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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.
"one of the greatest educational toys ever produced." That happens to be your opinion. I would argue that erector sets rule!!
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.
Too many of the new lego products have so few generic bricks and too many specialist bricks that can't easily be used for other things, eg, you can build a lego buggy into, um, a slightly different buggy, but not a lot else.
Get back to providing big bags of ordinary bricks, and encourage creativity!
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Price.
Also, how many parent think, "Little Jimmy should have a programmable set of Lego!"
TC Logo and Dacta were also great toys (one of my teachers wrote some of the documentation), but there just wasn't a big market.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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
I'm not sure the price of these toys is the problem. Toys in general aren't exactly cheap these days. Neither are video games, and video games seem to be what is the most appealing to children these days. So what we might need to look into is why expensive video games are more interesting than expensive toys where children have to actually think to use them. Or did I just answer my own question?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
It may be a change in how children play from then until now. From what I see, a lot of parents just stick their children in front of TVs now to get them to be content. I think many people need to take a good look at the benefits that these kinds of creative toys have to offer for young learners.
At the very least, they could outsource the playing with Legos to India!
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
The Mindstorms stuff is great, and it's a shame to see it killed. Can't help but think it was too expensive though, several times I've looked at buying a set and reluctantly decided it's too expensive. Lego's always been expensive though, so maybe they know their market.
I'm actually quite happy they're killing the movie tie-in stuff, because the sets seem to be mostly specialist blocks that are fairly useless outside the movie setting. More of a "play set" than a construction set.
Hopefully they will focus on the stuff that makes them different from the usual single-purpose fad toys.
I've kept my eye on Lego, even though I haven't purchased much for years. My greatest disappointment is the "special" pieces that are now so common. All the special pieces detract from your ability to make new and interesting things with multiple sets.
It's time to go back to castles and space ships and cities.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Is to continue making Mindstorms. And also the Legos they used to make. Not the 3-piece Bionic-shits they have nowadays, but the good old fashioned multiblock things which allowed for imagination and weren't pre-chewn.
Just look at those "Bionic" Legos or whatever they are. I'm not surprised they make a loss by selling those. They're ugly, they're no fun, they're not Lego. They're just crap.
Bring back the old Lego! Duplo, the Lego, Technic Legos and Mindstorms! That's all what you need.
The damn things cost too much and you can't make much with the sets anymore. All those one use, custom shapped pieces suck.
The problem with Lego sets in recent years has been the fact that they are very specialized. You used to be able to buy sets that allowed for lots of imagination, such as "pirate", "city", and "space" legos. Now, all I see is "Star Wars: Episode I" or other such sets that don't inspire the imagination in the slightest.
I for one am happy to see that Lego is making some serious changes. I disagree that it is the youth that is to blame. I have several young cousins that love to play with Lego but I see them less and less impressed with the "put these 4 custom pieces together and you have a Star-Jedi-Saurus-O-Tron-Laser-Car-Thingy". In my opinion Lego took to much to the 'build it once' toys and todays youth, just like in the good old days gets its real pleasure from the huge collection of small blocks with which you can build a House, a Plane, a Car or even a Spaceship.
Just before christmass I walked into a newly found Lego store at Valley Fair Mall (popular luxury mall in San Jose) and was discusted by the choices offered. Crappy replica's of crappy movies and stories that would not add anything of value to a kid's Lego collection other then a bunch of unusable custom pieces. Let alone the rediculous prices.
Rethink your strategy Lego. What worked in the past will really work in the future, there is still time since there is still no competition!
URL included this time:
First Lego League
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.
A good friend of mine, Russ, has a great and interesting and THOROUGH page detailing everything you could ever want to know about Mindstorms.
;-)
His page, at http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics/, discusses the internals in great detail. You really won't believe how ADVANCED his knowledge is, so you've gotta check it out for yourself.
The page contains EVERYTHING about these amazing toys. I can't believe they're being discontinued. It's probably due to kids having too many activities (to beef-up their resumes) and videogames/television/radio taking up their time. No one sits down anymore to spend quality time with their family and build toys like these Mindstorms. We all have our own schedules and stuff, and it's probably NOT good for America in the long term.
Anyway, sorry to jade off a bit there, but here are some other links from my friend's page:
1) Create a Spider Robot
2) LEGO MINDSTORMS Group official SDK
Enjoy these links and much more on Russ's page! I helped him with the HTML code
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
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.
