Earlier quoted context omitted.
The new sets are more complex and detailed, but god do I hate the franchised sets. Nothing kills kids creativity more than that. It's not a pirate ship, it is Jack Sparrow's pirate ship. It's not a spaceship, it's Luke Skywalker's spaceship! Additionally, the quality of parts has seriously decreased since the 80s and 90s.
The "ecological" parts are no longer bulletproof. What is not ecological, but I guess they want you to throw away bricks and buy new ones.
How Lego Became the Apple of Toys (2015)
71–80 of 88 posts
Re: How Lego Became the Apple of Toys (2015)
#72The Lego stuff was all bright primary colored bricks. They often wouldn't stay together like a bolted Erector set creation. Lego was never for me.
Re: How Lego Became the Apple of Toys (2015)
#73I wanted an Erector set. My mom thought the tiny bolts would be impossible for me, but I pressed for one and got one. Had a great time with it. What I liked about it was the creations were metal and looked like machines. The Lego stuff was all bright primary colored bricks. They often wouldn't stay together like a bolted Erector set creation. Lego was never for me.
Re: How Lego Became the Apple of Toys (2015)
#74Re: How Lego Became the Apple of Toys (2015)
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if this is yours, but if so: Firefox (android) and Chrome (android) refuse to load the site. Probably due to missing SSL.
You have to use HTTP for some reason. It's a database of Chinese lego clones, I've seen it before. Chinese lego is awesome, it's often cheaper than real Lego and there's lots of original sets including things that lego won't make (like tanks and stuff, think I saw a strip club set once). But there are clones of real lego sets too, whether that bothers you is up to you. Check out r/lepin for more
Chinese building blocks vary wildly in terms of clutch power and overall precision. But if all you're looking for is something to display and not ever touch again, it's probably the best way to go.
Re: How Lego Became the Apple of Toys (2015)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its interesting, you find quality with these brands. I'm certain these brands advertise they have quality, but I think they fall far short of the competition constantly. Nintendo? Disney? Apple? When I think of their actual quality compared to the best in the business you are talking B- quality. Sure you never get a C or a D like when I get a random Android phone for $100, but you are never going to get a Baulders Ga…
I don't agree that it's just marketing. I'm not saying their products are perfect, they certainly have flaws. But the maniacal focus on quality is palpable in their products. Play a Nintendo game start to finish, you will be very hard pressed to find ANY bugs or glitches. Like you have to hunt really hard to try to find them, they are usually an extremely polished experience. The same cannot be said for most other de…
Disney's animation style is sterile and formulaic. It's to the point of uncanny valley and overacting.
There's something to be said about how animation with tiny imperfections and errors improves the experience. Your brain is more ready to accept that it's seeing something fake rather than something failing to be real.
Re: How Lego Became the Apple of Toys (2015)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The new sets are more complex and detailed, but god do I hate the franchised sets. Nothing kills kids creativity more than that. It's not a pirate ship, it is Jack Sparrow's pirate ship. It's not a spaceship, it's Luke Skywalker's spaceship! Additionally, the quality of parts has seriously decreased since the 80s and 90s.
The "ecological" parts are no longer bulletproof. What is not ecological, but I guess they want you to throw away bricks and buy new ones.
Re: How Lego Became the Apple of Toys (2015)
#78If you’ve played and feel knocked off legos, “f this sht” will be a phrased used over and over as you try to read and assemble it. Even the instruction are world class stupid
Instead of clearly showing the 'path' of each part in a step, that is how and where to connect it to an assembly, they now tend to show the assembly with the new parts attached. This leads to a game of 'spot the difference' with the previous step.
Re: How Lego Became the Apple of Toys (2015)
#79Just to provide some counterpoint to the echo chamber here - as a Dad of a six year old who played with legos as a kid and again now, I can affirm - Legos and the sets they put out now are way cooler now than when I was a kid! You might worry that the less general purpose, specialized pieces might stunt creativity, but guess what!? The 6 year old has no problem taking them completely apart and building something off…
The new sets are more complex and detailed, but god do I hate the franchised sets. Nothing kills kids creativity more than that. It's not a pirate ship, it is Jack Sparrow's pirate ship. It's not a spaceship, it's Luke Skywalker's spaceship! Additionally, the quality of parts has seriously decreased since the 80s and 90s.
There's no single right "amount" of structure to provide to inspire creativity. Different works of art, different moods, different people, different days, will all "want" different starting points. Sometimes you want to experiment with basic geometry and it's useful to start from a bucket of raw parts. Sometimes you want to dig into stories and characters and it's useful to start with something that already exists. And because you can always remove structure from a situation - Legos can always be broken down into the bucket of raw parts! - more highly structured sets strictly expand the available range by pushing out the high end.
Even more than that, kids are learning how to be creative, and having some structure to start from helps a huge amount for a beginner. If you hand a blank piece of paper to someone who's never written anybody and tell them to be creative they'll never even be able to start. If you give them something to start from they'll have a much easier time. Even as expertise builds and you pull back on the guidance it's still incredibly useful to have new material injected from outside your own bubble of experience. Concretely, when you're just getting started it's a hell of a lot easier to learn that you can have a different person win a lightsaber fight than it is to write all your own characters from whole cloth, and when you're trying to learn how people work it's absolutely necessary to examine characters and stories that you didn't make up and that don't just confirm your own preconceptions and biases.
If I wanted to summarize my opinions, I think that playing with licensed-IP Lego sets is actually a critical step in the development of creativity because it lets you get started on more complicated topics earlier, makes you less afraid to adapt existing works, and provides inspiration and outside influence to break filter bubbles. I would compare it in many ways to writing fanfiction, and in a very literal sense it absolutely is.
Re: How Lego Became the Apple of Toys (2015)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen this sentiment time and time again, but careful examination of the actual pieces and sets, excluding the obviously marketed to adults sets shows them just as adjustable and combinable as I remember them being when given to kids . My ability to see what is latent and possible in the pile has decreased, but my kids have what seems to me to be quite the same amount of fun I did when I ways young. There's even…
This depends on your age. I think you were playing with Lego in the 1980s or 1990s when there was theming like pirates and what not. I had Lego in the 1970s. We really just had sets with square/rectangular blocks of various sizes and a few special parts like windows and doors. We didn't even have minifigs. But I get why Lego changed -- you only need to sell one or two generic sets and the kid has enough legos for lif…
Minifigs really were the main demark where it went from "plastic building blocks" to "modeling toy/dollhouse for boys".