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In lugnet.dear-lego, Deidre Rushton Brumby writes:
[her terrifically awesome message snipped]
> Where do I see him in 2 years (Age 7)? Well, unless Lego get their act
> together and bring back some more advanced models, we'll be relying on that
> freestyle while the town collects dust in a corner, until one day I put it
> away and he doesn't even notice (just like the Duplo).
Well ........ (a long, drawn "well ...")
The reason you put the Duplo away was, largely, because it
is not compatible with LEGO, at least in the kid's mind.
I've seen this happen, too. The five year old in my life loved
his Duplo trains, but once he had a chance to play with proper LEGO
pieces, he had no interest in the Duplo elements.
Pretty much, kids are smart, and once they are given the better
alternative, they aren't so interested in the big bulky "baby blocks"
any more, any more than we Adult Fans are.
Now, I can imagine LEGO coming up with a reason to mix Duplo
and LEGO -- giant castle walls built from gray Duplo elements
would be pretty cool. But LEGO doesn't really give us much reason
to mix and match Duplo with LEGO. There were a few Duplo
elements I was glad to have mixed in with my LEGO pieces as a
kid - yellow domelike pieces, not the plain old bricks - but
by and large the pieces are simply of the wrong scale. Kids are
pretty big on catagorization, and aren't very interested in mixing
toys that aren't on the same scale. So while the compatibility
of Duplo with LEGO is a cool feature, it's really only a physical
compatibility, not a functional one, at least in our minds and
playing habits.
Now, why did I ramble about this?
Well, the Town Junior stuff is not incompatible with the rest
of the LEGO line. I would suggest that in two years, you won't
be putting the Town Junior sets away. Instead, they will be all
mixed up in a large bin full of other LEGO elements from whatever
line is continuing to maintain your child's interest. In other
words, I would expect (and LEGO expects) your kid to move on
Space sets, Castle sets, and the like.
Now, I do wish that LEGO would produce town sets aimed at, say,
10 year olds rather than 4 year olds. It's a shame to see a
wonderful theme relegated to, essentially, the post-toddler
children. But LEGO expects children to get bored with one
theme but to move on to others. Since they turn over their
product line every year or two, there'll always be something
new to try. Those town junior pieces should mix in just fine
with a larger LEGO collection, even if some of them are so
specialized they won't get used very much.
I dunno. Maybe I missed the point, but I don't see why you
would need to put perfectly good pieces away in a closet. The
junior pieces just go into the collective after a while, to
be joined by pieces from the non-juniorized aimed-at-a-slightly-older-
audience sets.
Now, if the entire LEGO line gets juniorized, I agree - that will
just encourage kids to outgrow LEGO more quickly than they already
do. LEGO is courting disaster by catering to that trend, in
my opinion. To some extent, it makes sense - "kids outgrow LEGO
more quickly than they used to, so what should we do? Let's try
to sell more sets to the younger kids to make up for lost sales." Okay -
do that, but if you aren't careful you just reinforce the idea that
LEGO is for younger kids and that encourages children to grow out
of LEGO more quickly.
However, the fact that their most popular sets, the Star Wars sets,
are very non-juniorized, should serve to get them on the right path
for a few years more. LEGO follows the money. I'm sure that they've
learned some lessons from the runaway success of the Star Wars sets.
One lesson is probably "do more tie-ins with pop-culture properties" -
and the success of the Star Wars models will be difficult to reproduce,
as there simply is no other pop-culture phenomenon that has
cross-generational appeal as Star Wars. But, LEGO seemed to deliberately
steer away from making the sets too juniorized, and the sets sold
like gangbusters. LEGO will see a lesson in that, too. I expect
to see at least temporary refuge from LEGO's formerly irrevocable
slide towards juniorization in the next few years.
--
Jeff <jthompson@esker.com> "Float on a river, forever and ever, Emily"
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