12 ms·

Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

275 points by FailMore 12y ago

sfjailbird 12y ago
The copy is a play on the first thing an adult would say to the girl: "What is it?" "What it is, is beautiful."
pavlov 12y ago
Both the product and the ad are highly representative of '70s Nordic social ethics and aesthetics. A single product line called "Universal Building Sets" is an almost Platonic ideal of democratic creativity. Today's Lego has 33 product lines: http://www.lego.com/en-us/products http://www.lego.com/en-us/products When your Legos are branded as "Chima", "Bionicle", "Ninjago", "Marvel(tm) Super Heroes" or "Disney(r) Star Wars(tm)", it's expected that you play within the existing marketeer-created universe. Less blank canvas, more coloring book with product placement.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  They had no choice, the "univeral building blocks" patent ended not long ago, facing competition now, they had to find sustainable cash flow.
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    Actually, it expired quite a while ago, in 1989.
  - throwaway49873 12y ago
    The patent expired a long time ago, the original patent was filed in 1958. They tried to trademark the shape indefinitely, which recently was denied. They also lost a case against Tyco in 1988. Of course the Lego design was copied from Kiddicraft to begin with. More than anything, the family that founded Lego handed over the CEO post to a former business consultant in 2003. http://www.dehns.com/site/information/dehns_articles/will_lego_now_let_go.html http://www.dehns.com/site/information/dehns_articles/will_le... http://brickfetish.com/timeline/1947.html http://brickfetish.com/timeline/1947.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B8rgen_Vig_Knudstorp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B8rgen_Vig_Knudstorp
  - legoisbest 12y ago
    The competition is terrible though. Have you tried assembling any other "compatible" building set? The bricks aren't finished properly, some just pop off, and it all falls to bits easily. I'd say the nearest competition to Lego is probably 60% the quality of Lego.
    - agumonkey 12y ago
      No I'm just telling what I read from an article a few years back when new brands started to pop in stores. I wonder if parents/kids may see the quality rightaway. LEGOs were an expensive gift in my days. If I was asking for more toys, I'm sure my parents would be tempted to buy a lower priced brand.
    - zeusk 12y ago
      I grew up in India during the 90s when Lego had no proper establishment here. There was a very similar kit called 'mechanix' which I fondly remember to date. Would surely recommend still if can't find Lego or on budget.
    - kristiandupont 12y ago
      Lego is expensive. As a former employee, I've heard this complaint many, many times. The thing that people don't realize (because hey, it's just plastic) is that Lego is really really high quality. Getting the right stickiness requires very high precision in those little bricks. Also, if like me you have Legos from your childhood you will probably notice that they last long.
      - xanderstrike 12y ago
        The quality really cannot be understated, they last forever. When I was growing up, my brother and I had a mix of "modern" (early 90s) kits and my dad's legos he had growing up in 1950s and 60s Germany. Now my cousins' kids have inherited both and are mixing them with 2010s kits. The 50 year old blocks fit precisely with the blocks made in the past year, and when you throw them all in a bin together you can hardly tell the difference. It's rare to think of a toy that you can play with as "heirloom quality," but I have no doubt my kids will inherit a portion of the family set when it becomes time, and their kids just might too.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Given how long ago it expired and how terrible the competition is I think Lego is the poster company for showing that execution quality is crucial.
    - agumonkey 12y ago
      That's weird, I read about it really not long ago. Maybe they tried to delay things through legal means. That said yes, the LEGO company put a lot of thinking in their 'toys'. I think it's also the way things were done in those days, now it's all ship often, ship cheap.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lego_Group http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lego_Group Heading 'trademarks and patents', the last patent expired in '89.
        agumonkey 12y ago
        Aight, so I heard about the post 2000s lawsuits but didn't understand the grounds on which LEGO was able to sue.
- ps4fanboy 12y ago
  Maybe if sales for these things werent so high they wouldnt have done it, whose fault is it really Lego or the consumer? I certainly dont want companies deciding for me.
  - pavlov 12y ago
    You don't want companies to decide what products you buy? How does that work? I mean, you can only buy something if they'll sell it...
    - jamespo 12y ago
      Or you can buy something else and the company can go bust.
      - pavlov 12y ago
        Still, you can only buy something else within the range of options on the market. Ideally companies adjust their product lines based on customer demand. In reality it's mostly determined by other factors like supply chain, internal politics, competitor envy, random advice from consultants, need to meet quarterly growth goals, etc. For example, high-fructose corn syrup has become a major ingredient of many American food products within the past 20+ years. That didn't happen because of consumer demand, and consumers don't have an easy way to vote against it.
        maxerickson 12y ago
        Consumers could have demanded products without corn syrup in them. It turns out they don't care. If people did care, those other factors probably would have had to take a back seat to consumer demand. So I don't think you can say that it was irrelevant to the rise of HFCS. (You can argue that people are ill informed and blah blah blah, but that's still them not caring enough to demand whatever it is you think they should be more informed about)
        12y ago
- laurent123456 12y ago
  Looking at the two boxes on the poster, they don't look that "universal" - it's a truck and the other one a house. Today's boxes I guess are just better categorized, but not that different.
  - masklinn 12y ago
    Universal Building Set is actually the name of a product line: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Universal_Building_Set http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Universal_Building_Set it existed alongside LEGOLAND and Trains and constituted the "basic" lego sets, differentiated because each set usually came with instructions for multiple models, and better demonstrated the role of imagination and the purpose of legos.
  - eloisant 12y ago
    These boxes only have standard pieces, which is why the truck and house look boxy. Today's boxes include too many specific pieces. Car hood, top, helicopter nose, etc. Pieces that can't be used for anything else that what they're designed for, and can't be replaced if lost. So you can't take it appart to build something different.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      I actually think that the "Lego Movie" set is a perfect example of unbound creativity. Pretty much every set uses parts which do not match with their original use,and yet they are all used to build interesting things. The worst Lego bricks are the ones which have something painted/written on them, that usually does limit the applications.
    - Jgrubb 12y ago
      Trust me, a kid the age of the one in the ad can take it apart and make something different. Mine do it nonstop.
    - xanderstrike 12y ago
      In any given kit the ratio of custom pieces to generic pieces is still favorable. As a random sample check out the parts inventory of this kit [1] from Lego's Star Wars: Clone Wars system. When you sort by quantity, you see the vast majority of parts are generic wedges, blocks, and plates. Browse around the site, you'll see the same is true for any set over 50 pieces. The idea that you "can't take it apart to build something different," is a little ridiculous, it isn't a model airplane. I take it you haven't played with any of the modern kits. I encourage you, if you enjoyed lego as a kid, to buy a couple and see for yourself. The model on the box is more polished, but the building blocks are very much the same. 1. http://www.peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/inv/sets/7752-1?PagerSortDir=r&PagerSortCol=Qty http://www.peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/inv/sets/7752-1?PagerS...
