Lego to Stop Producing Mindstorms

nick58b writes "Lego, in response to the worst financial loss in its history, has announced they will stop making the electronics and movie tie-in products. This would include Mindstorms, one of the greatest educational toys ever produced." It saddens me greatly to see the toy that was such a mainstay of my childhood to be in such dire financial straits. If I were a more qualified sociologist, I'd think it may have inspired by the way that our children play today versus how they played twenty years ago.

Re:What happened?

Price.

Also, how many parent think, "Little Jimmy should have a programmable set of Lego!"

TC Logo and Dacta were also great toys (one of my teachers wrote some of the documentation), but there just wasn't a big market.

Re:What happened?

Also, how many parent think, "Little Jimmy should have a programmable set of Lego!"

Every parent who is an engineer? At least I will when I have my own kids.

Re:What happened?

Yes. Price. Legos are really cool, but they have always been way overpriced. They are lil' plastic blocks. They should be like 10 bucks for a five gallon pail of them, not 40 bucks for three handfuls.

Overpriced is unfortunately right.

...and that may be why the majority of Lego-set-purchasers I know (myself included) are over the age of 21 and purchasing them for themselves. With most of the sets that kids would actually be able to squeeze a decent amount of fun out of [lego.com] being over $40.00, and most of the affordable [lego.com] sets being so rinky-dink, a child given the choice would probably ask their parent for a comparably priced video game [ebgames.com] instead of a $50 Lego set.

I had (and dearly loved) piles of Legos when I was little, but most of those came as hand-me-downs in buckets. Maybe we can convince the folks at Lego to stop spending as much effort in producing new, specialized blocks for new, specialized sets with fancy graphics on their boxes and start selling things in buckets.

On another note, I bet that if someone were to set up a PayPal account to donate to the Lego corporation, that the mobs [cside.com] of Lego [fbtb.net] maniacs [ikros.net] out [thereverend.com] there [foundrydx.com] would be able to generate a significant amount of money for them.

Re:Overpriced is unfortunately right.

I'd agree, what's needed are more simle parts and less flashy stuff. You know how hard [and expensive] it is to get enough parts to build a decent sized castle nowdays! They need more buckets of 2x4 colored blocks...in more useful colors. That said, Lego needs to adapt it's piece size to make it more friendly to robot builders...The current technic pieces are too small and poorly joining for anything except matchbox sized toys. Building anything moving that exceeds 12" in any direction is extremely flaky.

Re:What happened?

If this was a chinese company they'd sell 5lb buckets of assorted pieces for $5.

And each brick would have a lifetime of less than one year, developing cracks and warp. Of the 5 lb, at least 4 lb would be out-of-spec, either fit too loosely or too tight, and they would have sharp, annoying warts where they were carelessly ripped from the molding sprue. The color would vary extremely from batch to batch, be rather dull, and fade rapidly when exposed to the sun.

The problem with LEGO bricks is not that they are overpriced, but that they are overengineered. They are just too good. And quality is just not generally appreciated these days, especially when we're talking toys.

As a child, I had quite a few Matchbox, Corgi and Dinky cars, very accurate models, well made, often in England. Sure, you can still get those brands today, if you want to pay collector prices. The toy stores, at least here, abound with lousy chinese produced stuff, that breaks when you look too hard at it.

Mind you, many of my toys I had inherited from my older brothers. And many of my toys are still in such a good shape, that my son now continues to play with them. That's good for the customer, but it's just not good for sales: either kids inherit a toy (= no sale) or parents don't care about long life, and therefore buy cheaper toys.

I build plastic models (aircraft, military vehicles etc), and I can tell you that precisely molded plastic parts, even when they come in just one color and still attached to the sprue, as plastic model kits do, are *quite* expensive. *Even* when produced in China.

-Lasse

Re:What happened?

Also, there are no good, cool sets to buy anymore. It's all Bionicle or sets that are 90% "unique" pieces. Every time i go to the toy store i hope to find something along the lines of Space Police or Ice Station or any of the other good sets, and they just don't exist. Therefore, Lego doesn't get my money.

Re:What happened?

I got my son a couple lego sets for Christmas and one of the Mega Block sets. The Mega Block set was a pain in the ass to assemble and all the pieces just kept popping apart. I think there is still an issue with quality even though the pieces look the same.

Of course one of the Lego sets was missing several pieces, so they aren't without their problems.

Re:What happened?

