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Lego Mindstorms: What Went Wrong?
latif writes "In recent years, Lego Mindstorms has generated more media buzz for Lego than
all of its other product lines combined, but surprisingly, Mindstorms seem to
be out of favor at Lego. The Mindstorms line has been cut down to a
single set and Lego is not interested in marketing even that set. Lego has been in
a lot of financial trouble in recent times and its neglect of a product line
with solid sales potential might seem odd but this is not so. I have done an
analysis of Lego's Mindstorms options and my analysis indicates that Lego has
solid economic reasons for backing away from the Mindstorms line."
The thing that made legos great was how much they used to enable creativity. Now they've gone the other way, and all the sets prevent you from making your own creation because of wierd specialized pieces.
Go back to the basics. Hell, just go back to Space Police, Blacktron, Castle, and Forest legos. That'd be cool.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
On the plus side, at least they keep on churning out basic tubs.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I love Legos* to death, but they are just too damn expensive. Normal, everyday people just don't like the idea of paying a hundred bucks for a couple of handfuls of plastic blocks, no matter how cool they are.
On the more specific topic of the Mindstorms kit, the author of that article seems to assume everyone who might be interested in Lego would be interested in Mindstorms, which just isn't true. Most people aren't interested in programming their own toys. I know it is difficult for geeks to believe this (and I say this as a professional C++ programmer for the past 10 years), but it is true.
*(yeah, that's right, I called them Legos, suck it down trademark Nazis)
No wonder Lego is in financial trouble--Someone is stealing them all!
I lost interest in Lego before Mindstorms, because all the sets I wanted - like the Model Team line or the high end Technics - cost over $200. They might have more sucess if they had the more popular models in stores and moved the higher end stuff to mail order status to reduce inventory and price. Instead of getting a phancy box with packs of individual parts, you get an instruction book in a plain box with a bunch of parts in zip lock baggies.
Yes, a Mindstorms set's production costs are probably 10% of retail, but this is the toy business, where production costs are not the main issue, and keeping on top of a fickle marketplace is.
There are likely to be slotting fees that Lego has to pay on an ongoing basis to keep each of its products in stores, and no doubt Lego is trying to make the smart business decision of maximizing profitability by using that shelf space to sell products that have higher volume and the same level of profitability.
No argument that it would be cool to have more Lego Mindstorms sets available, but unfortunately this ain't the perfect world, and things are never as simple as they seem from outside the corporation.
I heard that in 2004, American colleges graduated but 40,000 engineers while Pacific Rim ones graduated 450,000. Not only that, when you consider that 1/3 to 1/2 of American students are actually forigners, the picture looks even bleaker!
This is sad and pathetic! America needs a reality check lest we become an Engineering third world country!What went wrong is they charge $200 for a toy. That's the only reason I don't have one.
Yeah, you can find some on ebay for less, but who's counting those 718 parts?
Over at legoeducation.com you can find school-oriented Mindstorms kits, and you can also buy each of the most expensive parts (RCX, sensors, motors) individually.
Better to
My favorite Lego sets have always been the Kinetics set (the ones with the gears and pullies and blocks with holes). Those would've been so much more fun if I had a Mindstorm set...
When I look at Mindstorm, it's anyone's first step into programmable machines and robotics. It's actually how they teach some Mechanical Engineering and Systems Design Courses at school. It's an extremely versitile tool for learning. The Science/Engineering summer camp that the faculty runs, some age groups have extensive portions of the week focused on Mindstorms, and the kids loves it.
I admit that there may not be too much profit to marketing the set commercially, but to give it up entirely, I think a lot of benefits would be lost.
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"If everything seems to be going well, you obviously don't know what the hell is going on." - Murphy's Law
Someone made a "battlebot out of lego mindstorms, they didn't get past the qualifying rounds though, some about being smashed to peices?!
