Slashdot Mirror
Has Lego Sold Out?
Hugh Pickens writes "Matt Richtel and Jesse McKinley write in the NY Times that for generations of American children, Legos were the ultimate do-it-yourself plaything. Little plastic bricks, with scant instructions, just add imagination. But today's construction sets are often tied to billion-dollar franchises like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and invite users to follow detailed directions, not construct their own creations from whole brick. It's less open-ended, some parents and researchers say, and more like paint-by-numbers. 'When I was a kid, you got a big box of bricks and that was it,' says Tracy Bagatelle-Black. 'What stinks about Lego sets now is that they're not imaginative at all.' Lego loyalists are quick to defend the company. Josh Wedin, the managing editor of the Brothers Brick, a Lego blog, called complaints that they are less creative 'simply ridiculous,' adding that Legos always included some instructions, though he says he misses the alternative designs that used to be on the back of the box. But Clifford Nass, a sociology professor at Stanford University who studies how people relate to the physical world versus the virtual world, says some essential qualities were lost when Lego became more like other toys. 'The genius of Lego was, you had to do the work.' Learning about frustration, Nass says, 'is a hugely important thing.'" (And watch soon for a review of The Unofficial Lego Builder's Guide, a book intended to help Lego users escape the tyranny of block-by-number instructions.)
Ah, I agree so much. I had my fair share of legos when I was a child and the building blocks were nice and generic. Nowadays, all the pieces are molded to shape whatever you're supposed to make much better, resulting in a nicer looking whatever-it-is-you-were-making, but taking it apart, I wonder if there's much of a point in trying to make something else out of it, even beside the alternatives listed on the back of the box.
I'm glad I kept most of my legos for when my son's old enough for them. Other than that it looks like I'm stuck remembering the old days fondly.
What happens in my house: my son gets a Lego set. He excitedly spends hours building them (or one hour, if it's a small one). then he plays with it a little. A few days later I find it in pieces and deconstructed all over the playroom. A few days later, something else comes out as he institutes his own creations and modifications.
It's not a matter of lacking the manual, as we have kept every manual for every set he ever received. He knows where those manuals are, too.
To me, it seems like Lego has stuck a good balance.
They have had detailed instructions that you could follow for almost as long as Lego has existed.
The problem with today Lego I that they made they completely out of proprietary big pieces that do not really fit together any other way.
You used to be able to buy some castle set, with step by step instructions, but it was made with the exact same pieces as every other set out there. So at the end of the day you could take it apart and build that castle into a space ship. Now Lego is basically just action figures and video games.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
They sold kits in the old days. They even sold kits with various themes and special (non-brick) parts.
All of this nostalgia and angst is misplaced. These people are running off on a tangent based on some idealized notion of the past rather than what actaully happened.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No crap they sold out. Branding is now all they have left after losing their cases preventing competition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lego_Group#Trademark_and_patents The only way they can continue to compete with companies like MegaBlocks is to have exclusive rights to Star Wars or Harry Potter etc etc. Honestly how much justification can you have for $50 USD plastic blocks unless you are the only game in town with whats "cool".
LEGO is expensive now, and I can't afford it... personally I see Minecraft as replacing my favourite aspects of LEGO. :)
Not all legos are equal, they have sort of diverged into two types: the traditional brick type (and in that I include even the specialized pieces, as long as they fit together in the traditional stud/brick mechanism) and the Technic/Mindstorms type, which use pieces more like girders that fit together with special connectors. The brick type has moved more in the licensing/set model direction, and those I sort of agree that the creativity seems to be missing these days. But I have to admit I'm glad they came up with a decent lego millenium falcon, which was absolutely perfect for my son for Christmas a year ago.
On the other hand, the Technic/Mindstorms type still focuses a lot on creativity, with alternate directions for different models included, and lots of resources available for idea books and programming and such. If you look on the Lego education site, they seemed to almost have moved in the opposite/more creative direction, with resources for bodging together Mindstorms electronic components with a metal frame & RC servo-based robotics construction system (vertex? Tetrix? I forget what it was called) that another company makes.
Bottom line, if you want to emphasize creativity, go Technic early, then maybe branch off to mindstorms.
Meh, simple solution, a FOSS brick required. Free as in the design and many companies can compete for the supply. So FOSS LEGO promoted to replace proprietary LEGO and to make the creativity of design and assembly open to far more children from all over the globe.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I don't know. I always built them with the instructions, just once and never again to see it as they imagined it, and then I never touched the instructions again. I'd then tear it down and do my own shit.