"LEGO Ruins Creativity"... Again

[PicnicBasketSam]

I saw this over on the Brickset Forum... some nature presenter named Ben Fogle has issued a statement saying the usual misinformed garbage about "LEGO used to be just boxes of bricks when I was a kid, modern-day sets with newfangled instructions to build something are ruining creativity," and also stuff like "LEGO is turning us into mindless government drones with instructions!" which is clearly a pile of megabloks. This guy apparently marketed the Forest Police line in 2012... what an idiot.

Here's the article: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/education/lego-ruined-world-says-ben-fogle/

[anothergol]

Well, the fact that Lego has much more pieces does the opposite, it takes a lot more creativity to re-use those pieces (which were mostly minifig accessories) in ways that they weren't intended to be. Most MOCs are much more creative than those all-brick-made statues in Lego parks (which is just using bricks as pixels, their design is even partly computer-assisted).

However, the fact is that Lego used to make (when I was a kid, in the 80's) construction sets, now they make toys. I'm pretty sure that these days a kid disassembles his Lego much less, for these reasons:

-too strong assembly. It was pretty easy to disassemble a set when I was a kid, because it was all bottom-up assemblies, there was only 1 kind of bracket (rarely used), it was nothing like today where disassembling classic sets looks more like disassembling a technic set.

-sets look better nowadays, that's another good reason to keep them assembled

-sets also have more pieces, thus take more time to assemble, another reason to avoid disassembling

But I think you have to be over 50 to remember Lego as "piles of bricks". In the 80's, Lego already had many different pieces & large specialized pieces.

Edit: that guy is 43. I'm 41 - the only way he was getting "piles of bricks" when he was a kid, would be that he only got "pile of bricks" sets. And since those still exist today..

Edited May 8, 2016 by anothergol

[KlodsBrik]

Parenting ruins the creativity with LEGO as well as every other toy.

It takes a creative parent to make one's kids think about how to incorporate the block's into one's game, play or how it's expressed.

Yeah, get a set , use the instructions to build it. That's it, if one is not showen how many other opportunities it offers.

Dont blame LEGO .... Blame someone else .... Let's kill Hitler !

[62Bricks]

I think people who make this criticism are really exposing how they have lost their own sense of imagination and creativity. Children have no problem dreaming up other uses for specialized LEGO pieces - and even if they build the model exactly as the instructions say, they are still able to use that model in imaginative play.

But adults who have lost that ability look at modern LEGO sets and cannot imagine themselves using their imagination, they they incorrectly project their own inability onto children. They cannot imagine using a firefighter's helmet as anything except a firefighter's helmet. Children (or, ahem, certain adults who never stopped playing with their LEGO pieces) have no problem using that helmet as a frog's eyeball, or a duck's head, or whatever they want. An adult sees a molded roof piece and cannot imagine it as anything except the roof of a building. A child has no problem using it as a hat, a beak for a giant bird, etc.

As someone pointed out, when this particular critic was a child, LEGO sets were well on their way to being dominated by themed model sets. What he is probably remembering as a box of random bricks is not the sets as they came from the shop, but his family LEGO box, which, if it was like most others, was a collection of all the parts from all the sets in one big happy pile of possibility.

So I usually just feel sorry for these critics. They have lost their confidence in their own imagination.

[Aanchir]

I think people who make this criticism are really exposing how they have lost their own sense of imagination and creativity. Children have no problem dreaming up other uses for specialized LEGO pieces - and even if they build the model exactly as the instructions say, they are still able to use that model in imaginative play.

But adults who have lost that ability look at modern LEGO sets and cannot imagine themselves using their imagination, they they incorrectly project their own inability onto children. They cannot imagine using a firefighter's helmet as anything except a firefighter's helmet. Children (or, ahem, certain adults who never stopped playing with their LEGO pieces) have no problem using that helmet as a frog's eyeball, or a duck's head, or whatever they want. An adult sees a molded roof piece and cannot imagine it as anything except the roof of a building. A child has no problem using it as a hat, a beak for a giant bird, etc.