Sorry, but for 100$ you get a a64 3000+. You know, 1024KiB high speed cache, 6.4GB/s HT io, ect.
Those little microcontrollers cost you 5$ at most if you buy a few 1000.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
It's no wonder that lego is losing money. They seem to be putting a heck of a lot of their resources into stuff like Bionicle. Have you seen those things? There are like 10 pieces, they are not standard brick, and you can only make one thing out of them.
Bring back castle lego at a reasonable price and we'll talk. I would love to get my hands on that original black knight's castle. The big black square one. Now all they make is bionicle, harry potter, and some star wars. It's not the same as it was.
It used to be a toy of building. Now it's just a toy you build.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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.
The real problem Lego is facing right now (let's hope they realize it) is they produce too much custom pieces. Every set has at least 5 - 10 custom bricks and therefore:
1) costs much to produce
2) contains less ordinary pieces to reduce the costs
3) Since it contains less pieces and the ones it contains are custom, there's very little play value to justify the cost.
I would suggest Lego to:
1)reduce custom pieces. Kids are suppose to have fantasy you know... I remember I put two triangles together and pretend it was a star destroyer...
2)kill most of the cinema stuff. Starwars stuff is ok (meaning it's well done and designed). reduce cutom pieces and completely kill the other series ( If they can't make other movies with the same quality, then it's a no go.)
3)Kill bionicles!!!! (what in the world are those things? are they LEGO at all? and they DO contain very few pieces and they're mostly custom!!!! They're model kits, not LEGO!)
4) where are the old series? trains castles cities... there was really tons and tons of stuff!!! (and some amazing works to say the truth) where's all that stuff gone?
Anyway, probably Lego is facing the usual toy VS digital dilemma where most of the kids don't want dull toys and prefer videgames... anyway, I really believe the company isn't facing the crisis for the good... A few steps in the same direction and Lego is gone.
I don't know about 20 years ago, but 35 years ago I used to play with plain rectangular Lego blocks and generic wheels. I had to use my own mind and imagination to assemble these general-purpose blocks into the wide variety of things I wanted to build.
From the look of today's Lego sets, children play today by using the custom single-purpose pieces to assemble a verbatim copy of the picture on the box.
Wait for detail on this. A reporter penned those lines, not the company. And they are somewhat vague. Does this mean that the company will stop production immediately? Does it mean that it will stop pursuing new lines? Does it mean heavy winnowing of the non-profitable lines of production? Remember that you are reading a reporter's version of what the company is doing, and the reporter is not being all that detailed. Wait for an announcement from the company.
As the father of 7 and 8 year old boys, the elder of which has quite a collection of Bionicles, I've observed one little tidbit about Lego: if you lose or break a piece, it's gonna cost you an arm and a leg to replace it (No Bionicle Pun Intended ;).
What does this have to do with their financial success? A lot, IMHO. It certainly has affected our brand loyalty. As Kewl as Bionicles are, we have tried to steer our boyz towards products made by more consumer friendly companies, such as K'nex.
I know there's more to running a company, but this to me says they still Just Don't Get It.
Mark
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
Am I the only one who has noticed that Lego barely sells a kit (in stores) that require any effort or concentration to complete?
When I was younger (here we go....), toy stores always had a great selection of the classic Technics kits. The large, complicated kits seemed to be the hottest items, because they were *challenging* and *interesting*.
Today, most of the sets I see are low-piece count, over-simplifed, plug-the-head-into-the-pelvic-chassis Bionicle garbage, which seems only to make the statement that kids today aren't interested in anything unless it's presented as a completely non-cerebral AARRRGGGHHH-type of monster package.
This really is a shame. I'll never stop appreciating the endless hours I spent creating machines of every type imaginable, and can't help but to think that my exposure to Lego helped to form a little bit of who I am today.
I don't know what a childhood of building Bionicles might do to kid, expect possibly make them wish their parents were cool enough to buy them a toy that doesn't require assembly, like the kid next door.
And that's a sad thing
It costs $10 USD to buy a small toy consisting of no more than 20 or 30 pieces. In my day, you could buy a thousand piece bucket of blocks for $40 (adjusted for inflation). Now they can't even sell 1000 piece buckets, and a 150 piece model is damn near $35. Meanwhile, there are lego compatible blocks which are just as good, but way cheaper.
Lego needs to stop overcharging for their product if they expect to prosper. If they do, I'll buy 'em.