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It's an interesting write-up, but I think the conclusions latif's come to aren't warranted. Firstly, all the speculation about Mindstorms price elasticity of demand are based on the assumption that strong consumer interest exists. Lego Mindstorms is competing against (read in the same price range) as Robosapien and the like. These toys are in a premium segment of the market - they're the "big gift" for Christmas and birthdays. Without having seen any sales figures, I'd be surprised if there were strong demand for Mindstorms - the price is just too high. It's anecdotal, but I've only ever seen a few (if any) mindstorm stock items on the shelves in any of the stores I've ever been into. And, they've typically been in electronics stores, not toy shops. That's not typically a characteristic of a high demand item.
To be honest, it looks like someone's just completed an economics course and decided to try applying their knowledge to a real-world problem. I mean, the only point in examining price elasticity of demand in this context would have been if one had already established that Lego was losing money and were interested in determining whether or not Lego could raise prices without sacrificing sales. Same goes for the piece cost analysis. Which doesn't take into account the complexity of unique parts, I might add - Lego can achieve some degree of economies of scale with their common parts (6x2 / 4x2 bricks, helmets, etc). Mindstorms has a large number of parts that are only relevant for the Mindstorms line (such as gears, IR sensors, pulleys, etc). Production costs are likely to be higher, and because they're not piggy-backing on a fad (like Harry Potter or Star Wars), sales are also probably going to be lower.
The assumption that Mindstorms is cannibalising sales is also a stretch, in my opinion. Far more likely that their association with movie brands such as Star Wars and Harry Potter creates substitutable products. Both those brands, as an example, are pitched at the same demographic. And, neither is strictly complementary, from a kid's perspective. Which would you rather - a complete line-up of Star Wars characters, vehicles, and environs, or a blend of HP and SW?
In my opinion, the simpler explanation is that Mindstorms appeals to a very small niche - kids who think with parents who are trying to encourage learning and are willing to spend the time with their kids. Far more likely that they never achieved the scale of sales they were expecting, but because of the sunk costs associated with R&D and brand development, they're unwilling to kill the line entirely. Whether or not that's the economically wise decision depends on their unit revenue and long-run average cost of production.
This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
But let's talk about Mindstorms. I bought one when they first came out. They cost $200. That is a lot of money for a kid's toy (you can buy a Nintendo DS and two games for that). You can only program them with the Lego Mindstorms software which I found annoying and limited (I soon found the free C complier for it on the internet). I don't even think it would work with my Mac that I have today.
What kind of sensors did you get? As I remember you got.. 2 touch sensors. Or was it 3. And two motors. They offered rotational sensors (cost extra), a vision system (costs a TON extra), etc. I just spent $200 on a Lego set (that didn't include enough pieces, if you ask me), I'm NOT going to go buy a $50-$100 camera for it (I don't know what it costs, wasn't available when I bought it).
I think that was the last Lego set I bought. I used to love Lego. But there isn't anything like it today that I know of. Legos aren't the same. I remember building house kits, airplanes kits, a moon base with a monorail, the trains, and all sorts of other stuff. Today they seem to license half their product lines and there is almost nothing "normal" like I remember.
Maybe Megablocks or one of the other "rip-offs" is better. I don't know. I never looked. But Lego priced themselves out of my market. A quick check on Amazon shows the set is still $200. What can I buy for $200 bucks? Let's look at some of the things I've been looking at lately. I can buy a little stirling engine that will run off sunlight or the heat of my had for $140. Or for the same amount, I can buy a Steam Engine kit. A working kit that includes a whistle, governor, and more. Both of those leave me with $60 to spend (a video game, perhaps?).
The older I got, the fewer Lego products I got as gifts for Christmas and such. While there were things I wanted, they just got more expensive. About the only models I remember wanting to build since I was maybe 10 or 12 (I'm currently 22) cost $100-$200.
Between the proliferation of video games, other electronic gadgets, and issues like I mentioned above, I think Lego will be a gonner soon. My parents had a hell of a time finding me an Erector set when I was a kid. I don't know if that has changed, but between that and Lego, what is there for kids to build things with these days?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Specialized bricks are what is killing Lego!
There, we may all go on with trying to catch up with all the new stories that just appeared...which are dated several hours ago.