- eloisant 12y ago
  The last box I bought for my kids was a "lego classics" box. Just blocks. http://www.lego.com/en-us/classic http://www.lego.com/en-us/classic
- legoisbest 12y ago
  This does crop up all the time. You should also mention though that Lego still make and sell a lot of universal building sets. In Lego stores there are walls of bricks where you can select any bits you want. Yes, there has been a big rise in themed and licensed sets, and yes, some of them have specialised building parts that you can only really use in the set. But that's just part of the trend over the last few decades from generic products to branded products. Everything has to be branded... I even saw a "frozen" branded loom band set. I guess the loom bands are just colors associated with the movie? Even buying kids shoes these days they're mostly branded with superheroes, princesses, etc You can enjoy building predefined models, and creating your own from buckets of bricks though. Both can co-exist nicely. The best thing is that Lego is still going strong.
  - pavlov 12y ago
    Sure. I wasn't exactly criticising Lego, just pointing out that the appeal of the ad is inextricably linked to the ideal behind the product. Lego is a business, of course. Those ABS plastic blocks are practically indestructible, so they're not going to grow by selling replacements for universal blocks...
    - legoisbest 12y ago
      It's so impressive that I can take out a 30 year old Lego brick, and it "works" exactly the same as it did 30 years ago. Sure, the white ones have faded a little, but they still function just as they should. Not to put the knife in too hard, but megablocks and other competitors don't even function properly when they're new out of the packet.
  - hvidgaard 12y ago
    If I remember correctly, LEGO was in a bit of a financial crisis not long ago, and as a way to deal with it was more focus on LEGO based on existing and popular franchises. That said, you just take pull the sets apart and children being children will build things, just as they always have.
  - freshyill 12y ago
- DerekL 12y ago
  Actually, even back in 1981, there were multiple lines, though not nearly as much as now. Here's a list of the sets released in 1981: http://brickset.com/sets/year-1981 http://brickset.com/sets/year-1981 . Out of 58 sets, 16 are designed for generic use. Much of the rest are buildings and vehicles from the modern world, like houses, fire stations, tow trucks, ferries, helicopters, dune buggies, etc. But there are also sets with medieval knights and space themes. Plus, Lego created their own characters for a theme they called "Fabuland". There was even a tie-in series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keJua4D2Ymg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keJua4D2Ymg In summary, back in 1981, there were generic sets plus four different themes.
- olavk 12y ago
  Sets without any associated storyline or franchise still exist as the "Creator"-series, and seem to be quite popular.
  - Marazan 12y ago
    The Creator series are the absolute best bang for buck line they produce. In general they are 3-in-1 kits and they have lots of interesting blocks.
- xenophonf 12y ago
  it's expected that you play within the existing marketeer-created universe Maybe that's how you or your kids play with them, but here we have no problem kitbashing the branded sets. Their parts end up in the color-sorted bins along with all the rest, and the kids build crazy stuff out of whatever. The last round included parts from a city, a dinosaur, and a submarine, and those were just the ones I recognized. We even mix Megabloks and Duplo with our Legos. Now, if I could only get the kids to pick up the parts when they finish... Kitbashing is _the_ plot driver of the Lego movie, in that it's what Master Builders do. Notice how the Lego Club magazine highlights people's creative builds. I want to postulate that Lego's endpoint is not static sculpture, but active imagination. Consider fan fiction. Sometimes we want to create stories inside someone else's universe. Hasn't your imagination been sparked by some favorite movie or book or artwork? Have you ever wanted to tell the rest of the story? I know I did! That's why I flew my Duplo Millenium Falcon around the living room. I don't see how a more realistic version would have been less fun, or less imaginative. And that's the point of the branded sets. They're fun! With any luck someday soon I will be able to build model rockets that look a lot like what explodes on my launchpad in KSP, only my kids and I will be able to fly those around the living room, pretending the sofa is Planet Klystron, home of the savage (but peaceful) race of Mer-mole-men (Lego people with frickin' sharks heads!) Meanwhile, Superman arrives to rescue our stranded Kerbals, whose ship (naturally) blew up upon launch. And so on. It's about the stories we can tell ourselves and each other. In-universe. Something wholly new. It doesn't matter. Do whatever it takes to get you or your kids' imaginations jumpstarted. Or at least that's what I'm after when I buy a Lego set (branded or not). It looks cool, and it sets my imagination racing.
  - munificent 12y ago
    > We even mix Megabloks Heathen!
  - cben 12y ago
    > We even mix Megabloks and Duplo with our Legos. Is there any way/adapter to connect Duplo (or Lego) on top of Megabloks? I sometimes manage to usefully mix them but always feel it'd be more useful the other way around if Megabloks could provide large-scale structure with Duplo providing fine(r) detail on top... Though I might be biased by having tons of Megabloks and not that much Duplo. [There is of course the kludge of hanging a protruding duplo under: MMMM MMMM MMdddd MM MM MM but it's flimsy and requires too much overhead.]
- aerique 12y ago
  I can only give you an anecdotal counter point but Lego is still fine. Instead of asking for a universal building set like I did, my 5 year old old son now ask for a specific Chima or Star Wars box and then we build the vehicle on the box. After that things get still get ripped apart and combined into new things. It's still mostly a bunch of colored brick except the modern boxes contain a couple more custom bricks which make his own creations look even more awesome. Lego is still a good (or even better) for kids nowadays than it was 30 years ago.
- sp332 12y ago
  Wasn't the whole Lego Movie about taking the kits apart and mixing them up and not worrying about it?
- Ar-Curunir 12y ago
  I would rather have Lego around with branded lines than no Lego, and indeed the branded marketing is what's keeping Lego afloat. And it's not like you can't buy non-branded Lego (there's plenty of it available). Even if you do have the branded sets you can still use them with 30 year old Lego bricks. I don't see how branded sets result in less creativity.
hpaavola 12y ago
Back when we were kids there was only one type of Lego, the type that was meant for everybody. Now they have their own line for girls, Lego Friends. And Lego Friends is just stupid http://seasonaldepressioncomic.com/2014/12/06/lego-friends/ http://seasonaldepressioncomic.com/2014/12/06/lego-friends/
- ps4fanboy 12y ago
  What comes first, the desire for gendered products or the gendered products?
  - derwildemomo 12y ago
    gendered products.
  - Xylakant 12y ago
    The kids desire for gendered products or the parents desire for gendered products?
  - the_mitsuhiko 12y ago
    > What comes first, the desire for gendered products or the gendered products? Apparently the desire. Toddlers pick gendered products on their own (for some forms of them). There was some studies about this behavior.
    - ptaipale 12y ago
