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Comment by scrumper | Hacker News Reader

Lego is fantastic, and it's worth re-discovering if you haven't played with it since childhood. My wife bought me a 2,500 piece Star Wars kit last year (the Emperor's Shuttle) and it bought me to a place of zen-like calm for the two weeks it took me to build it. I'd sit down, and bang, instant flow. Best of all, I could carry that over to the computer if I wanted to do some programming. It's almost drug-like in its power.

There's something amazingly satisfying about unquestioningly following detailed instructions and seeing something tangible emerge before your eyes. I love it.

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I'll add something else for balance here: I went to see The Avengers after studiously avoiding any marketing for the film. I wanted my mind free to experience every scene for the very first time, like a pledge-ring wearing co-ed looking forward to her wedding night. I didn't even know that Loki was the villain, that's how innocent I was.

My friends and I arrived at the cinema early, secured great middle seats and sat back to endure endless local commercials (Annie got it done no less than four times.) Then it was time for the very last advert before the trailers started: Lego. A Lego set featuring the Avengers. An animated Lego set where the various characters recapitulated the plot of the film in thirty seconds. Many, many angry voices cried out, to the general tune of, "That better f-ing not be in the movie." It all was.

It tainted our experience pretty badly. Even if the advert had featured a completely different story we'd still have been looking out for similarities. This was a few days after opening weekend, too!

I still love Lego, but she's given me my first disappointment. I guess I'm growing up.

In general, tie-in ads that are full of spoilers are extremely annoying and, I suspect, do not help anyone.

If you're in SF, Sundance Kabuki doesn't show ads beyond a trailer or two. Much nicer theater overall vs. anything in my corner of the world.

(Sundance has theaters in a few other major cities as well, but SF's is the only one I've personally been to.)

Sounds good but no use to me :-) My sister used to frequent a Bay Area theater where the ads comprised the owners of the theater chatting (honestly) about upcoming features and the food they were serving (and this was considered a hugely positive component of the experience).

It's interesting to me that no major movie chain has tried to differentiate itself along the lines of "going to movies at our theaters is actually pleasant" but I guess the fact that they're able to sell soda and popcorn at a 1.0E+5% markup dwarfs any business model trying to sell some kind of decent experience at a plausible price.

Had this exact same experience, and you are the first person I know of that saw it as well. I distinctly remember (SPOILER) when they were on the roof, about to disable the device, going "I can't believe that Marvel allowed Lego to do this before their big movie blockbuster". For that matter, who was the marketing genius who thought that surmising the entire story arc would make for a good commercial at any time?

His name is Mads Nipper and I wrote to him and Jorgen Knudstorp (the CEO) over email the day after I saw the film. Sadly despite a day's research I couldn't find an email address for either of them that wouldn't bounce so I left it. I could have killed a tree, but in the end something came up and I moved on.

I just dug it out again. I was really angry. I'm almost glad it didn't get through. Here is a short excerpt:

What in Thor's name were you idiots thinking? Did you seriously believe that you'd engender goodwill in the audience by spoiling the film as it was starting? It's EXACTLY as if you'd shown an advert before a 1980 screening of The Empire Strikes Back featuring Yoda, a handless Luke and Han Solo in a block of carbonite.

For great shame, Jorgen. May your bare feet always find bricks.

> May your bare feet always find bricks.

That is the best kidsafe curse I have ever heard. Bravo!

Yes, nice one.

My favorite kidsafe curse is from an old BBC radio show from the late 40's and early 50's, called The Goon Show. The main character would say "curses and naughty words". The BBC at that time was super-strict and you couldn't say curses and naughty words, so he would literally say it instead. Very funny.

Lego sets based on movies are such BS. It should be about your own imagination not just recreating star wars and harry potter crap

Heh .. good for you! I'm an AFOL (adult fan of lego). For me, it started when I got a Mindstorms set to play with robots. I needed pieces for more sophisticated contraptions and the addiction began.

As with all things, moderation is key. I've got about a dozen high-end technic sets at this point. And I realized I had a problem ... my lego addiction was insatiable. Addictions aren't always bad .. but for me personally ... my lego addiction was bad. I didn't learn anything about building. All I did was follow the instructions to build the model. It was ... as you said .. zen like. But I got no feeling of accomplishment. I'm not an artistic person and have no interest in building MOCs (My Own Creations, in Lego community speak).

Anyways ... I have gone cold turkey. Haven't bought one in 8 months or so. I could crack any day if there are any good holiday sales :-p

Not to sound like an enabler, but did you try the Unimog set? That's educational: transfer cases, gearboxes, portal axles... All true-to-life. You'll learn some mechanics from it.

