I should really be summarizing Asamera Oil Corp. Ltd. v. Sea Oil and General Corp. right now (it’s as fascinating as you think it is), but…
Mark Kleiman has a point about the imagination requirement for toys steadily dropping, although I’m not sure how grounded it is; after all, interactive talking toys have been practically de-facto for girls and boys alike at least since I was little. (Well do I remember horrific advertisements for various baby dolls which would whine on cue, or piss themselves, or be incredibly annoying until you cuddled them – presumably this was valuable training for the mommies of tomorrow.) Likewise, art supplies with strict guidelines have been around at least since I was a littl’un – and before, considering that really, all that these things really are, are more advanced versions of colouring books.)
But he’s definitely right on one serious point. Lego just sucks now. When I was a kid, Lego was goddamned awesome in every way it was possible for little plastic things that were potential choking hazards could be. I remember that every box, every little kit, would have the image of the finished product on the front of the box – and then the back of the box would have at least half a dozen alternate ideas. It was like the Lego people were daring you.
“Any kid can build Lego from the plans. The plans are nothing. Do you see this awesome space interceptor? How did we make that happen with only the bricks in this box? Can you figure out? Can you surpass our creations?”
I’m not even slightly joking – those illustrations on the back of the box were a goldmine. They were imagination triggers, hardwired to the frontal cortex of every little kid who got Lego for their birthday. And they were only the start, of course, because once you started fooling around with the bricks from one set, you inevitably made the leap of logic, the one where you realized that not only could you mess around with the bricks from one set, you could mess around with the bricks from all the sets. Lego was interchangeable in every way that mattered.
And then they started making Lego sets for Star Wars.
Yes, I blame Star Wars for ruining Lego. There are other licensed product lines for Lego, of course, but Star Wars started it all. Take a look at this Lego version of Slave One. It is certainly quite badass in its own way, but it comes with special-use bricks, like most of the Lego licensed product lines do.
The thing about special-use bricks, specifically designed for a given product, is that they’re, well, special – the more specific the use for a given Lego brick, the less universally useful it is. Sometimes this can be economical – I’m thinking here of the early Lego Castle products, where the castle wall segments on their own were much more useful for speedy castle-building than the requisite number of individual grey bricks necessary to build up a big castle would have been, and furthermore reduced the cost of the product. But the castle wall pieces were, still, the basic building block of a big-ass Lego castle. The equivalent to what has happened with Lego nowadays would be entire pre-built walls. Which, sadly, is exemplified here with Hogwarts Castle.
And this is the norm, you see. Check out the Lego B-wing, which has so many custom bricks I’m amazed anybody still calls it Lego. It’s not just Star Wars, either – look at this Batmobile or this really horrific Lego Spongebob Squarepants. It’s crossed over into the non-licensed product as well: look at this Lego shark or this space-tank.
And of course, there aren’t any alternate construction ideas on the back of any of these boxes, which now more than ever are most likely to be the first non-Duplo Lego a child receives (because it’s Batman and Star Wars – I am not so jaded as to pretend that were I a kid, I would not want Batman and Star Wars in my Lego). Why would there be? Suggesting that there’s a different way to build the Batmobile – that ruins your licensing partner’s potential branding. (Up next: Indiana Jones Lego.)
The net effect of all of this is to take Lego from what it was and should be, and just turn it into another crappy line of action figures. Except that this particular line of action figures tends to fall apart when you play with them, so they’re not even particularly good in that regard.
In short: why couldn’t George Lucas just be satisfied with ruining his own products?
UPDATE: I want to make something clear here, because I don’t think I spelled it out properly: Lego for adults is different from Lego for kids. Of course it’s not impossible to build originally with more specialized bricks, but more specialized bricks discourage innovation simply by their very nature – if you implement a higher learning curve to use fancier bricks, less children are going to bother to use them except as directed, and thus the Legos are going to be less imagination-provoking. Yes, it’s wonderful that sites like Brickshelf and other Lego-enthusiast centres are around, and it’s great that there are Lego specialty stores where the staff primarily want to teach kids to “build outside the box,” but the vast majority of kids won’t access those, either because of lack of chance or lack of ability (Brickshelf isn’t kid-oriented, after all).