      Well, if the toddlers can pick, the gendered products were there first. But it is true that kids even make gendered toys out of practically nothing. For instance, a local kindergarten here: three-year-old boys were forbidden to have toy guns. So the kids took some flat crispbread at the midday meal and chewed edges off to make it gun-shaped, and then started playing cops and robbers. Bang bang.
      - DanBC 12y ago
        A child-made toy gun is not a gendered toy. A gendered toy would be a toy gun packaged in a blue box with only images of boys on the packaging.
zeeshanm 12y ago
The cool thing about legos is you get instant gratification for building stuff. My 2-year-old nephew was building with legos the other day and you know what he said after he finished building: "moma." He was so happy he wanted to go show his mom what he had built. Isn't that beautiful?
- tree_of_item 12y ago
  Maybe he wanted you to secure space for his creation at http://www.moma.org/ http://www.moma.org/ ? At least he's modest.
  - zeeshanm 12y ago
    Probably an oversight on my part not to think of this ;-)
agumonkey 12y ago
Reminds me of that article saw on HN https://medium.com/matter/the-man-who-destroyed-americas-ego-94d214257b5 https://medium.com/matter/the-man-who-destroyed-americas-ego... That "discover how you're special" mindset seemed to be a socio-academic theory of the times.
jackgavigan 12y ago
Original HuffPost article (from over a year ago): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/lego-ad-1981_n_4617704.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/lego-ad-1981_n_4617... Someone tracked down the little girl in the ad: http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/little-girl-1981-lego-ad-grown-shes-got-something-say/ http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/little-girl-1981-lego-ad-g...
joteichmann 12y ago
This is a brilliant kind of emotional branding! Chapeau!
- blumkvist 12y ago
  Check this out http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/blogger2wp/watch.jpg http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/blogger2wp/watch....
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shalmanese 12y ago
"What happened with Legos, they used to be simple. Oh come on, I know you know what I'm talking about, Legos were simple. Something happened out here while I was inside. Harry Potter Legos, Star Wars Legos, complicated kits, tiny little blocks. I mean I'm not saying its bad I just wanna know what happened." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVCOAFKjaoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVCOAFKjaoY
- facepalm 12y ago
  I'm glad that there are complicated kits to choose from. Sadly my kids don't stay two years old forever.
facepalm 12y ago
Congratulations for making such a great effort in writing that article! (Whenever I see the praise effort, not achievement meme I make it a point to praise the effort, not the achievement).
- soneca 12y ago
  Well, the effort here is not that great. He took an existing ad and gave his opinion on it. Not much research or else.
  - jboons 12y ago
    Why are you comparing the effort of an opinion article to that of a research article? That's not how this concept works.
johntaitorg 12y ago
Lego is now only a 3D jigsaw puzzle, sadly. Lego Classic has just arrived in the UK but it seems a half-hearted piece of mummery to me.
- DanBC 12y ago
  There have been Lego Creative sets available for ages in UK. I agree that other kits are just a bunch on non-general blocks and tiny pieces.
- gambiting 12y ago
  As a kid I used to have tons of Lego. My dad would always bring a set or two back after being abroad for a few weeks, so I had boxes full of Lego. And they were all specific(jigsaw-like) sets - bulldozers, cars, castles, Indian forts, spaceships, that kind of thing. And you know what? Just because the instructions say you have to build a spaceship,doesn't mean you can't disassemble it afterwards. I remember that I would build something,and next day it was back in pieces, contributing to my huge Lego city or whatever it was that I was working on at the moment. For me, sets were just a fun thing to assemble for a day,and then a source of parts after day one.
  - lfowles 12y ago
    My later custom designs benefited from having read instructions and putting together the set as intended several times. They gave me ideas about how pieces _could_ fit together.
- Jgrubb 12y ago
  I don't mean this as a slight, but to a kid there's absolutely nothing lacking from the modern kits. I'd say that the "half-hearted" part is solely in your perspective now as an adult.
- PJDK 12y ago
  I hear this a lot. Was I the only kid who would build what ever was on the box first, play with that for a day - break it and then have it all go into a big box? And all the funny bits people moan about make excellent space lasers.
duncanawoods 12y ago
recent studies have proven that praising a child’s effort over the childs acheivements is the correct way to raise a little person that will do well I think this claim is mistaken. The article backs the claim up with a link which discusses something different: whether to praise effort or praise attributes of the person e.g. "you are so smart!". Praising achievement is a third category of praise where consequences are assessed and not personal qualities. I'm confident that positive and negative feedback about achievement are incredibly important moreso than acknowledging effort. Praising the attributes of a person is clearly just flattery so I don't know why anyone would do it or need a study to point it out. Were you to praise effort and not assess achievement, you will train people to look like they are working hard rather than actually achieving anything and not give them the feedback that will help them truly excel.
- corin_ 12y ago
  I don't have sources but I'm sure I've read studies against praising achievement. I'm sure if combined well with praising effort it can work well, but it should be a way of helping judge effort, not praised for and of itself. For example if a child constantly gets Bs in a certain subject then getting an A can be an indicator that they've put more effort in - but the A itself shouldn't be the reason for the praise.
  - duncanawoods 12y ago
    Yep, effort\achievement shouldn't be considered as independent. What I do think is important is to kill dead this notion that achievement is not a necessary consideration for how to praise. For example: I would be cautious about praising: i) High effort but low performance due to repeating mistakes that have been pointed out before. ii) Low effort but high performance due to luck or the task being easy for the individual. I would find it important to praise: i) Low effort but improved performance due to a change in behaviour e.g. learning from previous experience. ii) High effort but low performance due to how novel or ambitiously challenging the task is for the individual.
    - 12y ago
olavk 12y ago
A subtlety which is not mentioned in the article: Why do we like the ad? Because it it targeted towards grownups! This is due to the understanding in the Lego company at the time, that parents decided what to buy for their children. Therefore ads where aimed towards parents, explaining how Lego help the kids develop and learn and so on. But better market analysis later showed that it was a mistaken belief. Actually it is kids that decide what they want, and parent oblige. Therefore Lego does not make this kind of ads anymore. They make marketing directly towards the consumers: The kids.
- Rambunctious 12y ago
  While it may be the case that kids these days demand and get the kind of toys they want, it is also the case (at least in certain cultures) that parents obsess a lot on what kind of toys make their kids 'smarter', 'happier', etc. So, Lego could look at ads that target parents in some of their markets.
  - facepalm 12y ago
    You think? Maybe they would hire you as a marketing consultant, because they probably never got round to thinking about that kind of thing. Not sure if "marketing" is even a thing in socialist countries like Denmark.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      Denmark is not a socialist country, and they certainly have marketers, especially in multinational companies like Lego. In fact, their current CMO held the same position at Revlon before joining them.
