The Tao of Lego

I’m with Jason when he says Legos are becom­ing just another single-use plas­tic toy.

But, even as the sets get more cor­po­rate, Lego builders get more cre­ative. And, my god. I just can­not com­pre­hend how peo­ple build some of this stuff:

The mech from Dis­trict 9, per­fectly ren­dered, with room for a Lego minifig inside.

Another Legomech, so alive and full of per­son­al­ity. (My 10-year-old self would have traded scraps of soul for the secrets in these bricks.)

Space­ships cooler than any­thing Lego has ever sold.

And, my favorite, the “micro­space” move­ment, which is like the haiku form of Lego-building. The empha­sis is on econ­omy of con­struc­tion and wee tiny scale. And yet: Dan­ger. Style. Speed. Drama. Each one is like a lit­tle puz­zle, some­times a lit­tle joke.

This, my friends, is the tao of Lego.

6 Responses

guy says:
September 12, 2009 at 5:47 am
One thing that those star wars and bat­man sets do bring are some pretty cool new pieces. I’m amazed by the Lego (engi­neers, design­ers?) to make spot on repli­ca­tions of items from these worlds.
Aywhoo, my son gets some of these branded sets, but really when we play With Legos it’s all about using you imag­i­na­tion to cre­ate some­thing new. Branded Lego sets haven’t changed that.
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Tim says:
September 12, 2009 at 11:10 am
Yeah, I guess I don’t buy the Indi­ana Jones Legos = decline of child­hood stuff.
1) It’s fun and use­ful to fol­low instruc­tions and put things together. Imi­ta­tio!
2) It’s fun to ignore instruc­tions and build what­ever you want — espe­cially with the ter­rific pieces that you get with the cus­tomized sets.
3) Even if you don’t break down the assem­bled Legos, it’s more fun to build an Indi­ana Jones or Harry Pot­ter cas­tle than it is to buy one that’s pre-assembled.
I think 2 and 3 are basi­cally incon­testable, but 1 is the crux, right? But I think it’s the most important!
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Robin says:
September 12, 2009 at 2:15 pm
The only part I take issue with is the sec­ond phrase of #2 — “espe­cially with the ter­rific pieces that you get with the cus­tomized sets.” Some of them are, I agree, pretty cool; but some of them are just like, “here is a piece of the Mil­len­nium Falcon.”
Eh, you know, I’m not using my imag­i­na­tion here. B/c of course you’re right — “here is a piece of the Mil­len­nium Fal­con” can become the chest-plate of a bat­tling war-mech with­out too much effort.
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Tim Maly says:
October 1, 2009 at 8:55 am
Oh man, this post plus this amaz­ing set of images which dis­plays pretty much the oppo­site phi­los­o­phy (look at what you can do with just A LOT of white bricks!) has reignited my Lego love in a big way. Gonna buy some bricks today.
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Robin says:
October 1, 2009 at 10:38 am
Oh wow, I’m with you. Those are terrific.
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Tim Maly says:
October 1, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Hav­ing bought and played around with both some stan­dard bricks and one of the ridicu­lous Star Wars sets, I can safely say that the belief that any Lego is sin­gle use says more about our poverty of imag­i­na­tion Lego-wise than any prob­lem with Lego.
For exam­ple I bought this kit, which appears to be made of all-kinds of single-use bits. But when actu­ally build­ing is I dis­cov­ered not so. For exam­ple, the feed of the walker are actu­ally the same as the bod­ies of the Droids, some of the joints are re-purposed guns, and there are just dozens of lit­tle clever things, such that as you build fol­low­ing the instruc­tions there is moment after moment of dis­cov­ery “Oh, you can do THAT with that part…”
And then my room­mate linked me to this which com­pletely puts paid to the notion that sin­gle use parts are actu­ally sin­gle use. You will not be sorry for click­ing on that link.