Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

joshsummers.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–146 of 146 posts

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#141

Post by Jgrubb »

aaron695 wrote: post #139
Jgrubb wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Or someone who insists that Lego is correct for either singular or plural, when colloquially they were referred to as Legos by everyone I knew growing up?

Or someone who points out your writing in fragments instead of acknowledging your point in the first place?

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#143

Post by ableal »

robbiep wrote: post #137
corry wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Two kids can share the same Minecraft play area in two different tablets/PCs. One runs a local server, which the other connects to. State is saved between build sessions.

I'm getting reports of a Bacon City and a Cake City being built connected by a railroad ;-)

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#144

Post by amag »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #76
pavlov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't want companies to decide what products you buy? How does that work? I mean, you can only buy something if they'll sell it...

More to the point people argue these genderised versions of lego are bad, and that lego shouldn't sell them, deciding to not sell a product because of that and not consumer demand is an example of how a company can decide for its consumers.

I don't see why the genderised versions are bad. My daughter is all for pink and princesses, something we have never (knowingly) encouraged. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't build legos at all if it weren't for the pink pieces, and the princesses! Now she builds and has learned that she enjoys the actual building process, not just playing with the creation afterwards. To me this is far more important than the way the minifigures look or whether or not it promotes gender stereotypes. Gender stereotypes are much more likely picked up from how ones parents behave than from toys. If it weren't for Lego Friends I'm pretty confident she would be playing with Barbies instead and that is worse in regards to all the bad things that can be said about Lego Friends, never mind the fact that Barbies lack the creative outlet that is the very foundation of Lego.

I'm pretty confident if it weren't for the Lego Friends series, there would be a lot of girls never learning that they enjoy the building process. Which would be a great shame. If girls learn building legos can be fun, then they might learn that CS can be fun as well :).

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#145

Post by 72deluxe »

I used to enjoy looking at the Lego brochures simply for the scenes they'd planned out and the things that were happening in them, like accidents, cars swerving etc.

I really wanted a Lego trainset but never had one; I did however have the house, a hospital, a racing track, a police station, the docks/port, a mid 1980s spaceship (with "Benny" out of the Lego film), Robin Hood's hideaway, a Napoleonic era series of figures with a rowing boat (can't remember if we had the actual giant boat), a castle of some sort (got the cannons). My brother and I had many many days of happiness building and playing with Lego.

I also had some horses. I have my characters somewhere but I think my mum gave away all of it to my nephew, who can only build from instructions, not from imagination. Hopefully he'll learn to do that.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#146

Post by cben »

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 and Duplo with our Legos.

Is there any way/adapter to connect Duplo (or Lego) on top of Megabloks? I sometimes manage to usefully mix them but always feel it'd be more useful the other way around if Megabloks could provide large-scale structure with Duplo providing fine(r) detail on top... Though I might be biased by having tons of Megabloks and not that much Duplo.

[There is of course the kludge of hanging a protruding duplo under:

    MMMM
    MMMM
    MMdddd
    MM
    MM
    MM
but it's flimsy and requires too much overhead.]
Post reply on HN