So yesterday I was playing with the grandson of a friend, the child and the dad were playing with some simple blocks making very interesting buildings and figures...all very simple and you had to use your imagination a lot!
I remember the same pleasure, as a child, with lego, but now all I see are these "pre-designed kits" where imagination is gone out of the window. In my days you wanted a spaceship and you built it with the block at hand (even better if you had a piece of clear lego for the cockpit -- but not essential). I and my friends would compare how great your spacecraft were. Not once did we consider following instructions of any sort -- we just picked legos off the floor (they were in large boxes) and from there we would build our universe.
Now I get that lego makes a lot more money from these 200 pieces kits it sells for $39.99 than they would from just selling half a kilo of assorted blocks of various shapes and sizes, but to me, they killed what made legos magical -- our imagination.
Funny enough the owners of lego are still the family of the founder/inventor of lego. Must be the fault of the MBA's they hired all those years ago...As for the dad (who is much younger than me), lego never had the shine they did for me, because "there's no imagination" you see his lego universe was entirely built on the "designed use" era of Lego -- for him lego is something with no imagination. In the short term, the owners of lego did fantastically -- in the long run, it's destined for the rubbish bin of toys. Because my friend will not buy legos for his children and his children will not know lego.
I am certain that the family that owns lego couldn't care less they are rich, they will, when sales decline, sell the brand to a Chinese company that will manufacture the legos in China (reducing costs) and shutting down manufacturing in Denmark.
Creative destruction is what its called, I think
I remember the same pleasure, as a child, with lego, but now all I see are these "pre-designed kits" where imagination is gone out of the window. In my days you wanted a spaceship and you built it with the block at hand (even better if you had a piece of clear lego for the cockpit -- but not essential). I and my friends would compare how great your spacecraft were. Not once did we consider following instructions of any sort -- we just picked legos off the floor (they were in large boxes) and from there we would build our universe.
Now I get that lego makes a lot more money from these 200 pieces kits it sells for $39.99 than they would from just selling half a kilo of assorted blocks of various shapes and sizes, but to me, they killed what made legos magical -- our imagination.
Funny enough the owners of lego are still the family of the founder/inventor of lego. Must be the fault of the MBA's they hired all those years ago...As for the dad (who is much younger than me), lego never had the shine they did for me, because "there's no imagination" you see his lego universe was entirely built on the "designed use" era of Lego -- for him lego is something with no imagination. In the short term, the owners of lego did fantastically -- in the long run, it's destined for the rubbish bin of toys. Because my friend will not buy legos for his children and his children will not know lego.
I am certain that the family that owns lego couldn't care less they are rich, they will, when sales decline, sell the brand to a Chinese company that will manufacture the legos in China (reducing costs) and shutting down manufacturing in Denmark.
Creative destruction is what its called, I think
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