Lego Is the Perfect Toy

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/12/lego-is-the-perfect-toy.html

by wallflower • 10 years ago

250 116 10 years ago

sampl• 10 years ago

  there was value to the building experience, the sense of accomplishment, the spatial reading

Toys like this are always so much more memorable--and meaningful.

I made a list of gifts that help people build, hack, create, explore etc [1], would love feedback from HN.

[1] http://wanderkind.org/

anentropic• 10 years ago

Yes

6stringmerc3• 10 years ago

Nice long-form overview and, from what I can tell, well-balanced trying to deal with legacy / reputation as a "smart toy" and somewhat inconclusive research on the whole. Intuition is a good "out" in this case, because not every toy works for every learning style for every child, etc. One thing I did see:

Marvin Minsky, the MIT scientist who helped pioneer artificial intelligence, has even said that “the decline of American inventiveness” can be traced to the rise of Lego, arguing that by becoming the most common construction toy, it’s pushed out construction toys like Tinker Toys and Erector sets that can get kids building simple machines.

Whoa, those are some names I haven't seen in a while but did grow up playing with. Tinker Toys in particular. To me, the criticism isn't fair - those were toys and learning tools from a prior generation. I'm pretty sure the only reason I grew up with Tinker Toys was because I had a Grandmother who grew up during the Great Depression and was of the generation that enjoyed them. My Parents much more embraced Legos, and, quite simply, getting bags or bins full of used, miscellaneous bricks at garage sales was a huge creativity boost. Then, later, turn around and sell or donate them. Rarely did I see Tinker Toys or Erector sets around. Technics seemed to bridge the gap between Legos and higher-level engineering / complexity / use of motors.

What does feel important about Legos & playtime, to me, is the manipulation of 3D space, coordination, and dexterity training. There is no such replacement via a 2D screen, and 3D / VR or AR aren't even close. The ROI on play time, age appropriate, with Lego-type hands-on exploration is worth keeping in mind. No batteries. Easy to clean. Hard to break. An Occam's Razor of developmental toys.

pavel_lishin• 10 years ago

My grandfather bought me an Erector set, and it was one of the best toys I ever had - but it definitely required a larger investment of time and effort than Lego did. Before you even consider that you need to plan out or follow instructions to build a machine, it just plain takes longer to connect the various pieces, with the fiddly little nuts-and-bolts that you steadily lose over the years anyway.

I have a kid, now, and I definitely look forward to getting to play... or watch someone play... with Erector sets and Lego and all those toys.

edit: Thinking about it some more, Lego is Minecraft, and Erector/Meccano is Kerbal Space Program.

arethuza• 10 years ago

I had a fair amount of Meccano, Lego and a weird thing called Philiform that was apparently a version of Lego created by Philips.

I actually have fondest memories for Meccano - possibly as it was the one I played when I was older. Did used to get upset at my dad "borrowing" bits to help make repairs to cars, greenhouses etc.

mc32• 10 years ago

I have to say I agree too. I had a Gabriel(?) erector set and it was the best toy. I enjoyed legos too but the erector set was the most fascinating as it mimicked real things like real cranes or cars (in that they had moving mechanics which obeyed laws of physics and you got to screw things together and took them apart, they were mostly metal so it had less of a "toy" feel as well).

tlrobinson• 10 years ago

Yeah, I guess Marvin Minsky wasn't aware of Technic and Mindstorms. I largely attribute my "inventiveness" to my childhood obsession with LEGO.

I had Erector set (actually "Meccano"), but preferred LEGO/Technic because they just snapped together, you didn't have to spend time screwing a bunch of tiny nuts and bolts together. The feedback loop was shorter.

I also had some other construction toys like Capsela. I don't think I had Tinker Toys, but they seem much more simplistic.

By middle school Technic were the only LEGO sets I was interested in (unfortunately Mindstorms came later, but I had one of it's predecessors, Technic Control Center).

nicklaf• 10 years ago

Yeah, I guess Marvin Minsky wasn't aware of Technic and Mindstorms

Which would be somewhat amazing, given Mindstorm's pedigree.

icebraining• 10 years ago

LEGO does have Technic, but it's a small and relatively unpopular subset of the whole universe, hence he may still be right. And the rest of LEGO not only has less of an emphasis in machines, as it also comes with minifigs and other components that can be used for more typical "roleplaying with dolls/action figures" over construction.

jfroma• 10 years ago

Prod owner of a capsele too. I didnt have Legos when I was a kid but loved so much my capsela.

