Thanks for the shout out.

One of the things that always stuck with me from Cluetrain was “Inside Fort Business”. Fantastic theme.

As far as Denmark… well, any country that has a 65% income tax …. well…

[...] Experience Curve provides us links to Jake McKee’s presentation on how Lego caught the Cluetrain. It’s a great case study on participating in social media. [...]

There’s some cool stuff in here, and I like this, but let me tell you about my frustration with Lego and specifically how it has changed.

“Lego is a creative medium” he says. “Talk to an engineer and you’ll find they played with Lego as a kid.”

True…but none of us played with the very limited branded Lego products that dominate the company’s product lines now. Now, Lego produces models in boxes. It’s hard to find just plain blocks any more, in fairly standard sizes except on ebay or brinklink. Instead you get Harry Potter models, Star Wars models and so on…tiny expensive collections and sets of blocks that you can make one thing with and then nothing else because the pieces are too specialized. As a result, my kid gets very little creative stimulation from Lego sets anymore. Instead he follows instructions, builds models, plays with them a bit, breaks them apart and is left with a pile of highly specialized and useless stuff. He returns over and over to the classic bricks, once the “acquisition high” has worn off. The father-son thing? My boy watches while I build the complex models.

He once got a Star Destroyer for his birthday. Shortley after he had built it, another kid stepped on it and it came apart im millions of pieces. He never put it back again. He was daunted by the prospect of all that work, and having to start from scratch. Yeah it was cool…for two days. Then it was a big pile of $300 worth of grey. Too complex, too specialized and not reusable in any value-added way.

Sure, I think the Star Destroyer is cool. But I don’t think the father-son is what you think it is. We actually engage over the classic bricks. What I find missing from Lego now is the possibility, the potential in a box of bricks. My kid and I get the most out of dumping a box of bricks on the ground and starting from scratch every time.

I’m frustrated with Lego these days. They are NOT the same company they were when I was a kid. They produce branded collectables now. I’d be surprised if many kids are learning engineering from Lego now. I think they are learning how to follow directions and get interested in spending lots of money for Harry Potter brands.

As a result, I’m buying buckets of second hand blocks on ebay to actually give my child some things to work with. I may be in a minority, but all I see is Lego pushing trash, plastic bits that are used once and relegated to a box of never-used-again.

And McKee…I know something about Denmark, and your characterization of the country is unfair. Sorry. Feels like you’re dressing your brilliance up in American superior know-how and Cluetrain edginess, and putting down the Danes in the process. Those off hand comments left a bad taste in my mouth and were regrettable in an otherwise interesting presentation.

Chris, thanks for the comments and let me attempt to address both your issues. First the Denmark thing…

First off, I think the Danes are fantastic and we Americans could learn some things from them. They’re a wonderful people, but whether or not political correctness allows us to say such things, they DO approach things differently than Americans do. (Or Norwegians, or Germans, or…) The tall poppy thing comes not from me but from the Danes. In the years I’ve been working with Danes, I’ve had countless people tell me that’s how their country works. I didn’t come up with this on my own.

As far as the current state of the sets, I’ll have to both agree and respectfully yet strongly disagree. First off, the agreement – in some ways, yes the company isn’t the one I grew up with. The expansion of the “themes” is much larger today than when I was a kid. It was easier, certainly, to find non-themed buckets of bricks back then.

That said, even a a 7 year old in 1982, my parents bought themes for me. Those themes were “Space” rather than “Star Wars” or “Castle” rather than “Harry Potter”, but make no mistake, they were themes. The sets were often large and complex (if I was lucky that year and my parents could afford those!).

In your post above, you’ve contradicted yourself a bit. First you say:

“He once got a Star Destroyer for his birthday. Shortley after he had built it, another kid stepped on it and it came apart im millions of pieces. He never put it back again. He was daunted by the prospect of all that work, and having to start from scratch. Yeah it was cool…for two days. Then it was a big pile of $300 worth of grey. Too complex, too specialized and not reusable in any value-added way.”

Then you go on to say:

“What I find missing from Lego now is the possibility, the potential in a box of bricks.”

So on one hand you’re saying you wish that your son had simply gotten a bucket of loose elements, but on the other you’re upset that the model doesn’t easily get rebuilt.

There is a great deal of “possibility” in that pile of elements from the broken model. Sure it may be a big pile of grey bricks, but that’s the particular set. Just like the Yellow Castle set (a hugely popular set from my era) was mostly yellow bricks. Or original buckets of bricks were largely red, blue, and white.

The Star Destroyer uses pretty traditional parts, and once in a pile on the floor there’s a world of ideas. That is unless you take over for him, as you say here:

“The father-son thing? My boy watches while I build the complex models.”

I’m not railin on ya, I’m just pointing out that perhaps you could work together instead of building while he watches. If he says it’s too hard, then show him how easy it can be. If he get bored, then making the 16 (I think that’s the age range) set is too big for him.

I’ll also point out that the LEGO instructions have been fundamental in every set for something like 30 years now. There’s an entire generation of geeks that grew up without the idea that LEGO at one point in time came without the instructions. (And even the first LEGO sets came with pictures on the box, which drove those kinds of designs when kids first opened the boxes).

Today’s play patterns have changed as well. In today’s American (and even in Europe, although not as bad) kids have 15 minutes of unscheduled free time in the course of a day. 15 minutes! When I was growing up the time was something like 4 hours! Parents in general have prioritized (right or wrong) scheduled activities over unscheduled play time. This means that in order to stay in business, many toy companies have had to change their product lines accordingly. Buckets of bricks simply don’t sell as well as you and I would hope. Kids aren’t being taught by their parents that once they build that Harry Potter model, the model can and should be torn down and rebuilt, that a pile of grey elements is still a pile of possibility, that it’s fun to take your time to learn how to build complex models without dad taking over in order to hurry through the building experience to get the model completion.

So in some ways, you’re right, the company IS different today than it was 30 years ago. Of course, so is the world we live in.

[...] Build a Lego-style community Army [...]

[...] Lego – eventually caught on and embraced the ever growing community and sites that their customers had created – How Lego caught the Cluetrain [...]