Honestly, I don't see how that's a bad thing. I always thought the Star Wars sets were a bad idea, no matter how neat it is to have a little Lego Emperor. You get the kid a model kit if he wants a model Millenium Falcon. Lego's for building stuff without instructions. Sure, sell the sets, it keeps the kids busy for the rest of Christmas day, but at least pretend you can take it apart and turn it into something else. What's your kid supposed to do when he takes the thing apart the next day and all he has are irregular slanty bricks with Rebel Alliance logos printed on them and Millenium Falcon hull sections? You can't very well go and build castle turrets out of R2D2's head.

Never, ever upgraded the platform

The mindstorms were cool toys, for a little while. But Lego never upgraded them- realistically, they had not released a significant upgrade of any type in the now 6 years since they released the product. They could have made them either more powerful (and hence more appealing to the adults who bought tons of them early on, but got frustrated by HW limitations quickly) or they could have made them simpler (and hence more appealing to the kids who they normally try to target.) They did neither, and let the product stagnate. And that's why they have to kill it now. Shame, really- they could have been really, really great. [I used to maintain legOS, so I fall into the category of 'adults frustrated by the limitations.]

Me too...

Alas, I also got frustrated with the hardware limitations. There's only so much one can do with three sensor/actuator channels, and I was never able to come up with a decent method of I/O expansion. An I/O expansion unit or expansion connector would have made more I/O's possible, vastly expanding the RCX's capabilities and potential market (the geeks with $ and their kids). Processor power was certainly not the limiting factor on the RCX.

That said, NQC and LegOS really rock. Many thanks to you who developed and maintained them!

Re:What happened?

Not low sales. Low profit margins. They're cutting the electronic, and licensed sets primarly. Which are the more expensive ones to make, electronic ones due to the cost of componates, and licensed sets for the costs of licensing.

One could only wish that they would license out the mindstorm excluseive items to be built and sold by someone else.

Vid Games

Could the less use of legos be due to video games???? I think so. Why use your imaginagtion when someone else can do it for you.

Re:What happened?

What I love about mindstorms is its hackability. sure, the default programming "language" it comes with is limited and annoying to use, but reflash it with something like BrickOS [slashdot.org] and you can program it in C. very cool stuff, sorry to see it go.

Mindstorm no more!

Okay, I could not care one tad bit less if I never see another lego Harry Potter set. But the loss of Mindstorm is nearly unbearable! The things people have done with this simple but effective robotics set eclips even more ambitious sets like the ER1. This is a sad day.

SCO must be behind this somehow!

Re:Mindstorm no more!

It is not SCO's fault.

Since it reported its first loss of $47.8 million in 1998, Lego has been hit hard by increasing competition from the makers of electronic toys.

It is GBA fault. It is the fault of the game consoles, the computers, and the leap-pad-ish products.

Plastic legos and tinker-toys and cabin logs rocked when I was a child. This year Christmas for my two year old required more batteries than gifts for the rest of my family.

Pure electronic gifts are winning...

All of our kids are going to grow to be bigger geeks than we are. :)

AC

Re:Mindstorm no more!

No.

Geeks can think and imagine. You are turning you 2 year old into a person that has to have flashly lights to be entertained.

Re:Mindstorm no more!

No, lego has gotten into the business of dumbing down their products by making huge specialized pieces and now real lego enthusiasts are buying both themselves and their children bulk used sets off of ebay.

Re:Mindstorm no more!

Exactly.

In the heyday of Lego, (late 1980's-early 1990's IMHO) you had a few specialized parts and mostly rather generic parts. You could build many different things out of a kit, sometimes even coming up with things better that what the kit was intended for. For example, I was able to build a church for my Lego town out of leftover castle parts.

Now it's all specialized crap. You can only build one thing that looks halfway decent. What's the fun in that?

Re:Mindstorm no more!

But they also make general parts assortments. In some ways, one can find more "open," "nonspecialized" LEGO now than back in the '70s. You can directly order bags of just one kind of basic brick from them, for example, and many of the LEGO stores have bins of parts so one can just fill a cup or a bag with parts, as in a candy store.

Tellingly, the Make and Create sets are apparently a bright spot for the company; reportedly they're among the few things they do really well, which seems to indicate their customers do indeed want general, nonspecialized sets that encourage imaginative, free-form building and unguided play as much as possible (though I do know one of the Harry Potter sets was apparently their biggest seller last year, but I guess that's an aberration). If nothing else, those sets also have some of the better price/piece ratios among all their current offerings...

Re:Mindstorm no more!

