12-03-2009, 05:03 PM
My son built that when he was five. He did it all by himself, playing alone in his room -- the only help he got was in writing Wall-E on a piece of Scotch tape to stick on that Lego in front.
All the pieces there came from various model kits.
Tomorrow is his seventh birthday. He's getting Legos. I adore the Lego kits. There is no way my son could have ever built that Wall-E had he not been through a guided process of building things. He's built cars and trucks and buildings and boats and planes by following the instructions with the kits. Then those things get disassembled and reassembled in countless ways. The kit instructions are a fantastic learning tool.
The anguish over licensed-character Legos is just dumb. Yes, you can get Star Wars Legos, and they're really neat. Indiana Jones Legos show up on clearance rack at Target because they weren't great sellers -- they're not really for kids, you know. Few seven year olds wax nostalgic over that movie franchise. Go to any Toys R Us, and you'll see that far more shelf space is dedicated to Lego City, Space Police, Agents, Pirates, Power Miners, Technic, and Creator sets. And of course, the new Atlantis theme.
I don't know any kid who saves the models and displays them -- they always get torn apart and made into something new. Besides, I fail to see how somebody buying Lego sets as collectors items "ruins" it for kids. If it weren't for collectors, there wouldn't be such a variety of Lego sets available. If it weren't for collectors, Lego would've made the Indiana Jones set you were buying in the first place.
When somebody says, "I was so much smarter than kids today," I want to punch him in the mouth.
billb, they still have the Lego software. The latest release is rather buggy on my mac, unfortunately. This is what my son designed last night (again, all by himself):
You can design something with the software, then upload it to Lego, and they'll make a custom kit out of it for you, complete with box & instuctions.