Life on the Road

I love LEGO.  My family has always loved LEGO.

My grandmother (a VERY tidy person, and very proper in many ways) was horrified when she came to visit for the holidays one year.  I was about 12, and my sister was about 6.  Mom and Dad had taken out all the Dining Room furniture, and covered most of the floor (wall-to-wall carpeted) with sheets of plywood.

Then, there were the LEGOs…

To keep us from arguing about parts, I suppose, they got my sister sets from the City theme, while I had Space sets. 

And boy, did we have sets.

The Dining Room stayed in that condition for quite some time, and I suspect we had every set made for those two themes at that time - plus any number of generic brick sets.

But you know, even those “specialized” sets had primarily “regular” bricks.  The only thing that made them a “set” was the particular assortment, and the instructions for assembling them into a Hotel, or a Spaceport, or whatever.

I’ve been buying LEGOs for Nick for over a decade now, and we’ve got lots of the “Duplo” big bricks now, too.  And frankly, I’m a little troubled by what’s out there on the shelves.

A set today is composed primarily of specialized pieces that ARE something - the hull of the ship,  the fender of a car, etc.  You don’t have to construct the whole model out of little cubes, you just have to snap the components together.

Doesn’t that totally eliminate everything we love about LEGO?

Where’s the creativity?  Where’s the thinking outside the box?  Heck, where’s the ability to dump them all into a big pile on the floor and just build a gigantic block tower with your kid sister that’s as tall as she is?

This is just one more thing that’s widely regarded as “progress” that I don’t find beneficial.  If I want to buy them a toy boat or a toy car, I’ll just buy one.  If I buy them LEGOs, I want them to be able to engage in stimulating, creative play.

Luckily, you can still order various “basic brick assortment” sets online (I’m sure some specialty stores still carry them, too - just not around here).