As someone pointed out, when this particular critic was a child, LEGO sets were well on their way to being dominated by themed model sets. What he is probably remembering as a box of random bricks is not the sets as they came from the shop, but his family LEGO box, which, if it was like most others, was a collection of all the parts from all the sets in one big happy pile of possibility.

So I usually just feel sorry for these critics. They have lost their confidence in their own imagination.

I think there's another factor as well, which is that not everybody is creative in the same way. Some kids might be extremely good visual-spatial thinkers and learners, and so building might come quite naturally to them. But other kids might have more of an inclination towards storytelling, which is itself a kind of creativity. Many people who think LEGO kills creativity think that because they believe it's too "prescriptive", telling kids what to build and how to build it. But really, it's these adults who are being prescriptive by treating original creations as the only worthwhile outcome of LEGO play.

So yes, there are still plenty of kids who can and do create their own original LEGO designs. I see parents share their kids' creations on Facebook and other sites almost every day. But there are also kids who are more likely to want to play with the official models and figures — to tell stories with them, or to display them in imaginative ways. There have always been kids like this, and there's nothing wrong with that.

[AyliffeMakit]

I think there's a simpler reason: Ben fogle wanted some attention, and he knew that criticizing something that's currently popular would do the trick. Easy as that.

[62Bricks]

I think there's a simpler reason: Ben fogle wanted some attention, and he knew that criticizing something that's currently popular would do the trick. Easy as that.

Yes - and the "Things were better when we were kids" lament is a perennial favorite. It has probably been around as long as humanity.

[Littleworlds]

A friend of mine has a kind of similar stance and I see where that comes from. For a good part its nostalgia

Ok, there are now licensed themes with very specialized pieces, but that is only one way to look at things. The other side is that many of these pieces are now used for something completely different, as you guys already pointed out. And I agree with certain sets being much less likely to be taken apart again once they are assembled, but when I remember right there were already enough kids in the 80s who had absolutely no feeling for a good build and failed in getting something built on their own. Seems they got kids now by themselves

But seriously: there are much worse and much less teaching toys around. Lego has changed its face a bit over the last decades, but in its versatility its still incredibly rich. I guess it really depends on how kids are brought up. If they get encouragement in being curious, or if they learn just stupid consumer mentality.

[Peppermint_M]

I did notice this. I came to three conclusions: 1 Ben Fogel does not remember his own childhood. 2 Ben Fogel is not creative. 3 Ben Fogel does not go shopping.

1: He is around the same age as my uncle, so his childhood was prime LEGO Set time. My uncle loves to look at my books about LEGO and point out all the awesome sets he used to own. He rarely recalls boxes of plain bricks at all, instead he had many of the classic town and castle sets until he grew into Technic.

2: As many said, projecting onto children is a huge issue. They see X, so the child sees X. Who knows...

I volunteer at a LEGO club for children, one of them came up to me with the boat motor, he wanted to know what it was. Once I explained, he thanked me and then went off to play. Later he returned with an underwater scene all self built from brick and plate. The motor was now fixed to the plate as it was a Submarine. Very creative building and storytelling. No adults involved beyond letting the child know that yes, it is a LEGO piece.

3: It has never been easier to get plain brick in the UK. When I was growing up, there were few creator sets on shelves and rarely any plain bricks. Now you can get the boxes of classic bricks in ASDA and in toy shops.

I dunno, it is as said: Sometimes someone famous has been ignore of late, they say something stupid to get attention.

[BrickJagger]

Ben Fogel, above, speaks out against the tyranny of toy instructions.

I also love the title of the article. Very dramatic.

Edited May 8, 2016 by BrickJagger

[Actor Builder]

This is funny. The good thing about our world is that the people in it who'll make any difference are the ones who think for themselves. Anyone who blindly agrees with the opinion in this blog-article (If there are any such crazies) is just sad.

