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Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

joshsummers.co.uk

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Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#111

Post by sp332 »

pavlov wrote: post #2

Both the product and the ad are highly representative of '70s Nordic social ethics and aesthetics. A single product line called "Universal Building Sets" is an almost Platonic ideal of democratic creativity. Today's Lego has 33 product lines: http://www.lego.com/en-us/products When your Legos are branded as "Chima", "Bionicle", "Ninjago", "Marvel(tm) Super Heroes" or "Disney(r) Star Wars(tm)", it's expected that you…

Wasn't the whole Lego Movie about taking the kits apart and mixing them up and not worrying about it?

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#112

Post by timjahn »

legoisbest wrote: post #33
agumonkey wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had no choice, the "univeral building blocks" patent ended not long ago, facing competition now, they had to find sustainable cash flow.

The competition is terrible though. Have you tried assembling any other "compatible" building set? The bricks aren't finished properly, some just pop off, and it all falls to bits easily. I'd say the nearest competition to Lego is probably 60% the quality of Lego.

I never believed this until I experienced it myself with my 4 year old. LEGOs are damn expensive but the competition simply just doesn't work.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#113

Post by lfowles »

gambiting wrote: post #54
johntaitorg wrote: post #38

Lego is now only a 3D jigsaw puzzle, sadly. Lego Classic has just arrived in the UK but it seems a half-hearted piece of mummery to me.

As a kid I used to have tons of Lego. My dad would always bring a set or two back after being abroad for a few weeks, so I had boxes full of Lego. And they were all specific(jigsaw-like) sets - bulldozers, cars, castles, Indian forts, spaceships, that kind of thing. And you know what? Just because the instructions say you have to build a spaceship,doesn't mean you can't disassemble it afterwards. I remember that I wo…

My later custom designs benefited from having read instructions and putting together the set as intended several times. They gave me ideas about how pieces _could_ fit together.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#114

Post by freshyill »

legoisbest wrote: post #17
pavlov wrote: post #2

Both the product and the ad are highly representative of '70s Nordic social ethics and aesthetics. A single product line called "Universal Building Sets" is an almost Platonic ideal of democratic creativity. Today's Lego has 33 product lines: http://www.lego.com/en-us/products When your Legos are branded as "Chima", "Bionicle", "Ninjago", "Marvel(tm) Super Heroes" or "Disney(r) Star Wars(tm)", it's expected that you…

This does crop up all the time. You should also mention though that Lego still make and sell a lot of universal building sets. In Lego stores there are walls of bricks where you can select any bits you want. Yes, there has been a big rise in themed and licensed sets, and yes, some of them have specialised building parts that you can only really use in the set. But that's just part of the trend over the last few decad…

My stepson is 11 and we've bought many sets for him over the years. We have one of those 5x5 Ikea shelves just packed with sets that never get touched. They're more like models than toys. But some of them are also my old pirate lego sets from when I was his age, which I also never touched after putting them together (hence the fact that they're still intact today, though some have been disassembled and reassembled).

A few years ago, however, we decided to just buy him a few of the big bucket sets. So he's got buckets of bricks that get played with, and shelves full of models that collect dust.

We also have a pretty big collection of Duplo blocks, which my 2 1/2 year-old daughter has little interest in, although she loves the Lego.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#115

Post by jboons »

soneca wrote: post #83
facepalm wrote: post #26

Congratulations for making such a great effort in writing that article! (Whenever I see the praise effort, not achievement meme I make it a point to praise the effort, not the achievement).

Well, the effort here is not that great. He took an existing ad and gave his opinion on it. Not much research or else.

Why are you comparing the effort of an opinion article to that of a research article? That's not how this concept works.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#116

Post by corry »

robbiep wrote: post #56

Lego. The toy of my childhood. My brother, sister and myself are the youngest of our cousins, and ended up inheriting all their Lego. We had a whole verandah (grew up in Australia in the country) filled with our Lego city. It became all encompassing. We had no close neighbors(nearest was 6 km away) and no console until the n64 was old so it was Lego or helping Dad on the farm. We had the most detailed alternate reali…

Re: Minecraft - as an adult, Minecraft is the closest thing to lego I've come across.

