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Comment by acabal | Hacker News Reader

My beef is that Lego have become so highly branded. I would rather my kid play with generic space and castle and pirate blocks, than with Star Wars and Harry Potter and Pirates of the Carribbean blocks. As a product of the 80's I can say I spent a lot of time playing with highly branded and marketed toys, so it's not necessarily a bad thing; but there's something special about Lego that makes me feel like they should be above film tie-ins and in a special airy realm of pure imagination.

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1. They still have the generic sets.

2. You can go to places like bricklink.com to buy almost any block or set that you want.

3. Branded sets usually mean more specialized pieces which only increase the source material you have to draw from when building things.

4. Lego also puts out stuff like this: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=67132. Highly specialized pieces that aren't tied to a brand.

When I was a kid I would have been in heaven if they had all of the sets out there today. Buying a Harry Potter set wouldn't have meant that I can only play Harry Potter[1]. It would have meant that I had more legos to combine in other ways with the rest of my parts (all sets ended up broken down and stored in a huge bin of Legos). I realize that ultra-specialized pieces like 3-CPO or R2D2 minifigs can't really be reused elsewhere, but most specialized pieces tend to be pretty generic (e.g. Harry Potter wands don't have to only be used with Harry Potter).

[1]: Example, I recently saw a Harry Potter set that used a combination of a translucent 1x1 brick and brown stud to create 'potion bottles.' It's a pretty generic idea that translates elsewhere.

When I was a kid, one of the things on which I spent a fair amount of time was trying to figure out how to make a Lego vehicle with independent front suspension (and steering). Nowadays, they have specialized pieces that have effectively solved that problem.

I don't know whether I ever came up with a decent solution back then, but I do know that trying to come up with one was an excellent exercise, one that I probably would never have embarked on if I'd had the pieces they make today.

edit: grammar fix

So your endeavour is replaced by others. Your logic could easily be used to rail against using calculators rather than slide rules or to rail against all Lego in favor of Erector sets, etc.

As others have stated, Lego was in trouble before adopting the franchise sets. Would it be better if Lego was 'pure,' but out of business? It's not like they removed the ability to do what you're talking about, they just added new things. You could easily limit yourself, or your children, from using the new things.

> My beef is that Lego have become so highly branded.

The problem was no one bought general Lego blocks. This is still the trend today.

I guess not many people remember, but Lego was in deep financial trouble during the 90s and early 2000's. Until they started creating licensed packages and video games based on 3rd party franchises like Star Wars, Lego wasn't selling anything.

As a seven years old, all I wanted (and saved up for) was the biggest, most generic set I could possibly have. I still remember running like crazy to see my mom coming back from the city, carrying LEGO 733 Universal Building Set.

Highly branded sets probably push children more into playing roles and sticking to, probably still imaginative enough, scenarios rather than into creative process of building.

I don't disagree. My point still stands though: kids don't urge their parents to buy generic sets.

Honestly, I doubt a kid will play much differently with a PotC themed Lego ship vs a non-branded one.

They basically look the same; http://www.brickset.com/brickLists/?5954

Also, pirates was a dead theme until PotC came around.

The reason why Lego makes sets that are branded is because other companies make good-enough lego-compatible blocks that are cheaper than legos. If lego stuck with the "generic sets only", they'd be history by now. Who would bother buying a pack of lego-branded red bricks when you could get the megablocks-branded one that is 90% as good for half the price?

Only the dorky neighbor kid whom everyone hated to play with thought megablocks were an acceptable substitute for Lego.

Yeah, poor people are losers.

The megablocks stuff we have bought either has nobbly extra molding bits still stuck to the bricks meaning they just don't work OR the bricks are not of a uniform enough size so they don't stick together for any length of time.

I would estimate at 40% as good as logo. Which puts it down in the play with it a bit and then ignore 'while the cat (or hoover) eats it' camp.

Even if they do someday stop using third party brands for sets, it will only be to replace them with their own brands. Take a look at the new Lego sets like Ninjago and Chima. These are as branded as the Star Wars ones, the brands simply happen to belong to lego. They also have toys and TV shows and games attached to them, as well as a whole backstory. This is arguably what they should have done in the first place to not find themselves in a position where they needed someone else's brands. The reality is that it is very difficult to sell an unbranded toy nowadays. Imagine making the same request of other toy companies "I wish they made a generic knight toy", I know these exist because you can find them in non huge toy stores, but it's hard to compete with something that has a comic book, TV show, and movie attached to it. I don't know if its necessarily a bad thing, there are pros and cons.

Their in house brands are really well developed product lines. They come with story lines that advance from year to year as the set goes along, and have associated comic books that are sent free to children that request a subscription. Does a great job creating brand loyalty. They also have mini theme parks and play centers set up in many major cities.

When I was a kid they had sort of started the branding effort. At that time LEGO was primarily doing creative in-house theme lines, but some branding as well.

Kid-me deduced that the more generic sets had more pieces, so in an early attempt at cost optimization I leaned generic the few times I had money. Though, it was also cool to get some sets with interesting pieces that let me branch out. Vanilla bricks can be limiting at times.

Totally agree. I hope Lego will move back to the more generic themes by the time my kid(s) get old enough. (Currently my 1.5 year old loves Duplo blocks; apparently there are even licensed Duplo sets though he doesn't have any of them.)

You can get all the generic Lego blocks you would ever want. The "problem" is kids want all the fancy sets.

For instance: http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Bricks-More-Builders-Tomorrow/dp/...

There's a difference between generic blocks and the non-licensed theme sets. I've got a couple Lego stores nearby, I know that the generic blocks are available, and that's definitely great. I was talking about, e.g., a fancy castle set, but just with a generic "knights" theme, rather than something from the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies or whatever.

However, I realize it's working out for Lego, and if the licensing is what's necessary to keep them going, then I'm not faulting them too much.

This generic knights theme?

http://kingdoms.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx?icmp=COUSFR33Kin...

And this fancy castle?

http://kingdoms.lego.com/en-us/Products/Default.aspx#7946

Thank you for pointing this out. I've been looking for a set like this for quite some time, just a variety of normal, colorful pieces. Ordered on impulse :)

Now, a way to organize these...

The kids want what we make them want, on tv and elsewhere. There is a general trend toward collectibles away from diy, confirmed by someone working in retail. That's very sad and probably harmful in long term for all the society: collecting things is borderline psychiatric while diy I'd the root of progress.

Well yeah. What's advertised? What's in stores? I haven't seen a 'plain' lego set in stores in years, outside of lego-brand stores.

If they don't know it exists, they're less likely to want it.

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