I mean, let’s be serious: Bionicle, one of the best-selling Lego products ever, is not popular because it offers awesome new ways to build with Lego. It’s popular because they’re action figures. The Bionicle pieces just aren’t designed to do much else other than be Bionicle parts, and while they might not be completely useless in conjunction with regular Lego (“reguLego”?), your average six-to-eight-year-old isn’t gonna grab a Bionicle and think “wow, this leg provides a fantastic cross-brace for that model I’ve been working on.”
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Indiana Jones legos? they did that line already, except non-licensed as Johnny Thunder and probably better.
I agree, lego needs to put those alternate pictures back on those boxes. specific pieces sometimes can be more fun to work with, but kids need to have some sort of inspiration to think of how to use those pieces.
Yeah, it kinda sucks these days. When the special pieces outnumber the generic, it’s not so great. I remember, though, getting some fun use out of special parts for a plane – specifically, the wings and pieces used for the cockpit. The cockpit pieces became, in my imagination, a sort of claw that opened and shut and crushed things, while the wings just jutted out from the back of my robot, Starscream style.
Holy cow! I knew they made these sets and they suck. But what makes it worse is that it looks like they no longer make the general, unthemed kits. They’re all specialized!!!
I wonder if they still make wooden blocks. unless star wars has gotten ahold of them too! 🙁
Legos are still the greatest toy ever. Anyone of any age can enjoy them, and goddamn if it ain’t fun not following the directions.
Goddamn you, Lego, for not giving children of all ages the chance to do wacky shit with Legos.
The problem looks more like aesthetic evolution.
Today’s kids, after being weened on Playstation 2 are no longer going to be satisfied with toy models that look like something that belongs on a Commodore 64.
however, the point is valid, the less universal a block is, the less happiness it can bring a child unless it is specifically used for a specific model under a specific license… which goes against everything Lego was first established as.
Of course, there are still those that refuse to play by those rules:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=61438
It’s not quite that bad. As someone who has been buying Lego sets over the past few years, I can say that most of the booklets included with the sets have alternate models in them. Even my Batman set. Additionally, Lego still makes generic sets. I got a great bucket that just had random pieces in it. I do agree about the specialized pieces, but my son still manages to make use out of them. The trick seems to be avoiding the really expensive sets.
Bird – Good luck on finals. Seriously, professors love IRAC.
Today’s kids, after being weened on Playstation 2 are no longer going to be satisfied with toy models that look like something that belongs on a Commodore 64.
Today’s kids don’t give a damn, just as no kids before them gave a damn. They don’t discern like adults do (or think they do). If something is fun, it’s fun, period. I was practically hooked up to my SNES with an IV, but I still enjoyed the ever-loving shit out of my Legos, my old Atari 2600, and various action figures inherited from my much older brother.
What people could really use is a visit to a Lego-only specialty store. I’ve seen the one down in Downtown Disney, Orlando, Florida, and there are two things there that might get kids (and adults!) thinking outside of the box.
1) There are several displays that show unique things made with mostly generic Lego blocks. For instance, several windows show easily identifiable cities. New York is there, with King Kong climbing a skyscraper and alligators swimming in the sewers. Venice has water made of Lego, with a motorized boat rocking back and forth. The thing is, while these displays obviously took more time and thought to produce, compared to the effort someone would have to make to construct a Lego Star Wars ship, these displays do look very fun and rewarding, and thus may ignite a desire to be creative with one’s own Legos.
2) Luckily, the store has bins full of generic blocks in all shapes and sizes (I think one buys them based on weight, or based on what size containerr you use to collect these blocks. I forget). The message is thus: You’ve seen the cool things you can make, now go ahead and grab your supplies so you will make cool stuff.
(Good luck on your finals)
I’m sorry, but this whole “special pieces” and “no imagination” nonsense irks me. It’s simply not true.
http://www.daveexmachina.com/wordpress/?p=1955
Jesus CHRIST people, I call bullshit on this. This is just another example of people claiming that “things just ain’t what they used to be. Why, back in my day…”. Don’t you realize that every generation and whatnot since the beginning of time has thought this? Same crap as people who say “so and so is raping my childhood”. Just because every damn piece isn’t a bigass brick that can combine to make a bigger brick doesn’t mean that you can’t take these “specialized” pieces and use them in creating more imaginative designs, you just need to have the imagination to do it, children included. Plus, a lot of these pieces allow you to create things that you never could have before, such as awesome robots of destruction, and who doesn’t like those.
