When I was growing up, I had a huge box of Lego and it was all in different shapes and sizes with a multitude of different colors. I had no instruction manual or key for which piece belonged to what set. I had a bunch of Lego men that I could set up and arrange in an army fashion or have them stand off against each other.
The whole purpose of having Lego was to use your imagination, to build something from scratch from your mind's eye. That creativity that comes from within is lost when we are told how to build it and which piece goes where.
You will be hard pressed to find a box of Lego that is just blocks and pieces anymore, and if you do it may be online and cost a fortune. There are rip off blocks that try to emulate the Lego brick, but they are not as well made and some of the pieces don't fit together.
Everything that is Lego these days has a theme that it follows, from Batman to Star wars to Pirates of the Caribbean, and these sets costs a lot of money for simple plastic bricks, but the designs and trade names cost money too and that is where the cost rises.
The problem with Lego being themed is that it puts a date on them, when is a certain style of Batman no longer be interesting or the Indiana Jones Lego set become boring and nobody wants to play with it anymore.
We are getting lost with the purpose of Lego, it is a mainstream themed toy that quickly gets replaced by a newer model.
The whole purpose of Lego, is that you had a box of never ending toys, if you got bored with a toy that you had constructed, you could simply break it down and make a new one. The construction was fun and playing with the toy afterwards was as well.
Lego the company should bring back the cheaper huge box of multiple pieces for a decent price, and let kids start using their minds again, it probably was the smartest toy in the world but has now settled into a sideshow attraction.
Scott Goerz
