For parents of little ones

[Fijimn]

Probably the greatest gift out there. Lego slippers. Slippers designed to protect you from stepping on a lego. As a parent of a little one that has entered the building phase, I will be hoping Santa brings me a pair.

http://cnet.co/1SU3Ogz

 

[FSUSarah]

Haha that is awesome! My kids 5th birthday is this week and his grandparents sent him money for Lego's. He came home with 3 different sets. He is obsessed with them. Damn expensive hobby to have....

 

[DanC78]

Haha that is awesome! My kids 5th birthday is this week and his grandparents sent him money for Lego's. He came home with 3 different sets. He is obsessed with them. Damn expensive hobby to have....

Those jokers are incredibly expensive. And, you will be the one putting them together. Which is prolly why they sell so many.... I kind of enjoy doing them. It's like using your little one as an excuse to go see the new Pixar movie.

 

[FSUSarah]

He does it all himself. He spent all of Sunday building. Which was great because we got to watch football in peace. haha!

I like building too though!

 

[Fijimn]

My little girl in still in the block building stage. Poor little one is so tiny that she had to stack books on the chair to build her tower...sigh

 

[seminoledq]

I have been surprised by the price of Legos these days. I was in to them for a while when I was a kid and I don't remember it being so expensive (relative to other toy options). Maybe because now they are themed with box office movies and other corporate entities do that drives the price up.

 

[Nole Lou]

Don't get me started on Legos today.

Too expensive, and too restricted to building one thing, and buying another set and another and another.

When I was a kid, you got a gigantic set of Legos, and it came with a book with about 50 things to build. You build a bunch of those, and you get the hang of building your own things, and have the pieces to do it.

Now you buy a specific "scene" from a movie, there's only one way to build it, and you don't have the pieces to build anything else. 80% of the pieces are orc arms or pirate masts that don't have usage otherwise. And there's clearly a "right" way to do it. Even if your kid could build something else wacky and stupid, it wouldn't be the "right" way, and kids know that.

It's just expensive model building. Spend $50, follow instructions, build the unit as proscribed, and move on to #2 of 38 in the series.

Don't get me wrong, my son loved them. He got very good at following directions, which is certainly a skill that all good worker drones need to have.

But it is absolutely not an imagination building toy in any way any more. It's a finely tuned mega brand focused on nothing more than compelling you to buy ever more product.

 

[DanC78]

Don't get me started on Legos today.

Too expensive, and too restricted to building one thing, and buying another set and another and another.

When I was a kid, you got a gigantic set of Legos, and it came with a book with about 50 things to build. You build a bunch of those, and you get the hang of building your own things, and have the pieces to do it.

Now you buy a specific "scene" from a movie, there's only one way to build it, and you don't have the pieces to build anything else. 80% of the pieces are orc arms or pirate masts that don't have usage otherwise. And there's clearly a "right" way to do it. Even if your kid could build something else wacky and stupid, it wouldn't be the "right" way, and kids know that.

It's just expensive model building. Spend $50, follow instructions, build the unit as proscribed, and move on to #2 of 38 in the series.

Don't get me wrong, my son loved them. He got very good at following directions, which is certainly a skill that all good worker drones need to have.

But it is absolutely not an imagination building toy in any way any more. It's a finely tuned mega brand focused on nothing more than compelling you to buy ever more product.

Great post and couldn't agree with you more!

 

[FSUTribe76]

Don't get me started on Legos today.

Too expensive, and too restricted to building one thing, and buying another set and another and another.

When I was a kid, you got a gigantic set of Legos, and it came with a book with about 50 things to build. You build a bunch of those, and you get the hang of building your own things, and have the pieces to do it.

Now you buy a specific "scene" from a movie, there's only one way to build it, and you don't have the pieces to build anything else. 80% of the pieces are orc arms or pirate masts that don't have usage otherwise. And there's clearly a "right" way to do it. Even if your kid could build something else wacky and stupid, it wouldn't be the "right" way, and kids know that.

It's just expensive model building. Spend $50, follow instructions, build the unit as proscribed, and move on to #2 of 38 in the series.

Don't get me wrong, my son loved them. He got very good at following directions, which is certainly a skill that all good worker drones need to have.

But it is absolutely not an imagination building toy in any way any more. It's a finely tuned mega brand focused on nothing more than compelling you to buy ever more product.

Oddly enough my wife and I were just talking about this exact same point when we were driving back from St Pete on Sunday. Not that we have kids, it was just an idle discussion because we were talking about the changes being done to Disney Springs and whether the Lego shop would stay there since it was a competitor and I said "Man how much does Lego make off those simple blocks." I mean the bricks themselves are probably literally pennies coming out of their Chinese factory and then it's just a paper with directions and a cardboard box to put them in. So on a thirty dollar set, the retailer probably makes ten and the materials are at worst a quarter. So you've got $19.75 to split amongst Lego and the rights holder to those IP since now most sold are Star Wars, Harry Potter etc....

So no wonder Lego is taking over the world.

And I was thinking the same thing you were, the old bucket of Legos is a 1000x better than an expensive one off set piece.

 

[FSUSarah]

You are so right NoleLou! Some of the ones my son plays with were his dads.

To his credit he does like to build and rebuild the sets and his imagination is pretty great. He creates his own worlds and stories with all the people. However trying to play with him is frustrating b/c as soon as you think you've got everything down he goes and changes it again haha.

 

[Nole Lou]

You are so right NoleLou! Some of the ones my son plays with were his dads.

To his credit he does like to build and rebuild the sets and his imagination is pretty great. He creates his own worlds and stories with all the people. However trying to play with him is frustrating b/c as soon as you think you've got everything down he goes and changes it again haha.

That's great. It's hard as they get older they pick up on what's "right"...basically they tend to internalize exactly what Lego is trying to tell them. Good that you are encouraging "non-standard" uses.

Here's the classic when it was about what you could build:

Here's the modern, when it's about building something in 15 minutes and asking for another set:

 

[HilltopperNole]

So they've basically turned into 3D jigsaw puzzles

 

[seminole97]

If you're interested in how your perceptions are skewed by adulthood, this is a good article.

 

[Laettner]

Kids watching Youtube videos of other people playing video games is one that I completely do not understand. Kids today are weird.

 

[maddog69]

Don't get me started on Legos today.

Too expensive, and too restricted to building one thing, and buying another set and another and another.

When I was a kid, you got a gigantic set of Legos, and it came with a book with about 50 things to build. You build a bunch of those, and you get the hang of building your own things, and have the pieces to do it.

Now you buy a specific "scene" from a movie, there's only one way to build it, and you don't have the pieces to build anything else. 80% of the pieces are orc arms or pirate masts that don't have usage otherwise. And there's clearly a "right" way to do it. Even if your kid could build something else wacky and stupid, it wouldn't be the "right" way, and kids know that.

It's just expensive model building. Spend $50, follow instructions, build the unit as proscribed, and move on to #2 of 38 in the series.

Don't get me wrong, my son loved them. He got very good at following directions, which is certainly a skill that all good worker drones need to have.

But it is absolutely not an imagination building toy in any way any more. It's a finely tuned mega brand focused on nothing more than compelling you to buy ever more product.

I agree. When I read post I read it in Grandpa Simpson's voice.

 

[Nole Lou]

I agree. When I read post I read it in Grandpa Simpson's voice.

Haha, that's me more and more lately.

And I get that the relative price might be unchanged...but the nature of the product has completely changed from something that you buy to play with and build with to something you "collect 'em all", making the cost of having a kid that is "into Legos" a much more expensive proposition.