When did Juniorisation really begin?

[Mister Phes]

I have this friend who is a fair bit older than me who is interested in LEGO. He collected sets in the 70's when he was but a young lad, then the 80's come along and everything changed for him. He hated the new pieces LEGO were producing! He reckoned they were too big!

Just look at the classic 6270 Shark Island for an example:

Just look at all the hideously large pieces there. For a start look how big that stair case is, and the cannon, and mast and ladders, and the treasure chest, and the rope bridge, and the cell doors, and the crows nest, and the palm leaves, and the monkey, and the shark, and the boat, and less noticable are the castle walls and 5 brick high pieces.

From the perspective of someone collecting LEGO back in the 60's and early 70's could well believe LEGO was losing its touch 20 years ago. However in my opinion the larger pieces work well together and don't seem bulky like in some of the more recent sets. LEGO had established a happy equilibrium betweens its specialist and generic pieces. But alas, they kept going and throughout the 90s the pieces just kept getting bigger and bigger...

[snefroe]

I have this friend who is a fair bit older than me who is interested in LEGO. He collected sets in the 70's when he was but a young lad, then the 80's come along and everything changed for him. He hated the new pieces LEGO were producing! He reckoned they were too big!

Just look at the classic 6270 Shark Island for an example:

Just look at all the hideously large pieces there. For a start look how big that stair case is, and the cannon, and mast and ladders, and the treasure chest, and the rope bridge, and the cell doors, and the crows nest, and the palm leaves, and the monkey, and the shark, and the boat, and less noticable are the castle walls and 5 brick high pieces.

From the perspective of someone collecting LEGO back in the 60's and early 70's could well believe LEGO was losing its touch 20 years ago. However in my opinion the larger pieces work well together and don't seem bulky like in some of the more recent sets. LEGO had established a happy equilibrium betweens its specialist and generic pieces. But alas, they kept going and throughout the 90s the pieces just kept getting bigger and bigger...

i guess it's only natural that every new generation more or less dislikes the work of the generation before her, just as the future generation won't like the tastes/works of the current generation. it's exactly the same with music, for instance... That's probably one of the reasons why so many customers loose interest in lego when a new generation arrives ... only a few will come back (and very often have a Dark Age, first): Afols...

Juniorisation depends on the perspective of the individual fan. but as i said, we will most likely hate <insert that tiresome argument> pieces of sets of the new generation (late 90s - current), but love juniorisation of the sets of our own generation (80s - mid 90s). for instance, i love that big explorien starship (#6982) of 1996, i hate the UFO pieces... a UFO set was build in just a few minutes, with only a dozen or so pieces... i wouldn't be surprised if many Afols were to say "juniorisation really started in the mid - late 90s..."

first, what is juniorisation?

how many pieces in a set do you have to have before you can actually call it "<insert that tiresome argument>"?

i also don't think that juniorisation is, as such, a bad thing. your set in this thread, for instance, looks great, even tho some pieces are large. that doesn't degrade the grace of the set... This set is focused on playability, which is even more stimulated by these large parts. this mast, for instance, will not fall apart, the prison door will always work properly,...

the word "juniorisation" is problematic in the sense that's only been around for a couple of years. people of the generation before me (basically before the minifig - era) never talked about <insert that tiresome argument> pieces, but most likely thought of minifigs as "<insert that tiresome argument>".

i think "juniorisation" doesn't exist, honestly... we, lego fans just grow older... in reality, it's just lego evolving, adapting to new fans,... it's in fact, exactly like pop music... i hated the pop music of the generation before mine, like (you british, look the other way for a second :P ) kinks, beatles, "mersey beat type of bands"; i loved my own generation's bands like Police and duran duran, hated the pop music of the next generation, like all that R&B crap and Rappers... thought that was for teenagers, too simple, "too <insert that tiresome argument>"...

[jonfett]

I, personally, think it began after the introduction of Star Wars sets.

Lego created many new pieces for Star Wars sets and they have just got bigger and bigger. Just look at the Ultimate Lightsaber Duel set, released this year. This set has at least 10 pieces which are just big and pointless. Star Wars started juniorisation becuase the ships and sets required new pieces to be accurate, if Lego had not of got the SW license then I guess we would have seen a lot more basic sets, like adventurers or maybe castle/pirates.

Jon.

[Darth_Ewok]

But if lego didn't have the SW liscense then we wouldn't have EWOKS! :oo

[ApophisV]

I noticed the first time that there is a trend to special molds in the middle of the 90's...

Look at the Explorien Starship 6982, it's just a collection of freaky spacy parts like canopys, wing parts, transparent antennas and deflector dishes and whatever! Also somehow there was a change from realism to playability at the pirates line, which made the most sets look more like some kind of an live play toy than a construction toy. Or just look at that Scala and Belville sets, that were just collections of some very large pieces!

But as it was already mentioned that are just my impressions, those parts that were available till 1992 or 1993 were THE lego parts that "always were there" (from my point of view). Somebody who started playing with Lego in the late 90's might give TLC a bigger tolerance till he sais "Oh, there was some change!" because he grew up with this large variety of parts!

[The Middleman]

I might point out that there is a noticable difference between Exploriens, a generally good line with some great parts, and Jack Stone. Juniorization really started when LEGO started trying to dumb down their sets for children. Before, they were just trying to provide us with new parts.

[Mister Phes]

So could we say that "juniorisation" is not so much the size of the piece, but more its functionality (or lack of) and how it integrates with the more generic LEGO elements?

[Mini]

Juniorisation began with the introduction of the one piece minifig seat.

[Mr. Lego-builder]

Well, I actually define <insert that tiresome argument> pieces as pieces (usually large) that LEGO uses in lower-aged sets which can be formed by other LEGO pieces. For example, one piece with wheel axis pieces with a car base that is molded as one, could be considered <insert that tiresome argument>, because you can use seperate wheel axis pieces and a seperate car base piece. I actually don't know when juniorization started, but it seems to be less present now...back to classical LEGO...slowly, bit by bit...

[Mister Phes]

I wouldn't mind things moving a bit faster in the classical direction myself...