I wrote a blogpost about it and the positive effect on my career:

http://joseoncode.com/2012/02/01/capsela-the-game-that-chang...

Original post in hn:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8797905

gohrt3• 10 years ago

Technic and Mindstorms are absurdly expensive compared to TinkerToys, and I think pricier than Meccano.

I don't know that LEGO really pushed out TinkerToys though.

He's right that LEGO is rather inflexible, as far as building structures and mechanisms. You need to mix in non-LEGO materials to build simple machines.

giardini• 10 years ago

"Marvin Minsky ... has even said that “the decline of American inventiveness” can be traced to the rise of Lego, arguing that ... it’s pushed out construction toys like Tinker Toys and Erector sets..."

Minsky's not the only person who has come to that conclusion. Tinkertoys were a good match for young boys' sometimes clumsy hands and, for the older more patient boy, Erector sets were a perfect way to spend a solitary rainy day.

Some chemistry professors, students and engineers still work with Tinkertoy-like tools every day.

gohrt3• 10 years ago

"the decline of American inventiveness” is assumed without any sort of proof.

mturmon• 10 years ago

What a nice summary. You write "what does feel important...is the manipulation of 3D space, coordination, and dexterity training..." and I wanted to highlight this versus "making machines" -- Minsky, of course, being a big proponent of machines even for no purpose at all (the delightful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useless_machine).

My kid has always enjoyed making shapes in 3D, but not so much the machines part. For 3D manipulation and creativity, she's spent more creative time with Magformers and the magnetic Y-ball and X-ball toys you can find at museum shops, than with Legos.

RHSeeger• 10 years ago

I have very fond memories of playing with both Legos and my Erector Set with my father, growing up. My daughter has both Legos and Tinker Toys. All the "build things with your imagination" toys are fantastic.

Of all the toys that I had as a child, Legos had by far the biggest impact. When I was in college, my mother gave away my "big box of legos" to my cousins. I was, and still am to some degree, devastated. I'm buying legos for my daughter now and its going to be a long time before I can afford to replace what was lost. I still harass my mother about it from time to time (and it's been decades).

Side note: Buying new legos for my daughter, I've come to realize just how much my parents spent on toys for me (and my sister). Even given the fact that the price of legos has increased less (per brick) than inflation, they're expensive. I have dreams of coming upon a great lego stash at a garage sale, so I can jumpstart my daughter's collection and creative "scope". :)

DanBC2• 10 years ago

I have dreams of coming upon a great lego stash at a garage sale, so I can jumpstart my daughter's collection and creative "scope". :)

You can buy Lego by the kg or pound from Ebay. Depending how much cleaning and sorting you're prepared to do you can get some bargains.

kbouck7• 10 years ago

Observing my 7yo son's open-ended play with modern-era LEGOs, I must disagree with Minsky. Perhaps the LEGO sets have changed since this this comment was made. I find the current LEGO Technic pieces to be the perfect tool for open-ended exploration, and for building of simple machines. While the sets do come with prescriptive instructions to build something specific out of that set - you aren't forced to follow them. Those instructions are more of a demo of what you can do with the pieces.

The pieces are almost all generic, and closely model their real-world mechanical equivalents -- beams, pins, gears, axels, motors, linear actuators, switches, battery power supplies. There a great book exploring all the technic fundamentals: "Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide" [1]. It covers concepts like leverage, torque, gears, gear ratios, differentials, suspensions, transmissions, etc.

Throw in the fact that technic electronic components (motors, lights, sensors) can be driven by code (eg. scratch on a rapsberry pi), and I can't imagine a better learning toy which is initially so approachable, and yet has such a high ceiling for advanced learning.

If you want to see what incredible creations are possible in the hands of the masters, check out "Incredible LEGO Technic" [2].

[1] https://www.nostarch.com/technicbuilder2

[2] https://www.nostarch.com/incredibletechnic

thro1237• 10 years ago

Looks like a nice book. I have zero exposure to legos. Which lego kit should I buy to go along with the book? An amazon link would be very helpful. Thanks.

BatFastard• 10 years ago

Technics are awesome, as a 60 year old engineer I hated to part with the extensive set I had acquired while leading a Lego League team, but I passed it on to my nephew.

