The Changing Face of LEGO

[fallentomato]

So I've started going to these biweekly potluck talks that some alumni from my college started last year. Every other Monday a bunch of people get together and eat food and then there are three presenters who talk about anything from neuroscience to politics. I volunteered to give one about LEGO (since that's the only topic I know squat about ) at next Monday's meeting and now I am scrambling to get a power point together.

The (admittedly pretentious) title of my talk is "The changing face of LEGO: the death of imagination and the rise of otherized imperialism." The main point I want to get across to my fellow twenty-somethings is that LEGO is not quite the toy they remember from their childhood. The two specific trajectories I want to trace for them are the two that I find most troubling:

1) The shift away from products aimed at fostering creativity and imagination to more straightforward model building

2) The dramatic change in the tone of the system storylines from simple rivalries to the violent imperialism/colonialism epitomized here

Here's a basic outline of what I plan to talk about. My apologies if this is rough and hard to follow. I'm putting it together as I go.

I will probably begin with a quick overview of some basic LEGO facts for the uninitiated:

lego = leg + godt = play well

the reason there were no green bricks for so long was because OKC didn't want LEGO to be used to build military things (I think, I don't remember where I read this now)

modern brick design patented in 1958

first modern minifigs as we know it in 1978

For the first topic I was planning to illustrate the trend in a few different ways

1) The changing "brand statements" which go from "The toy that builds imaginations/We build great imaginations" to "Just imagine" to "Play On"

2) The removal of alternate model pictures

3) The decreasing percentage of merchandise on a yearly basis that is in the basic/creator/bulk category (this will involve making graphs out of brickset data and may end up too laborious a task to finish by next week)

4) Perhaps the increased in licensed themes?

Basically I will start by presenting my (very worn) copy of the Bill and Mary idea book and end with a run-down of the current product line

For the second topic I will start in 1978 and show a lot of pictures of box fronts to illustrate what I see as three distinct phases

1978-1988 - Minifig paradise

- With the exception of a few castle joust sets and siege towers there is no depiction of direct conflict of any kind

- There is only one face for all minifigs

- there are no clear good guys or bad guys.

1989~1998 - The eternal struggle

- 1989 is the introduction of pirates

- introduction of non-smiley faces

- also the introduction of factions ( pirates versus imperial guards, space police vs blacktron)

- this continues through out the next decade and spreads to nearly all the themes

- there are two main categories the conflicts fall into: law vs outlaw & good and evil sides fight over resources

~1998-2008 - otherization and imperialism begin

-1998 Hydronauts vs. stingrays. Here we have a conflict where the "evil" side has been dehumanized, but at the same time legitimized. If the stingrays are part fish, or otherwise native to the sea, doesn't that make the hydronauts invaders, who are taking the stingray's natural resources. Of course this is conjecture, but not completely unfounded.

-1999 Rock Raiders. The inclusion of the rock monster is problematic. Clearly the rock monsters are native to the caves and are probably only protecting their homeland from being damaged. Another point I will make is that unlike the factions of the past the rock monsters are underrepresented in the theme - there is no rock monster cave. They exist only as an obstacle between the Rock Raiders and the precious resources

- General trend in this time period to dehumanize the evil faction - Examples: skeletons/trolls in castle, the cyborgs in agents line, robots in exo force

- increasing tendency to pit "man vs. beast" Examples: Dino Attack, Vikings, Aqua Raiders

- 2007/8 - Mars mission - Another example of a imperial/colonial conflict - humans are fighting martians for energy crystals on mars. The human also have elaborate capsules on most of their vehicles for containing martians and it looks like they are using them for power as well. They are at the very least subjecting them to tests and shooting them through tubes for no good reason

2009 - ??? - Miners and Monsters

- The sentient monsters are part rock and part crystal

- The power miners are drilling through rock to take crystals

- The crystals are likely either a food source for the monsters or something akin to baby monsters

- In some cases the monsters are being enslaved and made to collect these crystals for the miners

- In many cases the miners are throwing dynamite at the monsters

I'll probably wrap up by making a vague attempt to tie this back to the real world by saying something like "what is this teaching our children? in a time where violent conflicts over natural resources are very real, do we really want to give the impression that might makes right?"

Wow. That was a long post. Thank you if you have read through it all. I'd love to get feed back on what you think about this, what I am leaving out, what I have gotten blatantly wrong etc. Most of this I pieced together from memory and a couple hours of trawling Brickset. )And just to ward off potential flame wars, no I don't think LEGO is spiraling downward, in fact I think if anything it is only getting better , these are just a couple things that have been troubling me. )

[WhiteHexagon]

I'm not sure I agree with point 1, doesn't the introduction of new brick types, minifigures and story line into sets add to the creativity aspect?

