
Changes in Lego Toys Show Disturbing Trend, Say Researchers - pavel_lishin
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/violence-in-lego-toy-sets-significantly-rose-over-time-say-researchers
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douche
This is not a new phenomenon. My glory days of Lego were in the early-mid 90s,
and literally every set that my friends and I were interested in were either
explicitly martial or violent in a GTA-esque, drive-fast-and-crash-into-stuff
way. Catapults. Castles. Dragons. Knights. Space fighters. Giant robots. Drag
racers and police cars, in realish life or in space. Factions of undersea
divers with monstrous submersibles at war over glittering crystals. Pirate
ships, with cannons and crocodiles and angry natives, etc. Every good Lego
theme set up at least two factions which were at least implicitly at odds, if
not explicitly at war.

This is the shit that sells to little boys - Legos are just better army men.
Ironically, the pacifistic stuff tends to sell better with the AFOLs, as
witnessed by the resurgence of the line of modular town buildings, and
architecture sets explicitly marketed at adults.

The more disturbing trend with Lego is the continuing rise of licensed themes
that has completely gutted their product lineup. Star Wars has been a cash cow
for them, but has meant that that is it for space-themed Lego sets for around
15 years now. Likewise, two of the other of the four classic System themes,
Pirates and Castle, have been on ice for years, due to overlap with Tolkien
and Jack Sparrow-related licensed themes.

They seemed to be trying a little harder three or four years ago, but I've not
seen anything really exciting the past few years.

~~~
k__
Didn't their patent on the bricks expire or something?

I had the feeling, that other companies entering their marked forced them to
this licensed stuff to stand out

~~~
douche
That did happen, although selling your soul for Disney money is not exactly
the best choice when you have a reputation for quality over the foreign, no-
name imposters. Ultimately, they've got the distribution channels and the
reputation, so it will take more years of mediocrity to lose that lead, but I
worry, because I remember how excellent they used to be.

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LoSboccacc
The real bad trend is the use of more and more single use pieces instead of
building stuff from the common set.

~~~
agumonkey
I lamented watching new sets. Then I heard my father lament over the same
thing. Odd.

weird parallel : new legos are like new games, every thing is more realist but
lost the "limited" old one charm.

ps: some twitter magic
[https://twitter.com/LegoSpaceBot/status/749731872507367425](https://twitter.com/LegoSpaceBot/status/749731872507367425)

~~~
turnip1979
I was an AFOL but stopped cold turkey because of this reason. Vote with my
dollars and all that. Lego can keep their one-time special pieces.

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brownbat
The pregnant implication is that if (a) we're entertaining ourselves with
violent themes, then (b) we ourselves become more violent.

As to (a), engaging in martial play or entertainment is hardly a disturbing
new trend. It's not just videogames or plastic army men, even most sports are
an allegory for battlefield conflicts. Some of humanity's most classic and
enduring literature, including pieces from various continents, are meditations
on exactly this topic.

As to (b), if anything, the supposed renaissance of violent entertainment has
actually accompanied one of the least violent centuries on record.

Let people play however they want. Teach kids values that benefit humanity.
These two ideals are not inconsistent.

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the_watcher
These sorts of pieces always remind me of something: When my nephew was around
2 or 3, his mother insisted that she'd never buy him any toy guns (LEGOs, pop
guns, or anything). When he'd visit us, he always somehow dug out the old pop
gun toys we had buried away. A year later, I visited her and she'd entirely
caved. I asked her about it, and she said she gave up when she realized he was
just using sticks or anything else he could think of simulate one while he
continued playing cops and robbers and all the "violent" games little kids
play.

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slantaclaus
Bigthink is not a credible source of information IMO

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okket
The price LEGO had to pay for going down the lucrative movie franchise /
merchandise road... btw, is the main audience still kids?

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zihotki
tl;dr - researchers are a scared of increasing trend of 'violent' Lego toys
mostly because of movie sets - Star Wars, Lord of the Ring, etc.

~~~
imron
And here's me, more concerned by movie set Lego and what it does to
creativity.

~~~
yellowapple
Same. The nice thing about older Lego sets was that they were more-or-less
generic; while I did have a few Star Wars and Indiana Jones themed sets while
I was growing up, having access to things like deep sea and generic space sets
seemed to discourage faithfulness to the source material.

Nowadays, though, I feel like the kids I see playing with Legos are
discouraged from mixing and matching among kits, which is unfortunate; mixing
and matching to create something better than the sum of the parts was always a
big part of the fun of Legos.

~~~
douche
Funny enough, that is one of the core messages of the Lego Movie, that it is
okay to be creative and mix and match things, as opposed to the collector's
impulse to keep everything mint.

