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Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

joshsummers.co.uk

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Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#131

Post by MagerValp »

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...

I agree that the gendering sucks, but I'll say that the Lego Friends sets are a great match with the Castle sets. Banquets, anyone?

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#132

Post by Ar-Curunir »

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…

I would rather have Lego around with branded lines than no Lego, and indeed the branded marketing is what's keeping Lego afloat.

And it's not like you can't buy non-branded Lego (there's plenty of it available). Even if you do have the branded sets you can still use them with 30 year old Lego bricks.

I don't see how branded sets result in less creativity.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#133

Post by bmj »

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…

So much love for Lego. Maybe Minecraft fills a similar role in today's kids?

Yeah, LEGO is still a big deal. My older boy has participated in LEGO-based robotics competitions, and both of my boys still spend time just about every day building.

My kids do like the kits, but generally those kits stay together for a month or so, and little by little, blocks are scavenged for other projects. My older son has a small handful of built kits that are sacred, but otherwise, the rest of them end up in the bin.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#134

Post by munificent »

xenophonf wrote: post #92
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…

it's expected that you play within the existing marketeer-created universe Maybe that's how you or your kids play with them, but here we have no problem kitbashing the branded sets. Their parts end up in the color-sorted bins along with all the rest, and the kids build crazy stuff out of whatever. The last round included parts from a city, a dinosaur, and a submarine, and those were just the ones I recognized. We eve…

> We even mix Megabloks

Heathen!

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#135

Post by snuxoll »

specialist wrote: post #119
DanBC wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

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

As a parent of a 2 1/2 year old I couldn't agree more. We went to Toys 'r' Us to do some Christmas shopping last year and I was absolutely appalled to see the place. Aisles weren't organized by age, or the general "types" of toys, instead they had entire aisles dedicated to specific brands or media franchises.

An entire two aisles of Frozen toys, another for Cars, then all the Hot Wheels (okay, I might give this one a pass), so on and so forth. And really, all of these things were junk, just generic dolls or little specialized playsets.

Somedays I look into my daughters room and wonder if maybe it's a little sparse, I've got a big bucket of Lego Duplo, some alphabet blocks, a play kitchen with a bunch of Melissa and Doug items in it, some dress up clothes and a couple other age appropriate toys. But every time I realize that she has plenty of things to play with, and she's always doing neat and new things with everything she has.

She had me help her make a train car out of her Lego over the weekend, it was just a basic "box" that was 6x4x4 with an open top, and she started cramming her stuffed animals and Little People into it and going around the room shouting "choo choo".

Meanwhile, every other kid I see that has these toys from big media franchises just plays out or extends the universe they already know from the movies or shows. I think we really need a return to the basics with toys for our children, watching my daughter explore and create is much more enjoyable than watching the other kids act out their favorite scenes from Frozen again.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#136

Post by stinkytaco »

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…

The fact that it's the toy of your childhood actually makes me wonder how effective the ad was at selling legos in 1981. The author says it would have him out the door and buying legos, but that's because he already knows legos and how they work. Would this sell to someone who didn't know legos, or would it just be weird?

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#137

Post by robbiep »

corry wrote: post #116
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.

I've never played mine craft but my observation came about because when doing paediatrics terms a lot of sick kids will have their parents iPad with mine craft.

I haven't seen the kind of deep social interaction that my brother sister and I had while playing lego though - more the way we all used to stand around while one of us played simcity 2000 (still social, but one driver of activity)

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#138

Post by cade »

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...

> 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.

Very much this.

I have a couple of kids, and I try to steer clear of the specialized sets. I've heard stories of friends' kids pointing out set after set in the store and saying "Done that one. Done that one. Done that one. ..."

They have no sense of dumping out that giant bucket, delighting in the rushing chatter of a plastic avalanche, then asking themselves, "What do I want to build today?"

Sort of makes me sad...

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#139

Post by aaron695 »

Jgrubb wrote: post #102
theoh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get the idea that the toy is plural? It's not.

Probably no pedantic asshole corrected me when I was a kid and now it's a habit.

Would it be a pedantic asshole who corrects kids not to say sheeps but sheep?

Or someone who actually cared about children and learning?

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#140

Post by maxerickson »

maxerickson wrote: post #51
pavlov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, you can only buy something else within the range of options on the market. Ideally companies adjust their product lines based on customer demand. In reality it's mostly determined by other factors like supply chain, internal politics, competitor envy, random advice from consultants, need to meet quarterly growth goals, etc. For example, high-fructose corn syrup has become a major ingredient of many American fo…

Consumers could have demanded products without corn syrup in them. It turns out they don't care. If people did care, those other factors probably would have had to take a back seat to consumer demand. So I don't think you can say that it was irrelevant to the rise of HFCS. (You can argue that people are ill informed and blah blah blah, but that's still them not caring enough to demand whatever it is you think they sh…

A similar situation:

http://www.france24.com/en/20150218-nestle-usa-strips-artifi...

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