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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?"
I always preffered unabashed Lego sets.
Having 100 of each was great. The sets with instructions were fun, but it really was more enjoyable to be creative. That's what we should getting children to do anyways.
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?
I'm 38 and still monkey with Lego. When I was sick at home for a few days I had a little contest running with myself. I had built a small Lego "bridge" that could span a piece of legal paper lengthwise (14") then would place a glass of water on it. If the bridge didn't hold then I had water to clean up. If the bridge held for 5 minutes I'd tear it down then 're-engineer' it with less pieces than before. All the regular bricks, no cheating with the longer pieces.
When you're sick a bit of a mental challenge helps you forget the illness. (I was doing this with my Lego blocks from 30+ years ago but I have a lot of Mindstorms stuff too, it's leet)
Trolling is a art,
is a return to the way legos were sold in the 80's, not in sets, yes there were those, but you could also just get a generic set. I have not see a generic set in the stores around here, they all are some set based on some movie game or some thing, but no generic set.
I wonder how this will effect FIRST Lego League, the international robotics competition for middle-schoolers. FLL is a great program from Dean Kamen and the same people who run the FIRST Robotics Competition.
A corporation moving back toward imagination and away from limiting corporate tie-ins, don't see too much flowing in that direction these days. The "themed" Lego sets were the worst thing to happen to toys in my lifetime.
I'm beginning to have faith that I may be able to buy new Lego for my future children, as opposed to having them play with my mess of a collection.
but when I was a kid, I remember having much more fun with K'Nex than with legos. K'Nex constructions were larger (some could take up the better part of a room, which kids find tremendously cool), more permanent, and they could have some really neat moving parts (Lego Technix notwithstanding). I played much more with my Big Ball Factory than with the Lego models that I had.
--- Bwah?
The problem with the Slashdot crowd is that not as many /.'ers play with legos and one might think. Most of us have jobs and lives that prevent us from playing with cool toys.
On the other hand, Lego's problems lay deeper than a bloated product line. Lego toys are way, way too expensive. Even when I was a little kid twenty years ago, my parents bought me high quality knockoffs at Sears for like 1/3 the cost of Legos. I imagine that it's worse today.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
> 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?
Perhaps he was talking mental age?
Seriously though a key trait of the hacker mindset is, I think, playfulness. That shows up in the way hackers mess around with language and Lego. And that playfulness is a key aspect of learning. How many times have you hacked something together "just for the fun of it": in reality half the fun was that you were learning.
The good news is that Lego is going back to the bricks. Great news Lego, that's just what we all needed!
John.
The problem with LEGO is the stupid pieces.
Grab a random $20 kit at a store, it's full of special pieces with no real use.
What happened to actual blocks? you get only a few if any in the average kit.
I was going to buy lego for some children, until I realized I would need a moderate fortune to give them a decent assortment of basic pieces.
He is soon to be a guest on Krusty's Komedy Klassic.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
One thing lego always helped me do was learn to conentrate. I could spend hours just doing one thing. Kids now days seem to spend 5 minute son something then move on
As the old saying goes
"I'm sure my concentration span is...ooh look shiny thing"
Rus
CPanel + Root from $35/mo - 10% off with discount code SLASHDOT
It'd be nice if they were more affordable though (this is where that nasty global economy / foreign currency things comes into play :(
I C_ ID=7109
Actually, I've been kind of surprised that Lego hasn't hit upon the idea of marketing kits directly to grown-ups, say a line of desk accessories (the pens struck me as lame).
When I got a Fujitsu Point 510 pen slate, I didn't bother to get a stand---thought about making one out of wood, but instead chose to use my old Legos (I've since added a pen holder and a stand for a CD-RW drive to lift it up behind the Fujitsu Stylistic I did purchase a stand for (was running low on Legos)).
Pictures of the Point 510 and stand should be here:
http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOP
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I've always been interested in the Mindstorms, but never quite enough to buy 'em, always figuring "Some day, some day..." Well, it looks like "some day" has arrived, and I don't know which ones to geek out on. I'd like to:
- Have something mobile
- Have it be controllable via Linux
- Have it do nifty things
For those of you that've already bought/geeked out on/played with them, which models (that are still available) have brought you the most joy?