However, I see many kids building one model, and then sitting it on a shelf as something they have made. What a waste of Legos...

diggan• 10 years ago

So let's say I want to use those two books to get started with LEGO Technic (I have long LEGO experience, not so much with Technic), how I find the sets to have use of the books? Should I buy the parts by themselves, after buying the books? Can I find a aggregated set somewhere, where the most common pieces are included?

Basically, how I can find start-sets of LEGO Technic?

agumonkey7• 10 years ago

The generic was part of the appeal. It seems to have peaked in the 90s, now LEGO is milking dedicated shapes. Expected, that's how "progress" evolve. Even my father complains.

mcphage8• 10 years ago

It's a shame this article didn't come out a few weeks ago, when NoStarch Press had a ton of their Lego books available in a Humble Book Bundle

Glyptodon• 10 years ago

From what I remember of my childhood Tinker Toys were just low-quality (things would fall apart easily) and weren't as flexible in terms of what you could construct.

Erector, on the other hand, was prohibitively expensive which made it hard to have a meaningful enough collection to build what you wanted.

mcphage8• 10 years ago

and weren't as flexible in terms of what you could construct

The things you made were a lot more abstract, but people have even made computers using Tinkertoys: http://www.retrothing.com/2006/12/the_tinkertoy_c.html (which doesn't excuse the fact that Minsky was flat-out wrong there)

usefulcat• 10 years ago

I played with Legos extensively when I was a kid (1980s). Overall, they were definitely my favorite, and in fact I kept all of them and now my 4 year old son has them and loves them.

I'm not sure I agree with Minsky, but I have definitely noticed that the Legos of today are very different to the ones I grew up with. Today there is a far, far greater variety of pieces available.

This is definitely a very mixed blessing. On one hand, it does offer a skilled builder many more options, and certainly allows the creation of things that look much better than what could have been created with Legos of thirty years ago. However it also means that finding the right piece takes far more time, which I remember as being the least fun aspect of Legos.

Then there's also the fact that reduced constraints are often not beneficial to the creative process. As a kid, certainly I would have always liked to have had more Legos, but as an adult I realize that an unlimited amount (or, perhaps more importantly, variety) of Legos would probably not have been for the best.

wvenable• 10 years ago

As I kid I loved all the special pieces I could find; they became the centerpiece of most of my designs. Odd enough much of what I built as a kid, I can't build now because my son's large collection of Lego's doesn't include many of cool 80's space pieces. :)

ronald_raygun• 10 years ago

I think there are generational technical toys. For example, I think snap circuits are a ridiculously awesome toy for kids.

sea-shore• 10 years ago

I think one of the big arguments agains the standard Lego blocks is that you can not build triangles, which is kind of important when building structures.

gonzo• 10 years ago

http://www.webofstories.com/play/marvin.minsky/10;jsessionid...

Marvin Minsky says LEGO isn't ideal, because you can't build triangles, no pulleys so .. no machines.

MagnumOpus• 10 years ago

Which can only be said of basic Lego. Triangular connections, pulleys and gears are some of the most basic Lego Technic advances - and Technic has existed for 40 years now, though that is maybe slightly too late for Marv's kids to play with them...

radicalbyte• 10 years ago

Perfect timing, I've just ordered the three big Technics sets from 2016.

Technics is brilliant, even if my enjoyment with it is currently limited to following the instructions. I hope that it'll teach my kids a lot about engineering. The gear boxes in the big sets for example are genius.

artursapek• 10 years ago

For xmas I asked my mom to mail me my old Mindstorms sets (original yellow brick version). I want to share them with my 2 year old, who is already into Legos. I absolutely loved those things.

Yen3• 10 years ago

I have a fun memory of the yellow Mindstorms set.

Apparently, the visual programming environment was just a thin wrapper on top of C, and people quickly came out with simple IDEs that let you program the brick in C.

I tried to program a musical sequence, and was mystified when programs involving simple decimals didn't work. I didn't understand at the time, but the Yellow Brick didn't have any floating-point support! I eventually just faked it with a good-enough approximation of using integers to emulate fixed-point arithmetic.

jdcarter• 10 years ago

Perfect toy indeed, and I'm glad to see how they've captured the girl's market with the Friends and related series. Lego had attempted to market to girls several times before 2012 but failed. I appreciate how this interview spoke to the specific outcome of their market research, i.e. the larger, more detailed figures. It must have been crazy to suggest to Lego that they abandon the "minifig" format for a major new product line, but it turns out that's exactly what they needed to do.