      - lione 12y ago
        I think this is the point where someone is supposed to say whoosh. The person above was being sarcastic.
        12y ago
robbiep 12y ago
Lego. The toy of my childhood. My brother, sister and myself are the youngest of our cousins, and ended up inheriting all their Lego. We had a whole verandah (grew up in Australia in the country) filled with our Lego city. It became all encompassing. We had no close neighbors(nearest was 6 km away) and no console until the n64 was old so it was Lego or helping Dad on the farm. We had the most detailed alternate reality you could imagine. Characters, occupations, a little economy (each of us had a primary character . And then all their accessory characters, and we would have a million dollars... Learned a lot about closed economies from that little experiment!) We made cheque books with little bits of carbon paper, and would reconcile the transactions. We would start a 6 month long session by determining the rules- is space allowed? Western? Only one character? Combine with the train set for transport?) And then play out until our 'dump' of all the remaining pieces was left with nothing but the rejects... Then tear down our civilisation, rub of the chalk Marks from the floorboards that laid out the streets (we only had for pieces of road and they were all corners!) I dislike that Lego only comes in kits now... The glory of Lego was in getting a massive rub of pieces and doing whatever you dreamt up out of it. We had a Lego police station and helicopter and a restraint, and they were great centerpieces, but the beauty of our playtime was that it was a creative effort of the the of us. Through out we learned/discovered economics, banking, made mini newspapers, the rules of society... I ever created my first computer program in vb so we could do our bank statements on it. So much love for Lego. Maybe Minecraft fills a similar role in today's kids?
- Jgrubb 12y ago
  No, Lego still does. Mine just discovered them this past Christmas. They'll build them 5 times in a row and then trade with each other so they can build a new one. I tell ya, as much as I remember loving Legos when I was a kid, there is absolutely nothing as cool as building them with your own kids. Also, they still sell those big boxes of random pieces. I think it's called the "Classic" line or something like that.
  - robbiep 12y ago
    That's awesome to know. Still a while away for me but it's on the 'looking forward to' list!
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singold 12y ago
What I find interesting in old magazine ads like this, is how much text they have, today probably no one would read all that text on an ad
- FailMore 12y ago
  Read Ogilvy on Advertising - makes you think all the (non copy filled) adverts of today are crazy. Copy works.
RodericDay 12y ago
Anita Sarkeesian has a great couple of videos on Lego's transition from advertising like this, to advertising in a heavily gendered way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrmRxGLn0Bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrmRxGLn0Bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe65EGkB9kA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe65EGkB9kA
- facepalm 12y ago
  Yeah she has hit a very simple scheme to create her videos: pick some selection that has an arbitrary bias of her choice. Claim on video that "all of x" has said bias. (Another way to describe it would be "anecdotal evidence"). So in a video she would show only gendered Lego, omitting all the non-gendered Lego. Or she shows only video games with scantily clad women, omitting the context (might be portrayed as despicable to mistreat a woman in the video game, but taken out of context you may only see that a women is mistreated in the game), and omitting the zillions of video games that have nothing to do with women or gender at all. That way she "proves" that Lego is sexist and video games are sexist, and I don't know what else (haven't watched all her drivel). People apparently believe anything that is presented on film.
- aikah 12y ago
  That person is irrelevant to the matter discussed here.
aerique 12y ago
Awesome, I recently handed down that 744 set to my son and build the truck on the cover with him.
lazyant 12y ago
Comments and picture of the girl as a grownup http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/girl-famous-1981-lego-ad-has-few-things-say-about-todays-gendered-toys-155795 http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/girl-famous-1981-lego-ad-has-f...
mxfh 12y ago
For a historical perspective, LEGO's gender policy in advertising and product development seemed to swing around every 5 Years or so in the 70s. http://thinkingbrickly.blogspot.de/2012/01/lego-gender-gap.html http://thinkingbrickly.blogspot.de/2012/01/lego-gender-gap.h... Compare this to the still great and gender encompassingly written, but still clearly gendered approch from '74 to introduce the homemaker line: http://helpemptymyattic.co.uk/vintage-lego-little-girls-think-big-leaflet-catalogue-1974 http://helpemptymyattic.co.uk/vintage-lego-little-girls-thin... http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?C=c74ukhom http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?C=c74ukhom funnily enough the now internet famous introductory text was always cited out of it's context: http://io9.com/these-lego-instructions-from-1974-are-awesome-and-yes-1662169567 http://io9.com/these-lego-instructions-from-1974-are-awesome... There was another version other of the same year clearly aimed at boys (sorry only dutch version here). [1] Correction, its actually quite generic and very inclusive/neutral compared to the 1976 UK version [2] [1a] http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?q=97875 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?q=97875 [1b] http://worldbricks.com/fr/my-instructions/download/file.html?fid=87.4017 http://worldbricks.com/fr/my-instructions/download/file.html... [pdf] [2]http://worldbricks.com/en/my-instructions/download/file.html?fid=87.4025 http://worldbricks.com/en/my-instructions/download/file.html... [pdf]
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Sorry don't read Dutch but the pictures aren't 'aimed at boys' in any way at all. Unless you're projecting your own prejudices - trains and trucks are only for boys? Explain!
  - mxfh 12y ago
    Sorry messed that up, you're right that the '74 builder catalog was very inclusive/generic but somehow the '76 one overshadowed this already in my memory (similiar models, strictly for lads). http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?C=c76uk http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?C=c76uk http://worldbricks.com/en/my-instructions/download/file.html?fid=87.4025 http://worldbricks.com/en/my-instructions/download/file.html... [PDF] Yet the '74 homemaker one is clearly aimed at girls, and only mentions boys in the foreword. http://helpemptymyattic.co.uk/vintage-lego-little-girls-think-big-leaflet-catalogue-1974 http://helpemptymyattic.co.uk/vintage-lego-little-girls-thin... My point is LEGO had quite the on/off approach with gender in their advertising for decades already, and yes I like the 1981 one.
Jean-Philipe 12y ago
FWIW, Lego still does sell generic sets today. I just got one for my kids. Stop crying about the good old times already. I can't wait for my kids to grow up so I can buy them Mindstorm :)
72deluxe 12y ago
I used to enjoy looking at the Lego brochures simply for the scenes they'd planned out and the things that were happening in them, like accidents, cars swerving etc. I really wanted a Lego trainset but never had one; I did however have the house, a hospital, a racing track, a police station, the docks/port, a mid 1980s spaceship (with "Benny" out of the Lego film), Robin Hood's hideaway, a Napoleonic era series of figures with a rowing boat (can't remember if we had the actual giant boat), a castle of some sort (got the cannons). My brother and I had many many days of happiness building and playing with Lego. I also had some horses. I have my characters somewhere but I think my mum gave away all of it to my nephew, who can only build from instructions, not from imagination. Hopefully he'll learn to do that.