Could the less use of legos be due to video games???? I think so. Why use your imaginagtion when someone else can do it for you.
Evolution or ID?
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,
From what I hear, Lego made money, but it just had to pay so much to Lucas, Disney, and whoever makes Harry Potter, that it had the loss.
Corps overvalue their own IP, while everyone else's IP is theirs to exploit.
God spoke to me
You used to be able to buy sets that allowed for lots of imagination, such as "pirate", "city", and "space" legos.
When I was a kid, I bought Lego sets that just came with x number of assorted blocks with no theme whatsoever. That took REAL creativity. I don't even know if you can buy just plain ol' regular blocks anymore.
The consensus is that LEGO probably will not stop production of Mindstorms, though they may drop from 'public' perception and possibly only be available through LEGO educations resellers like Pitsco Lego/Dacta.
I will not mourn the loss of the Harry Potter and other movie tie-in crap. Sounds too much like MBA-fodder and not the genius that makes Lego what they are.
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
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'
When we found out we were having a boy
Because girls aren't supposed to build robots? Don't tell that to my six year old Natasha, whose favorite playtime is spent building K'Nex Battlemechs and Bandai Gundams with her dad.
1953 just called. They want their gender biases back.
Sheesh.
Town, Space, Castle.
I had more fun with the basic themed sets (although I never had any castle sets, just town and space) because there were enough generic pieces that you could be really creative.
The merchandise tie-ins and specialty sets really tarnished the company's sterling reputation for making simple toys that really inspired kids to create.
The sad commentary on our time is that given a choice, kids today would rather have a video game than a Lego set.
Lego should go back to basics...perhaps reissue old but favorite sets for those who wish to recapture the past.
I still remember the little spaceship my parents bought me when we visited Legoland in Denmark. As I recall it was set number 918: Space Transport. I still have the 4x1 bricks that have "LL 918" printed on the side.
-Crolis
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."
Nah, you'll be able to get the Mindstorms cheaper on eBay in the future. And all you need for a stop-action movie studio is a cheap ($30) digital camera, some normal Legos or action figures, some cardboard and crayons, and some software that turns a bunch of JPEGs into a movie.
There is nothing wrong with a high price for good toys, but the following is completely ridiculous (the imperial star destroyer):
1 4& c=70632933%2DFEF6%2D4B18%2D9D06%2D6124A1D78027
http://shop.lego.com/product.asp?p=10030&t=5&d=
Yes, it has a lot of pieces, but the same amount of pieces in buckets would only cost about 120 euro.
Drop the price a bit, and dump all the special elements. If I'm too lazy too build, I'll buy playmobil or other IMHO uninteresting stuff.
I've been looking for something to put my retirement saings in. The Mindstorm kits are showing their age, but I still love them & I think they'll be around for some time to come.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
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.
Also, how many parent think, "Little Jimmy should have a programmable set of Lego!"
Every parent who is an engineer? At least I will when I have my own kids.
No, just ridiculously high price.
Actually, among the 6-year-and-up set in my son's school (in NJ), Bionicles are quite popular. And a few weeks ago we visited in Kentucky and they seemed to be quite popular there, too. I think the storyline and the fact that the sets are character-based make them popular. Plus the complex backstory and wide assortment of characters hits some of the same mental buttons as Pokemon, in that kids can develop a deep specialized knowledge area and be experts on it (even more than their parents).
Check out bzpower.com to see some of the Bionicle fan community.
By the way, even though Bionicle are built with quite a few specialized pieces, they are compatible with Lego Technic, and can be rebuilt to form as many different creatures as you can imagine (large numbers of which are currently populating my livingroom). They use quite a few technic pieces in their construction, especially in the larger Bionicle models, which are primarily standard technic pieces.
Maybe the huge licensing fees for Star Wars, Spiderman, and Harry Potter are part of the loss.
The article confirms that Lego has been hurting badly. The writing has been on the wall for a while now though. Just look at Lego's product lines over the past 5-10 years. Added: Harry Potter, Star Wars, video games, Bionicle, Sports, Mindstorms. Lost: classic space, castle, pirates. Plus the saddest thing for me, a lack of focus on good Technic sets.
Why so many problems? I think kids expect more from today's toys than just bricks. That's kind of a sad fact that says something about our culture I think. Second, since the expiration of Lego's stud-and-tube patent, there's been competition from Mega Bloks, which are inferior but cheaper. In today's world though, I think it makes sense that many parents choose cheaper rather than better. Another sad fact.
