(Apologies if I’ve already made this rant here, I searched and I don’t think I have).
Back in my day, Legos were toy bricks that you could build whatever you wanted with. The instruction book came with some suggestions but after that got ripped up you’d just kinda figure it out.
For my kids, Legos are playsets that you build once, they collect dust for 4 or 5 years, and then you donate them. At some point they just end up as plastic waste in a landfill.
I get that it’s fun to follow directions and build the playset. I’ve done it with my kids, it’s fun, like doing a puzzle. But I’ve never seen a kid finish a Lego set, take it apart, and then pull it back out a few months later and build it again (as with, say, a puzzle). Nor have I seen a kid spend more than a day or so playing with the resultant playset as if it were a toy in and of itself.
It just seems to be an inherently wasteful product. I’m sure Lego aren’t very high up on the list of plastic polluters, but it seems like they get a free pass for some reason.
When my kids were little kids, I liked to say that the most painful thing in the world was stepping barefoot on a lone piece of Lego in a dark room.
Picture it. It’s nighttime and you’re in your living room so you know your way around, so you don’t turn on the lights. You’re barefoot and walking across the floor when suddenly…
OUCH!!! DAMN!! MOTHER-F*%#€ING COCK S*%#€ING SON OF A BEACHBALL!!!
Your own children notwithstanding, but from what I gather of the community, this is primarily adult LEGO fan behavior.
Speaking for myself, some sets get taken apart and built as something else or rebuilt as the set. Others stay put together and go on permanent display. My Apollo Saturn Rocket for example, is never getting taken apart.
When we were kids LEGO were the same as Tinkertoys; there were no ‘kits’ and everything was free-form. But I suspect a lot of kids simply use the LEGO from kits to do their own free-form construction.
Some of my kids’ Lego sets stay built and some end up in a big box of Lego pieces. I think some of the more challenging Lego sets are good for concentration and engineering skills.
I think the way Lego is marketed might be what’s bad.
You have your set of kids who are obsessed with Lego, who use them in the “traditional” way we’re all thinking of - get a set, build it, take it apart, use the pieces to build something else, hours of engineering fun.
But with all of the insane numbers of popular franchise partnerships now, you have a lot of kids wanting sets because they are fans of whatever fandom the set represents. They beg you to buy it. You buy it, they hopefully put it together (or make you put it together). They do not turn in to Lego engineers. The thing sits on the shelf and collects dust. You hope they have kept all the pieces together so you can re-sell it soon.
At least that’s how it happened in my family. I’m still super salty about my dad caving in and buying my niece a $130 Harry Potter set that I was tasked to sell 1 year later for $18. Grr. She had no intention of becoming a Lego Person. She just wanted more Harry Potter crap.
I don’t think that’s true so much these days. Lego isn’t so really seen as a ‘build anything you want’ toy, but some sort of puzzle (or for adults, an artwork) that you build once then leave.
My ex-husband used to buy Lego kits, ostensibly for our son. He would then assemble the kit himself and give the finished product to the kid as a toy. Any time a brick came off, my son would cry because the toy was “broken”.
I imagine that a Lego spaceship or whatever makes an awkward toy since it’s going to be fairly heavy compared to something not made of Lego. So do a lot of kids play with the constructed things?
I think you nailed it. I was a LEGO kid in the 90s - when kits were getting way more complex and “thematic,” but crucially before kits were themed around other licensed properties. LEGO had their own wizards-and-magic theme instead of being Harry Potter, had their own archeological-adventure theme instead of being Indiana Jones.
I definitely clamored for the kits that appealed to me (particularly sci-fi stuff like this kit which now runs $250+ ) but every kit eventually got dismantled and added to the Big Tub of Loose LEGO. To my recollection, the process began as modifications to the original design. My flying saucer would look cooler with more guns! With big pincer legs! With a radar dish! Eventually I would imagine a different design that needed some of the elements - a giant knight or robot who needed half of the saucer for a shield. That would kick off the deconstruction process.
I think Zipper’s assessment is likely correct - there’s probably still as big (or bigger!) a contingent of “builder kids,” but LEGO is now aimed at a much bigger market than just them.
I like to say Lego hurts twice, once at the checkout and then when you step on them.
Ouchy!!
Son-of-a-wrek was the Lego guy around here. He built, rebuilt, redesigned and rebuilt. He loved them. He still does.
I have all his Lego at my house. The grandkids play with them.
One thing I didn’t touch on, the playsets don’t really lend themselves to the “lego bin” mentality. They’re a lot of custom pieces, or very small pieces. The colors are often specific to that series.
We’ve tried throwing a bunch of dismantled playsets into a bin and it just doesn’t play as well as the bin we have of classic bricks. (This is with kids we babysit for, my kids are all sort of past the lego bin stage as it were).