275 points by FailMore 12y ago

The copy is a play on the first thing an adult would say to the girl: "What is it?" "What it is, is beautiful."

Both the product and the ad are highly representative of '70s Nordic social ethics and aesthetics. A single product line called "Universal Building Sets" is an almost Platonic ideal of democratic creativity. Today's Lego has 33 product lines: http://www.lego.com/en-us/products http://www.lego.com/en-us/products When your Legos are branded as "Chima", "Bionicle", "Ninjago", "Marvel(tm) Super Heroes" or "Disney(r) Star Wars(tm)", it's expected that you play within the existing marketeer-created universe. Less blank canvas, more coloring book with product placement.

agumonkey 12y ago
They had no choice, the "univeral building blocks" patent ended not long ago, facing competition now, they had to find sustainable cash flow.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  Actually, it expired quite a while ago, in 1989.
- throwaway49873 12y ago
  The patent expired a long time ago, the original patent was filed in 1958. They tried to trademark the shape indefinitely, which recently was denied. They also lost a case against Tyco in 1988. Of course the Lego design was copied from Kiddicraft to begin with. More than anything, the family that founded Lego handed over the CEO post to a former business consultant in 2003. http://www.dehns.com/site/information/dehns_articles/will_lego_now_let_go.html http://www.dehns.com/site/information/dehns_articles/will_le... http://brickfetish.com/timeline/1947.html http://brickfetish.com/timeline/1947.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B8rgen_Vig_Knudstorp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B8rgen_Vig_Knudstorp
- legoisbest 12y ago
  The competition is terrible though. Have you tried assembling any other "compatible" building set? The bricks aren't finished properly, some just pop off, and it all falls to bits easily. I'd say the nearest competition to Lego is probably 60% the quality of Lego.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    No I'm just telling what I read from an article a few years back when new brands started to pop in stores. I wonder if parents/kids may see the quality rightaway. LEGOs were an expensive gift in my days. If I was asking for more toys, I'm sure my parents would be tempted to buy a lower priced brand.
  - zeusk 12y ago
    I grew up in India during the 90s when Lego had no proper establishment here. There was a very similar kit called 'mechanix' which I fondly remember to date. Would surely recommend still if can't find Lego or on budget.
  - kristiandupont 12y ago
    Lego is expensive. As a former employee, I've heard this complaint many, many times. The thing that people don't realize (because hey, it's just plastic) is that Lego is really really high quality. Getting the right stickiness requires very high precision in those little bricks. Also, if like me you have Legos from your childhood you will probably notice that they last long.
    - xanderstrike 12y ago
      The quality really cannot be understated, they last forever. When I was growing up, my brother and I had a mix of "modern" (early 90s) kits and my dad's legos he had growing up in 1950s and 60s Germany. Now my cousins' kids have inherited both and are mixing them with 2010s kits. The 50 year old blocks fit precisely with the blocks made in the past year, and when you throw them all in a bin together you can hardly tell the difference. It's rare to think of a toy that you can play with as "heirloom quality," but I have no doubt my kids will inherit a portion of the family set when it becomes time, and their kids just might too.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Given how long ago it expired and how terrible the competition is I think Lego is the poster company for showing that execution quality is crucial.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    That's weird, I read about it really not long ago. Maybe they tried to delay things through legal means. That said yes, the LEGO company put a lot of thinking in their 'toys'. I think it's also the way things were done in those days, now it's all ship often, ship cheap.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lego_Group http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lego_Group Heading 'trademarks and patents', the last patent expired in '89.
      - agumonkey 12y ago
        Aight, so I heard about the post 2000s lawsuits but didn't understand the grounds on which LEGO was able to sue.
ps4fanboy 12y ago
Maybe if sales for these things werent so high they wouldnt have done it, whose fault is it really Lego or the consumer? I certainly dont want companies deciding for me.
- pavlov 12y ago
  You don't want companies to decide what products you buy? How does that work? I mean, you can only buy something if they'll sell it...
  - jamespo 12y ago
    Or you can buy something else and the company can go bust.
    - pavlov 12y ago
      Still, you can only buy something else within the range of options on the market. Ideally companies adjust their product lines based on customer demand. In reality it's mostly determined by other factors like supply chain, internal politics, competitor envy, random advice from consultants, need to meet quarterly growth goals, etc. For example, high-fructose corn syrup has become a major ingredient of many American food products within the past 20+ years. That didn't happen because of consumer demand, and consumers don't have an easy way to vote against it.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        Consumers could have demanded products without corn syrup in them. It turns out they don't care. If people did care, those other factors probably would have had to take a back seat to consumer demand. So I don't think you can say that it was irrelevant to the rise of HFCS. (You can argue that people are ill informed and blah blah blah, but that's still them not caring enough to demand whatever it is you think they should be more informed about)
        12y ago
laurent123456 12y ago
Looking at the two boxes on the poster, they don't look that "universal" - it's a truck and the other one a house. Today's boxes I guess are just better categorized, but not that different.
- masklinn 12y ago
  Universal Building Set is actually the name of a product line: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Universal_Building_Set http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Universal_Building_Set it existed alongside LEGOLAND and Trains and constituted the "basic" lego sets, differentiated because each set usually came with instructions for multiple models, and better demonstrated the role of imagination and the purpose of legos.
- eloisant 12y ago
  These boxes only have standard pieces, which is why the truck and house look boxy. Today's boxes include too many specific pieces. Car hood, top, helicopter nose, etc. Pieces that can't be used for anything else that what they're designed for, and can't be replaced if lost. So you can't take it appart to build something different.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    I actually think that the "Lego Movie" set is a perfect example of unbound creativity. Pretty much every set uses parts which do not match with their original use,and yet they are all used to build interesting things. The worst Lego bricks are the ones which have something painted/written on them, that usually does limit the applications.
  - Jgrubb 12y ago
    Trust me, a kid the age of the one in the ad can take it apart and make something different. Mine do it nonstop.
  - xanderstrike 12y ago
    In any given kit the ratio of custom pieces to generic pieces is still favorable. As a random sample check out the parts inventory of this kit [1] from Lego's Star Wars: Clone Wars system. When you sort by quantity, you see the vast majority of parts are generic wedges, blocks, and plates. Browse around the site, you'll see the same is true for any set over 50 pieces. The idea that you "can't take it apart to build something different," is a little ridiculous, it isn't a model airplane. I take it you haven't played with any of the modern kits. I encourage you, if you enjoyed lego as a kid, to buy a couple and see for yourself. The model on the box is more polished, but the building blocks are very much the same. 1. http://www.peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/inv/sets/7752-1?PagerSortDir=r&PagerSortCol=Qty http://www.peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/inv/sets/7752-1?PagerS...