In any event, while I'm unhappy about Mindstorms, I'm happy they're abandoning Harry Potter and the like. They have totally lost their identity by branching out, and I think they really do need to get back to their core business as they're doing now. I wonder though, is it too late already?
There use to be a steady stream of great Technic sets worth getting, but recently good sets have slowed to a trickle, with just one catching my eye recently... 8455 Backhoe. Check it out, it might be one of your last few chances to grab a great Lego set.
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 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 don't see anywhere where it explicitly says Mindstorms is gone, just a vaguely-worded mention of "electronics". They say their new mission is focusing on their own products, not the tie-ins, so that they have control over what they do - Mindstorms is owned by them, no? I took it to mean they were dropping the Star Wars line (which was cool, admittedly), the Harry Potter line, etc. and would stop making the video games (where presumably they are not responsible for making them, but license out the Lego name or contract other companies, either way they're not in control).
So until someone explicitly tells me the Mindstorms line is done, I'm not going to hold out any hope for seeing it in the clearance aisle.
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
I'm afraid that Lego is not returning to its roots (building blocks), but may just cut the licensed products (Star Wars, Harry Potter) and concentrate on its own Bionicles line.
I was not thrilled to see that my second grader brought home a Bionicles novella from the Scholastic book fair (which is increasingly a toy fair), especially after I looked at it and saw a grammatical error in the book's very first sentence. Lego has a whole mythology about Bionicles, and that's attractive to kids. But my son lost a couple essential pieces of his Bionicle within days of getting it, and I'm not going to encourage this overpriced, intellectually shallow, proprietary product line as a hobby.
Unfortunately, I could not find more generic Lego blocks in my Christmas shopping. There were some overpriced ($30-$40) Star Wars kits, and a space shuttle for $100, but nothing I wanted to buy. I'm beginning to associate Lego with brands like Scholastic and Disney, that have turned their once-respected product lines into brands of dumb, overpriced junk.
Get your nephew a Handy Board or a couple of Handy Crickets :-) http://www.handyboard.com/
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
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!
Also, how many parent think, "Little Jimmy should have a programmable set of Lego!"
I did,
It's probably the least pointless gift Jimmy got last year.
(But then, his dad reads slashdot, so what chance of a life has he got anyway)
Also, there are no good, cool sets to buy anymore. It's all Bionicle or sets that are 90% "unique" pieces. Every time i go to the toy store i hope to find something along the lines of Space Police or Ice Station or any of the other good sets, and they just don't exist. Therefore, Lego doesn't get my money.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
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?
Honestly, I don't see how that's a bad thing. I always thought the Star Wars sets were a bad idea, no matter how neat it is to have a little Lego Emperor. You get the kid a model kit if he wants a model Millenium Falcon. Lego's for building stuff without instructions. Sure, sell the sets, it keeps the kids busy for the rest of Christmas day, but at least pretend you can take it apart and turn it into something else. What's your kid supposed to do when he takes the thing apart the next day and all he has are irregular slanty bricks with Rebel Alliance logos printed on them and Millenium Falcon hull sections? You can't very well go and build castle turrets out of R2D2's head.
If you want to make stuff, get a milling machine like everybody else. Legos are for kids.
I had (and dearly loved) piles of Legos when I was little, but most of those came as hand-me-downs in buckets. Maybe we can convince the folks at Lego to stop spending as much effort in producing new, specialized blocks for new, specialized sets with fancy graphics on their boxes and start selling things in buckets.
On another note, I bet that if someone were to set up a PayPal account to donate to the Lego corporation, that the mobs of Lego maniacs out there would be able to generate a significant amount of money for them.
They're not overpriced, if they were The Lego Company would be able to make a profit. The problem is that they are expensive.
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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According to a map on legos homepage they have production facilities in Denmark, Schwitzerland, Poland, somewhere on the east coast of north america and japan or korea.
c ks
... specialized bricks.. too expensive. Please remember that denmark is not a big country and we are affected when one of our larger exports fail. Back in 2000 when the last lego crises hit, the taxes in Billund Kommune (the county where lego is situated), had to increase their taxes. A loss of 200 million dollars for the company is a loss of about 40 million dollars in taxes(assuming they could have a comparable profit). That is quite a lot of money to lose for a county of 8700.