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In a computer class I taught to middle school kids last year, I was the lucky recipient of a grant to outfit the whole class (7 groups worth of kids) with Mindstorms. I spent a semester teaching them not only the basics of Mindstorms, but how to program, how to debug, how to test, and all the other basics for computer programming. They had a blast doing the different projects, and I've never seen these kids so engaged before. Several of them actually wanted to come in after school and work on their robots which is unheard of. This is sad if Lego is cutting back on that and all but phasing it out.
I was in a club in high school called TSA (Technology Student Association) and one of the most popular events at regional, state, and national levels of competition is the System Control event, which 99% of teams use the Lego Dacta/Mindstorms equipment. However, with all these single-use model pieces, theres no real room left for the imagination, thus why it's dying.
If Lego starts killing off these branded, model-building ploys and goes back to where they are strong - a tool to use the imagination, I think they will survive. I've been seeing some new stuff that looks promising, some firehouses and trucks and such, that reminds me of Lego of old, perhaps if they can go more that way (and back to other good ole themes, Pirates, Castles, Space, Submarines, etc - things that you can build the models once, then break them down and mix and match to build your own ideas) then they will be ok. If not, RIP Lego, a victim of bad decision making.
Then there is always the having good software issue...
Two guy I work with have a kids who are involved with other 4th and 5th graders doing a club thing with Mindstorms. One guy had me redo an unused five year old laptop from Win2K (which it came with) down to Win98. This is because he heard the software (even the newer version) works best under Win98. Most of my web searches seemed to confirm this information.
If it doesn't work well under XP, which comes on almost every new PC, you aren't going to get a lot of good "word of mouth" advertising.
After owning a RIS kit for some years now + expansion kits, having gone to the Robotics challenge at LegoLand, and demoing the kit at various school functions, here's my observations about it:
This kit has or had potential to hook kids into robotics, but IMHO they should emphasize extending a "video game" interface into real life peripherals (ie, doing something in a "video game" experience causes something in real life with Mindstorms something like augmented reality). Once kids see augmented reality with Mindstorms, then that can hook them into learning how to do the more complex things, like programming. Furthermore, open up the kit so other companies can extend the kit without threats of lawsuits from Lego.
Why do we have to turn everything in to a time limited, disposable, keep repurchasing nightmare?
Because companies are in for the long haul.
Let's say they take your advice, and build a Mindstorms lineup with the cool electronics bricks on the cheap. Say, $40 for the RIS with just the electronics and mechanical parts. Maybe a couple of add-on sets for more electronics and mechanical gears. Then say they go back to selling the big boxes of bricks again, like they had when I was a kid. You use these to build the models themselves, and the RIS stuff for the movement and such. Mark it all at a reasonable price so that for $100-150, you can get one fantastic set of Legos that will let you build anything you can imagine, as a kid. Nothing huge, but all the joy of Lego plus the learning experience of the Mindstorms gear. Easily done, and they'd make a killer profit. Everybody would get one.
Then next year rolls around, and they go out of business. Those Lego bricks *last*. My sister's kids will be playing with the same bricks I had 30 years previously. As long as you don't lose them to the evils of the vaccum cleaner, they just freakin' last forever.
Lego just has an unusual business. They're into selling timeless toys, but the problem with timeless toys is that they are actually timeless. They sold the big boxes of bricks 30 years ago and it almost killed the company. It's all down to profit, really. They make more money selling those crappy models with all the custom pieces and selling *less* of them than they did by selling the generic bricks on the cheap at a still substantial profit.
Yes, we all want the big buckets of bricks and we all want the electronic coolness that is the Mindstorms line, but the fact is that selling those is not a way to achieve long term profitability. They're not trying to sell to you right now, they're trying to continue selling to you and your kids, and their kids, forever.
Okay, so that sucks, but it does make sense from their point of view.
