shame that Mindstorms are to be retired.
One thing that Lego could do is to license the LegOS spec to other interested companies. Such companies could then build Mindstrom-like hardware around their own implementation of the OS spec, with their own compilers and IDE's. This might also bring the price down if enough companies get into the act.
The actual toy built around a LegOS need not even be a brick kit like Mindstorms. Instead smaller toy companies could just use the OS to create pre-built sophisticated toys. They needn't go to the trouble of creating their own OS.
End result ==> Another revenue stream for Lego.
I remember the good old "Light & Sound" fire engine (1987). Mostly generic parts except the battery box and siren which would either play a European or American type siren.
For some reason, my mother never got me new batteries when the original set died.
I think I've seen other packages mention other countries, though, including Mexico, but from my quick, admittedly unscientific survey it definitely appears the majority of bricks come from just three countries, none of which is one I'd guess is particularly cheap to manufacture stuff in. Might the company do well to move some of its production to other countries that can make it for lower cost (without sacrificing quality, of course)? I can't believe they'd ever completely abandon Denmark as a main production locale, but do they need to manufacture everything in expensive countries? Could they not do some of their manufacturing to their standards elsewhere?
I've worked with a number of their products and have found them to be well-designed and accompanied by clear, easy-to-comprehend instructions. And if you do get into a bind, their tech support is both informed and responsive. All-in-all, they're a top-notch company!
What I love about mindstorms is its hackability. sure, the default programming "language" it comes with is limited and annoying to use, but reflash it with something like BrickOS and you can program it in C. very cool stuff, sorry to see it go.
Let's make a difference
oh my. Should have known better :)
Yeah, the A64 3000 runs at 2Ghz with 512K cache.
But those little controlers, if you dont need 512K rom, you can get controllers for a few cent that could do the job. All you need are a few 10000 transistors, in a time where every gpu has 50 million+
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Yes.
My friend gets weekend visits with his 7-year old, and they usually end up over at my place on sundays. I have 2 giant boxes of Legos (some new, some vintage) and after playing monopoly or whatever, the kid always plays with the Legos, sometimes for hours.
Well, daddy bought the kid a PS2 for X-Mas, and guess what? No more interest in Legos. Hell, no more interest in Monopoly, for that matter. He just wants to play Tony Hawk or Simpsons Hit and Run. [shrug]
Yes. Price. Legos are really cool, but they have always been way overpriced. They are lil' plastic blocks. They should be like 10 bucks for a five gallon pail of them, not 40 bucks for three handfuls.
Eat at Joe's.
I finally tried some Mega Blocks sets this year and they are really great sets! They seem to have a lot of imagination over at Mega Blocks. There is a quality control problem at Mega Blocks however. Sometimes the blocks don't stick together very well whereas Lego always sticks together well. Meg Blocks they are MUCH less expensive and Lego doesn't seem to have had a new idea in a long time. The sets they have out today look just like the sets that were out 20 years ago when I was a kid.
The only Lego sets lately that have caught my eye are the Star Wars ones and if they're eliminating them I think they really need new leadership at the top to come out with some more innovative designs.
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Absolutely. The quality of Megablocks is really piss-poor when compared to Lego. They have some excellent looking models, but the things won't stay together unless you use glue!
I can see how parents with no experience with Lego might look at the Megablocks and Lego side by side, and question why the Lego were so much more expensive, but after buying one set of the Megablocks, I can definitely say that I'd never do that again.
I think the big mistake Lego made was with the Bionicle and sports sets. Lego is for building models, and expanding your imagination, not for playing mini-basketball and hockey. The basketball sets also brought in something previously unseen to the Lego universe - racial minifigs. From what I understand, prior to the basketball sets being introduced, all minifigs were yellow. They weren't white, black, asian, indian or whatever. They were just yellow. I liked that.
I really like some of th newer larger models, which are probably going to be cut back a bit if the article in question is correct. The Tie Interceptor is a really cool model, but it cost so much that it would be hard to buy the set and just integrate the pieces into the rest of your collection after building it and checking it out.
I guess I'd better shell out the $300 for the Star Destroyer before it is dropped.
This is an ex-parrot!
It's clear that having lots of special pieces encourages "collecting" lego sets, whereas once you have a big bag of the older simple bricks you don't crave more of them.
I think the early eighties were the first era of cheap, heavily marketed, "collectible" toys. I've heard that manufacturers actually designed the toys to be not that much fun to play with, so that once you get the toy, you just want more, because the fun is in the acquisition of the latest toy when watching the spinoff cartoon with embedded comercials, not the use.
Also, did anyone else feel really old when the original poster referred to Mindstorm as the toy that was such a mainstay of my childhood? Is he 14 years old or something?
When I first got into Lego, their primary focus was Legoland and Lego Technic. I remember staring in awe at a friend's Legoland set up in his parent's garage, the entire floor of which was covered in baseplates with every kind of building, and even the Legoland train running around it.
In addition to that, another friend had the Technic lego car, with big wheels, cylinders, rack & pinion steering, suspension, etc. It ruled!
Where are those kits now? Relegated in favour of crappy Bionicles and Harry Potter themed kits. What can a child build with them? Bugger all, that's what!
Perhaps if they want their fortunes to improve, Lego should bring back the originals.
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When I grew up, I had meccano to burn. Well, being metal it wouldn't burn, of course. When I was in my teens, I was the friendly neighbourhood babysitter, and by then ('70s) Lego was all the rage. I used to build large constructions from the sets at some of my charges houses that they wouldn't pull apart until next time I came to babysit them.
When I saw the rise of sets like "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" and so on I thought "Oh, yeah. Boring. No creativity need be applied here.".
Now, though, I have my own children. I have bought them basic boxes of blocks, and that's fine, and I've bought them specialised sets like Harry Potter (Hogwart's Castle) and SpiderMan (my wife is a spiderman nut, so my kids are too).
The interesting thing is, is that they sat right down and built it "like on the box" then immediately pulled it all apart and made amazingly creative stuff out of them. We now have pyramids, temples in the jungle (complete with mazes) secret laboratories (with traps, computers and mad scientists). We have Spiderman rescuing X, Y, or Z from some scenario that never happened in any comic. We have marble races, and endless things that fly and drive.
Most of the parts that allow all this wierd stuff to happen are actually the special ones. All of the neat secret panels and traps in Harry Potter are wonderfully repurposed in making a "Temple of Doom" (with a few Orient Expedition pieces, and a quick pyramid out of basic blocks...).
Creativity is pretty hard to hide, really. If you give a creative kid some toys to play with then he will be creative with it.
It is a shame to see MindStorms discontinued. I'm halfway tempted to go out and get one for my sons before they disappear. On the other hand the oldest (and most creative) one has just turned six, and I won't trust him not to destroy it for a couple of years yet. In those couple of years the landscape will change enough that I full expect something better will be available.