eloisant 12y ago
The last box I bought for my kids was a "lego classics" box. Just blocks. http://www.lego.com/en-us/classic http://www.lego.com/en-us/classic
legoisbest 12y ago
This does crop up all the time. You should also mention though that Lego still make and sell a lot of universal building sets. In Lego stores there are walls of bricks where you can select any bits you want. Yes, there has been a big rise in themed and licensed sets, and yes, some of them have specialised building parts that you can only really use in the set. But that's just part of the trend over the last few decades from generic products to branded products. Everything has to be branded... I even saw a "frozen" branded loom band set. I guess the loom bands are just colors associated with the movie? Even buying kids shoes these days they're mostly branded with superheroes, princesses, etc You can enjoy building predefined models, and creating your own from buckets of bricks though. Both can co-exist nicely. The best thing is that Lego is still going strong.
- pavlov 12y ago
  Sure. I wasn't exactly criticising Lego, just pointing out that the appeal of the ad is inextricably linked to the ideal behind the product. Lego is a business, of course. Those ABS plastic blocks are practically indestructible, so they're not going to grow by selling replacements for universal blocks...
  - legoisbest 12y ago
    It's so impressive that I can take out a 30 year old Lego brick, and it "works" exactly the same as it did 30 years ago. Sure, the white ones have faded a little, but they still function just as they should. Not to put the knife in too hard, but megablocks and other competitors don't even function properly when they're new out of the packet.
- hvidgaard 12y ago
  If I remember correctly, LEGO was in a bit of a financial crisis not long ago, and as a way to deal with it was more focus on LEGO based on existing and popular franchises. That said, you just take pull the sets apart and children being children will build things, just as they always have.
- freshyill 12y ago
DerekL 12y ago
Actually, even back in 1981, there were multiple lines, though not nearly as much as now. Here's a list of the sets released in 1981: http://brickset.com/sets/year-1981 http://brickset.com/sets/year-1981 . Out of 58 sets, 16 are designed for generic use. Much of the rest are buildings and vehicles from the modern world, like houses, fire stations, tow trucks, ferries, helicopters, dune buggies, etc. But there are also sets with medieval knights and space themes. Plus, Lego created their own characters for a theme they called "Fabuland". There was even a tie-in series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keJua4D2Ymg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keJua4D2Ymg In summary, back in 1981, there were generic sets plus four different themes.
olavk 12y ago
Sets without any associated storyline or franchise still exist as the "Creator"-series, and seem to be quite popular.
- Marazan 12y ago
  The Creator series are the absolute best bang for buck line they produce. In general they are 3-in-1 kits and they have lots of interesting blocks.
xenophonf 12y ago
it's expected that you play within the existing marketeer-created universe Maybe that's how you or your kids play with them, but here we have no problem kitbashing the branded sets. Their parts end up in the color-sorted bins along with all the rest, and the kids build crazy stuff out of whatever. The last round included parts from a city, a dinosaur, and a submarine, and those were just the ones I recognized. We even mix Megabloks and Duplo with our Legos. Now, if I could only get the kids to pick up the parts when they finish... Kitbashing is _the_ plot driver of the Lego movie, in that it's what Master Builders do. Notice how the Lego Club magazine highlights people's creative builds. I want to postulate that Lego's endpoint is not static sculpture, but active imagination. Consider fan fiction. Sometimes we want to create stories inside someone else's universe. Hasn't your imagination been sparked by some favorite movie or book or artwork? Have you ever wanted to tell the rest of the story? I know I did! That's why I flew my Duplo Millenium Falcon around the living room. I don't see how a more realistic version would have been less fun, or less imaginative. And that's the point of the branded sets. They're fun! With any luck someday soon I will be able to build model rockets that look a lot like what explodes on my launchpad in KSP, only my kids and I will be able to fly those around the living room, pretending the sofa is Planet Klystron, home of the savage (but peaceful) race of Mer-mole-men (Lego people with frickin' sharks heads!) Meanwhile, Superman arrives to rescue our stranded Kerbals, whose ship (naturally) blew up upon launch. And so on. It's about the stories we can tell ourselves and each other. In-universe. Something wholly new. It doesn't matter. Do whatever it takes to get you or your kids' imaginations jumpstarted. Or at least that's what I'm after when I buy a Lego set (branded or not). It looks cool, and it sets my imagination racing.
- munificent 12y ago
  > We even mix Megabloks Heathen!
- cben 12y ago
  > We even mix Megabloks and Duplo with our Legos. Is there any way/adapter to connect Duplo (or Lego) on top of Megabloks? I sometimes manage to usefully mix them but always feel it'd be more useful the other way around if Megabloks could provide large-scale structure with Duplo providing fine(r) detail on top... Though I might be biased by having tons of Megabloks and not that much Duplo. [There is of course the kludge of hanging a protruding duplo under: MMMM MMMM MMdddd MM MM MM but it's flimsy and requires too much overhead.]
aerique 12y ago
I can only give you an anecdotal counter point but Lego is still fine. Instead of asking for a universal building set like I did, my 5 year old old son now ask for a specific Chima or Star Wars box and then we build the vehicle on the box. After that things get still get ripped apart and combined into new things. It's still mostly a bunch of colored brick except the modern boxes contain a couple more custom bricks which make his own creations look even more awesome. Lego is still a good (or even better) for kids nowadays than it was 30 years ago.
sp332 12y ago
Wasn't the whole Lego Movie about taking the kits apart and mixing them up and not worrying about it?
Ar-Curunir 12y ago
I would rather have Lego around with branded lines than no Lego, and indeed the branded marketing is what's keeping Lego afloat. And it's not like you can't buy non-branded Lego (there's plenty of it available). Even if you do have the branded sets you can still use them with 30 year old Lego bricks. I don't see how branded sets result in less creativity.

hpaavola 12y ago

Back when we were kids there was only one type of Lego, the type that was meant for everybody. Now they have their own line for girls, Lego Friends. And Lego Friends is just stupid http://seasonaldepressioncomic.com/2014/12/06/lego-friends/ http://seasonaldepressioncomic.com/2014/12/06/lego-friends/

ps4fanboy 12y ago
What comes first, the desire for gendered products or the gendered products?
- derwildemomo 12y ago
  gendered products.
- Xylakant 12y ago
  The kids desire for gendered products or the parents desire for gendered products?
- the_mitsuhiko 12y ago
  > What comes first, the desire for gendered products or the gendered products? Apparently the desire. Toddlers pick gendered products on their own (for some forms of them). There was some studies about this behavior.
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    Well, if the toddlers can pick, the gendered products were there first. But it is true that kids even make gendered toys out of practically nothing. For instance, a local kindergarten here: three-year-old boys were forbidden to have toy guns. So the kids took some flat crispbread at the midday meal and chewed edges off to make it gun-shaped, and then started playing cops and robbers. Bang bang.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      A child-made toy gun is not a gendered toy. A gendered toy would be a toy gun packaged in a blue box with only images of boys on the packaging.

