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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
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!
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
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'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
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 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
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.