------------------
I like the "back to the basics" idea. Today's Lego sets look way too specialized to me- too many specialized pieces, not enough basic Lego bricks- so there's a lot less creative potential. They also look way too expensive.
I think that selling basic Lego sets again is a nice potential return to the things I liked about Legos as a kid in the early 80's. It would be nice if they could sell the basic sets in addition to the fancier licsensed sets and the advanced products like Mindstorms instead of canning those products entirely, but all in all I like this move.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
I recall being surprised that the parking lot for Legoland was nearly deserted, until I saw the admission price.
Anyway, I know I'll miss Mindstorms. I wonder what other lines they'll drop?
John
Gosh, that's going to be one unhappy baby. All it wants is something plush that maybe it can wrap its tiny fingers around while lying in the bassinet, and instead it's going to get a pile of hard, sharp angled blocks that it cannot possibly understand how to assemble. The odds of a zero-year-old choking on Legos, I would estimate at fifty-fifty.
What a horrible idea.
--
RumorsDaily
Legos were much better when they were simply blocks and YOUR IMAGINATION was what mattered. I've watched my little brothers put together newer lego sets where most of the pieces are designed to fit together in ONE SPECIFIC WAY. Everything is already planned out, and you are supposed to follow the directions (like a some-assembly-required toy).
I'm all for plain old blocks again. And I wouldn't be surprised if that leads to higher revenues again.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
What about girls? (And there's supposed to be ingrained gender equality in Denmark hmmmf!)
OK, the girls that play with Legos and stuff like that might get shunned by the the silly girls who play with dolls and maybe some parents want their little girls to wear frilly dresses and play with dolls and girlie stuff but 1) it was always more fun to play with the boys, and 2) who says you can't make a tea party set with lego blocks??
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
This makes me very happy to hear. I'm 25 and my favorite lego series was the "Model Team" with the Semi trucks, jeeps, vans, helicopters and generally cool, LARGE fully functional models of real life vehicles.
I recently rebuilt my model team semi and it now rests proudly on my desk. Right now they have a very nice lego Shuttle in the stores for $50 bucks (same price as most of the model team models back in the day, and even today on ebay)that I've been trying to convince my wife we need...hehe
Its really disapointing to go to the store and see Soccer, Harry Potter, and Star Wars sets with little more than 20 pieces and some look alike action figures. Give the kids somthing that will take them a few hours to build and leave them enough blocks to construct something different if they should choose.
Just this weekend I noticed some new sets out called "design sets" that were of normal everyday objects (one was a pontoon plane) and each set is capable of being at least 3 different things. (I assume they have docs inside which show how to convert as well..at least the last technic model I bought did)
This is the lego I remember and love, and I think more parents would rather buy somthing that can be more than just a scene from SW or HP.
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Isn't Lego being a bit harsh on itself after a down year in sales? They were still profitable in 2002. I can't find the profit and loss numbers of the previous years, although statements have been made that 1998 was Lego's first loss year.
...
I have a mindstorms set, I really like the technic boxes, and I'm amazed Lego's sole interest for the future would be in 0-7 year olds. All of the young boys (7-10 year olds) in my neighborhood and family still seem to be getting huge piles of Lego blocks
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
Regarding choking hazards, the hospital gave us this handy little plastic guage (basically just a clear acrylic tube with one end closed.) If it can fit in the tube and touch bottom, it needs to be out of reach.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
They already have some Lego stores in the mall, I don't think it would be too hard to add a bulk section.
Being able to buy a 1/2 pound of triangle, rectangle, or square pieces would be great if you are missing pieces or if you want to buy you kid or husband a heck of a lot of legos to foster their imagination.
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.
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
I have a 6 and 3 year old, and we're moving from duplo to lego. I consider these essential toys.
