THE ILLUSTRATOR Daniel Mitsui has a fascinating piece (see July 14th entry) on recent trends in Legos, the plastic building toys popular among boys. Lego stopped basing its miniature figures on characters and narratives  from medieval history and legend, choosing branded fantasies instead. Mitsui writes:

I began to lose interest in these toys around the time of the first troubling developments. The weird and thankfully short-lived Wolfpack Renegades theme was a harbinger of worse to come; this was the first introduction of characters with no basis in medieval history or literature. Dragon Masters followed, with a wizard named Majisto. I don’t mind dragons, but this theme signaled that the designers in Billund were abandoning medieval history and literature altogether for the much smaller, much less interesting realm of fantasy fiction. Even more objectionable was the giving of names to the characters, and presenting them as definite heroes and villains; in the LEGOLAND sets, there were dragon knights and falcon knights and lion knights and Robin Hood-esque forestmen, but the children were not told who was good or who was bad; they could incite the armies against each other or forge alliances as they saw fit.

The prepackaged narratives and characters became downright ridiculous in the years after I stopped paying attention; reading over a list of Castle Lego sets from the late 1990s and 2000s, I meet Basil the Bat-Lord, Cedric the Bull, and Lord Vladic …

… What is this idiocy? Legos, the greatest building blocks ever invented, have become just another toy for children to play with someone else’s imagination.

The company seems to recognize it has alienated its traditional base and has made some improvements with its most recent 2010 editions. Its struggles to remain current in the face of dumbing-down trends and competition from video games are familiar. Mitsui writes:

It is a story that resembles that of many other institutions: churches, schools, publishers, opera houses et cetera. When an institution sees that it is competing against powerful forces inimical to everything it values (in Lego’s case, video games and mass children’s media), it has three options: it can capitulate entirely; it can stand firm in its principles and establish itself as a stubborn counter-cultural opposition, contenting itself with a smaller but more loyal following; or it can make gradual compromises, insisting that its principles have not changed (at least not too much, even though they obviously have) and justifying itself with a lot of rhetoric about reaching out to meet people where they are. 

Please follow and like us: