Is lego being dumbed down?

simu

As an example: in my early days of lego, if you wanted to build a wall, you had to build a wall out of assorted bricks, taking care of the order you used them in to ensure maximum structural integrity, searching til your hands were raw through the lego box for that elusive 3-peice that would finish off a row and possibly colour co-ordinating the lot (although I never bothered with that last one). Then, later on there was the appearance of wall sized pieces that you could just plonk into place without hassle... OK, they were fast but isn't something of the magic of lego lost when you move from atoms, so to speak, to pre-formed molecules?

Also, sets seemed to have far more gimmicky lego pieces, that is to say pieces made for very specific purposes rather than forcing you to make them yourself out of smaller, multi-purpose pieces. Now, I know that some very specialised pieces are needed for many lego dreams to become actualised and that these pieces sometimes do end up being used in new and wildly innovative ways and that is something I welcome but I fear that such overly-specialised pieces are beginning to take up too large a portion of the overall number of lego pieces one gets in a given set and that this has an overall detrimental effect on the freedom offered by lego as a "toy".

Thoughts?

nesf

I concur.

Shiminay

I've certainly noticed a huge increase in the more specialised pieces - like you said it was always the challenge to make something work with what you had. It's a different market these days though, it would appear children have lost the need/want for imagination...

nesf

Kharn wrote:

I've certainly noticed a huge increase in the more specialised pieces - like you said it was always the challenge to make something work with what you had. It's a different market these days though, it would appear children have lost the need/want for imagination...

Well it's competing with a lot more toys now isn't it? I think kids have a lot more distracting them now and it makes it less likely that they'll have the patience or the attention span to deal with just a basic set. While back when we were kids there was far less flashy shiny stuff to distract us (and less toys in general to be fair) so it'd be natural for us to give more time to something as mutable as Lego.

irlrobins

Agree. Looking at the new sets out today and comparing them to the ones I got in the 80's, there definitely seems to be less pieces in the new ones.

Prob for the reason nesf stated, but also maybe cos it's cheaper for lego to manufacture 1 wall piece then 15 separate pieces to make up the same wall.

Do I see Lego around in 10 years? I doubt it. It's just not able to compete with the electronic toys of today. If you look at stuff like this you can see they're trying to move away from the traditional products.

Sleepy

If Lego ain't around in 10 years time as a company, it will still be going strong in many households around the world. Most people I know have their lego stored away for any kids they may have in the future.

But yes, Lego has certainly been dumbed down over the years.

legologic

Yeah... the pieces are becoming a lot more specialized and a few sets probably are being dumbed down. Tho' I must say... I was over in a friends house last night and his "little brother" is huge into his lego. I was very very impressed by the new Castle lego and the Star Wars Lego in particular, especially the specialist pieces. The thing that caught my eye was the Yoda legoman. It really is a work of imaginative genius.

I'd hate to see the sets turn into some sort of Kinder toy but I was very impressed with those little details that went into some of the sets I seen last night.

tSubh Dearg

The great thing about the Lego we had in my household was that we were able to integrate it with the Lego from when my Dad was small. Everything just fit together. And like simu said in her first post, if you wanted a wall you had to carefully put it together out of many many pieces.

I've not seen many of the new stuff but have a wall piece kind of seems to defeat the purpose of lego in my mind.

Though that said we did have some Duplo stuff when we were very small and it had wall pieces but I feel that was as much because small hands and young brains would find that easier to handle than building a wall themselves.

In conclusion I think it's a bit sad that Lego have had to dumb down their product so that they can compete with other things.

PS: Those thin planky pieces make great helicopter blades

Patricide

I concur, but dam you and your lego forums i wanna go to my garage and find mine now, I bid you good day, and i hope your happy youve gotten me hooked on lego again.

r3nu4l

To answer Simus question, yes Lego is shamefully being dumbed down. Some specialized pieces are nice, useful and with a bit of imagination can be used for something other than their intended function in the set they came with. However, nothing beats the small pieces that can be used to make just about anything

irlrobins wrote:

If you look at stuff like this you can see they're trying to move away from the traditional products.