;-) ) is its interchangeability of pieces and flexibility. Their recent design and marketing trend suppressed its fundamental characteristic!
It drives me nuts to go shopping and see only pre-determined model sets, with all kinds of non-generic parts that, once inevitably added to the bucket, will not be used as intended, and in fact will get misplaced into other toy boxes and barely used at all.
I don't appreciate paying the premium for a product design that comes broken in the box. The whole point of lego (in my 38 years of experience playing with it
Lego is, in principle, back to basics, I'm happy to see them waking up to that again. I'll be one of the first to go and get a generic assortment box when I see them on the shelves again.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Do you know the difference between a clitoris and a Lego brick?
If you don't, keep playing with Lego.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
You could throw a rock from any one of the drugstores and hit any of the other ones. I am sure there is some reason for this, but I have yet to be told what it is.
Americans are drug addicts?
I bought an giant tub of lego, >2000 bits in it.
It was mostly empty and most of the bits were one or two square size!!
I was very angry!
New lego in the UK costs about 100 GBP per kilo.
Lego on ebay costs 10 GBP per kilo.
For the summer I bought 15 Kilo of lego, enough for 5 children to play with (no, I dont have 5 children.)
I bought it from ebay!
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
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.
I don't know about gears at this time, but you can buy just about anything else you might want for a HUGE number of projects without having to pay insane amounts of money to have items machined for you. As long as you stick to 'standard' items, you will be more then fine.
The web-site is www.mcmaster.com
Good hunting!
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Back when Lego introduced a lot of the new stuff I couldn't see the point, as it limited the use of specialty items, which was IMHO unattractive. In my youth I made lots of stuff and spent uncounted hours developing my imagination with a few simple pieces. I'm sure my parents loved it, as it kept me busy and quiet while building things. Same applied to Erector sets, Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys. Provide the kids with the basics and their minds will do the rest. Provide them with limited toys and they lose interest in a short time and expect something new.
There was also something like brown or red plastic girders and green plastic sheets which could be used to make buildings, houses, etc. which were really cool, but I can't remember the name of. I'd buy them if they were still for sale.
Once again, brick and mortar prove most successful.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Lego was by far my favourite toy growing up. Indeed, I played with the stuff so much that I am convinced that it has affected my thinking patterns, and in good ways. My visual-spatial sense is excellent, and my mind is forever trying to break down problems into modular pieces; or, seeing a collection of modular components, trying to figure out intriguing ways to assemble them into a larger system. In short, ladies and gentlemen, I think in Lego.
That said, I hope that the Lego company goes about this the right way. The things I always wanted as a youngster were more hinges and other such articulated pieces in order to build things like spacecraft and vehicles with moving parts; doors and hatches that open, sensors that swivel, and so forth. Lego's strengths were always in the design of clever models that most of us would build at least once. You could learn some neat tricks by understanding how the model designers accomplished a particular effect using a small number of bricks. I agree with posters to a previous Lego story who criticized the overabundance of specialized pieces (anathema to the creative Lego builder) and the rather exorbitant prices of Lego kits.
Perhaps Lego has decided that its future is no longer in robotics, but computers can play a role in its revival. Embrace the Internet! As so many slashdotters will attest, there are large numbers of people for whom Lego remains a unique creative outlet. Work to bring them together through the Net, and offer to sell them what they want through that same channel. More standardized, well-thought-out basic bricks, offered with the promise of volume discounts through Internet purchases. Parents who still enjoy Lego and can get access to their favourite toy in bulk and share their love of creating with a community of fellow builders will have kids who will get an early taste of the joys of building with little plastic blocks, and will thus pass on the hobby to the next generation.
In a world without walls, there is no need for Windows.
I am constantly frustrated when I try to buy Legos for my daughter. She loves building with Legos, but is not really interested in the kind of macho directions Lego has been going (fighting themes). Clikits does not fit the bill, and it's almost impossible to find a store that carries Belville sets.
Maybe if Lego would try harder and with more imagination to reach the other 50% of the zero-to-seven set, they's make more money.