;-))
They also have a nice flash animation on how the bricks are made http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asp?page=bri
When you see the movie with all its links in the chain of production please remember that the minimum wage in Denmark for a person with no education and no union affiliation is about 12$/hour, and pretty much any person in that chain would be entitled to more.
The reason for the high salaries is the income tax, which is about 45% for a low income family.
I am about as low income as you can get. I am on student wellfare(less than ordinary wellfare), and have a 8 hour/week job on a school, and i pay 40% net in tax. also of the wellfare. I postulate the 45% on that background.
I've seen some people saying they do not feel sorry for lego because
And to all the people who have been nagging about the specialisation of pieces. Yes i have to agree i miss the simple bricks too, luckily I also have bags of them in the basement. But i am pretty sure that lego made that move for a reason, the crass commercialisation of our times. I am saddened that that is the way we are moving but there seems to be little we can do about it. It seems to be in keeping with the loss of small specialized shops with craftsmen running them to large supermarkets/superstores (ie wal-mart), where you'll be lucky to actually get bread, when you ask for some sort of bread that would go well with salmon. (this specific example is not from walmart but from a danish supermarket. Yes i am bitter
On a lighter note a couple of friends where over and we where bored when we remembered my old legos in the basement, so hours of fun later we had built a replica of a Blide (a danish siegeweapon) it is only 8" tall but is able to fire a 2-by-4 3 meters up into the air and hit a target ten meters away. (replace meters with yards for the metrically challenged).
Legos used to me made in europe. They've been moving production to china to lower cost.
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
Missing pieces are rare. I once had a damaged piece, and once bought a set with almost half the pieces missing. Both times Lego responded by having a new set shipped to me (at my door within a few days). ...and the best part is they let me keep the bad sets. I've never seen quality service like that anywhere else.
Quite true: Lego parts have a tolerance of 0.005 mm-- 5 microns!
I've run across some generic Lego-compatible "construction bricks", and they have been simply -bad-. Most of the time I spent was finding a brick which would connect without just slipping off. No fun at all.
It's tragic, really. Like others, I disagree with the directions the company has chosen recently (excepting, of course, Mindstorms). Still, I don't know what they -can- do. We live in the age of the relentless cost-cutting of Walmart, and the quality Lego produces may not have a market.
What would I like to see them do? Obviously, the brand is very strong (Toy of the Century, etc.) and so this makes them a prime target of a takeover. I would hate to see this happen. I think they scale back production, cut any unprofitable new ventures, and focus on staying profitable.
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.
My little brother got a Rahkshi Kaita Vo Kit for Christmas and I had the opportunity to play with it for an hour or two. The kit contains the pieces to make three functionally identical models, which seems pretty useless to me, but since you can buy them separately I'll blame the person who bought it for him.
Yes, many of the fixed pieces are overly specialized. However, the characters also have novel motion features, which would be difficult to design with general pieces and need to be light weight. By far the most interesting aspect of the whole kit is that the articulation of the limbs is due entirely to ball and socket joints, so although the "bones" appear only stylistically different, when you actually start building with them you realise that the attachment of balls and sockets at slightly different angles makes a big difference.
So the Bionicles don't just look organic, but incorporate organic design principles. And that could be way more educational than yet another civil engineering simulator!
I was also happy to see that many of the pieces included connection points that weren't used in the default models. So reuse might not be as high a priority at Lego as it used to be, but its still considered a virtue.
I am an adult Lego fan with quite an inventory of the stuff. This parent is right on the quality issue (and others on the thread pointing to low margins are also there).
... but also in manufacturing design. Their systems are partly secret (and the company is 100% privately-owned).
... although some are put to good use in "realistic" castle walls, depicting stones of different hues and textures. There are also extremely high quality non-official Lego-compatible components for Mindstoms, but those are another story altogether.
Lego keeps on selling 1949 designs (basic lego bricks with ~11-year industrial patents) because nobody can beat them at their prices. Lego invests quite a bit in product design
There are clones that can *potentially* be attached to regular Lego, but their quality is glaringly inferior
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Want to buy cheap Lego? Try searching ebay for bulk lego (which can be washed with lukewarm water and soap). Keep an eye out for the (regular) Lego sales at toy stores, including the official online Lego store (which also offers bulk sales). Or use the new pick-a-brick Lego outlets. For specialized/hard to find parts Bricklink and Pitsco are your friends.