Very sad, to lose Mindstorms, although I never tried it myself. However, one maker of similar toys is Fischertechnik [fischertechnik.com]. They come from Germany, and they don't have much distribution here, but I had a set as a kid, and it's the absolute best quality I've seen for any mechanical tinkering. Imagine the best of Legos and Erector sets combined.

I've never tried their robotics kits, but it may be just what you're looking for. Eight digital inputs, two analog inputs, and four motor outputs. Also the quality of the gears, motors and structural pieces blows Legos away. Price is expensive, but not outrageously so. In the same ballpark as Mindstorms.

Can't feel much sympathy for them.

I've been a Lego fan most of my life too, but I have to say that I'm not surprised or terribly upset about the way this has turned out. Lego sets have become so ungodly expensive over the years (many $100+ sets having nothing to offer for their high price points other than "collector's series" or some other buzzword), it's no wonder more people aren't buying them.

Too Specialized

I've kept my eye on Lego, even though I haven't purchased much for years. My greatest disappointment is the "special" pieces that are now so common. All the special pieces detract from your ability to make new and interesting things with multiple sets.

It's time to go back to castles and space ships and cities.

Re:Lego cost

I just looked at the eensy print on some of the boxes I have, and they say either "Components made in DENMARK, SWITZERLAND and USA," "Components made in DENMARK and SWITZERLAND," or just "Components made in DENMARK."

I think I've seen other packages mention other countries, though, including Mexico, but from my quick, admittedly unscientific survey it definitely appears the majority of bricks come from just three countries, none of which is one I'd guess is particularly cheap to manufacture stuff in. Might the company do well to move some of its production to other countries that can make it for lower cost (without sacrificing quality, of course)? I can't believe they'd ever completely abandon Denmark as a main production locale, but do they need to manufacture everything in expensive countries? Could they not do some of their manufacturing to their standards elsewhere?

Re:Mindstorms was awesome

Though I've never played with them because I'm a grown up now

So you don't play with Lego anymore that you are "grown up"? How sad :) Even though I would consider myself all growned up now (27), I still love mindstorms. Then again having replaced the firmware on my RCX with Lejos [sourceforge.net] and building my own sensors for it, I enojoy it much more then the Programming kit that came with it.

Re:Mindstorms was awesome

Though I've never played with them because I'm a grown up now

Remember: we do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.

Don't forget...

The plural of Lego is Lego, not Legos.

Plus Lego is Danish for "play well"

Just a few Lego facts.

Re:Don't forget...

Plus Lego is Danish for "play well"

Almost. It's a contraction of "leg godt" which is the Danish for "play well." (not in a well, that's dangerous, kids!)

Re:Don't forget...

Founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen, the name Lego was invented by combing the first two letters of the Danish words "Leg godt" (play well) without knowing that that the word in Latin means "I assemble."

Re:Don't forget...

...and that in English, it means, "How can a box containing a bunch of plastic squares cost so much money?"

Re:Don't forget...

From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

The company's name was coined by Christiansen in 1934, from the Danish phrase "leg godt", meaning "play well". It is a myth that the word also means "I put together" or "I assemble" in Latin. "Lego" is in fact a Latin word, but it means "I read".

Go out and buy them before their gone!

I would say that it might send a message if you buy as direct as possible from them.. but I would make sure that they are all bought up by the end of the month. Even if Lego cant keep the product.. it might inspire some other company to do so.

Re:Inspiration

I'd think it may have inspired by the way that our children play today versus how they played twenty years ago.

Actually, the main point of the lego mindstorms was to change the way kids learned... to make learning and playing the same.

The prototype for the mindstorms toy was built at the MIT media lab by roboticist Fred Martin [uml.edu]. (who teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell at a budding robotics lab). Fred really wanted to know about how to use computing to educate kids, and lego offered a sum of money to the media lab in order to foster a new type of marketable toy that had "engaging computing" potential. So he built a lego brick with a computer inside, which was the base of the toy.

Interesting enough, Fred Martin also built the handyboard, which is a great way to get into amateur robotics. As shameless self-promotion, the work I did in Fred Martin's class can be found here [edgiardina.com].

No

Sorry, but for 100$ you get a a64 3000+. You know, 1024KiB high speed cache, 6.4GB/s HT io, ect.
Those little microcontrollers cost you 5$ at most if you buy a few 1000.

Re:MindStorms

Add that to the cost of making the plastic blocks themselves.

Nope. Plastic blocks cannot cost much more than a few cents. It's simple injection molding, the same way they make CDs. Not much material in each block. The only reason lego charges such outrageous prices for them is because they can.

