Or, the answer being to Lego’s credit, we could ask “How many toy companies (or any other companies in business since then) have decided against re-tooling for planned obsolescence or made their products cheaper knowing the products would fail in time?”
Not a lot of toys being passed down these days. Or anything else either.
Personally, I like the radar dishes. They have a shape you can’t get with blocks that has a bazillion uses.
But these days the buildings, such as for example in the Harry Potter sets, often include huge pieces instead of letting you just lay brick like a real wall. Meanwhile, as has been already pointed out, the spaceships have thousands of parts. Interesting in the context of human/exciting?
I keep telling my wife that – in English, anyway – the word “enough” cannot modify the word “Lego.”
Fine. You want a 400,000 piece Hogwarts Castle? Alice Finch will give you a 400,000 piece Hogwarts Castle.
Even if not genuine it certainly seems to be officially “endorsed” as Lego have just posted the photo themselves on their FB page
No mystery here folks…
This is a 1974 dated UK Homemaker LEGO catalog back cover page… and yes it is legit. The LEGO company started a series of Doll House furniture sets called “Homemaker Sets” (32 of them in total) that were produced “mainly” for girls from 1971-82… but that disclaimer on the back page says the same thing that the LEGO company has been saying for over 40 years since then… LEGO IS FOR EVERYONE!!!
Here is what the front page of this UK LEGO catalog looks like…
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=C&catString=349.85
Also, this brochure was produced in each continental European LEGO country in 1974, as well as UK, Ireland and Australia. This was not produced in the USA or Canada, as the Homemaker sets were not sold there until later.
It’s been confirmed that this particular Lego ad is genuine, but to answer your specific comment, many ads from the 60’s and 70’s used short, pithy sentences like this.
Or this one for “leg bronzer.”
I don’t know enough about advertising history to say exactly why they wrote ad copy that way, but it was probably strongly influenced by style guides like the Chicago Manual that became influential during that time, and advocated for a short, simple, almost abrupt writing style.
Note: this is not directed at you beschizza but rather at the people who have wasted copious time discussing, debating, and arguing when a simple path to the answer is readily available. Quoting your post is a convenience.
The unbelievably obvious way to determine if it is real is to ask the folks at Lego. Here is the response I received…
Thanks for getting in touch with us.
The letter “To parents” that’s rapidly making its way around the internet is authentic. The letter was a part of a pamphlet included with a variety of LEGO® doll house sets from 1974.
The text remains relevant to this day – our focus has always been, and remains to bring creative play experiences to all children in the world, based on the LEGO brick and the LEGO system – ultimately enabling children to build and create whatever they can imagine.
This is visible today across the entire product range from the LEGO Group – any LEGO product is based on the LEGO system and this creative building experience.
Most only have instructions for one thing, but most of the Creator line has instructions for three things. Here’s a list of the currently available 3-in-1 Creator sets.
Creator is kind of an odd, hodgepodge theme, but there’s some fantastic stuff in it. Vehicles, animals, robots, and buildings at a variety of different scales, with a tendency towards broadly-usable parts rather than specialized ones. It’s basically the antithesis of the “Lego is all just media licenses and stupid gimmicks now” canard. If you’re thinking of getting back into Legos, picking up one or two of the small Creator sets would be a great place to start.
I’m sure it is. I’m as socialist as the next socialist, but I don’t think I can fault a company purely for being successful if they’re not hurting people or sacrificing their values to do it, and I think I’ve demonstrated that they haven’t.
Abrupt writing style is right. I’m sure you’re right about this being a factor, but the lego one felt even starker to me, and vaguely non-native. And the apostrophe, of course.
I only understand the tiniest bit of German, but I get have the feeling this was written in German first (and worked great in that language, most likely) and then translated very literally to English by a German speaker. Or Danish? Now there’s a subject I know nothing about.
I don’t know that The Lego Group ever explicitly promised not to be sexist in their toy marketing, but they’ve certainly gotten more sexist in their toy marketing. Thay have promised not to sell war toys, and that promise has been finessed and re-interpreted and muddied to the point of irrelevance.They’re selling models of military aircraft that lack military insignia, even for vehicles that have no civilian application. The guns they sell are supposed to look either too futuristic or too old fashioned for us to take offense to, yet their “agent” series is no anachronism.
I suppose it’ll be megabloks or tente that buys up the GTA franchise to make gangster minifig and hooker minifigs.but only after Lego has pioneered that slippery slope.
They cannot be worse than kids’ existing imagination. A gun or a bomber aircraft can be made from a few of generic bricks easily. Don’t ask how I know. 
I dont remember building much that wasn’t militaristic.
Isn’t that minifig the very rarest of them all?
Sure! It would be folly to use policy to prevent kids from making shooting gestures with their fingers, too. I object to the instructions showing kids how to make war toys with the set they’ve just opened.