When you compare other toys on the market, LEGO isn't doing too bad a job. The rock monster set you linked does raise some concerns, although maybe the children are going to sympathize with the rock monsters? I wonder how detailed these sets get play tested in front of child physcologists.

At any rate I think the problem is not with LEGO, but with the way children develop these days. When I was a child I was happy with a bucket of simple bricks for hours on end (I still am really), and even with identicle minifigs I'd still create good vs bad scenarios. These days I get the impression children require much more stimulation to keep them interested and normally the TV or other electronic devices are going to win.

Still, an interesting post :)

[Dadster]

Pretty interesting stuff - I bet the folks on this site could discuss those points for some time to come.

Good Luck with your presentation!

[timbutnice]

Interesting stuff, not sure I agree that Lego represents a shift to imperialization - I mean you can take it too far, e.g. do the construction vehicles in Town / City represent the rape of our precious planet to build nasty roads etc.

On the creativity side, I'd argue that Lego has many more possibilities now than it ever did for four reasons

1. More different unique pieces available now

2. Many more colours

3. The exploration and use of 'advanced' techniques to combine Lego (e.g. SNOT)

4. (this is the biggy) The internet - before the net all we had was the Lego magazine, a few very localised groups and the occasional Idea book for inspiration. We now have Brickshelf, MOCPages etc etc with (I'm guessing) 100,000s of MOCs, numerous sites including the illustrious and supreme EB to support and grow the community, and the extension of the Lego marketplace away from a B2C model to the C2C model in eBay and Bricklink.

Of course this is largely AFOL facing, or at least to me, an AFOL, it feels like it is.

So to turn my above argument around, does the plethora of ideas and opportunities out there strangle an individual child's imagination, as they no longer have to think for themselves?

I hope that this isn't the case. According to this there are 915 million ways to combine 6 bricks - and that's just 6. With that scope to experiment (i.e. play) in, I'd argue that there is no way our, or our children's, imagination will ever be constrained by the multitude of MOCs that exist today, only inspired to greater things.

Anyway, good luck with the presentation, be interesting to hear how it goes down,

cheers,

timbutnice

[fallentomato]

I'm not sure I agree with point 1, doesn't the introduction of new brick types, minifigures and story line into sets add to the creativity aspect?

While those elements certainly display a greater amount of creativity from the TLG design teams, they also require less imaginative effort on the part of the child. I don't think this is always bad thing, for instance I'm glad that we aren't still in the days of brick built horses, but the thing about brick built horses is that it is then very easy for the child to turn it into a unicorn or a zebra or a camel where as all the can do with the current one piece horses is add on wings/flamethrowers/etc. fo the place where you attach the minifig. There's still a possibility for imagination there, but it within a much more restricted realm. No matter what you do the horse will still be a horse. At a certain point of specialization you verge into Playmobil territory.

Obviously LEGO will always be a hugely powerful toy/medium for creative and imaginative expression, and for us AFOLs who have spent years building, the addition of new pieces only opens up more possibilities. My concern is not even with this so much as the fact that bulk bricks and "freestyle" buckets and idea books have become a marginalized part of the LEGO line-up instead of it's core. You have to search to find them in my local LEGO store. The emphasis is on the system sets, where kids are provided with an existing story and pieces that have very clear intended uses (of course the kids can always choose to ignore the intended story and uses, but that's not my point) and unlike the past, most sets these days don't come with pictures of alternate models.

My main point is TLG has stopped pushing creativity in the way it used to, it is no longer a visible part of every product. And that, I think, is a shame.

When you compare other toys on the market, LEGO isn't doing too bad a job. The rock monster set you linked does raise some concerns, although maybe the children are going to sympathize with the rock monsters? I wonder how detailed these sets get play tested in front of child physcologists.

At any rate I think the problem is not with LEGO, but with the way children develop these days. When I was a child I was happy with a bucket of simple bricks for hours on end (I still am really), and even with identicle minifigs I'd still create good vs bad scenarios. These days I get the impression children require much more stimulation to keep them interested and normally the TV or other electronic devices are going to win.

Still, an interesting post :)

I agree, LEGO is still doing a great job, especially in comparison with other toys. And yes I do hope that children sympathize with the rock monsters, but even if they do, there's still the issue that the set they have is mostly made up of the drill. It's not like the Batman and Agents lines where the good and bad factions each have equivalent vehicles in most sets. And i do agree that children will do whatever they want and will create conflict even in the "minifig paradise" - I certainly did But again, I'm more concerned with how LEGO is presenting it's play themes and storylines. I just can't imagine showing the picture of 8958 to OKC.

As for children needing much more stimulation these days I disagree, I mean children just have more stimulating options and if they are raised exclusively by those means, obviously they are going to demand much more from the toys/entertainment. But that's a question of how parents are raising kids and that's a bit outside the scope of this topic...

Thanks for your reply!