My own family experience is reflective: my daughter enjoyed building Lego sets (and got quite good at it) but didn't really engage with playing with them until the Friends sets came out. With Friends she can spend hours creating a huge narrative about their adventures. Now you can't find a coffee table in our house that doesn't have a couple Lego sets on it. And when other girls come over to play, they're drawn like magnets straight to the Legos.

6stringmerc3• 10 years ago

Very interesting to get your perspective, re: what they studied, deployed, and you observed. Nice to hear success stories. Habits and 'tradition' can be tough to adjust or break, but when it works, quite cool. The "creating a narrative" is awesome, as in a lot of development research I reviewed for some studies, because that's how 'play' and development seem to grow naturally. Acting out. Imagining stories. Not the end-all be-all of things - but a noteworthy component.

secabeen• 10 years ago

Yep, Friends is an example of the success of research, product development, and commitment over status quo. LEGO's research showed them that many girls wanted characters with names (Sophia, Emily, Sherrie, etc.) not mini-figures with roles (firefighter, policewoman, robber). Friends gives them that.

Yen3• 10 years ago

A bit ironically, the 'Larger, more detailed figures' is is actually something Lego had already done, in boy-centered sets, several years before.

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/TECHNIC_Figure, http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/8714_The_LEGO_TECHNIC_guys

I'm a bit disappointed they didn't use the same design (or a similar one) for the new figures - there was a lot to be said for the full posability of the Technic figures.

Also, the legs had holes in the side, allowing you to mount bricks either on their feet, or to the side of their legs. This allowed for building reasonably convincing exo-suits.

lordnacho• 10 years ago

Worth mentioning the CEO credited with the turnaround announced his retirement (to the board) this week.

gpderetta• 10 years ago

As far as I understand, a Lego parent company is getting set up (Lego Brand Group) and Knudstorp will be head of that company, while Lego itself will switch focus on just the brick themselves (a bit like the recent Google->Alphabet restructuring).

Source: http://www.brothers-brick.com/2016/12/06/lego-names-new-ceo-...

wolfgang42• 10 years ago

My parents like to tell the story of when I got my first Lego set--the first thing I did was pull out the instruction booklet (with all the diagrams of 'models you can make') and put it in the trash, with the explanation "I don't need instructions." Most of what I wound up building with them was 'world of the Future' models, which demonstrated some vision of an ideal society. For example, I had a model street with some storefronts, and overhead wiring to support small single-person electric scooters which would run on the sidewalk alongside the pedestrians, and would be docked at special stations for the next person who needed them. (I struggled with designing an automated system to automatically redistribute them as necessary, using only relay logic which is what I understood at the time.) Another model was what I now recognize as a 'smart home', which featured occupancy detection, a (wired) telephone remarkably similar to Apple's 1983 concept phone[1] based on the Macs we had in our house at the time and an Apple Newton I had seen, and various other concepts (again, all based on relay logic and desktop computers!)

Bear in mind that I was doing all of this when I was 10. Clearly this was not normal play amongst my peers, and I would not expect Lego to provoke this sort of thing in most people. However, it was for me a valuable tool in building a worldview which I still strive for today.

My point in mentioning all this is that the great virtue of Lego is that it can be used for pretty much anything. Even if you get a set which is intended for "conflict play," it can be repurposed by the recipient to match whatever it is they're most interested in. (It's sort of like an inverse of the short story The Toys of Peace[2] in that regard.)

[1] http://www.mactrast.com/2011/12/apples-was-working-on-a-touc...

[2] http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/ToysPeac.sh...

sixdrum• 10 years ago

Tell that to my feet when my kids leave them in the middle of the family room at night!

Legos are amazing and are definitely the focal point of my kids (age 5 and 9) creative play.

glaberficken• 10 years ago

I have 6yo and 1yo daughters and one thing that strikes me with the current Lego range Vs the sets I had as a kid is the amount of rubbish decorative tiny parts that the most recent sets include.