One thing not seemingly mentioned anywhere is that Lego seems to have the notion building internally of starting up a different market for the older people into Lego. Us old people who still remember the big buckets of bricks can sign up for their catalog. I got one the other day, and yes, you can buy bricks in bulk. Not random sets, but sets of specific brick types, basically by the bag. It's kinda interesting, actually. For the Lego-philes, I recommend looking around their webpage and signing up for the catalog to see what's what there. Yes, the catalog is full of all the Harry Potter and Spiderman crap, but in the center is a nice foldout where you can just buy pieces in bulk. You could amass one hell of a large lego collection for a decent price by buying one bag of everything they have. Or if you have a specific idea, it would be great for making a large model of whatever type you like.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
One thing the author does not seem to take into account is the fixed cost of creating machines, factories, etc.. to build any blocks or other items specific to mindstorms. Even if the RIS is selling for 3 times the price of similarly equiped sets if way less people are buying the RIS it may not be worth the cost of keeping the factory running and other fixed (yearly) costs to produce that product line. The same issues come into play with the cheap chinese product he compared to the lego product. Additionally quality, place of production and other factors can all combine to make it considerably more expensive.
Frankly I find the canibalization idea pretty hard to swallow. It just doesn't seem reasonable to believe that the same people using the RIS would otherwise be out there buying all the different specialized lego models. Most likely they would be the people out there buying the big boxes of assorted pieces if they were buying legos at all. The best explanations I can think of along these lines is that either LEGO was afraid of dilluting it's child friendly brand by marketing toys which might be too complex for some young children or that if feared connecting basic lego sales to something like mindstorms where more savy adult customers are involved might allow FischerTechnik to get a foot in the door. However, neither of these seem plausible.
Ultimately I suspect the economics of selling mindstorms were just more complicated than the author realizes. He never quotes actual mindstorms sales figures, only a positive press buzz, so it is quite posssible they simply never achieved wide enough adoption to make money and there are large costs he never even considers. Marketing, deals with stores for promotions and other costs may all play a role in lego's deciscion.
While I don't think we can really say what the whole story is without more data I think a more reasonable guess is something like this. Despite positive press buzz mindstorms simply don't sell enough to generate significant amounts of profit. While the development of mindstorms itself may be a sunk cost this means it simply isn't work lego's while to develop new addons, promote the product or otherwise devote further resources. Lego discontinued all mindstorm products other than the RIS because these other *mindstorm* products were canibalizing revenue from the RIS. Even though these other product lines may have themselves been profitable without the same sales as RIS they just wouldn't have as high a margin so if a reasonable fraction of people would buy a second RIS if they didn't have these other options lego might improve profitability by dropping these additional sets. If they don't think it is worth investing more money in the mindstorm line this has no real downside for them.
As for why lego doesn't simply adjust prices to make the mindstorms sufficently profitable to justify further investment I suspect things are a little more complicated than the author suggests. The demand curve is likely far from linear which dramatic drop offs in sales if they push the price much above $200 and beyond what most people consider to be in the 'toy' range. So raising the price much isn't really an option but this doesn't imply that lowering the price would have similarly dramatic increases in purchases (the elasticity is far from constant). Likely in order to make mindstorm sales high enough to be worth significant R&D money they would have to lower the price so considerably that then mindstorms would directly canabalize regular lego sales (if you can get the computer set for an extra $30 who wouldn't).
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
When it comes to the play experience, much of the fun of assembling a robot is similar to the fun of building a city or an empire in SimCity or Age of Empires. Instead of gears and pulleys, you manipulate serfs or workers or whatever ... but otherwise it's all figuring out what thingies do what and how to combine them to do what-ever.
Lego has the great advantage of being physical and tactile, but OTOH computer games do much better with graphics and sound. I feel the same sense of pride in a well-built empire as I do in a well-build Lego thingy ... and the computer game has the added element of competition (... and, ahem, cheat codes ... .)
As to the impact on our educational system ... it may be unfortunate that the engineering skills Lego can teach are something America may be falling behind on, based on the number of engineers in our schools. However, the skills of organizing a complex organization (a.k.a. empire) may be just as valuable. Is it better to be a top-notch engineer, or to be the employer of a dozen top-notch engineers?
