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http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/11/18904238-do-legos-need-anger-management-figurines-grumpier-than-ever-study-says?lite=
By Gillian Spear and Tracy Connor, NBC News
BEGIN Quoted Article:
Do Lego Minifigures need an attitude adjustment?
A team of academics who studied hundreds of the plastic people prized by
children and collectors thinks a little anger management might be in order.
In 1980, all the figurines that came in sets of interlocking bricks were
“smileys” — with seemingly sunny personalities to match their bright yellow
visages.
But in the mid-1990s, only about 80 percent of figurines were putting on a happy
face, and by 2010, the proportion had dropped to 50 percent, the researchers
found.
In place of enigmatic grins, scowls, grimaces and knitted brows increasingly
appeared below those molded plastic toupees.
“Things have changed a lot since I was a kid,” said the study’s lead author,
Christoph Bartneck of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, who briefly
worked for Lego in the 1990s and declared himself an AFOL – and Adult Fan of
Legos.
He and another researcher from the school’s Human Interface Technology lab
culled photos of all the figures produced between 1975 and 2010 and had study
participants describe the facial expressions of a representative sample of 628.
They plotted the emotions — happiness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise and
sadness — on a time chart to illustrate how the two-inch toys have gotten
crankier with the passing years. By 2010, about 30 percent of the figurines were
hot under their removable collars.
“We cannot help but wonder how the move from only positive faces to an
increasing number of negative faces impacts how children play,” Bartneck wrote
in his study.
While he said there is no conclusive research to suggest grouchy Legos beget
grouchy children, he sounded wistful that the halcyon days of Minifigures are
fading.
“The children that grow up with Lego today will remember not only smileys but
also anger and fear in the Minifigures’ faces,” he wrote.
Lego did not return a call and an email for comment on the study.
Young fans, however, were unperturbed by the playthings’ perturbation.
Victor Hudson, 13, of Raleigh, N.C., correctly noted that glad still outnumbers
mad in the Lego production line, and the increase in angry faces accompanied an
explosion in the number of different Lego characters.
“The robbers are obviously mean,” he said. “There’s lot of characters, so some
are mean, but it’s mostly smiles.”
Jeanette Collins, a mother of a 6-year-old girl from Hinsdale, Ill., had not
noticed grumpiness creeping into her daughter’s collection but isn’t worried.
“It’s better than watching TV,” she said. “As long as it doesn’t affect her
behavior.”
Bartneck believes the harder edge is a response to consumer demand for less
generic, more character-specific Minifigures.
“Can you blame them?” he said of the toymaker.
:END Quoted Article
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Mad Legos
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| (...) I'm not bothered by the facts or story here, but I do find it annoying that a) the author/editor chose a challenging headline when the conclusion of the article does not actually get that challenging (it's misleading!) and b) the picture used (...) (11 years ago, 16-Jun-13, to lugnet.mediawatch, FTX)
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