I mean, a microcontroller with three inputs and outputs, 32 kB RAM, and some ROM (512 kiB IIRC) has to cost at least $100

If you think that a microcontroller with 32kB RAM and 512 KB ROM costs >$100 you have never priced one. A microcontroller such as a PICmicro, an Atmel, a Zilog, and so on costs at most $10 for a "deluxe" version with about 30 I/O pins and Flash memory. What Lego is using is most likely a pre-programmed chip w/o Flash, which are about 1/3 of the price. A 512 KB FlashROM chip costs about $6. These are RETAIL prices, what you can get one single chip for. Lego probably gets them for a fraction of the price since they need quite a few of the things.

I am willing to bet that most of the money from the cost of a Mindstorms kit goes towards marketing and product development. Not towards manufacturing. I'm sure the software inside (and outside) the mindstorms thing cost much more to develop than the hardware.

Great stuff, but...

they charge twice as much for the same stuff you can get from other brands. Of course, the high value of the Euro isn't helping. Those are the reasons why the company is having financial problems.

Get back to ordinary bricks!

Too many of the new lego products have so few generic bricks and too many specialist bricks that can't easily be used for other things, eg, you can build a lego buggy into, um, a slightly different buggy, but not a lot else.

Get back to providing big bags of ordinary bricks, and encourage creativity!

Jolyon

I agree: too much cutomization

The real problem Lego is facing right now (let's hope they realize it) is they produce too much custom pieces. Every set has at least 5 - 10 custom bricks and therefore:
1) costs much to produce
2) contains less ordinary pieces to reduce the costs
3) Since it contains less pieces and the ones it contains are custom, there's very little play value to justify the cost.

I would suggest Lego to:
1)reduce custom pieces. Kids are suppose to have fantasy you know... I remember I put two triangles together and pretend it was a star destroyer...
2)kill most of the cinema stuff. Starwars stuff is ok (meaning it's well done and designed). reduce cutom pieces and completely kill the other series ( If they can't make other movies with the same quality, then it's a no go.)
3)Kill bionicles!!!! (what in the world are those things? are they LEGO at all? and they DO contain very few pieces and they're mostly custom!!!! They're model kits, not LEGO!)
4) where are the old series? trains castles cities... there was really tons and tons of stuff!!! (and some amazing works to say the truth) where's all that stuff gone?

Anyway, probably Lego is facing the usual toy VS digital dilemma where most of the kids don't want dull toys and prefer videgames... anyway, I really believe the company isn't facing the crisis for the good... A few steps in the same direction and Lego is gone.

Re:Get back to ordinary bricks!

If you want just plain bricks, they sell them [lego.com]. And those sets aren't that expensive.

Such a shame :-(

This is horrible. I was hoping to buy my nephew lots of Mindstorms [lego.com] stuff when he got older. Maybe I have to buy them now and keep them around?

I'm not sure the price of these toys is the problem. Toys in general aren't exactly cheap these days. Neither are video games, and video games seem to be what is the most appealing to children these days. So what we might need to look into is why expensive video games are more interesting than expensive toys where children have to actually think to use them. Or did I just answer my own question?

Re:Sadly..

I think that society today is more interested in quick results then in long term effects. When a child is restless, parents seem to just want them to quiet down and look for the easiest ways out. When a parent is too busy with their own lives, the TV should not become a baby sitter. Why? There is no independent thought going on, the child is simply entertained. The child is not forced to think about what is happening in most cases because the answer is inevitably answered later on in the show, if there even is a question to ponder. Parents should never be too busy for their child, if that is the case, they shouldn't have had one at all. I am no sociologist, but one thing that makes me believe that sticking children in front of a TV does a-lot more bad then good is watching my father getting older. Last year all he did was watch TV, even educational things like the discovery channel. I noticed that gradually his mind became a little duller, you could tell by the way that he spoke. He couldn't take it anymore, he even noticed that he was slowing down. Now he works for my sister's school doing odd computer jobs, and he is back to a sort of "normal".

Maybe they wouldn't loose so much Money...

Maybe they wouldn't loose so much Money if they didn't pay people to play with Legos! [slashdot.org]

At the very least, they could outsource the playing with Legos to India!

specialization

The problem with Lego sets in recent years has been the fact that they are very specialized. You used to be able to buy sets that allowed for lots of imagination, such as "pirate", "city", and "space" legos. Now, all I see is "Star Wars: Episode I" or other such sets that don't inspire the imagination in the slightest.