(I know you can still buy the basic box full of bricks, but these are sometimes hard to find)

notadoc• 10 years ago

Agreed, Lego is fantastic, and timeless.

dwe3000• 10 years ago

I still look at most of the modern, themed Lego sets with a sense of sadness. They seem to inspire the "you have to follow the instructions" mentality so apply demonstrated in the father in the Lego movie. The older sets did include instructions, but the older blocks seemed more generic to building a wide variety of things, versus the "this is a piece for the Batmobile engine."

mcphage8• 10 years ago

Lucky for you Lego still sells tons and tons of sets that are just generic bricks for you to do whatever with: https://www.lego.com/en-us/classic/products and the Lego Creator line which directly emphasizes being able to make a bunch of things with each set: https://www.lego.com/en-us/creator

That was one of the points of this article—people see their themed lines, or their Friends line, and say "why can't it just be like when I was a kid?"—when what Lego said was "why can't we do both, and more?"

blacksmith_tb• 10 years ago

I agree to a point, but unlike other pop-culture tie-in toys, the Batmobile etc. Lego set can be broken down and combined with other bricks. In my experience about half of the themed sets are quickly absorbed into my son's common pool for building other things, while others stay more or less whole (sometimes with some upgrades and repairs). Overall the experience is very good, I think - they are toy which can be mastered (well enough) by children, can build (fairly) durable things, and then recycle cleanly.

hkmurakami• 10 years ago

Well even the older sets (25 years ago for me) had some specific pieces for boats, castles, space craft, etc.

But you could still make your bat mobile engine something else, if you let your imagination run wild during a building process.

xahrepap• 10 years ago

I stopped buying Lego for a while because that's what it felt like to me, too. But a LOT of the newer sets now are built with very generic pieces. Each set might contain a unique piece or two.

Also, I've noticed that my kids (<8yo) both get new Lego, build following the instructions, then within minutes they will be moving pieces around to better suit their style. Or completely destroying it and making something they want to build instead.

AceJohnny2• 10 years ago

Funny, I remember having these complaints 20-25 years ago.

It's more likely the reality is the more specialized blocks come and go, and you only remember the more useful ones that survive the generations. There were junk pieces back then too.

It's kinda like saying "all music nowadays is trash, not like the old days". Sturgeon's law applies: 90% of everything is trash, and you only remember the best parts of the past.

up_and_up• 10 years ago

Thats somewhat true. But my kids always build the themed project first, play with it, then bust it apart and the pieces are merged into the greater pool for general builds. My kids come up with some crazy uses for those specialized blocks!

Yen3• 10 years ago

How modern is 'modern'?

When I was a child, the sets I received usually had some sort of theme, even if it wasn't a branded theme. Pirates, space, race cars, whatever. Also, as other articles have pointed out, the majority of the specialized-looking pieces in modern, branded models, are actually creative re-uses of pre-existing pieces. Re-contextualization.

One thing I remember distinctly is that my sets always came with two sets of instructions - one would build the model featured on the box, the other would use a subset of the same parts to build something related but different. Personally, I would usually build the intended model, play with it a bit, then disassemble it for the alternate model. Eventually that would get disassembled as well, added to the big box of unsorted Lego, and would be fodder for modeling some other random idea.

That said, I think I did more experimentation with the Technic line of Lego, which is more like a plastic erector set, than I did with the regular bricks. At least, I remember more of the experimentation with those, probably because it was at a later point in my childhood.

animal531• 10 years ago

I'd do roughly the same. I would build and play with the main model, perhaps the secondary designs if they looked like fun. Then I'd break it down and use the pieces for whatever I felt like at the time.

But then roughly once a year I would break down everything I'd built and sort every piece. Then I'd rebuild all the original models.

Funnily I have trouble swallowing medication, but I once put a flat 1x4 piece in my mouth for storage, but accidentally swallowed it. After that I'd always be bummed out when building my fire truck because it would be missing a piece. Back then in the 80's you couldn't get replacement pieces (at least where I lived).

douche6• 10 years ago

The instructions in the older sets are also noticeably harder than the instructions are now. The new sets probably have, on average, four or five times as many steps, for the same number of pieces. And forget about listing which new pieces are used in each step, or showing multiple angles to help illustrate the alignment - you'd better be really good at counting studs in the isometric renderings on some of the old instruction sets.

gohrt3• 10 years ago

You are allowed to throw away the instructions.

Your opinion is common, but it reflects a waning creativity of a person growing older, not a major change in LEGO

agumonkey7• 10 years ago

I especially love the algebraic nature of LEGOs. Something the designers took care to respect over the years. Many things combine mathematically with so many other parts[1]. Sometimes in twisted ways, sometimes in absurd ways.