Edited May 8, 2016 by Actor Builder

[Gnac]

If I was so inclined, I'd release instructions to build a LEGO "Ben Fogle" and send them to Ben Fogle. Unfortunately, my creativity has been destroyed by nearly 30 years of following LEGO set instructions and I have lost the ability to think for myself D:

Edited May 8, 2016 by Gnac

[Actor Builder]

If I was so inclined, I'd release instructions to build a LEGO "Ben Fogle" and send them to Ben Fogle. Unfortunately, my creativity has been destroyed by nearly 30 years of following LEGO set instructions and I have lost the ability to think for myself D:

You'd have to make sure to use non-generic bricks, however. Otherwise he'd be like "See! Normal LEGO bricks can make Giant sculptures of me, but newfangled weird pieces ruin creativity and we're all zombies!"

[Enforcer Zer0]

This guys an idiot, Lego is very creative as I love to modify existing sets to "make them better" makeing the argument that Lego isn't creative is just as crazy as saying video games make people murderers.

Edited May 9, 2016 by Enforcer Zer0

[Vindicare]

How on Earth is(was?) he a brand ambassador?! He seems very clueless on the very brand he's supposedly for. He must've taken Lord Business' agenda to heart. He's clearly ignorant of the AFOL community.

[rodiziorobs]

<insert that tiresome argument>

[DPrime]

Meh, whatever. I don't know anything about this guy, definitely don't agree with this.

One thing I will mention, however, is that I miss Lego's "alternate builds" pics on packaging - which I do think encouraged creativity - and I somewhat lament that licensed sets are first and foremost as far as the company's agenda goes. But that's about as far as I'd go with that.

[GallardoLU]

There was a time not that long ago that even licensed sets had alternate models. usually weird and far from anything in the licensed material but alternate builds all the same. (look at early star wars sets) sure Creator and non-licensed technic have alt models, but very little else still does. but even more than that what got me MOCing and playing with turn down sets was images of other's who had already done that. the idea that my little pirate cave could become a moon base, or the normal car simply powered up with a "Big Engine." heck even seeing sets I didn't have and trying to replicate them with what I did have did more than a blind pile of bricks ever did.

[Iria]

I think there's a simpler reason: Ben fogle wanted some attention, and he knew that criticizing something that's currently popular would do the trick. Easy as that.

Exactly. From the click bait title to the hyperbolic claims which are so obviously wrong (ie building sets have been around since the start of Lego building bricks), it's pretty obvious that it's for attention. Ironically, not a very creative way to argue a point.

<insert that tiresome argument>

Yup. Well stated.

[Sarah]

Well, the fact that Lego has much more pieces does the opposite, it takes a lot more creativity to re-use those pieces (which were mostly minifig accessories) in ways that they weren't intended to be. Most MOCs are much more creative than those all-brick-made statues in Lego parks (which is just using bricks as pixels, their design is even partly computer-assisted).

However, the fact is that Lego used to make (when I was a kid, in the 80's) construction sets, now they make toys. I'm pretty sure that these days a kid disassembles his Lego much less, for these reasons:

-too strong assembly. It was pretty easy to disassemble a set when I was a kid, because it was all bottom-up assemblies, there was only 1 kind of bracket (rarely used), it was nothing like today where disassembling classic sets looks more like disassembling a technic set.

-sets look better nowadays, that's another good reason to keep them assembled

-sets also have more pieces, thus take more time to assemble, another reason to avoid disassembling

But I think you have to be over 50 to remember Lego as "piles of bricks". In the 80's, Lego already had many different pieces & large specialized pieces.

Edit: that guy is 43. I'm 41 - the only way he was getting "piles of bricks" when he was a kid, would be that he only got "pile of bricks" sets. And since those still exist today..

Agreed. He's my age (I'll be 43 in September). And my very first set (The Farm) had instructions for building things. So did the second and the third (Kitchen, Bathroom).

OTOH, the Farm had a REALLY nice inset in the box. Such that it encouraged you to put your blocks back in an organized fashion and easily be able to find the blocks you wanted for future building. And a fairly limited color pallette (nice to make other things without having too horrible a sorting isssue). And Lots of cool pictures on the inside of the cover to give you ideas for other things to make.