Youngsters...

You used to be able to buy sets that allowed for lots of imagination, such as "pirate", "city", and "space" legos.

When I was a kid, I bought Lego sets that just came with x number of assorted blocks with no theme whatsoever. That took REAL creativity. I don't even know if you can buy just plain ol' regular blocks anymore.

Re:NNNNNOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

When we found out we were having a boy

Because girls aren't supposed to build robots? Don't tell that to my six year old Natasha, whose favorite playtime is spent building K'Nex Battlemechs and Bandai Gundams with her dad.

1953 just called. They want their gender biases back.

Sheesh.

Re:NNNNNOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

The highlight were the Lego Mindstorm robots and the stop-action movie studios. I guess I had better buy some now, eh?

Nah, you'll be able to get the Mindstorms cheaper on eBay in the future. And all you need for a stop-action movie studio is a cheap ($30) digital camera, some normal Legos or action figures, some cardboard and crayons, and some software that turns a bunch of JPEGs into a movie.

Lego is dead, long live Lego

I for one am happy to see that Lego is making some serious changes. I disagree that it is the youth that is to blame. I have several young cousins that love to play with Lego but I see them less and less impressed with the "put these 4 custom pieces together and you have a Star-Jedi-Saurus-O-Tron-Laser-Car-Thingy". In my opinion Lego took to much to the 'build it once' toys and todays youth, just like in the good old days gets its real pleasure from the huge collection of small blocks with which you can build a House, a Plane, a Car or even a Spaceship.

Just before christmass I walked into a newly found Lego store at Valley Fair Mall (popular luxury mall in San Jose) and was discusted by the choices offered. Crappy replica's of crappy movies and stories that would not add anything of value to a kid's Lego collection other then a bunch of unusable custom pieces. Let alone the rediculous prices.

Rethink your strategy Lego. What worked in the past will really work in the future, there is still time since there is still no competition!

Of course they lost money...

have you seen their product line lately? Congratualtions to the board on finally figuring out they have lousy execs who were driving the line away from what people wanted. You can hardly buy a decent set (lego builder sets are the exclusion) that doesn't have half of its pieces as special components, non-lego coloring or exclusive stickering. The result is a bunch of pieces you can only use if you are building a particular set - counter intuitive to the whole lego concept. The whole Jack Stone thing - the guys are twice the size of the old 'mini-fig' guys. What, is Jack Stone a giant? Are the old mini-figs halflings? Are old my old mini-figs obsolete now? How is jack stone suppoed to drive the car with the tiny steering wheel - from the old set. Its most irritating because, if you are like me you already have a good sized pile of these and its like Lego moved the ball on you. It will be sad if they quit mindstorms - hopefully it will be picked up by an educational company on licence. What I really miss is the set that had all the gears and socketed I-beams. That was a great mechanical engineering kit. This will not destroy Lego - they will endure. As any 5 year old (mine included) what his favorite thing to do at school.

Visit my colleague's page on MINDSTORMS

A good friend of mine, Russ, has a great and interesting and THOROUGH page detailing everything you could ever want to know about Mindstorms.

His page, at http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics/ [crynwr.com], discusses the internals in great detail. You really won't believe how ADVANCED his knowledge is, so you've gotta check it out for yourself.

The page contains EVERYTHING about these amazing toys. I can't believe they're being discontinued. It's probably due to kids having too many activities (to beef-up their resumes) and videogames/television/radio taking up their time. No one sits down anymore to spend quality time with their family and build toys like these Mindstorms. We all have our own schedules and stuff, and it's probably NOT good for America in the long term.

Anyway, sorry to jade off a bit there, but here are some other links from my friend's page:
1) Create a Spider Robot [homepage.dk]
2) LEGO MINDSTORMS Group official SDK [lego.com]

Enjoy these links and much more on Russ's page! I helped him with the HTML code ;-)

No wonder

It's no wonder that lego is losing money. They seem to be putting a heck of a lot of their resources into stuff like Bionicle. Have you seen those things? There are like 10 pieces, they are not standard brick, and you can only make one thing out of them.

Bring back castle lego at a reasonable price and we'll talk. I would love to get my hands on that original black knight's castle. The big black square one. Now all they make is bionicle, harry potter, and some star wars. It's not the same as it was.

It used to be a toy of building. Now it's just a toy you build.

Too specialized

I have to cast my lot with the folks who are complaining about too many special-purpose blocks. Lego has to make molds for all of those, no wonder the damn things are so expensive.