Sure lego is a great toy. I loved it when I was young and even like the idea of mindstorm. But even as an adult with a very reasonable income I find lego just a bit to much. What the lego company never seemed to have grasped is economy of scale. Make it as cheap as possible so that as many people will buy it as possible. Instead they charge a premium. This is a fine business tactic until the economy goes down.
Compare premium airlines with the budget ones when the bubble burst. Compare big american cars with japanese car when the fuel crisis hit.
Oh well good luck to them. Maybe if they go bust I can pick up some mindstorm in the bargain basement.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've got 2 test subjects, er, 21-month-old boy/girl twins at home, and we allow them to play with whatever toys they want to.
Generally, they both play with (and share) the Duplo blocks (Legos are still a choking hazard), the Matchbox cars, the Mr. (and Mrs.) Potato Head, the Brio trains, my bass amp, and so on. There are also baby dolls (boy/girl twins, like them), various stuffed critters, and the Little Tykes kitchen our friends gave them. And books -- tons of 'em. Boynton, Little Golden Books, DK, Shel Silverstein poetry, Dr. Seuss, Pooh (AA Milne, not the Disney-fied crap), etc. They sometimes insist on taking a book to bed with them at nap time...
Does my son play with the trains more than the kitchen? Seems like it to me.
Does my daughter play more with the baby dolls? Again, seems like it to me.
Do we "direct" them in their play, shooing them away from any particular toy or "suggesting" to them to play with something else instead?
Absolutely not.
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
I am sure there is some reason for this, but I have yet to be told what it is.
Ever notice how often you'll find a gas station right across the street from another gas station? Even if they both have the same price? It's because there's enough traffic to justify their existence. You are describing the same trend when it comes to America's increasingly aged population.
The older you get the more pills you pop, and those pills keep costing more and more (and generating more and more profit no doubt), and when you're 75 with a cane, a stone's throw is from your bladder to the bowl, making an intersection, let alone a city block seem like a great distance.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Perhaps someone doesn't need/want to get into the whole 'circuit boards, some metal, and an arc welder' project because they don't have the space, time or knowledge to do so.
I don't understand the difference between pencil and paper and crayons and paper, or why clay is different than making mud pies, or how a CAD program is going to give me something I can hold.
I'm not sure where you got your seemingly arbitrary distinctions of what makes a toy a toy, and what can be used for 'grown-up' work; apparently you are blinding yourself to the ease of use, standard sizes, flexible assembly and unique qualities that Lego has.
Clay, paper and pencils, metal, and CAD software all serve some purpose, but when I want ten little rolling carts to hold screws, and I want it in 10 minutes, I'll go with Lego.
I'll bring you a cup of coffee while you're in the garage setting up the lathe and wirefeed.
Lego are tools that happen to be toys as well.
Don't get caught up in limiting your free expression, use the right tool, or toy, for the task at hand.
The existence of basic Legos is absolutely critical to the fostering of a generation capable of survival in the coming century, and I am not engaged in hyperbole here.
1. I work as a policy wonk, but have always had a technical bent; it's just enough that I will take apart the things that I own, or install my own software, or be mad when something is poorly designed. In a variety of other ways, I realize that the technologies I own did not happen to me and are not immutable. They are for me to use, they could have been made differently, and I fundamentally have control over them, to modify or reject them.
This is a worldview formed before, really, I had ever touched a piece of software; formed entirely from playing with Legos for HOURS A DAY when I was little. I would posit that the United States' technological elite, people who really look at a computer program or a bacteria or a steam engine and think "I could take that apart and do that better", played with Legos far more than the general population.
Cause and effect there are left as an exercise for the student, but the point remains that Legos are the preferred play object of the people who grow up and become our producers of technology; and if you think play is not that important to learning, attitude development, and general life outlook, you need to read some educational or vertebrate behavior research, or at least go watch some otters.