- http://www.htxt.co.za/2016/08/08/local-master-builder-shows-...

- http://www.themarysue.com/bendable-lego-geometry/ (tolerance based curvature?)

- http://brickset.com/article/23288/the-geometry-of-the-new-11...

There are a few pdfs listing the linear and angular ratios, can't find them right now. Enjoy your google fu.

ps: for the sheer epicness of it https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/4gmsfp/finished_my_gi...

[1] and as programmers I'm sure you enjoy that ;)

Waterluvian3• 10 years ago

I loved that Lego was even units so you could end up having two things half way across your universe pretty much line up perfectly, or require just a few adjustments.

But the fact that THREE flat pieces equaled a standard height piece drove me nuts as a kid. WHY NOT TWO OR FOUR?

LV8• 10 years ago

One explanation might be that the flat pieces snap between two top studs on any other brick, when laid on edge. This would not be possible with a different ratio.

brandmeyer• 10 years ago

I loved that Lego was even units so you could end up having two things half way across your universe pretty much line up perfectly, or require just a few adjustments.

This fact is extremely under-appreciated: the Lego system works the way it does because they have attained truly astounding tolerance control in a cheap injection-molding process. I remember a couple of years ago when a small startup promised a Lego-like replacement, but themed for girls. The hype got them plenty of sales, but the poor fit of the pieces meant lots of disappointed customers.

scoot• 10 years ago

LEGO, Lego or lego - I really don't mind, but please don't pluralise it like all the other sheeps!

galfarragem• 10 years ago

During my childhood (80s) I only cared about 3 toys: lego, playmobil and zx spectrum. All the rest was crap.

tmaly• 10 years ago

I remember playing with a really old version of Technic as a kid. This was probably one of my favorite toys. I would build all sorts of interesting machines with the gears.

I saw another mention of a raspberry pi driving Technic on here. Has any tried this?

kbouck7• 10 years ago

Yes. Raspbian comes with a version of Scratch which has out-of-box support for LEGO WeDo/PowerFunctions.

If you get the Lego USB hub part (9581), you can attach Power Functions v1.0 components to your raspberry pi via the hub. Works right away. The USB hub has two channels, so you can use it to control 2 motors, 1 motor + 1 sensor, or 2 sensors.

The LEGO extension to Scratch has controls like:

- Set Motor (A or B or both) to speed 0-100

- Turn Motor (A or B or both) on for x seconds

- Stop Motor ...

- Reverse Motor Direction

- Read tilt/distance sensor value

I've also worked out the IR codes (with the help of others' work) so if you hookup an infrared led to your pi and install LIRC you can imitate the Power Functions remote controls.

douche6• 10 years ago

There are some really cool examples of people building working printers with Technic pieces and Mindstorms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yZpAMWU1s8

notindexed2• 10 years ago

Just some x y work but i think some here might enjoy the nostalgia

400k+ 2x2 Lego bricks pixel wall http://imgur.com/a/X5fHS

euyyn2• 10 years ago

Wow, where is that?

notindexed2• 10 years ago

In a 36m x 2,75m hallway http://www.alr.lu/

douche6• 10 years ago

I wish they would bring back some of the classic themes. There is kind of a hole right now, as there isn't a real Castle theme, a real Pirate theme, and Space has been subsumed into the Star Wars licensing for almost two decades.

One thing I've always really wanted was a modular castle line, akin to the modular town building series, e.g. https://shop.lego.com/en-US/Pet-Shop-10218

DanBC2• 10 years ago

Holy crap "modular castles" would be ideal for the Lego Ideas website.

douche6• 10 years ago

It's nuts that they haven't done it already. The late 80s, early 90s crusaders/falcon knights/black knights sets could be put together in something approaching what I'm envisioning, but it was underdeveloped. The Medieval Market Village and Kingdoms Joust sets were natural jumping-off points for a modular castle system.

billpollock2• 10 years ago

We have a few LEGO books that make people think.

j_s• 10 years ago

https://www.nostarch.com/lego

problems• 10 years ago

Try stepping on it and you'll quickly discover its flaw.

billforsternz• 10 years ago

I often try to explain the appeal of programming to the uninitiated by saying it's a bit like building Lego models but you have an almost infinite supply of blocks.

partycoder• 10 years ago

One of the best toys I've seen are "snap circuits", which are basically one of those simple electronic lab kit "toys" only that they do not use cables. Instead you snap blocks together like legos.

euyyn2• 10 years ago

Legos did that too! I had a spaceship and a boat in which a battery was connected to lights and a siren via bricks.

kbouck7• 10 years ago

Lego power functions is exactly this (but for very limited circuits). There are battery boxes for power, switches (both mechanical, and remote-controlled), lights, motors, etc.