Oh dear God, that is woeful! :eek: I realize that it is probably a good business move but have kids really become so unimaginative that they need this? I remember making small horses out of lego for a bit of cowboys and Indians (before the cowboy sets came out). Okay, anyone looking at it probably would have had a tough time guessing it was a horse but in my head it was a horse. What's wrong with that? Take away imagination and all you have is a kid mimicing what it sees on TV. Monkey see, monkey do!

singingstranger

Agree with the OP. I don't think Lego will ever truly die, though, or at least not in Ireland - wait for the next Christmas Day when half the country has no electricity (8 out of the last 11 back at home, I think) and the young 'uns will go seeking it out again.

Cormic

I truly hope that lego does not die. I have always said it was one of the greatest toys invented. I also think that they should bring lego back to it's roots.

jrey1981

From what I have seen I would have to agree, and all the possible reasons mentioned sound pretty likely too...

Uncle Spunk

Wow. Just found about this here Lego section. I cant stand new crappy Lego
as demonstrated in this comic I drew.




I'm working on a graphic novel based on lego minifigs, it's nearly finished sort of, the first 40 pages can seen on my site and the very first episode is currently in this months Judge Dredd Megazine.

Sorry for the gratuitous pluggery but it's all LEGO!

www.clamnuts.com
The bestest Irish comics

r3nu4l

Wow! I'm not one for comics or graphic novels or whatever they are called these days but whoa that's :cool: Cool! I'm also very annoyed by the Lego men with stubble, pirates with eye patches etc.

I know it adds to the authenticity but I was quite happy using my minds eye to add wooden legs and pirtae patches and bandanas to my smiling lego men and didn't consider it silly at all that he was smiling while he was being forced to walk the plank

Uncle Spunk

Exactly, the ideas/roles are forced on us now and the imaginative qualities are vanishing. Yep, comics are great, especially my ones.

r3nu4l

Uncle Spunk wrote:

Yep, comics are great, especially my ones.

I hope that the mods can accept your blatant plugging in this case seeing as how it is quite relevant to the topic in hand.

Uncle Spunk

Hey, that's not blatant plugging, I can show you blatant pluggery if you want!
Nah, it's Irish, it's Lego so it's all good

Bateman

I have no problem with Lego dumbing itself down to compete in the "Barbie" market, as the Belville carry-on would seem to suggest. However, there will always be young lads who are into the fire station, the airport, Star Wars, and the castles, etc, so as has been stated, demand will facilitate both sides to the market IMO.

Pigman II

Not to bothered about "wall pieces" or whatever new style pieces have been introduced since I stopped playing with lego. The thing that puzzles me is all the 'licenced' stuff. eg when I was kid and I wanted to make a millenium falcon I just took the pieces out of a firestation or whatever I had. But now you just go out and buy the millenium falcon set (or the harry potter set, or the spiderman set.... ). I wouldn't mind but all this licenced stuff is pure tat. The stuff you'd make yourself would look more like the actual thing.

parsi

Well my young fella is having great fun at the moment combining his various bionicles into other types of creatures.

El Nick

Dunno if I agree...

Long term Adult Fan of Lego here, currently aged 33. And I'll be out at Argos at 9am on Saturday the 29th because the new Argos catalog promises to have Batman Lego. Hope they have it in stock.

I don't think it's that Lego is being dumbed down quite so much as Lego is specialising more. Whereas in my day there was Duplo, and then proper Lego (what later became known as Lego System) there's now a bunch of agegroups in between from Lego's point of view. So the Jack Stone/Alpha Team/Dino 2010 lines (where there are big specialised pieces) go before what we used to play with as Lego Space in age-range. But because the pieces fit together, folk see them as "Lego, but with bigger pieces."

If you look at the sets aimed at the older kids (Lego Star Wars is a really good example)... Some of those have really intricate builds. The AT-AT walker is a really great build.

Then there's Bionicle/Knight's Kingdom, which are effectively a different toy.

Nick.