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 Dear LEGO / 1857
1856  |  1858
Subject: 
Re: Stuff I'd like to see...
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.dear-lego
Date: 
Sat, 18 Mar 2000 16:04:02 GMT
Viewed: 
1684 times
  
In lugnet.dear-lego, Richard Marchetti writes:
To Whom It May Concern (and therefore the least likely to actually read it):

TLC's ambitions are probably an exercise in overreaching.  Belville will never
be Barbie.  These terrible video games will never compete with Doom or Myst.
These timepieces will never put Swatch or Timex out of business.  Playmobile
is already too well realized to be competed with directly.  So IMHO, in the
end it will be about modular bricks or nothing.

You're right! I think that the reason that all the sets are so juniorized, is
because kids don't have the patience to sit down and build something. Or, they
are not creative enough to fit 5 bricks together into one larger. TLC says that
lego enhances creativity etc. It *did* that, but today, all you have to do is
take five bricks and voila! You have a house! That's not very creative. Instead
of adapting the lego to the kids, they should try to adapt the kids to the lego,
if you understand what I mean.

Yet, sometimes modular is NOT the way to go.  There are indeed occasions when
TLC simply needs to design a thing not otherwise available to scale if you had
to build it yourself from bricks or plates.  These items include walkie-
talkies, tools, horns, guns, etc.  Yet, in the move towards juniorization
(particularly in town, but now creeping over into castle as well) I sense a
desire to create a more "ready-made" play item.  The weird thing is the sort
of items TLC has chosen to make "ready-made."  We see juniorized architectural
and vehicle items, as well as things like telescoping cranes and so on -- lots
of stuff you could have made for yourself from other elements.  But there are
so many things we don't see...

We don't see many animals.  Trees and other plants are currently pretty
limited. We don't see much in the way of food.  We see few items for
minifigure recreation.

I'd like to see ready-made items that I can use at mini-fig scale.  I'd like
more dogs and cats at an appropriate scale, farm animals, peacocks for
gardens, elephants, tigers, lions, deer, mice, butterflies at mini scale,
toads, etc.  I'd love to see the return of the cypress tree, as well as a host
of other items to include: ivy, grapes, bushes that are more than just pieces
of plastic jutting straight out, flowers of different types, oak trees, etc.
I'd like to see minifigure roasted turkeys, carrots that are not Belville-
sized, wine bottles, cola cans, chicken drumsticks, steaks, pies, hunks of
cheese, bread, etc., and all the sorts of tableware I would need for my
minifigs to eat it all.  How about making ready made musical instruments like
lutes, guitars, folk harps, bagpipes, pianos, harpsichords, pipe organs, huge
drums, tubas, trombones, and saxaphones?  How about filigree black gates with
which to surround a Victorian manor?  I think my minis might enjoy a comfy
chaise lounge.  And etc, etc, etc!!!

Animals exist, but I'd like to see more of them. A zoo would be great. It could
have icebears, parrots and other birds, spiders, all the animals made by TLC.
Peacocks etc. would be great, but I don't think we need butterflies.
I partly disagree with you on the other things.
Cheese, bread etc. would just get lost because of their size, the apples and
carrots we already have works fine. Ivy sounds good, we already have some sort
of ivy in the Belville sets, so does Cypress trees and more flowers (I'm
thinking colour-wise here, the shape of them is good enough for me).
Musical instruments is good, we could have a rock band then!

--Tobias

The point is: stop giving us ready-made "juniorized" pieces of stuff we can
build ourselves from other modular parts, give us ready-mades of the stuff we
could never build properly to scale!!!  Is this idea so hard a concept to
grasp?

Sometimes people joke that if you put monkeys in a room with typewriters,
eventually they will have written something on par with Shakespeare.  Is this
the working theory behind your design department?  If so, I think it needs to
be restructured.

-- Richard



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: Stuff I'd like to see...
 
(...) I keep seeing people say this, and you know, I don't agree. I am quite sure *some* kids are this way but the ones who come to my Technic class (about 30 or so kids, on and off, age range 6-12, out of a school of 120 or so kids) are definitely (...) (25 years ago, 18-Mar-00, to lugnet.dear-lego)
  Re: Stuff I'd like to see...
 
(...) Hmm. From my experience, they don't HAVE to adapt the kids to lego. I baby-sit two 5 y/o twins every Friday afternoon, so I get to see what other kids think about lego. These kids have both "dad's old lego" (1) and new sets (among others: Sith (...) (25 years ago, 19-Mar-00, to lugnet.dear-lego)

Message is in Reply To:
  Stuff I'd like to see...
 
To Whom It May Concern (and therefore the least likely to actually read it): TLC's ambitions are probably an exercise in overreaching. Belville will never be Barbie. These terrible video games will never compete with Doom or Myst. These timepieces (...) (25 years ago, 10-Mar-00, to lugnet.dear-lego)

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