When I was a kid, there were very few specialized blocks. Even the railroad kit didn't have any except for the lego motor modules (I have always had a soft heart for the 70's-era motor modules) and the railroad tracks. Even the railroad track ties were standard 8x2 thin blocks.

In those days the vast majority of legos were sold in generic kits. You could even get small boxes of 50 or 100 generic blocks, up through the large 400 and 600 and 1000 block kits. All generic. They'd come with a little booklet of suggestions but the possibilities were endless.

The 70's-era house kits had doors, windows, and roof blocks all of which tied in with standard blocks. You could build a wall of doors or use an architectural door in your Moon Rover. You could use your roof blocks to make an Aztec pyramid.

Now you buy a little kit for, say, a TIE fighter and it costs $20 and there's not much you can build with it except things that look a hell of a lot like TIE fighters. The big generic kits aren't even sold any more; if they were they'd probably cost $1,000 and nobody would buy them.

Lego should go back to making the generic kits, price them reasonably, and let the kids think of stuff to build themselves again.

showing their age

I think that it was time to retire the current incarnation of Mindstorms anyway. It would be nice if the next gen. robot toy featured:
wireless (802.11x or cell)
a linux based os (of course)
more sophisticated moving parts
cooler ai modules...

I definitely think that there is a market out there for such a product.

Re:showing their age

"I think that it was time to retire the current incarnation of Mindstorms anyway. It would be nice if the next gen. robot toy featured:
* wireless (802.11x or cell)
* a linux based os (of course)
* more sophisticated moving parts
* cooler ai modules..."

Or more specifically:
* Lots more outputs, lots more motors (solenoids, electromagnets, lights, LEDs) in the box.
* Li-ion rechargeable batteries
* Radio-control, possibly from your PC.
* Webcam (after all, who will buy it if it can't be used to make a climbing or flying spy-device?)

Play methods

If I were a more qualified sociologist, I'd think it may have inspired by the way that our children play today versus how they played twenty years ago.

I don't know about 20 years ago, but 35 years ago I used to play with plain rectangular Lego blocks and generic wheels. I had to use my own mind and imagination to assemble these general-purpose blocks into the wide variety of things I wanted to build.

From the look of today's Lego sets, children play today by using the custom single-purpose pieces to assemble a verbatim copy of the picture on the box.

They Don't Care About Customers

As the father of 7 and 8 year old boys, the elder of which has quite a collection of Bionicles, I've observed one little tidbit about Lego: if you lose or break a piece, it's gonna cost you an arm and a leg to replace it (No Bionicle Pun Intended ;).

What does this have to do with their financial success? A lot, IMHO. It certainly has affected our brand loyalty. As Kewl as Bionicles are, we have tried to steer our boyz towards products made by more consumer friendly companies, such as K'nex.

I know there's more to running a company, but this to me says they still Just Don't Get It.

Mark

Why in my day...

Boy I'm feeling old, I never got a chance to play with Mindstorm Legos. We had regular Legos, but Erector Sets were still going strong when I was a kid. When you built something with an Erector Set you felt you'd really constructed something. In fact I once worked later in life for a mom and pop business where the owner had constructed a motorized ticket dispenser constructed mostly from Erector Set pieces and Roller Skate wheels. I also recall seeing several High School science experiments held together by Erector Set, and I'm talking the teachers semi-permanent devices, not Rube-Goldberg science fair projects (though they were there also).

I'm sure Mindstorm Lego people must have some similar tails to tell, and await a few replies.

Indicative of a trend?

Am I the only one who has noticed that Lego barely sells a kit (in stores) that require any effort or concentration to complete?

When I was younger (here we go....), toy stores always had a great selection of the classic Technics kits. The large, complicated kits seemed to be the hottest items, because they were *challenging* and *interesting*.

Today, most of the sets I see are low-piece count, over-simplifed, plug-the-head-into-the-pelvic-chassis Bionicle garbage, which seems only to make the statement that kids today aren't interested in anything unless it's presented as a completely non-cerebral AARRRGGGHHH-type of monster package.

This really is a shame. I'll never stop appreciating the endless hours I spent creating machines of every type imaginable, and can't help but to think that my exposure to Lego helped to form a little bit of who I am today.

I don't know what a childhood of building Bionicles might do to kid, expect possibly make them wish their parents were cool enough to buy them a toy that doesn't require assembly, like the kid next door.

And that's a sad thing

Unholy deals with corporations

From what I hear, Lego made money, but it just had to pay so much to Lucas, Disney, and whoever makes Harry Potter, that it had the loss.