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Most of what has been said is true. In addition to pricing issues, I believe that the expansion sets were not very well laid out. After purchasing my initial kit in 1999, I waited for the expansions to come with the other cool sensors, but the kits that came really didn't offer much (especially at their $50 price point). To get the special sensors I was going to have to special order them individually at an outrageious price. I did purchase a few Technic kits to canabalize for parts for my robots though. The other issue I had with the kit, though this wouldn't have caused sales problems but would have been nice for the next generation of mindstorms, was that all my robots were built around the brick, motors and sensors. If the motors and sensors had been slighly less expensive and more readily available individually, I would have picked up more of them and if the main brick could have been smaller and seperated from the robot somehow (perhaps with a central wiring harness brick) then I could have built more robots without having to take one robot apart just to make another one. This would have help increase sales. I think that Lego should have embraced the other programming options for the Mindstorm.
Bottom line, smaller Mindstorm kits on store shelves for motors, sensors, gears, etc; Continued gradual improvements to keep the product line moving forward.
Back in the (my) day, Lego just sold boxes full of rectangular blocks, mostly just red and white ones, with some gray flat plates and the occasional clear or triangular roof tiles. I made TWA jetliners, Apollo rockets (they had to be square, since I didn't have enough curved pieces), space ships, tanks, garages, bridges and tunnels for my Hot Wheels, etc.
The sets didn't include step-by-step instructions for making any of these things. AAMOF, I don't remember any instruction sheets at all.
Inspiration came from the pictures on the Lego box and the imaginations of my friends and myself.
Years ago, I looked back at my Legos and realized it was probably the most influential toy of my childhood. Hence, I wanted to pass this glorious experience on to my son. I spent, along with the help of many relatives, literally thousands of dollars on Lego for my boy.
We started with Duplo, then graduated up the Lego ladder. As time passed, the kits became, as others have noted here, very specific to themes, and highly specialized. Sometimes the pieces were so specialized that they would not work well with other kits.
I watched my son assemble these kits, following the supplied instructions exactly. He was very good at it, and he was very happy with the results he got. He also got to be very good at troubleshooting where he put in the wrong piece in Technics sets. This was a Good Thing(TM), I thought.
Then one day, while he was bored, I suggested that take apart some of his Lego and build something new from the pieces. He looked at me like I had three heads. He asked me where he could get instructions for assembling new objects, since he had already assembled all of the variations of the kits' instruction manuals.
I was crestfallen. It confirmed right then and there that Lego Corporate had, over the years, managed to remove all the imagination and excitement of Lego and kids being creative with simple chunks of plastic.
Then Mindstorms came out! I was so excited that I bought a set right away, plus a few (expensive) accessories for it. I gave it to my son, at the time 9 years old, for Christmas. Once he saw that it contained no instructions for specific projects he lost interest quickly.
Some may read my post and judge my son to be an unimaginitive drudge without capacity for creative thought. He isn't that at all. But he has been conditioned by Lego, through Lego products, to treat Lego as a step-by-step construction project, much like a 3D jigsaw puzzle.
Lego might as well print on the box "No Imagination Required!" on all their products.
Let's play Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I'll be Pestilence.
There are some great sets that Lego still makes.
The Designer series is top notch and a current favorite of mine. Sure there are some custom pieces here and there but the majority are hinges and cosmetic blocks that can be used in many interesting ways. The models are great too; I've got a T-rex by my monitor at work and a (sadly discontinued) crab sitting on my system at home.
The Technic series is still going strong from the eighties. What's not to like?
The City is like the LegoLand sets of old that you probably remember. There are a few other lines that are in the same vein but those little yellow people don't interest me as much as they did when I was a child.
And the new Factory series are designed by fans. I'm strongly recommending that you check them out.
Lego is a for profit company and will continue to manufacture what sells. Licensed products like Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Dora the Explorer are making them money so they will continue to make them. They have had moderate success with their annoying Bionicle line so it is still being added to. All is not lost yet; Lego is still making some decent and interesting products, so go out and support those.
P.S. You can also get buckets of regular blocks. Think about that the next time you want to buy that Star Destroyer.
Lego has a great product. There is nothing wrong with the product. It is not hard to develop or research because the blue prints can be derived from real life applications, like the Technic series was.