Edited May 9, 2016 by Sarah

[Andrzej777]

I think his point is that lego is creating sets nowadays which come with lots of different parts that you cannot do make a lot with except go along with the instructions. I think there is some truth to it.

On the other hand, the whole idea of lego ruining creativity couldnt be more far fetched. Lego is a toy. A set is basically a toy. You get what you paid for, a car, a plane, a castle etc. You could buy a different toy which didnt require building it, though. Lego however, comes in parts, and those parts all fit together and enable you to build something entirely different, its up to you and your creativity.

Its like crayons, you can buy some crayons and a coloring book or just draw and paint on a blank sheet. Hey, :), in this regard, coloring books would ruin creativity as well, right?

No really, IMHO this guy just wanted to make some noise, and make himself know to the world or something.

In the end Lego is what you make of it. If you are creative, you will find ways, maybe becoming more creative, or as I would put it, more experienced. Personally I am not too creative and have a hard time building something - I do it for me and its fun and relaxing. But also stressful :).

Maybe Lego should create sets with versatility in mind - providing at least one alternative build for every set. Thus they would show little children the versatility and creativity that is surrounds those little lego bricks.

[TomKraut]

The premise of the original statement is of course wrong. We all know that there has never been a larger selection of "pile of bricks" offerings than we have now with the various Classic boxes (at least not in my lifetime of 35 years).

One thing I noticed though when I came out of my dark ages about two years ago is that I found it much more difficult to get my collection to a point where I had enough parts to make something that doesn't look out of place next to an official set.

When I was a kid in the 80's official sets were a lot simpler. There were only six "building" colours (red, blue, yellow, black, white, (light) grey) and the standard 1xN brick was used a lot more in sets. I don't think that the so-called "specialized part" is the problem, but rather the fact that there are so much more pieces that one would call standard now (like curved slopes). The plethora of colours amplifies this problem because the chance to have the right piece in the right colour is much smaller.

This has nothing to do with creativity directly, but it might be off-putting for some if the thing you can create yourself (with a reasonable amount of sets = money) looks so much worse than the thing you get when you follow the instructions (of course, a child might see this a lot less critical than an adult).

Cheers

TomKraut

[bonox]

i love the way people ignore all the other benefits of construction toys - hand/eye coordination and motor function development are equally as brain developing as thinking of creative uses for things. Not to mention memory exercises of remembering where the last part you saw was in the pile of parts :)

[Phadeout]

I just have to watch my 5 year old playing with his Lego to realise what a load of megabloks Mr Fogle is talking. He loves his star wars sets and he does keep some of his favourites intact but those are often used in a more role-playing/story-telling role. The Mos Eisley cantina is a prime example of this as is the Death Star Final Duel. But he will happily scrap a ship, or three and try to turn them into to something else. He is imaginative as well - I have often been impressed with his NPU (I don't phrase it like that to him!) and he sometimes rebuilds using the instructions and sometimes not.

I will agree with a previous post @TomKraut that in order to construct something that "fits" these days you can end up needing a lot more sets than in the past due to the increase in colours and increase in technic in kits (based on a 37 yr olds impressions anyway) but it is clear that a 5 year old isn't sitting there going - "Well I don't seem to have enough 1x8 plates in DBG for this spaceship so I guess everything is going back in the box until my bricklink order comes through" he can leave that sort of behaviour to his dad - he just grabs some red bricks and carries on...

[Actor Builder]

I know that some kids build sets and just display them. My best friend when I was a tot was like that. But that doesn't mean he's not creative. He just has different creativity than I do. All my LEGO are sorted or in MOCS, a very small percentage is still sets.

That said, when someone, anyone, says "Creativity is being destroyed" or whatnot, it's clear they have no idea what they're talking about. Creativity is not a singularly anchored phenomena with a strict procedure of "Do this and you are creative. Do that and you are not." That's the exact opposite of creativity.

I don't know why I'm posting this, as I'm sure you all agree with me and have already thought about it, but I figured I'd put it into words for myself. Writing is one of my personal creative strongpoints, so why not use it, huh?