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In lugnet.build.microscale, Mark van ‘t Hooft wrote:
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Hi all,
I’m sure most of you know that the Lego Factory contest ended on Monday and
the winners have been announced.
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Mark and everyone-
As the parent of two LEGO world champions (the 1992 LEGO World Cup, the 2000
LEGO Star Wars Galactic Challenge), I’ve seen both sides of what it’s like to
put heart and soul into these events and then win or lose.
The bottom line, to me, is that I’m grateful to The LEGO Company for giving kids
a chance to show off what they can do. There’s lots of places in our society for
child athletes or child entertainers to earn big recognition, but very few
opportunities for future engineers and architects. So, for that reason, I really
appreciate that TLC holds such contests.
That said, there sure have been problems that could be fixed. Rules need to be
made more comprehensive and they need to be followed. The problem, I’m sure, is
that TLC doesn’t anticipate putting a lot of effort (i.e., money) into rule
enforcement and judging. And if we complain too much, we will end up with
“contests” that consist of TLC picking 100 entries at random and then choosing
the best from just that 100 instead of looking at everything.
My older son entered a contest when he was about 7 in which he followed all the
rules that required building something from 3 specified sets and conforming to a
specific theme. He followed those rules and won, but TLC also awarded prices to
entrants that were not built from the specified sets and didn’t match the theme!
My younger son entered a Halloween costume contest at LLCA in which judging was
done by audience volume. His entry dressed him head to toe in LEGO and included
a full size automated operating space weapon. He lost to a child in a store
bought costume. Why? The winner brought along a large extended family. Well,
good for them, and good for LLCA one might say if those family members had all
bought admissions that day, since presumably that was the purpose of the
promotion. Except on the way out of the park, we happened to be in Customer
Service when the winner’s mom thanked the park for letting her busload of family
members visit at no charge just to vote in the contest!
At one point, TLC held a contest that precluded winners and near-winners of
previous contests. If it had been a luck based drawing, I would have had no
objection. But when the the announced itent was to find the “best LEGO builder
in the United States”, it seemed crazy and unfair to disqualify competitors who
had proven themself worthy of consideration. The Olympics would be a different
beast if anyone who had previously attended was automatically inelligible. I
found this particularly ironic for a company whose slogan is “Only the best is
good enough”!
I think the LEGO Factory concept is a terrific idea. LEGO can find some really
cool new ideas and put them in production. Kids and adults get a great
opportunity to show off and earn recognition and valuable considerations. It’s a
win-win. With so much value in it for TLC, TLC should allocate the resources to
professionally judge the submissions. Having the unqualified public do it is
just crazy for them -- and heart breaking some for contestants.
-Ted
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