So if we grant that they're centrally important (and if you would doubt this, why are so many of you so fond of them? Why does Slashdot have a Lego icon?) then their *composition* and *direction* is centrally important. Our kids should feel that helicopters, robots, dinosaurs are made out of simple parts that can go together different ways, that to find out how those parts go together you have to *try things out* and *maybe screw up*, and that you, at six years old, can make something new and cool that no one has seen before and be proud of it.
The other option is just to have another pre-molded piece of plastic that works, for sure, first time. You're not sure why, someone else designed it, that's where technology comes from, I didn't have anything to do with putting it together because I can't do something like that, *fast forward ten years* what? Digital Rights Management? Biometric scanning in shopping malls? OK, I'm no engineer. These things happen, you can't change them. Is this a pill that I should take? If you say so, doctor, no point looking at it, machines are something other people make and understand and then I consume them as is, especially if they're trendy. *shudder.*
I've had trouble for years articulating why it bothered me so much that Lego was moving towards more specialized pieces and more licensed properties; they were teaching passivity and damaging the kind of play that gave me what intelligence I think I have today.
2. The tiny yellow Lego people of my youth existed in a shiny, functioning, Utopian republic, where there was no violence, no conflict, and the guy who drove the tow truck one day could - would - pilot the innovate Space Shuttle / submarine / dinosaur hybrid the next.
Maybe not a viable image of the world for the long term, but a good first impression, and one that fixed in your head an early impression that what you did with technology was design better police boats and monorails and ice cream shops and in general make a better place in which to live your lives, rather than, say, Spam programs or chemical weapons. These are all habits of mind that I want my kinds to get early, far earlier than they grasp that they must follow the hot toy or trend of the moment.
I had not realized that this was upsetting me until it appears to be moving towards a solution. Halleleujah.
cc: Lego North America.
Will Lego continue their educational branch, and if so, will it still have a robotics product?
:), in Alabama (where I lived at the time) to buy a Mindstorms set and drove 2 hours to get there at midnight to buy from a friend the day they hit the shelves.
I'm 32 and still play with and occasionally buy Mindstorms stuff. I was the first person, to my knowledge anyway
My last 2 projects involved cheating at games. 1 was made to automatically mash a button on a PS2 controller when it sensed a lightning flash in Final Fantasy X. The other jiggled my wife's Pikachu2 minigame until it was at it's happiest state. This isn't to point out how to cheat but rather how Mindstorms can be adapted to TONS of applications. I am looking forward to what my someday future children might do with them.
I definitely see them as educational toys for the teenage crowd and I don't know of anything in the same price range (which means I would pay more) with the same flexibility.
I understand Lego going back to the basics, I agree with many that they nearly specialized themselves into oblivion. I won't miss the movie tie-ins (my wife WILL miss the Harry Potter clutter though) and Bionicles was just too much to collect in the end (I tried). However, I really hope Mindstorms and the Technics line live on somehow.
Perhaps Lego needs to branch an adult-focused (ahem, not -that- kind) company so that the 2 lines (3 if you count their educational branch) can work autonomously and not pull each other down but still partner when it makes sense.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
What Lego needs to do is lower their prices. Their prices are just ludicrous! 80-120$ Can for a box of Legos? Lower the price to 20-30$ and people will buy.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
A: Lego Army men
B: Lego Star trek (yeah, ok, they'd need copyright stuff, but I know that there'd be a proliferation of lego comic things... And I'd buy them just to take pictures of the red shirted ensign pieces getting killed in various ways.)
C: Lego Warhammer 40k (finally, a cheap and fun way to play warhammer! Of course this would be directed at the younger crowd...)
D: Lego D&D (Miniatures take too damn long to paint.)
E: Lego Half life
F: Lego programming department (so the
Too bad they'd never get the copyright stuff...
I have played with Legos for over 40 years. I've built static models, moving models, even motorized and robotic models. From basic assembly skills to advanced robotic programming I have seen Legos change in a changing world. My son was brought up on Legos, and before we got a small inflatable pool for them I too stepped on them in the dark of night; Ouch!
