I never had more than a polite pittance of Legos. With me it was always about the cartoon tie-in toys, whether the Smurfs at age 6-7, or the Hasbro dyad of Transformers/G.I. Joe from ages 8 to 12 (yes, embarrassingly late... and by the time I was done playing with toys it was pretty much right into RPGs: Marvel/DC/eventually D&D).
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know that when it came to Transformers/G.I. Joe I had created an incredibly complicated expanded universe that intertwined tightly with the cartoon continuity (never the comics, although I later realized that the Joe comics had all the messy real-world details insofar as the Joes' various Southeast Asian escapades and origin stories). I deferred on the toys whose cartoons I found wanting on the storytelling front: He-Man, Thundercats and Gobots were poor poor substitutes for the writing of Flint Dille (check out his most famous collaborator!) and company. I even had a "series finale" when I finally decided it was time to put away the toys for good.
What I'm trying to say here is that the Lincoln Logs, Legos, and Construx never lasted more than a week or so in my house in heavy rotation and when I did use them they'd end up being support items for my story-telling. How boring it was to build something for the sake of building it! I wanted to do something with the result, and if I had a blueprint, so much the better! This is undoubtedly why I'm not a coder; both Messrs. MacDougall and Coupland have this one right: Legos made engineers and cartoon tie-in toys made... well, in a way I'm still writing fanfic expanded universes in other people's intellectual properties, he said from behind the Storyteller's Screen. :)
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timeasmymeasure
engineering vs. humanities
Date: 2010-05-26 09:28 pm (UTC)I doubt it will surprise anyone to know that when it came to Transformers/G.I. Joe I had created an incredibly complicated expanded universe that intertwined tightly with the cartoon continuity (never the comics, although I later realized that the Joe comics had all the messy real-world details insofar as the Joes' various Southeast Asian escapades and origin stories). I deferred on the toys whose cartoons I found wanting on the storytelling front: He-Man, Thundercats and Gobots were poor poor substitutes for the writing of Flint Dille (check out his most famous collaborator!) and company. I even had a "series finale" when I finally decided it was time to put away the toys for good.
What I'm trying to say here is that the Lincoln Logs, Legos, and Construx never lasted more than a week or so in my house in heavy rotation and when I did use them they'd end up being support items for my story-telling. How boring it was to build something for the sake of building it! I wanted to do something with the result, and if I had a blueprint, so much the better! This is undoubtedly why I'm not a coder; both Messrs. MacDougall and Coupland have this one right: Legos made engineers and cartoon tie-in toys made... well, in a way I'm still writing fanfic expanded universes in other people's intellectual properties, he said from behind the Storyteller's Screen. :)