Slashdot Mirror
Lego Goes Back to the Basics: Building Blocks
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "Slashdot recently covered Lego's plan to stop producing its Mindstorms line in response to the Danish company's worst financial loss in history. While the original article linked focused primarily on Lego's plans to cease production on various toy lines, Yahoo News now has a follow-up article that looks in greater detail at Lego's plan for the future. 'We are returning to Lego's former concept,' says Lego owner and president Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen. 'We're going to focus on building bricks as our main product, concentrating on little kids' eagerness to assemble.' Kristiansen goes on to blame the company's financial woes on its attempt to follow trends rather than focusing on its more traditional products. In turn, the company's plan for 2004 will include a renewed marketing push for Lego bricks as opposed to licensed products like the Harry Potter and Star Wars lines. Toy researcher Joern Martin Steenhold also notes the following in the article: 'All research, including my own, shows that computer games and other electronic games take up only 20 to 30 percent of children's play time. Boys play with traditional toys up until the age of eight or 10, and it is in the zero to seven age range that Lego has its niche.' Zero to seven? What about the Slashdot crowd?"
They come in buckets now. They were called Freestyle sets throughout the 90's, but I'm not sure what the series name is now. Check your local Lego aisle for buckets full of windows, bricks, etc.
If it's individual kinds of parts in bulk you want, shop.lego.com still sells the service packs that they've always sold through the Shop At Home catalog, as well as the rest of their product line.
For single special parts, or any other sort of non-set purchase, BrickLink is a great resource. That's where the resellers break down the sets they buy from stores and sell the parts individually. If you want 300 wigets in blue, bricklink is the best way to find them.
Two more:
Capsela - Cool plastic spheres with gears and motors inside them and various wheels and such to attach. The coolest part was that they had float attachments so you could make boats. I made some of these into a robot for a final class project just recently.
Old School Erector Sets - these things are valuable collectors items now. I seem to remember the instructions giving you basic structural engineering tips. The motor they had was badass.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
After getting several kits, though, then I could come up with more designs, like centipede monsters, etc, but I still felt constrained by how specialized the pieces were. It's hard to figure out an alternate use for the little brain piece that only connects with one other piece, for example The ball-socket joints and the gears were a nice addition though.
Anyway, I'm glad to see legos returning to the original free-form ideal rather than becoming a glorified action-figure maker.
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Long-term effects of Bush deficits
Mindstorms is all about three things: RCXes, motors and sensors. The RCX is the "brain" that you program. It has inputs and outputs.
You want to buy as many Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention Systems as you can. Each RIS kit comes with an RCX, two motors and various sensors. The kit also includes plenty of wheels, axles and generic blocks for building just about anything. It's a good bargain. I own two kits and probably need more now that they'll be discontinued.
The accessory kits have been somewhat of a disappointment for me, but it is how you get some different sensors. You can order discrete parts directly from Lego but you end up paying a lot.