Why Can’t Lego Click? “(T)he business of engaging children has changed so much that Lego’s core value, inspiring and nurturing creativity and play, doesn’t seem to be helping the company succeed. If you look at what children and their parents are buying ( Lego hasn’t had a toy in the list of top 20 U.S. sellers any year in the past seven ), it’s hard not to conclude that Lego finds itself in a fight for relevance, perhaps even for survival, for which the company’s 70-year history may not have prepared it.” Fast Company The Fast Company website got swamped after a slashdot thread discussed this story.

My son had several years’ fascination with Legos and I’ve been surprised to find, as the article points out, that they’ve become more model-building kits than the freeform construction sets they were in my childhood. Clever marketing, it seemed at first; instead of selling one set of bricks to each child, now they were hooked on an endless series of themed kits tied with web- and print-based adventure tales in what almost amounted to an alternate universe. (I’m still waiting for Lego, the Movie.) To my relief, he soon saw through the yearning for more and more newer and newer kits and, after building a set by the instructions, he would almost immediately dismantle it and, as he called it, “invent,” pooling the pieces with the pieces (tens of thousands of them) he already had. Eventually, he started selecting the new kits he wanted by how unique the pieces would be for his inventing.

Perhaps it is a good sign for soulful play, despite what it means for the corporation, that Lego hasn’t had a topselling toy in a long time, if it means that my son’s saturation steering him to a much more inventive creative play with the toys is not an uncommon experience.