Oh, except Bionicle does suck, mainly because they don’t have any connecting bricks at all. At least with all the other sets they are based off of bricks, Bioncle is just…yeah, action figures.
I’m afraid that as a 16 year old who only stopped playing with lego regularly two or three years ago, I must de-lurk to disagree. Almost all of our lego was Harry Potter based and the thin plastic roofs and walls were some of the best parts because you can use them for other stuff. The roofs on the castle alone can be boats, toboggans, tents or an iron maiden. Yes you can make all those things from just bricks, but by the time you finish whatever you’re constructing the story has moved on and it’s time for it to get blown up. So it worked quite well for us if we only had to put four pieces together because it just let our imaginations get on with it. I think specialized pieces actually force you to be more imaginative because you have to think of how to use them in interesting ways.
Ah, LEGO. So many memories. I’ve still got maybe three tubs of it in the basement somewhere. My friends and I would always build rival civilizations and fight wars with our LEGO.
btw, that’s a Y-Wing, not a B-Wing http://starwars.lego.com/en-us/Products/classic/6208.aspx
…curse you George Lucas, I was using those brain cells!!
The joy of legos is that you don’t need a context or instruction book to play with them. It is fun to just click the blocks together and build. To me, it really doesn’t matter what the blocks look like – I can just play and make anything I want out of them. I would love to see the bricks from the B-Wing model be dumped in front of a 4 year old with no instructions or picture to guide him and tell him to build anything he wants – are you telling me his imagination is now limited because of the special pieces? In fact, I would argue that the specialized pieces can spark a child’s imagination more than a simple brick can.
Lego still sells buckets of random simple bricks for those who are threatened by the odd shaped ones.
I don’t know if there are as many specialised pieces as you think. The people designing the lego models are /really/ good at what they do, and (at least in the Y-wing) there aren’t any specialty pieces aside from the shopvac and the minifig gun. And (as the father of a pair of children with approximately 20,000,000 legos, including many of the Star(tm)(r)(c) Wars(r)(tm)(c) sets) in my experience small children will take these elaborately coiffed kits, rip them to tiny bits, and build their own things from scratch which have nothing to do with the original design.
Some of the new non-minifig figures (the “super battle droid”, and the space invader) are pretty horrible, but they’re also so fragile that they disintegrate almost immediately and self-sort themselves out of the collection.
Actually, the trend in Lego away from generic pieces and toward more set-specific molds has been a long time in coming, since the day of the dreaded BURP (big ugly rock piece) — see 2001: A Lego Odyssey and note the “Lego Today” minifig’s reaction as reflective of most AFOL (Adult Friends of Lego) at the time.
This specialization/antiuniversalitization (ung) I think hit its peak just as the Star Wars line was hitting the shelves — I think it’s improving across the line (there seems to be a new emphasis on “builder” sets that has been lacking in the last few years), but where it’s worst is, yes, in the licensed products. And I don’t mind that much — I think it’s the licensed products that’s insured Lego’s survival in the last ten years, as the toy market’s been getting tight, even for a traditional favorite. Lego’s marketing strategy has been brilliant, crossing not just generational gaps but media while inking some appealing licensing (and occasionally all three — the Lego Star Wars computer game is nine times more fun than you’d think). I hadn’t noticed that there’d been a lack of alternate model designs on the back — I know there’ve been a few in the instructions themselves in recent years — but I have more faith in their corporate strategy.
Thanks for the kind words. Note the Lego post is by my co-blogger Mike O’Hare.
Great, Thanks for mentioning our lego site.
I’m going to disagree here as well. I just made my first Lego model in years, that was given to me as a gift because I am a huge Star Wars fan. This was the B-Wing, which I was pleased for the custom parts as they made the finished model look more realistic. But my main reason for disagreeing is that on the back of the B-Wing box are two pictures of alternate models that can be built from the pack, a Transformers looking robot and a sleek looking starship with rear gunner. There may have only been two, as oppossed to the half dozen from your childhood, but they were still there.
Dave