Quote:
Originally posted by kbarger
They no longer seem to make (or at least the toy stores don't carry) just a big old honkin' bucket of LEGOs that you can use to build whatever the heck you want, with no preconceived suggestions. For some reason this bothers me. Am Ijust pining for the paraphenalia of my youth? Or do I have a legitimate beef (stifling creativity, too much structure, etc. etc. etc.)
|
It's certainly an issue others have identified. Read
the article from <i>Fast Company</i>: "Why Can't Lego Click?"
<blockquote><i> Ethan, an 8-year-old boy from New England, is standing in front of a huge display of Lego kits: arctic adventurers, jungle explorers, and the Lego dinosaur adventurers -- a series of toys that has particularly captivated Ethan. The boy gazes longingly at the Lego Dino Research Compound -- 612 pieces. The box shows a Lego scientist in a Lego jeep in hot pursuit of a Lego T. Rex. It's all inside the box.
Ethan is in one of Lego's half-dozen company-run retail stores in the United States -- this one in Orlando, at Downtown Disney. Ethan's grandmother comes up holding an enormous tub of Lego bricks -- 1,200 pieces. "With these," Grandma says, "you can do whatever you want. It gives you examples right on the front."
Grandma is funding this present. Ethan is picking. And although the dinosaur compound is $79.99, and the tub of bricks is $19.99, price isn't the point of difference. Play is. "He and I have very different ideas about Legos," says Ethan's mom, Lisa Gates, a dean at Wesleyan University, who is in Orlando on vacation. "I prefer the free-form bricks, where he can make his own universe. Ethan is most drawn to the theme-based scenarios. He has an Egyptian-pyramid-dig set and some Star Wars sets. He's fixated on the directions -- when he builds it, he wants it to look exactly like it looks on the box. That introduces a note of anxiety into playing with Legos -- did I do it right?"
The tug-of-war between Ethan's view of playing with Legos and his mother's view is a miniature of the problems that Lego itself faces -- internally and in the wider world. ( Ethan, for the record, goes home with the dinosaurs. ) In fact, the shelves of the store in Orlando display all of the opportunity and confusion that exists in the modern world of Lego. In the beginning, there were bricks -- and kids built whatever they imagined. The addition of roof tiles, windows, wheels, and trees allowed you to make more-realistic creations. Buckets of bricks are available in the store, but they attract almost no attention.
After the bricks came the themed sets -- town and farm first, followed by space ( almost 10 years after the moon landing ), and then castle and pirate lines later. The theme sets added a dimension: You built it, the theme provided inspiration ( and sometimes instruction ), and you could play with what you'd built in the classic role-playing scenarios that kids dream up. The construction was less inventive, the play more so. ..</i></blockquote>