So, was dragged into the Lego Store in Birmingham’s Bull Ring yesterday, but not by a bratty snotty little kid, no but by the boyfriend. We’d just grabbed some dinner at Nando’s (yum), and as we were walking out, he espied the Lego Store.
Him: “Its a Lego Store!!!”
Me: “Yes.”
Him: “We’re going in!!”
I’ve never seen him this excited about Lego before, so, in we went…
It was a magical grotto of Lego. Lego of all shapes and sizes. Lots of Lego kits. Harry Potter Lego, Medieval Knights Lego, Star Wars Lego, T-Rex Lego, and Lego marketed at little girls. Lego which was pink. Bright pink. Pink like this. The horror. But it got worse. There was Lego with sparkly bits in it. Its wrong! Lego used to be bright primary blues, greens, yellows, reds and black. And it was multi functional, and it didn’t matter whether you had dangly bits or not to play with it. Pink Lego, people.
But, it was a Lego Store. It was cool. And it had a wall at the back just filled with bins of lego pieces.
Noooooooooo!!! I just went to their website, and it’s full of jewellery kits and ‘fairy land’ sets and…nooOooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! It’s wrong, just wrong. :mad:
'ere, this 'ere Lego int warrit yoosd’be. When oi wurra lahd, we 'ad reel solid blocks. None of them fancy colours, moind. Just yer good honest blue 'n red. If we were lucky, we’d get a box of whoite’ns at Christmas. We 'ad to make’em lahst, moind you. Kids these days don’t know ‘ow to make bricks lahst. If we ran out of bricks, that was it. No runnin’ to the shop to get more. They were rationed, you know. Moind you, lil’Tommy always yoosed to get extra, on accoun of ‘is dad working’ at the docks. Soon as the convoys came in, they’d be in there to the crates of Lego,…
Recently, at a friend’s house, I noticed he had Lego SOFTWARE. It was a kid’s toy… a virtual Lego set, with an infinite number of pieces. You literally built virtual Lego stuff, and played with it, in the computer.
If I was a real Lego freak, I think being able to buy individual Lego pieces at low prices would be… like… orgasmic.
I bought my son a Lego robot kit. He can build a robot, which he was pretty much doing anyway, and then program it on the computer. Too cool, having a ten-year old.
I’ve just spent a few minutes looking at the snap-on flowers and magic fairy princess toys that Lego is undoubtedly using to attract girls to its product line. I wonder what can be said for females like myself who were attracted to Lego bricks long before any of these “girly” toys, much less pink bricks.
And what’s up with all the cutesy little faces they’ve got on the minifigures now? I liked them back when they had two dots for eyes and a tiny curve of a smile. Occasionally you could find a girl minifigure, with eyelashes and red lips, or a scruffy pirate. The basic facial expression was still the same though.
I admit, I haven’t looked recently, but last time I did, the problem with the girly legos was not that they were girly, but that they were stupid.
You couldn’t build with them, the people didn’t stick to the pieces (they weren’t even real lego people, they were like mini-Barbies), the pieces you could buy (no building) were dumb. They’d taken away all of the lego-ness of legos, painted it pink, and marketed it to girls. Which sucks.
But lego bricks that happen to be pink wouldn’t bother me at all.
They have a lego store at the mall here, too… I need to borrow a friend’s child so I don’t look stupid going in.
Boy, where have you people been? Girly Legos have been out for a while now.
(Disclaimer - every 10 minutes of my life spent in a Lego store seems like a year. I am not interested in Legos, however, my 12 year old son is)
But I digress…
There are Lego pens, Lego Models, Bioncle (Robot/alien looking guys), movies, Lego Chess, Lego Pizza Delivery Guy Software Game and lots of other Lego related software for kiddies (and other so inclined). My son gets a comic and catalog once a month from Lego, he gets birthday cards from Lego, he wrote a letter to Lego, Snap On Jewelry Legos…the list is never-ending.
I saw an episode of While You Were Out (or a similar home-improving show on TLC) where a woman had an entirely unhealthy Lego obsession. She had millions of Lego pieces organized by color and shape in huge crates in her basement. In the living room, tables, clocks, vases, picture frames (and pictures!!), footstools, almost everything was made of Lego. She cried as they took it apart.
