I don’t know how much me being European has to do with it, but I find the claims that the message is too modern rather puzzling. At the time that would have been a) a fashionable mainstream progressive statement b) still worth pointing out. To me it sounds positively quaint.
Sure, toys are pointlessly gendered today and more so than they used to be for a while, but generally manufacturers hide behind demand from children. At least the idea that there is no need for a prescriptive standard is (still) pretty well established.
Which of course, is driven in part by toy manufacturers themselves, because if they have a gendered demand, they can produce more toys for the market… it seems to become something of a vicious circle. But it’s hard to trace back to origins on this stuff, so we end up endlessly debating it, which came first, the pink aisle or the girls wanting a pink aisle.
It’s great that you use new special LEGO parts creatively in ways LEGO hadn’t intended, but the topic here is LEGO’s marketing and advertising.
Their intention in making and marketing Star Wars sets and vehicles, or any other licensed products, is not to supply you with the best, new and novel building block shapes.
What it boils down to, is product makers want us to buy stuff we don’t need. So they want us to think we need it. Which means a separate unit for John and a seperate unit for Jane, and a completely different unit for Mom and Dad. Can you imagine how it would look for all four of them to be playing with the same bricks at the same time? Communism!
(to be sure, it’s not just gender used to divide us, but that’s a much larger topic…)
Sometimes, the product makers want us to continue to buy stuff we don’t need, year after year after year, This continual demand is fostered, in part by brand image. If a older girl thinks that Lego is associated with a younger, pinker self, she’ll be more likely to “outgrow” lego. If, however, she recalls her earlier sets as merely being simpler, with fewer pieces, she might be inclined to try out more complex models, and buy more from Lego.
In the 1980’s there was no graphical internet to fuel the insane building passion, and AFOL groups were unheard of.
But it was when I could afford all the bricks I wanted, I noticed I spent much more time sorting and organizing them than actually building with them. Even today, I have to maintain a carefully chosen subset of bricks for each project, since there’s far to many for random access to play a part,
[quote=“youneedcoolin, post:67, topic:46817, full:true”]
It’s based on unanalysed assumptions.[/quote]
Whose unanalyzed assumptions? It seems to me that it’s trying to analyze and refute the reader’s unanalyzed assumptions.
Indeed. That’s exactly what the pamphlet is saying, isn’t it?
I don’t know what “gender-comparative” means in this context.
It’s not? Well, that’s what it does, whether it’s intended or not, so I can’t really manage to be fussed. This piece was created for the guns on the very first non-sports licensed Lego kit, the 1999 X-Wing, and it (and its newer version) have been used all over the place for all kinds of things in the last fifteen years, in official Lego kits and in fan creations.
Again, have you played with a recent Lego set? The new licensed ones are every bit as good and versatile and creative as the old non-licensed ones. They still put ideas for other things you can build with them on the box. And they still produce plenty of original lines in the Space, Fantasy, Town, etc. themes.
If you know what AFOL means you’re probably aware of this, but just in case, BOX4BLOX is very useful for doing basic sorting, especially for accessing all the tiny pieces that otherwise sift to the bottom of the bin and can’t be found. Of course, many people have written about more elaborate sorting and storage schemes.
Here’s what I mean: once built it’s likely nobody is taking this very expensive, very dedicated movie souvenir LEGO set apart to make anything else.
Changing their business plan and marketing direction in this way has made LEGO the biggest toy company in the world. This is their intention. The topic is about the history of how LEGO presents itself and markets its toys to parents.
That set is only a few hundred dollars, if I had the time to play with lego beyond with my kids hell yes I’d take it apart & use it differently. I’d probably never even put it together as shown, I never did when I was a kid (although those were usually rather mundane examples as I never had the fancy sets)
As well, their change in direction isn’t by necessity to the exclusion of the egalitarian message once included in sets. They’ve had a few mis-steps with crappy gender marketing, particularly their Scholastic offerings, but overall the spirit of creativity remains despite stylized sets seeming to limit same. Sure, some people may see that as nothing more than a super star destroyer, but many would only goggle about having 3100 pcs suddenly dropped into an already diverse collection & build whatever they want.
Sure we could say chicken n egg, but their stated intentions have remained fairly static & their model changing to include opportunities by way of popular culture isn’t so great a paradigm shift that it changes their intentions.
Some people win gold medals playing for enjoyment, some people win gold medals to win gold medals or land lucrative advertising contracts. Some do all three. Either way the spectator wins.
edit - It would be fair to say they’ve added an intention, except making money is always an intention in business both before and after success. If they cancel their Creator line, or any of the myriad other lines that are not pop culture branded license stuff, maybe then they’d have changed away from their original mission, but they haven’t, so all that stuff is merely in addition to.
Every child is active in creative and has a particular way of expressing themselves, children painting, horseback riding, climbing, dress up, build in the sand or play with blocks. lego meets the zest of children. you can build with small colorful stones, what you want, what you like. whether young or girls, lego sets the imagination EEIG limits.
a girl builds a spaceship. A boy plays with the doll’s house; because a dollhouse is human. Playing with a spaceship, however, is more interesting and exciting.
but the most important is that you get the right play material in the hands. only then you can feel free to create and play.
My Dad bought me my first Lego set back from USA in 1965 (I think). It was just blocks. I don’t think it even had wheels. But it was the best toy i ever had. And guess what? Some of those 49 year old bricks are still in a big box we get out when little kids visit, and they still snap together. How many toys last that long?
I have a bunch of LEGO brochures from the 70s that I kept when I gifted all my LEGO from that period to my nephews. I remember being pretty surprised by the amateurishness of some of them – the grammar, spelling, and layout weren’t exactly of pro quality. But remember, in the 70s, LEGO was not the globe-straddling toy titan it is today – it was a mostly parochial little Danish company that shipped kits to a few other countries. But it did also ship the egalitarian Danish attitude of the time as well, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was real.
Do they have instructions for some variants besides the main object/scene, or just photos on the box for kids to reverse-engineer? I haven’t played with Lego in over thirty years but this thread is making me want to.
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