Lego Friends sucks. The gendering of Lego sucks. The relentless specialist themed sets sucks. The move towards many small fiddly pieces and some specialist pieces to create a Lego-thing sort of sucks.
Luckily I can ignore all of that and buy Lego Creative or Lego Classic.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-10681-Creative-Building-Cube/dp...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-Classic-10698-Large-Creative/dp...
My understanding is gendering of Lego in the US sucks. It's cultural. The EU doesn't have a pink stigma.
Also, Lego made bank with the themed sets. First with the western (cowboy) then with Star Wars sets. I think some (not all) of them are awesome. Lego's made plenty of stinker sets. They really had little choice. Their target age market was being squeezed from both ends, "learning toys" on one side, video games on the other.
I don't care what child has which toys (boys with dolls, girls with bulldozers, vice versa) so long as they're playing, learning.
Overall, that experience made me a toy snob. +1 to Lego/Duplo, Lil' Tikes, and misc reading books. Most other toys suck.
Except magnets. Magnets are always cool.
As a parent of a 2 1/2 year old I couldn't agree more. We went to Toys 'r' Us to do some Christmas shopping last year and I was absolutely appalled to see the place. Aisles weren't organized by age, or the general "types" of toys, instead they had entire aisles dedicated to specific brands or media franchises.
An entire two aisles of Frozen toys, another for Cars, then all the Hot Wheels (okay, I might give this one a pass), so on and so forth. And really, all of these things were junk, just generic dolls or little specialized playsets.
Somedays I look into my daughters room and wonder if maybe it's a little sparse, I've got a big bucket of Lego Duplo, some alphabet blocks, a play kitchen with a bunch of Melissa and Doug items in it, some dress up clothes and a couple other age appropriate toys. But every time I realize that she has plenty of things to play with, and she's always doing neat and new things with everything she has.
She had me help her make a train car out of her Lego over the weekend, it was just a basic "box" that was 6x4x4 with an open top, and she started cramming her stuffed animals and Little People into it and going around the room shouting "choo choo".
Meanwhile, every other kid I see that has these toys from big media franchises just plays out or extends the universe they already know from the movies or shows. I think we really need a return to the basics with toys for our children, watching my daughter explore and create is much more enjoyable than watching the other kids act out their favorite scenes from Frozen again.
Very much this.
I have a couple of kids, and I try to steer clear of the specialized sets. I've heard stories of friends' kids pointing out set after set in the store and saying "Done that one. Done that one. Done that one. ..."
They have no sense of dumping out that giant bucket, delighting in the rushing chatter of a plastic avalanche, then asking themselves, "What do I want to build today?"
Sort of makes me sad...