The power functions pieces have special bricks which embed electrical endpoints which click together when the bricks are connected. The system is basically 4 wires - 2 which propagate the power rails to downstream pieces, and 2 more wires which are for PWM controlling of motor spin rate.

I would love it if they added more electronic components to this set (eg. timers, sounds, more sensors, etc). If you like to tinker, you can cut apart these wires and hook up the control wires to an raspberrypi-controlled circuit.

There's probably even more circuits possible with Mindstorms components, but I'm not familiar enough w/ Mindstorms to comment.

facepalm• 10 years ago

The only thing that is sad is superhero themes. There are much better stories out there.

gene-h• 10 years ago

One thing that really annoys me about lego, is that lego mindstorms kits are still relatively expensive despite tech improving. It is hard for most parents to justify this costs on a toy. In fact, the price has gone up with time rather than decreasing as would be expect. The newer kits are more expensive than the older kits by about $40 when adjusted for inflation.[0][1] Sure, the new kits feature an arm processor that runs linux and has bluetooth, but these things have gotten cheap.

I am somewhat surprised the chinese haven't started making counterfeit smart bricks with the same capability.

[0]http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/9747_Robotics_Invention_System [1]http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/31313_Mindstorms_EV3

mzzingtime• 10 years ago

The lament over price and overly specialized parts is misplaced. Price per piece has not changed much, and there have always been specialized pieces in sets.

While I've seen the trend of more kids just following the instructions (vs free-building from their imagination), the pieces still provide a lot of opportunity for creativity.

Even better, Lego released their free Lego Digital Designer (LDD) software, which is a CAD-like program where you can build in 3d using the entire catalog of Lego pieces. It opens up many more creative possibilities.

For example, using LDD, I was able to design my own take on the A-Team van.

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/160590

On the Lego Ideas website, customers can submit designs, and the Lego company will consider making them into official sets... Yet another way to stimulate creativity.

johnhenry• 10 years ago

Yup, perfect toy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXgB3lIvPHI

erickhill• 10 years ago

My son has a ridiculous bucket of Legos - more than I ever could have dreamed of as a child. I used to spend obscene amounts of money on branded Lego sets when a birthday approached. I soon realized that, while a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle van was really cool (seriously, it was), it only lasted about a day or two before it was reduced to pile of brick rubble and scooped back into the mega-bin. At that stage, the possibility of it ever being reassembled was virtually impossible for a 1st grader to figure out.

The generic pieces were the way to go.

Then, after what seemed like about a year, he started playing with them again. He showed me his long, snake-like sumbaraine with parts of dragon bits here and there which he'd found somewhere in that bin. It was awesome. It was unscripted and creative. It came from his mind, not some 30-paged instruction booklet.

I was more excited to see that kind of creativity than I was the original dragon (which I was made to assemble eons ago). I recently felt a bit jaded about Legos. But my son brought me back.

jayajay• 10 years ago

Legos are dope as fuck.

PhasmaFelis2• 10 years ago

From the article: "What he noticed was that they now play with physical Legos as if they were the video game, reenacting their races with the plastic pieces. This isn’t to say that Legos aren’t still good toys, or that there’s anything necessarily wrong with imaginary play mimicking the experience of a video game, but it’s certainly different from what most parents imagine they’re buying in a box of Legos. The question is whether that difference matters."

Not only does the difference not matter, I'm not sure I believe that there is a difference. When kids play, they're acting out variations on stories they've encountered. I don't see a real difference between performing scenes from a video game and performing scenes from a book, movie, TV show, or real life.

frakr• 10 years ago

Isn't this just an ad?

talmand• 10 years ago

Lego is a near-perfect toy. Anyone who claims it is perfect has not stepped on one barefoot in the dark.

After a few times you consider crawling across the floor probing the floor before you as if you were Rambo in a minefield.

Lego Is the Perfect Toy

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