Haha ... yup .. I've got that! And nope .. I didn't learn a thing. I think when I follow the instructions, my brain shuts down. This is what you referred to as the Zen-like state of bliss :)

My new hobby is a bit better in terms of learning. I started building radios and learned quite a bit about electronics (filters, tank circuits, etc.). I even got some kits to play with. When a circuit works like it is supposed to, I do get a sense of accomplishment :) From an addiction point of view, this is still pretty bad. Except now I'm funding worthy causes like SparkFun and Adafruit instead of Toys R Us :-p

Totally agree. I picked up a box of plain Lego blocks for my desk at work a little while back. They start conversations, are great to fidget with while on the phone, and can provide a nice distraction when needed. Definitely a good investment.

Great idea - "Lego - Conference Call Set".

I agree. We bought a mindstorms kit for me daughter a year ago (she has engineering aspirations).

I have to confess, I've had as much fun with it as she has.

Mindstorms is a brilliant product. They used it to teach robotics for undergrad IT at university. I built a machine that could play blackjack (light sensor moved over the pips of a playing card, discovering the card value). It was brilliant.

That is pretty cool. What did you do about face cards though?

They are all worth 10 and they do not match any of the pip patterns of the numbers. They have color in all the spots you would look for pips. Other numbers don't.

Exactly. I didn't even need to write any special code to deal with them, they just naturally come up as tens.

Did you just work this out or have you done something similar?

I have a 3 month old daughter. It is my secret wish that she'll want to play with this kind of stuff when she's old enough. If I keep the wish a secret then there's a chance she'll come to it on her own.

From experience if you want your kid to develop an interest in something you'll want to expose them to it and not just keep it to yourself. My daughters love Legos and Duplos. They play with them constantly.

My 5 year old is getting the Jabba's Palace set for Christmas this year. It's all she really wants.

Thanks, that's encouraging and you sound like a lucky father. I'll expose her for sure, I just meant that I don't want her to know that's what I want her doing so I avoid triggering her rebellious instincts.

That doesn't really start for a long, long time. If you just keep good toys around they'll take to them. If they really just don't like building then you find something else but in my experience just exposure to toys is a great starting place.

For me, I got really into Minecraft for a while and felt that same magic and wonder that Lego offered as a kid -- Creating mockups and wireframes of things I wanted to create, then building them in the game, was just a ridiculously awesome experience.

indeed, also the experience of collaborative development is hard to get over. So hard to shake that my entire focus has now shifted to creating a collaborative development environment which facilitates a similar experience for creating software.

Your experience sounds great and something I've been trying to replicate. Building something with your hands and watching it come together provides a different level of satisfaction and enjoyment than hacking on your computer. Recently, I've been trying to come up with ideas of "adult" things I could build in my spare time without taking up too much space in my apartment - such as model vehicles or aircraft. I hadn't even thought to just revert back to Lego, which I enjoyed a lot as a kid. I think I'll give it a try, thanks!

Enjoy! Start big, I'd say :)

Do read throwaway1979 above. Building Lego sets brings quite a different sense of accomplishment to programming (or carpentry, painting, cooking etc.) I think that's why I like it: I can switch off very effectively. It becomes a little like meditation. I'm not an addict though; one set a year since I rediscovered it (only two in total.)

I can really identify with that flow state you describe so well.

I have built 5 or 6 of the larger Technic and buildings (each thousands of parts) over the last year or so.

The structured play (simply follow the directions and you will get to the goal) is a very welcome counterpoint to the somewhat unstructured way in which I spend my days (here's a blank page, describe a complex product in any way that you see fit).

I can feel you there. However, there is a certain zen in the opposite as well. Having a general idea of what to build and a general plan and direction but little else. The specifics are left to between you and the thing you are building as you build it.

And that's what's beautiful about a good general purpose bucket of bricks. It's right brained creativity which complements Lego's instruction-based kits.

One thing I've noticed is that many of the (secondhand) buckets of bricks we've found are NOT a general purpose bucket of bricks. It seems like half the pieces are special-made for a specific purpose. ("Oh, this is a squid-head. This is a custom-made tailpipe for a race car. This is a police-car-top-shell. This is a Gungan head.") I exaggerate, but it's very noticeable when I went to build something with my son this past holiday. Looking at sets in the store (I still ogle them ;)), it seems to match this pattern as well.

Granted, you can buy them in bulk, and you can special order ones you need, but ... it seems not quite the same. I'm sure part of it was that the legos we were rummaging through were poorly organized (color? size? vintage?), and could not be used more than one pucket at a time due to spatial constraints. ;)

I think that the key may be to buy large-ish sets which have enough general purpose things: plates, angled plates, angled blocks in varying directions, etc, or to special-order bulk collections of things.

I can't believe I forgot about that with LEGO's. I find puzzles are good for that too. I think I'll have to buy myself some kits.

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