The person who wrote the article stated that Lego assembly was "scripted" and "devoid of imagination". The only people who wrote that stuff are the people who HAVE not imagination. Generally, this can be attributed to the marketing agency which limits itself to a select few brand names or icons that they believe people will recognize and buy products related to the other icons or brands insted of the Lego brand. Hence, Spider-man, and Harry Potter get more recongintion than Lego. The people in charge of marketing did not help Lego, the helped the people at Marvel Comics and Time Warner. Accounting also has a hand in the destruction of the Lego corporation. These are simiple plastic peices that can be manufactured at any plastics molding plant. However, the accounting department decided that only China should be given the honor. Hence, instead of producing an inexpensive product, the cost of creating the Legos have increased.
If consumers aren not happy, the investors won't be happy, and the Lego corporation won't be happy. It is a loss for everyone.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
That's not the only stupid thing they've done recently. In 2004 they decided to change their 50-odd year core colour palette.
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The light gray and the dark gray changed into a light blueish gray and a dark blueish gray, which were given the derisory name "bley" by the aficionado AFOL community (AFOL=Adult Friends Of Lego).
All new sets since 2004 contain only pieces with the new grays, making it difficult for owners of existing sets to build anything without ending up with a patchwork of different shades of gray in their creations. The brown color was also changed into a more reddish colour.
The official response from the LEGO CEO can be read here: http://f24.parsimony.net/forum61776/messages/9746
As far as I am concerned, I think LEGO is aiming too much towards the market of "grown-up" children who are interested in robots and monsters. The Bionicle sets are cool, but they do not belong in the LEGO construction system. They don't even have studs, they don't interlock with the standard pieces. They sell well, good for them, but they are just one of endless companies to fight in that market.
My feeling is that LEGO could rediscover its roots (and sell) by targeting once again the small children market, with small sets mostly made of standard pieces, as in the famed Legoland series, or the much-loved Classic Space series.
The fact that LEGO is currently showing no sense of direction saddens me to no end.
To conclude with a further tiny bit of information, if you want to find again the old sets that you loved as a child, you might find this site quite interesting: www.bricklink.com
Legos don't die. That's half their fun. If the company goes bankrupt tomorrow and liquidates everything they have, renaming Legoland to Megabloktopia and dumping the Harry Potter franchise, there's more than enough Legos out there to sustain the hard-core Lego fans until the generic people step up production.
Specialized bricks have their place. I agree on the one hand that many of them ARE one-use only crap. It's true. I used to love getting their space sets (seems like a popular choice here) and trying to make copies of space sets I already had, and sometimes ones that I just saw in the nifty catalogues that used to come out and for those, you usually needed a couple of those specialized pieces. Great concept... warring space empires ripping off each other's designs for their own knock-off vehicles.
Then came the age of pirates. I loved the boats and still have a huge fleet of them, but the set that is both my most beloved and my most hated was that one where you made a small island fortress using three (I think... I'd have to dig it out of the closet) huge wall pieces and a cannon. I didn't have enough matching pieces to add on to it without it looking stupid, and using the walls for another project always looked a little stupid becuase they didn't fit in with the rest of my sets very well.
And then I couldn't use my basic bricks because they looked out of place and kiddy (who has a solid blue townhouse next to their neighbor's solid yellow townhouse? And what pirate would be caught dead with a bright red castle?) Next the doors looked out of place so they went out of circulation... then the thick wheel units...
Eventually I just gave up on legos altogether because basically I could make the set and have a fun shelf-saver or I could have a bunch of little dinky pieces that, when I was younger, I would have loved turning into lasers for space ships (since EVERYTHING became a laser for my space army's ships) but now exist as just feeder for the bottom of my tubs.
Long story longer, the bricks didn't change... we did. With a little creativity all those one use only pieces probably can be used for all kinds of things... we're just too short-sighted to enjoy them without Lego giving us a couple of alternative ideas. I was blown away the time I saw someone place a fence upside down between two rows of holes and built up from there. My suggestion... give those one-offs to your kids and see how many cool things they can come up with.
As for mindstorms themselves (so I at least appear to be on topic)... never tried them for the same reason I didn't enjoy the few Technic sets I tried... they weren't "pure" Lego. Although I'm sure this is news to some of you, but not everyone that plays with Legos is an engineer in training, some of us just liked having another medium to play in and trying to work the technic stuff into the stuff we were already building was more trouble than it was worth. Nobody is blaming Lego for the lack of support of Clickits or that morphing-boy-show lego set, both of which I think would have touched much larger markets than the robot-fan group.