Corps overvalue their own IP, while everyone else's IP is theirs to exploit.

Mindstorms for 401K

I've been looking for something to put my retirement saings in. The Mindstorm kits are showing their age, but I still love them & I think they'll be around for some time to come.

3 things

That have prevented me from buying Legos:

1. Price - wow. Am I stunned when I see legos in the store now. Multiple hundreds of dollars. The most expensive kit I owned as a kid was 60 bucks for the lastest and bestest. Which leads me to...

2. The kits themselves. I got Technics as a kid and made *everything* with them. The manuals were thick, had many different things you could make with them. Now - the kits are one project. There's no imagination to them. My 60 dollar kit was a red dump truck. It had the frame of a windshield - imagination filled in the rest. Now the windshield comes with the set. Who needs to stretch their thinking? I liked it when *I* made the choice of what the pieces were for.

3. Bionicles. Ironically, that brought legos to my attention (free toy at Burger World), but when I investigated, it was lousy. Hey look, I put this part here and *nowhere* else. Isn't the reason behind legos being able to place a piece wherever you want it? Gahh.

Put all these together, and what do you have? Someone who would like to buy legos, but the kits I want aren't around. I'd love to use legos in a more industrial manner (say building a case for something) but the basic sets are few and far between.

Three things that keep me from busting out my legos:

1. Cats.

2. Cat hair. (I can just imagine it sticking out of the seams and it makes me freak :)

3. Not enough room/time to mess with them. House is too small after the holidays and time is always short. Not like the halcyon days of my youth.

LEGO! Go back to the basics! Give us the old Technic sets, the massive 'generic' kits. Fire the Bionicle guy. You are digging your own grave. The more specialized you make your toys, the more people will just buy toys that are already 'done'. And that was never the point in the first place.

BTW - No. I won't sell any of my extensive collection of Technics or my wonderful zillion piece basic set. If ever there was something to be buried with, its my legos. You can try and pry them out of my cold, dead hands, but look out for the transforming watchdog I just made. His mouth moves and he's looking at you.

Check out the Parallax line.

Parallax [parallax.com] (the BASIC Stamp folks) have numerous robotics kits, including their very successful Boe-Bot [parallax.com]. Plus, their selection of sensors and other accessories is truly awesome -- all at reasonable prices.

I've worked with a number of their products and have found them to be well-designed and accompanied by clear, easy-to-comprehend instructions. And if you do get into a bind, their tech support is both informed and responsive. All-in-all, they're a top-notch company!

The death of Lego?

The article confirms that Lego has been hurting badly. The writing has been on the wall for a while now though. Just look at Lego's product lines over the past 5-10 years. Added: Harry Potter, Star Wars, video games, Bionicle, Sports, Mindstorms. Lost: classic space, castle, pirates. Plus the saddest thing for me, a lack of focus on good Technic sets.

Why so many problems? I think kids expect more from today's toys than just bricks. That's kind of a sad fact that says something about our culture I think. Second, since the expiration of Lego's stud-and-tube patent, there's been competition from Mega Bloks, which are inferior but cheaper. In today's world though, I think it makes sense that many parents choose cheaper rather than better. Another sad fact.

In any event, while I'm unhappy about Mindstorms, I'm happy they're abandoning Harry Potter and the like. They have totally lost their identity by branching out, and I think they really do need to get back to their core business as they're doing now. I wonder though, is it too late already?

There use to be a steady stream of great Technic sets worth getting, but recently good sets have slowed to a trickle, with just one catching my eye recently... 8455 Backhoe [lego.com]. Check it out, it might be one of your last few chances to grab a great Lego set.

Official Word From LEGO

Check this out: http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asp?page=pres s See the Jan 8 post. Nothing there about Mindstorms being cancelled. I just read something on LugNet as well that was an interview at one of the Lego shows, and one of the Lego reps said that Mindstorms 3 was in development. Here's hoping!

NOT too specialized

I hear many people in here complaining that Lego has become too 'specialized' and they need to get back to simple blocks. This is absolutley rediculous. You can still buy [lego.com] simple bricks. They haven't stopped making them, they have just expanded their product line. You hear about the specialized sets more only because they bring in more cash for Lego.

Where does it say Mindstorms is gone?