zeeshanm 12y ago

The cool thing about legos is you get instant gratification for building stuff. My 2-year-old nephew was building with legos the other day and you know what he said after he finished building: "moma." He was so happy he wanted to go show his mom what he had built. Isn't that beautiful?

tree_of_item 12y ago
Maybe he wanted you to secure space for his creation at http://www.moma.org/ http://www.moma.org/ ? At least he's modest.
- zeeshanm 12y ago
  Probably an oversight on my part not to think of this ;-)

agumonkey 12y ago

Reminds me of that article saw on HN https://medium.com/matter/the-man-who-destroyed-americas-ego-94d214257b5 https://medium.com/matter/the-man-who-destroyed-americas-ego... That "discover how you're special" mindset seemed to be a socio-academic theory of the times.

jackgavigan 12y ago

Original HuffPost article (from over a year ago): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/lego-ad-1981_n_4617704.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/lego-ad-1981_n_4617... Someone tracked down the little girl in the ad: http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/little-girl-1981-lego-ad-grown-shes-got-something-say/ http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/little-girl-1981-lego-ad-g...

joteichmann 12y ago

This is a brilliant kind of emotional branding! Chapeau!

blumkvist 12y ago
Check this out http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/blogger2wp/watch.jpg http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/blogger2wp/watch....

deleted 12y ago

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shalmanese 12y ago

"What happened with Legos, they used to be simple. Oh come on, I know you know what I'm talking about, Legos were simple. Something happened out here while I was inside. Harry Potter Legos, Star Wars Legos, complicated kits, tiny little blocks. I mean I'm not saying its bad I just wanna know what happened." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVCOAFKjaoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVCOAFKjaoY

facepalm 12y ago
I'm glad that there are complicated kits to choose from. Sadly my kids don't stay two years old forever.

facepalm 12y ago

Congratulations for making such a great effort in writing that article! (Whenever I see the praise effort, not achievement meme I make it a point to praise the effort, not the achievement).

soneca 12y ago
Well, the effort here is not that great. He took an existing ad and gave his opinion on it. Not much research or else.
- jboons 12y ago
  Why are you comparing the effort of an opinion article to that of a research article? That's not how this concept works.

johntaitorg 12y ago

Lego is now only a 3D jigsaw puzzle, sadly. Lego Classic has just arrived in the UK but it seems a half-hearted piece of mummery to me.

DanBC 12y ago
There have been Lego Creative sets available for ages in UK. I agree that other kits are just a bunch on non-general blocks and tiny pieces.
gambiting 12y ago
As a kid I used to have tons of Lego. My dad would always bring a set or two back after being abroad for a few weeks, so I had boxes full of Lego. And they were all specific(jigsaw-like) sets - bulldozers, cars, castles, Indian forts, spaceships, that kind of thing. And you know what? Just because the instructions say you have to build a spaceship,doesn't mean you can't disassemble it afterwards. I remember that I would build something,and next day it was back in pieces, contributing to my huge Lego city or whatever it was that I was working on at the moment. For me, sets were just a fun thing to assemble for a day,and then a source of parts after day one.
- lfowles 12y ago
  My later custom designs benefited from having read instructions and putting together the set as intended several times. They gave me ideas about how pieces _could_ fit together.
Jgrubb 12y ago
I don't mean this as a slight, but to a kid there's absolutely nothing lacking from the modern kits. I'd say that the "half-hearted" part is solely in your perspective now as an adult.
PJDK 12y ago
I hear this a lot. Was I the only kid who would build what ever was on the box first, play with that for a day - break it and then have it all go into a big box? And all the funny bits people moan about make excellent space lasers.

duncanawoods 12y ago

recent studies have proven that praising a child’s effort over the childs acheivements is the correct way to raise a little person that will do well I think this claim is mistaken. The article backs the claim up with a link which discusses something different: whether to praise effort or praise attributes of the person e.g. "you are so smart!". Praising achievement is a third category of praise where consequences are assessed and not personal qualities. I'm confident that positive and negative feedback about achievement are incredibly important moreso than acknowledging effort. Praising the attributes of a person is clearly just flattery so I don't know why anyone would do it or need a study to point it out. Were you to praise effort and not assess achievement, you will train people to look like they are working hard rather than actually achieving anything and not give them the feedback that will help them truly excel.

corin_ 12y ago
I don't have sources but I'm sure I've read studies against praising achievement. I'm sure if combined well with praising effort it can work well, but it should be a way of helping judge effort, not praised for and of itself. For example if a child constantly gets Bs in a certain subject then getting an A can be an indicator that they've put more effort in - but the A itself shouldn't be the reason for the praise.
- duncanawoods 12y ago
  Yep, effort\achievement shouldn't be considered as independent. What I do think is important is to kill dead this notion that achievement is not a necessary consideration for how to praise. For example: I would be cautious about praising: i) High effort but low performance due to repeating mistakes that have been pointed out before. ii) Low effort but high performance due to luck or the task being easy for the individual. I would find it important to praise: i) Low effort but improved performance due to a change in behaviour e.g. learning from previous experience. ii) High effort but low performance due to how novel or ambitiously challenging the task is for the individual.
  - 12y ago

olavk 12y ago

A subtlety which is not mentioned in the article: Why do we like the ad? Because it it targeted towards grownups! This is due to the understanding in the Lego company at the time, that parents decided what to buy for their children. Therefore ads where aimed towards parents, explaining how Lego help the kids develop and learn and so on. But better market analysis later showed that it was a mistaken belief. Actually it is kids that decide what they want, and parent oblige. Therefore Lego does not make this kind of ads anymore. They make marketing directly towards the consumers: The kids.