Oh, and while I'm complaining... I saw the Megablok's Narnia set, the Winter Rescue one, and could I be any more disappointed? Well, only if Lego had made it. There's the mini-figs of a few players and then almost everything else is one big one-use-only brick. It's bad enough they've probably scared Marvel out of the Construction toy market... now they're ruining the one thing that could have given Harry Potter legos some real fight.
I'm suprized they don't have a $100-200 kit that has a motor, video cam, and wheels, so one could wirelessly control the vehicle one makes. That'd even work for non-Lego hovercraft.
The problem with mindstorms was that it was only entertaining for a certain amount of time. Once you learned the programming and how to make a robot that could follow a black line, there was really nothing else you could do that would be all that entertaining. Other lego sets have more flexibility once you get bored with what the instructions tell you to make.
One of my brothers friends had some real solid gold and silver lego bricks. His father was a goldsmith and seemingly just made them for fun.
I think most of ours were inherited or from garage sales. Though i do remember when i first got one of the knights and castles models that had custom pieces - even back then i wasn't too happy about it.
Maybe Lego are running Mindstorms into a siding because it turns kids onto programming and thus away from building real things with Lego?
This is a bit of a reach, but I know that as a kid I soon lost interest in making real things once I learned to program. You can't save an earlier version of a Lego model before making a revision. And I know I'm not the only one.
Xenu loves you!
Like many here, I'd say I did the same - used to build any space-ship seen on TV in a somewhat square form. Even out of red house bricks if necessary (grey being rarer than it was before space lego). If you wanted a model, you'd get an Airfix kit instead - but they had far less appeal to me. I don't know how long I'd play with my Lego creations before pulling them apart into something else, but it felt more like drawing, than gluing and painting plastic. Modeling was more about make model, display model - you didn't even play with it after. I think that attracts a different personality type.
.NET Harry Potter edition?
Of course I think one thing that's really hit Lego has been computer games - the feeling I'd get playing the early versions of Sim City or Civ was pretty much the same as I'd get from covering the entire floor area with a Lego city. And like Lego the fun has been driven out of those games as they've got closer to reality in their graphics.
Does the decline of Lego explain the rise of Visual Studio? Just click the components into place and there - you've made a program. Will be have
'Capitalists of the world, unite! Oh
They're expensive for a very good reason. The manufacturing tolerances on those little bastards are absurdly tight, because they have to click together solidly, tightly enough that you can build something out of a few hundred bricks and not have it crack apart under its own weight, but loosely enough that they can be pried apart with the force an average 8-year-old can exert. That implies very demanding engineering requirements indeed. Take a look at those little bricks, and measure them. I can easily believe the dimensions on any of the next million bricks off LEGO's assembly line all match to within 0.1% or better.
Now, that would be not so terribly hard to do in metal, because metal is a very reliable material to work. You can mold it, punch it, machine it and cast it and easily make sure every one of a million copies of a given piece matches the rest to the nearest tenth millimeter. But it is a real bitch in plastic, because plastic has all kinds of non-Newtonian fluid weirdness that make it much harder to positively guarantee the final dimensions of a piece.
In short, LEGO's ability to manufacture those bricks in plastic and to the required high tolerance is a real engineering feat. Hence, it costs. You can easily buy LEGO clone bricks for much, much cheaper. But 10% of them won't click to the rest at all, and anything you build bigger than about 50 bricks will just fall apart.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a similar case with the RCX unit. The....ah, person of modest real-world experience, shall we say, who wrote TFA compares it to some piece of electronic trash that would probably fail in 90 days of real use and concludes: Gee, they look the same and have the same stated functions, so I guess they ought to cost the same to manufacture.
Might as well have looked at a Mercedes E-class and a Yugo and said: Gee, they both have four wheels and an engine, and are designed to transport me at highway speed -- they must cost about the same to manufacture! So why does the Benz retail for so much more?
A lego plan is valuable in the same way that "hello, world" is valuable -- it teaches you a technique that you can apply to your own designs.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?