Lego - Can I think of a better title? No (Lego in General)

Member Name: andersonmarske

Product:	Lego in General
Date:	04/03/05 (1251 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Legendry, Durable, Creative

Disadvantages: Costly, Some awkward bricks

Lego... perhaps the best toy of the 20th Century, and certainly the most popular one. Adults (apparently) and children play with Lego, construction buildings, scenes, decorations and nearly everything else using small, durable plastic bricks.

Lego's legacy began in 1932 in Billund, Denmark with a joiner named Ole Kirk Christiansen. He made ironing boards, stepladders and WOODEN TOYS.

In 1934 he named his product LEGO from the Danish words: Leg godt (play well), strangely in Latin LEGO means 'I put together'

In '42 the factory burnt down, however the company (small back then) rebuilt it.

~The idea~

People put Lego brick together to make constructions. The plastic brick are to represent building bricks.

Constructions can be of many things, everything from err... art to buildings. A page even exists on Lego.com with different people's creations photographed and shared.

~The Bricks~

The bricks are highly durable, I have some from the '70s and they're all still fine, undamaged and heavily played with.

I think if you chucked some bricks out of a window on a 1st floor of house they wouldn't break. Perhaps even from the top of an apartment block!

The bricks themselves come in various varieties, to many to name. The smallest common brick size is 1.00x1.00cm square and the most common brick is 2x1cm. The most inconvenient size is 1.5x1.0cm. You can also get super-awkward circular bricks.

The bricks can be in various colours: white, red, yellow, blue and the surfaces on which you place these on are green. These surfaces are generally big rectangles on with the little circles on that allow you to link the bricks together.

You make towers by placing brick on top of brick. The surfaces I've mentioned above are perhaps the best surface to use. I don't know where you get the thicker version of these but the thin, versatile ones are available in the box sets: more info below.

~The Box Sets~

By box sets I don't mean the boxes full of bricks, but boxes you make something out of, like a police station or pirate ship schemes.

These boxes contain Lego men and women (see pic), the surfaces, bricks and other props to be used. The use of Lego bricks themselves is decreasing, these box sets contain little or no Lego bricks.

The quality of these sets is quite high, and so are the assembly instructions.

~Other Lego Stuff Hidden Amongst the Rest~

The sad bit, Lego is moving away from the traditional Lego brick. As mentioned above you get Lego men and other non-traditional Lego objects such as plastic-framed windows.

Lego also have moved into different sectors and different creative tools.

For example, Lego launched a series of software including the famous Legoland game, in which you build and manage a theme park similar to Legolands around the work and Lego Racer, a childish car racing game.

Another example is the popular Clickits series for girls. They make non-Lego accessories by linking together different object, to create an attractive picture frame for example. I don't know much about these as they're relatively new.

Now naturally the famous Duplo, bigger objects, but still heavily Lego based. The bricks are larger than Lego, the characters are and it has a tendency to include animals. These are for pre-school children.

Lego Mindstorms are robots made out of Lego style object. You can control and program them via. a PC, these have being around for some years now and never seemed to be that popular because of the high price tag involved in such things.

Lego Technic is another popular series of Lego that I don't really get.... ah, now I do! You design stuff correctly and efficiently such as vehicles, hope you don't mind but this is there description as I can't really explain it:

'LEGO TECHNIC puts realistic functions and style at your fingertips – with a building system that lets you build all kinds of authentic machinery.

With LEGO TECHNIC, you'll enter the world of gears, pneumatics, motors, wheels and many other realistic functions found in construction equipment, trucks and other advanced vehicles.' Lego.com

None of these are really would really have being my style and I think I would have stuck to traditional ones, but different people have different tastes

~Packaging~

The packaging depends on the product, for certain products like Duplo or the boxes full of normal bricks the package is a strong place sand castle style bucket (with lid), but for box sets it's generally some cheap thin cardboard.

This appears to be strong though.

~Value for dosh~

Well...... I would say it's quite expensive, but it's hard to compare saying they appear to be the only one in the field.

I know people spend around £30 for sets such as the police station and £6 for an individual 'Lego Racer' car. This does seem somewhat extortionate saying it only costs them a few pence to make.

~Conclusion~

Anyone know a child without Lego? No. Lego is a classic toy like Barbie or Action Man every child (or adult) will use. It is expensive, yet fun, and wastes hours of your time.

You really have to give your child some just as it's a tradition. Every child likes...needs..... Lego!


© http://joeanderson.co.uk, 2005.

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