FOR generations of American children and their parents, Legos were the ultimate do-it-yourself plaything. Little plastic bricks, with scant instructions, just add imagination.
In a wired world, they would now seem the ultimate anachronism, the only click being the sound of blocks snapping together. This holiday season, though, Lego is again among the hottest brands, and not just for the blocks, but a raft of Lego-related video games, children’s books and a TV spinoff — many of which are hugely popular in their categories.
In leading this revival of Lego, and creating a multimedia juggernaut, executives have shown great imagination. But some parents and researchers worry that the company’s gain has come at a cost to its tiny consumers: diminishing the demand for their imagination, the very element that made the Lego brand famous in the first place.
Even when actual bricks are involved, today’s construction sets are often tied to billion-dollar franchises like “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings” — and the story lines therein — and invite users to follow detailed directions, not construct their own creations from whole brick. It’s less open-ended, some parents and researchers say, and more like paint-by-numbers.
“When I was a kid, you got a big box of bricks and that was it,” said Tracy Bagatelle-Black, 45, a public relations consultant in Santa Clarita, Calif., north of Los Angeles. “What stinks about Lego sets now is that they’re not imaginative at all.”
Not that she can resist the hue and cry from her children. For Hanukkah, Molly, her 11-year-old daughter, got two Lego products, neither of them blocks; her son, Alex, 5, got even more, including a Lego Darth Vader Clock, a Lego board game, a Lego sticker book — at the top of his list — and a Lego “Ninjago” video game.
Oh, yes, and he also got some traditional Legos, sort of: a Lego Super Hero Captain America and Lego Marvel Super Heroes set, both of which come with detailed instructions.
For their part, officials at Lego — a privately held, Denmark-based company — say their efforts in books, television and video games are still creatively minded and aimed at driving kids “back to the playroom.”
According the company’s research, parents “don’t mind the video games, they don’t mind the books, they don’t mind the TV series because it’s intensifying their child’s desire to build,” said Michael McNally, the director of brand relations for Lego’s American operations, based in Enfield, Conn. “And they love watching their kids build.”
And so does the Lego Group, which nearly melted down financially in the middle of the last decade, with layoffs and huge losses. The company has since turned things around, reporting a 17 percent increase in revenue in 2011, with product lines based on “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Harry Potter” performing “considerably above expectations.”
“Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes,” for instance, was the No. 1 video game in June, selling 450,000 copies in the United States alone, according to NPD, a market research firm. (Collectively, Lego brand games have been among the top five best-selling game franchises in each of the last five years, according to NPD.)
Then there is Ninjago, with Lego figures as martial arts masters, which was the biggest launch in company history. The animated “Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu” series on the Cartoon Network ranked as one of the top cable shows in America last year among boys ages 2 to 11, according to the Nielsen Company, going toe to toe with the likes of SpongeBob SquarePants (which also has a Lego version).
Of course, lots of toy companies have gone the multimedia route (see: Barbie). But for parents and some researchers, there’s a narrative twist with Lego, which engenders such good will from parents because of its education-centric reputation. It was, literally and proverbially, a building block.
“Parents are confusing the brand with the product and, more important, what it delivers” said Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at the University of Washington, whose research focuses on the impact of interaction with various media on children’s brains. Regarding the evolution from open-ended toys to multimedia and bricks with specific building plans, he added: “Depending on how far it goes, it could wind up, quite frankly, as the opposite of blocks.”
News Analysis: Has Lego Sold Out?
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News Analysis: Has Lego Sold Out?
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News Analysis: Has Lego Sold Out?
