Subject:
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Re: Ahh, the old times...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.dear-lego
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Date:
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Sun, 3 Jul 2005 20:02:16 GMT
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Viewed:
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4887 times
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On 7/3/05, Patrick McFarland <pmcfarland@downeast.net> wrote:
> Dear LEGO,
>
> When I was a kid, I remembered how LEGO toys were apart of a modular toy
> system. Town, for example, had a complementary set of vehicles and sets,
> focusing on emergency services (such as police, firemen,
> ambulance/hospital, etc) and on generic 'common' stuff like cars and trucks
> and other stuff you'd see driving down the street; this easily blended into
> Train, which focused on cargo shipment, with trains, cargo trucks, cargo
> units to put on the train, and cargo ships.
>
> Maybe I'm mistaken, but it doesn't seem like that anymore. Its just a small
> number of sets that don't really have the imagination that sets when I was
> a kid had.
>
> I know LEGO has been pouring a lot of time, money, and other
> non-temporal/monetary resources (such as blood, sweat, and tears) into the
> Star Wars and Bionicle lines (not that I'm complaining too loudly here, the
> SW line has great gimmicks such as the light up lightsabers, and Bionicle
> is a great exercise in trying to make action-figures out of bricks, which,
> when I was a kid, I always wanted), but it seems to be wrong to neglect the
> classic LEGO toy lines, such as[1] Town, Train, Pirates, Castle, and the
> Underwater. All of them suffer from neglect.
>
> The Technic line also suffers from this. I remember the 8839 Supply Ship
> ( http://guide.lugnet.com/set/8839 ). A unique, nice little kit (only $60
> when released), and its decently sized had has a bunch of neat gimmicks.
> Newer stuff just isn't as complex (and when it is, it costs twice as much).
> Like, the Mobile Crane
> ( http://shop.lego.com/product.asp?p=8421&cn=48&d=11&t=5 ) is awesome, but
> its also $150, and way out of the price range of most people (kids or adult
> fans).
>
> Of course, the Technic line is doubly screwed. Walmart[2] doesn't seem to be
> carrying Technic, and if they are, its not many. The local Walmart has even
> gone as far as carrying a few popular SW line kits (with the SW stuff, not
> the LEGO stuff), a few Bionicle products; very little shelf space dedicated
> to the Designer line, and very little also allocated to whats left (like
> Town and Alpha Team). No Technic is on the shelves. (In addition to this,
> no one is buying the Knights series at all, the same bottles have been
> sitting on the shelf for the past few months)
>
> Thats another problem I see: kids wont buy toys they don't think are
> important and important toys have a lot of shelf space. At the local
> Walmart, half of one side of an isle is dedicated brick products. By brick
> products, I mean LEGO, Megablock (blargh! We need an
> alt.toys.megablock.die.die.die), K'nex, and some magnetic toy I don't know
> the name of. Of this half of one side an isle, half is LEGO, the other half
> is shared by everyone else.
>
> In contrast, when I was a kid, we had two major stores[3], and /both/ had a
> full side of an isle dedicated to the wonder that is LEGO; and during the
> holidays, Walmart had both sides of a full isle filled with boxes with the
> square red LEGO logo on them, it was really awe inspiring. I'm much older
> now, and I still miss that.
>
> LEGO was an important part of my childhood, and I want other kids to have
> the same thing in their lives. LEGO has shaped the way I think about the
> world around me. I became a computer programmer, and playing with bricks
> when I was a kid was an important step in forming my analytical and spacial
> skills, which come in handy when working in object oriented languages such
> as Objective-C.
>
> LEGO, thank you.
>
>
>
> [1]: Obvious omition of Space, due to the fact it can't co-exist with the SW
> line, but the same still applies. The last space sets produced before SW
> just wern't as awe inspiring as the older stuff, back when Blacktron and
> M-tron were popular, and Ice Planet was just introduced.
>
> [2]: Its a small town, and we have no other major stores, and no one else is
> selling LEGO products; otherwise, yes, I'd hit up a good toy store for
> stuff.
>
> [3]: Walmart and Ames, and Ames shut down all their stores 2 or 3 years ago.
> I miss Ames because they used to sell LEGO kits a little cheaper than
> Walmart or LEGO S@H.
>
> --
> Patrick "Diablo-D3" McFarland || pmcfarland@downeast.net
> "Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids,
> we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and
> listening to repetitive electronic music." -- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo,
> Inc, 1989
While I hope they do continue older product lines, I am a big fan of
the mindstorms, the Spybotics, the Bionacle manas. I have found uses
for some of the most obscure peices, and if you take a look at the
lugnet mecha forum, you will some othe mecha builders have even
incorporated Clickits in mecha models.
Anyway - new products can sometimes be difficult, and themes are a bit
of an interesting one, but classic product lines do resurface from
time to time.
It is a shame that fo some reason S@H is showing no prices in the uk,
but along with bricklink and ebay - and sometimes even amazon, it is
my preferred method. Local toystores just seem to stuff a premium on
it.
Anyway before ranting, take a look at this rather amusing older
thread: http://news.lugnet.com/general/?n=43860
Lego will always change and evolve, because the market is changing,
and so is the technology. They can do movie tie ins they could never
do before, and although they have indicated they will move to their
core product, it is great to have seen them explore that venue.
Classic space peices lived on in the Alpha team theme and other
themes. It would be nice if Lego retain a larger back-catalogue of
sets - especially some of the greatest larger ones, but they
definately need to be given room to grow.
Cheers
Orion
--
http://orionrobots.co.uk - Build Robots
Online Castle Building RPG -
http://www.darkthrone.com/recruit.dt?uid=V30311I30328J30379X30379E30260X30277
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Ahh, the old times...
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| Dear LEGO, When I was a kid, I remembered how LEGO toys were apart of a modular toy system. Town, for example, had a complementary set of vehicles and sets, focusing on emergency services (such as police, firemen, ambulance/hospital, etc) and on (...) (19 years ago, 3-Jul-05, to lugnet.dear-lego)
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