Rambunctious 12y ago
While it may be the case that kids these days demand and get the kind of toys they want, it is also the case (at least in certain cultures) that parents obsess a lot on what kind of toys make their kids 'smarter', 'happier', etc. So, Lego could look at ads that target parents in some of their markets.
- facepalm 12y ago
  You think? Maybe they would hire you as a marketing consultant, because they probably never got round to thinking about that kind of thing. Not sure if "marketing" is even a thing in socialist countries like Denmark.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Denmark is not a socialist country, and they certainly have marketers, especially in multinational companies like Lego. In fact, their current CMO held the same position at Revlon before joining them.
    - lione 12y ago
      I think this is the point where someone is supposed to say whoosh. The person above was being sarcastic.
      - 12y ago

robbiep 12y ago

Lego. The toy of my childhood. My brother, sister and myself are the youngest of our cousins, and ended up inheriting all their Lego. We had a whole verandah (grew up in Australia in the country) filled with our Lego city. It became all encompassing. We had no close neighbors(nearest was 6 km away) and no console until the n64 was old so it was Lego or helping Dad on the farm. We had the most detailed alternate reality you could imagine. Characters, occupations, a little economy (each of us had a primary character . And then all their accessory characters, and we would have a million dollars... Learned a lot about closed economies from that little experiment!) We made cheque books with little bits of carbon paper, and would reconcile the transactions. We would start a 6 month long session by determining the rules- is space allowed? Western? Only one character? Combine with the train set for transport?) And then play out until our 'dump' of all the remaining pieces was left with nothing but the rejects... Then tear down our civilisation, rub of the chalk Marks from the floorboards that laid out the streets (we only had for pieces of road and they were all corners!) I dislike that Lego only comes in kits now... The glory of Lego was in getting a massive rub of pieces and doing whatever you dreamt up out of it. We had a Lego police station and helicopter and a restraint, and they were great centerpieces, but the beauty of our playtime was that it was a creative effort of the the of us. Through out we learned/discovered economics, banking, made mini newspapers, the rules of society... I ever created my first computer program in vb so we could do our bank statements on it. So much love for Lego. Maybe Minecraft fills a similar role in today's kids?

Jgrubb 12y ago
No, Lego still does. Mine just discovered them this past Christmas. They'll build them 5 times in a row and then trade with each other so they can build a new one. I tell ya, as much as I remember loving Legos when I was a kid, there is absolutely nothing as cool as building them with your own kids. Also, they still sell those big boxes of random pieces. I think it's called the "Classic" line or something like that.
- robbiep 12y ago
  That's awesome to know. Still a while away for me but it's on the 'looking forward to' list!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

singold 12y ago

What I find interesting in old magazine ads like this, is how much text they have, today probably no one would read all that text on an ad

FailMore 12y ago
Read Ogilvy on Advertising - makes you think all the (non copy filled) adverts of today are crazy. Copy works.

RodericDay 12y ago

Anita Sarkeesian has a great couple of videos on Lego's transition from advertising like this, to advertising in a heavily gendered way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrmRxGLn0Bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrmRxGLn0Bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe65EGkB9kA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe65EGkB9kA

facepalm 12y ago
Yeah she has hit a very simple scheme to create her videos: pick some selection that has an arbitrary bias of her choice. Claim on video that "all of x" has said bias. (Another way to describe it would be "anecdotal evidence"). So in a video she would show only gendered Lego, omitting all the non-gendered Lego. Or she shows only video games with scantily clad women, omitting the context (might be portrayed as despicable to mistreat a woman in the video game, but taken out of context you may only see that a women is mistreated in the game), and omitting the zillions of video games that have nothing to do with women or gender at all. That way she "proves" that Lego is sexist and video games are sexist, and I don't know what else (haven't watched all her drivel). People apparently believe anything that is presented on film.
aikah 12y ago
That person is irrelevant to the matter discussed here.

aerique 12y ago

Awesome, I recently handed down that 744 set to my son and build the truck on the cover with him.

lazyant 12y ago

Comments and picture of the girl as a grownup http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/girl-famous-1981-lego-ad-has-few-things-say-about-todays-gendered-toys-155795 http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/girl-famous-1981-lego-ad-has-f...

mxfh 12y ago

For a historical perspective, LEGO's gender policy in advertising and product development seemed to swing around every 5 Years or so in the 70s. http://thinkingbrickly.blogspot.de/2012/01/lego-gender-gap.html http://thinkingbrickly.blogspot.de/2012/01/lego-gender-gap.h... Compare this to the still great and gender encompassingly written, but still clearly gendered approch from '74 to introduce the homemaker line: http://helpemptymyattic.co.uk/vintage-lego-little-girls-think-big-leaflet-catalogue-1974 http://helpemptymyattic.co.uk/vintage-lego-little-girls-thin... http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?C=c74ukhom http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?C=c74ukhom funnily enough the now internet famous introductory text was always cited out of it's context: http://io9.com/these-lego-instructions-from-1974-are-awesome-and-yes-1662169567 http://io9.com/these-lego-instructions-from-1974-are-awesome... There was another version other of the same year clearly aimed at boys (sorry only dutch version here). [1] Correction, its actually quite generic and very inclusive/neutral compared to the 1976 UK version [2] [1a] http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?q=97875 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?q=97875 [1b] http://worldbricks.com/fr/my-instructions/download/file.html?fid=87.4017 http://worldbricks.com/fr/my-instructions/download/file.html... [pdf] [2]http://worldbricks.com/en/my-instructions/download/file.html?fid=87.4025 http://worldbricks.com/en/my-instructions/download/file.html... [pdf]

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Sorry don't read Dutch but the pictures aren't 'aimed at boys' in any way at all. Unless you're projecting your own prejudices - trains and trucks are only for boys? Explain!
- mxfh 12y ago
  Sorry messed that up, you're right that the '74 builder catalog was very inclusive/generic but somehow the '76 one overshadowed this already in my memory (similiar models, strictly for lads). http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?C=c76uk http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?C=c76uk http://worldbricks.com/en/my-instructions/download/file.html?fid=87.4025 http://worldbricks.com/en/my-instructions/download/file.html... [PDF] Yet the '74 homemaker one is clearly aimed at girls, and only mentions boys in the foreword. http://helpemptymyattic.co.uk/vintage-lego-little-girls-think-big-leaflet-catalogue-1974 http://helpemptymyattic.co.uk/vintage-lego-little-girls-thin... My point is LEGO had quite the on/off approach with gender in their advertising for decades already, and yes I like the 1981 one.

Jean-Philipe 12y ago

FWIW, Lego still does sell generic sets today. I just got one for my kids. Stop crying about the good old times already. I can't wait for my kids to grow up so I can buy them Mindstorm :)

72deluxe 12y ago

I used to enjoy looking at the Lego brochures simply for the scenes they'd planned out and the things that were happening in them, like accidents, cars swerving etc. I really wanted a Lego trainset but never had one; I did however have the house, a hospital, a racing track, a police station, the docks/port, a mid 1980s spaceship (with "Benny" out of the Lego film), Robin Hood's hideaway, a Napoleonic era series of figures with a rowing boat (can't remember if we had the actual giant boat), a castle of some sort (got the cannons). My brother and I had many many days of happiness building and playing with Lego. I also had some horses. I have my characters somewhere but I think my mum gave away all of it to my nephew, who can only build from instructions, not from imagination. Hopefully he'll learn to do that.