I don't see anywhere where it explicitly says Mindstorms is gone, just a vaguely-worded mention of "electronics". They say their new mission is focusing on their own products, not the tie-ins, so that they have control over what they do - Mindstorms is owned by them, no? I took it to mean they were dropping the Star Wars line (which was cool, admittedly), the Harry Potter line, etc. and would stop making the video games (where presumably they are not responsible for making them, but license out the Lego name or contract other companies, either way they're not in control).

So until someone explicitly tells me the Mindstorms line is done, I'm not going to hold out any hope for seeing it in the clearance aisle.

Re:Where does it say Mindstorms is gone?

They are dropping all of the electronics lines, which includes Mindstorms, from their retail division.

But LEGO Dacta, the educational division of LEGO will still sell Mindstorms stuff. Pitsco is the distributor of LEGO Dacta in the USA, and will sell to anyone anywhere within an area that isn't already serviced by another regional LEGO Dacta supplier.

Hope this doesn't mean more Bionicles

I'm afraid that Lego is not returning to its roots (building blocks), but may just cut the licensed products (Star Wars, Harry Potter) and concentrate on its own Bionicles line.

I was not thrilled to see that my second grader brought home a Bionicles novella from the Scholastic book fair (which is increasingly a toy fair), especially after I looked at it and saw a grammatical error in the book's very first sentence. Lego has a whole mythology about Bionicles, and that's attractive to kids. But my son lost a couple essential pieces of his Bionicle within days of getting it, and I'm not going to encourage this overpriced, intellectually shallow, proprietary product line as a hobby.

Unfortunately, I could not find more generic Lego blocks in my Christmas shopping. There were some overpriced ($30-$40) Star Wars kits, and a space shuttle for $100, but nothing I wanted to buy. I'm beginning to associate Lego with brands like Scholastic and Disney, that have turned their once-respected product lines into brands of dumb, overpriced junk.

Oh, grow up

If you want to make stuff, get a milling machine like everybody else. Legos are for kids.

Legoland and the technic lego car

When I first got into Lego, their primary focus was Legoland and Lego Technic. I remember staring in awe at a friend's Legoland set up in his parent's garage, the entire floor of which was covered in baseplates with every kind of building, and even the Legoland train running around it.

In addition to that, another friend had the Technic lego car, with big wheels, cylinders, rack & pinion steering, suspension, etc. It ruled!

Where are those kits now? Relegated in favour of crappy Bionicles and Harry Potter themed kits. What can a child build with them? Bugger all, that's what!

Perhaps if they want their fortunes to improve, Lego should bring back the originals.

Do specialised sets discourage creativity?

When I grew up, I had meccano to burn. Well, being metal it wouldn't burn, of course. When I was in my teens, I was the friendly neighbourhood babysitter, and by then ('70s) Lego was all the rage. I used to build large constructions from the sets at some of my charges houses that they wouldn't pull apart until next time I came to babysit them.

When I saw the rise of sets like "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" and so on I thought "Oh, yeah. Boring. No creativity need be applied here.".

Now, though, I have my own children. I have bought them basic boxes of blocks, and that's fine, and I've bought them specialised sets like Harry Potter (Hogwart's Castle) and SpiderMan (my wife is a spiderman nut, so my kids are too).

The interesting thing is, is that they sat right down and built it "like on the box" then immediately pulled it all apart and made amazingly creative stuff out of them. We now have pyramids, temples in the jungle (complete with mazes) secret laboratories (with traps, computers and mad scientists). We have Spiderman rescuing X, Y, or Z from some scenario that never happened in any comic. We have marble races, and endless things that fly and drive.

Most of the parts that allow all this wierd stuff to happen are actually the special ones. All of the neat secret panels and traps in Harry Potter are wonderfully repurposed in making a "Temple of Doom" (with a few Orient Expedition pieces, and a quick pyramid out of basic blocks...).

Creativity is pretty hard to hide, really. If you give a creative kid some toys to play with then he will be creative with it.

It is a shame to see MindStorms discontinued. I'm halfway tempted to go out and get one for my sons before they disappear. On the other hand the oldest (and most creative) one has just turned six, and I won't trust him not to destroy it for a couple of years yet. In those couple of years the landscape will change enough that I full expect something better will be available.

Re:Has the copyright on Lego expired?

LEGO never had a copyright on its blocks.

It did, however, have a patent.

And yes, LEGO's patent has expired... at least with regards to the building brick. The patents on the Technic parts are still alive and well afaik.

Megabloks, a company that makes a building brick that is essentially compatible with LEGO, opened up shop almost to the day that LEGO's patent expired on the brick and has been slowly and steadily improving the quality of their own product ever since. They aren't half bad right now.