You can build anything, go on any adventure. Far more immersive than lego, but still crude enough that you need a bit of imagination to really get into it.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#117

Post by xanderstrike »

kristiandupont wrote: post #79
legoisbest wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The competition is terrible though. Have you tried assembling any other "compatible" building set? The bricks aren't finished properly, some just pop off, and it all falls to bits easily. I'd say the nearest competition to Lego is probably 60% the quality of Lego.

Lego is expensive. As a former employee, I've heard this complaint many, many times. The thing that people don't realize (because hey, it's just plastic) is that Lego is really really high quality. Getting the right stickiness requires very high precision in those little bricks. Also, if like me you have Legos from your childhood you will probably notice that they last long.

The quality really cannot be understated, they last forever. When I was growing up, my brother and I had a mix of "modern" (early 90s) kits and my dad's legos he had growing up in 1950s and 60s Germany. Now my cousins' kids have inherited both and are mixing them with 2010s kits. The 50 year old blocks fit precisely with the blocks made in the past year, and when you throw them all in a bin together you can hardly tell the difference.

It's rare to think of a toy that you can play with as "heirloom quality," but I have no doubt my kids will inherit a portion of the family set when it becomes time, and their kids just might too.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#118

Post by bane »

robbiep wrote: post #56

Lego. The toy of my childhood. My brother, sister and myself are the youngest of our cousins, and ended up inheriting all their Lego. We had a whole verandah (grew up in Australia in the country) filled with our Lego city. It became all encompassing. We had no close neighbors(nearest was 6 km away) and no console until the n64 was old so it was Lego or helping Dad on the farm. We had the most detailed alternate reali…

Here ya go http://shop.lego.com/en-US/LEGO-Creative-Suitcase-10682?from...

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#119

Post by specialist »

DanBC wrote: post #86
Jgrubb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty great, my house is occasionally quiet for the first time in years because they're all at the table building something. It's also pretty evident (to me) in this thread that the folks who are moaning about how Legos suck now probably are not the ones with kids.

I have a kid. Lego Friends sucks. The gendering of Lego sucks. The relentless specialist themed sets sucks. The move towards many small fiddly pieces and some specialist pieces to create a Lego-thing sort of sucks. Luckily I can ignore all of that and buy Lego Creative or Lego Classic. http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-10681-Creative-Building-Cube/dp... http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-Classic-10698-Large-Creative/dp...

Mid '90s, I worked at a toy startup. We studied Lego, PlayMobile, K'NEX, etc. Mfg, mktg, distribution, etc. Play tested everything. Conferences, networking, etc.

My understanding is gendering of Lego in the US sucks. It's cultural. The EU doesn't have a pink stigma.

Also, Lego made bank with the themed sets. First with the western (cowboy) then with Star Wars sets. I think some (not all) of them are awesome. Lego's made plenty of stinker sets. They really had little choice. Their target age market was being squeezed from both ends, "learning toys" on one side, video games on the other.

I don't care what child has which toys (boys with dolls, girls with bulldozers, vice versa) so long as they're playing, learning.

Overall, that experience made me a toy snob. +1 to Lego/Duplo, Lil' Tikes, and misc reading books. Most other toys suck.

Except magnets. Magnets are always cool.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#120

Post by xanderstrike »

eloisant wrote: post #19
laurent123456 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the two boxes on the poster, they don't look that "universal" - it's a truck and the other one a house. Today's boxes I guess are just better categorized, but not that different.

These boxes only have standard pieces, which is why the truck and house look boxy. Today's boxes include too many specific pieces. Car hood, top, helicopter nose, etc. Pieces that can't be used for anything else that what they're designed for, and can't be replaced if lost. So you can't take it appart to build something different.

In any given kit the ratio of custom pieces to generic pieces is still favorable. As a random sample check out the parts inventory of this kit [1] from Lego's Star Wars: Clone Wars system. When you sort by quantity, you see the vast majority of parts are generic wedges, blocks, and plates. Browse around the site, you'll see the same is true for any set over 50 pieces. The idea that you "can't take it apart to build something different," is a little ridiculous, it isn't a model airplane.

I take it you haven't played with any of the modern kits. I encourage you, if you enjoyed lego as a kid, to buy a couple and see for yourself. The model on the box is more polished, but the building blocks are very much the same.

1. http://www.peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/inv/sets/7752-1?PagerS...

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