In Defense of New Lego

Legos are a battleground. Not just figuratively in the world of our imagination, but literally. Conservatives hate their populist message. Liberals are disgruntled that the girlification takes away from the engineering. Some of the argument is understandable, since Lego did drift away from a gender neutral start, and is now very heavily invested into quite segregated product lines.

Now that the children have attained the ages of 5 and 7, we have moved into the thick of Lego building. As they are girls, we have focused on two sets: Lego Friends and Lego Elves. Oh, and a third set, Disney’s Frozen, but that feels like an extension or combination of the other two. The girls have a smattering of other sets, including Batman, Spiderman, and Lego Movie vehicles. There are also a couple of our large older sets that have hung around, including the USS Constellation and the Space Shuttle/Hubble set.

But the Elves and the Friends are here in force. To be honest, I was apprehensive. These sets were not the ones I grew up with. But I shouldn’t have feared for a couple of reasons. New Legos are awesome, and here’s why:



Colors are awesome.

Growing up, there were six colors of Legos: black, white, grey, blue, yellow, and red. There were also green Legos, but they tended to be the huge flat ground pieces. I even had a couple of those from the era where the initial places for cornerstone pieces were painted white.

Now look at this:

Pretty colors.
Pretty AWESOME colors, that is!

The pieces themselves are pretty spectacular too. The Elves boat comes with a ton of interesting facets and shaped pieces. The sail is a thin vinyl attached to a moveable mast. The patterns and and general look of the pieces take away the blockiness of the, well, blocks.

It's not all just boxy blocks any more.

It shouldn’t have taken Lego the better part of its history to move into this array of colors. I understand that manufacturing only recently got to the point where the bulk creation of billions of little blocks could be subdivided into such thin variations at affordable prices. But we would have paid for some of this before now. Regardless, it's here now, it's cool, and having a rainbow to play with boosts everyone’s imagination.

Tiny steps are awesome.
One of the big developments in Friends sets is that Lego spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours examining the variations in how kids play. Boys (i.e. me) tend to build in a linear fashion, completing the build before playing with it. Girls (including the two short ones that live in this house) are quite happy to stop and look around every once in a while.

And it seems to work. About a quarter of the sets are collections of small projects, like a magic workshop set that has four different mini-projects in the same box. The large sets have three or four smaller chunks that get put together and played with at different times. The Frozen Arendelle set is assembled by levels, with breaks in between to put together fireplaces, beds, mailboxes, and furniture.

We assembled the USS Constellation as a family a few months back. It’s an old set, we had the early 2000’s re-release of the 1970’s set. It sucked to build. It was layer after layer of assembling a hull. Only at the end, after all the masts and rigging went up, did it look like a boat. And this was absolutely a shelf model, and even came with a stand to hold the thing. The girls played with the Constellation in that they moved their mini-dolls around the deck, then went somewhere else.

You know, part of building a model boat is that you don't have to build the whole damn boat.

What I see happen with the new sets is that the girls will spend time building, then stop and spend time arranging and, dammit, playing. These are not models to set on the shelf at any stage. Now, the process makes me grit my teeth. I would have viewed this as valuable time that could have been used to finish the damn castle. But that’s not how they play, and I accept that. Grumblegrumblegrumble.

The engineering is awesome.

In the world of old Lego, it took getting to the level of Technic before things started moving. In sets for any younger than 12 or 13, the only movement was a couple of hinged doors and wheels. Technic started with pulleys and gears and axels. I even had a pneumatic set or two.

Now look at this. LOOK AT THIS.

You always wanted an inter-dimensional portal at the top of your Lego castle. Now they have it, and it looks fantastic.

This was assembled by a 7 year old, unassisted. And something like this shows up in every set. There’s a trap door in the baking set. The mast moves by the steering wheel in the Elves boat. All of the tricks that were developed in Technic have been back-fed into these sets. Even some of the more general assembly is more complex. For example, the bow of the Elves boat is actually assembled on its side, and turned before snapping into place and build around further. None of this is the layered wall building like the Constellation or so many of the castle sets I assembled. It’s good, and very creative, engineering.

***

So, everything is awesome? No. The decisions to put the Friends in domestic playsets sucks. The general targeting of a gender for a particular toy or location of these sets in the store, segregated from the “boy” sets, sucks. And there has been a big thumbs-down to the Friends and Elves mini-dolls, the new figures that come with each set. These are not the traditional minifigs.

Some have raised concerns that the new figs are curvy, or in makeup, or gendered at all. I’m just torqued that their hands don’t move. These figs are geared to hold things straight up and down, while there are plenty of circumstances that they should be able to grip horizontal things like monkey bars or paychecks that are the same size as the male minifigs. 

The mini-doll of Emily Jones from the Elves collection.
The minifig of Emmett from the Lego Movie. And the mini-doll for Adelle Dazeem.

But more than anything else, there is one complaint about the new sets. The addition of ice castles has added Lego icicle pieces. This introduces an entirely new world of pain when they are stepped on in the middle of the night.

Ouch.

Then again, that’s what Legos have always been about.