Over the years I have followed the gradual trends, Duplo for smaller children, Techno for teenagers and the ever growing number of theme based kits. While the Robotic kits may be the big money loser, I believe that the real killer has been all those theme kits. For 20 bucks you can get a bucket with a few hundred unspecialized pieces, or 75 pieces of highly specialized blocks. Sure a race car or three little go-karts is much more like a toy, and many other things can be built with a specialized set, but collecting Legos through these specialized sets is both expensive and time consuming. Keeping specialized blocks (hands, hats and other smaller that 2X pieces) is is difficult at best. I've probably spent a week of my life at this point sifting through that sea of parts looking for some special piece or articulating joint or gear or axle to complete a project. Don't get me wrong, specialized pieces are definitely cool! But they become a huge waste of time if you don't spend almost as much on developing your own specialized storage system to deal with them.
Then there is the whole software aspect of Legos. (Anyone remember Micorserfs?) Lego spent quite a lot on Lego software. Now there are several 'virtual lego' products. I'm sure that we all remember the Lego diagrams that show how to build something. Those drawings are some of the cleanest engineering and assembly guides around. The software was supposed to enable end users to do that kind of thing, but unfortunately it crashed more machines than it loaded on in the first few go arounds. By the time that MIT's smart brick became the model for the Robotics kits there was even a slick, GUI driven programming model; one which I'm still torn by, because it's either the slickest tool for coding or one of those just over the edge towards madness gizmos depending on how the day/stress level/project deadline is. But you can't really build with Legos at the keyboard, nor can you read most displays from the floor, so I'm not sure that the whole Lego-Computer thing was very well conceived.
Now Lego with RFID tags might be something! Plug your Lego scanner into the computer and watch thOr maybe some kind of 'Etch-a-sketch' sized pad that could display how to build something would probably work better that a computer because you can use it right where you play with Legos. Your upgrade packs could come with inventory files so that the models that were displayed could be built with the pieces on hand. Hell, even a scanner to locate that missing piece could be incorporated!
I'd hate to lose a company like Lego, so I hope that they can 're-generalize and re-integrate' their product line into today's reality.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Mindstorms came later, use a bubble-gum programming interface, and has no way of expanding.
I am all for stretching their minds. But there is stretching your mind to learn algebra, and there is stretching your mind to work out Kabbalistic numerology. One is applicable to everyday life. The other is suspect at worst, and completely in-applicable to anything else at best.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I was a huge, huge Lego fan. I have most of the space sets from 1980 on to whenever it was I stopped playing with Legos, '87, or '88 I think. Still have all the catalogs, sets, and instructions.
Occasionally in a fit of nostalgia I wander into the toy section to check out the new sets, and boy have they been dumbed down. When I played with Legos, I'd have sets that had 300 pieces. The bricks were bricks...You could put them together in just about any way you wanted, regardless of what the instructions said. Now the pieces are so specialized and few there's only one way to put them together, and you can do it in 5 minutes. It's not "space" and "town" and "castle" sets anymore. I don't think those even exist, and it looks like the offerings are mostly vehicles and micro-sets, so forget building your own town or space base. I think one of the reasons that Lego is doing so badly is that most people who played with Legos when they were kids are parents now, and see the same thing I'm seeing. I bet they have started looking elsewhere for stimulating toys.
-R
Think about it: it's easy to come up with multiple uses for a simple brick. Faced with the brown log-cabin wall pieces from the old Western-themed sets, well, what would you do then? A friend of mine was puzzling over that, and finally came up with a scale model of his old, ugly foam-and-corduroy couch (with a skeleton of Technic pieces). When you _do_ come up with alternate uses for highly specialized pieces, the results are really dazzling.
As long as I'm being heretical, I'll say that the Star Wars sets are the best things that happened to Lego in ten years. Those models are much higher quality and piece count than a lot of what came before, they got lots of geeks like me involved in Lego for the first time in their adult lives, and many of the "specialized" pieces created just for Star Wars sets turn out to be very versatile and beautiful. (Printed designs on pieces have got to go, though, as does the entire ugly-as-sin Harry Potter line.)
If you don't pretend to be anyone, are you?