I've just read those two Guardian articles. I am genuinely amazed that such poorly researched articles qualify as professional journalism. I'd be embarrassed to publish something that bad as a blog post.

I just read those articles as well... Come on, it's LEGO! They shouldn't say that the models on the box stifle creativity- you can just build them into other models if you so wish! And they are quite misinformed on the Shell Lego promos- LEGO made an exclusive promotion for Shell cars to be sold at gas stations; there aren't themes or even sets based on Shell!

Wow. Apparently even the most basic, obvious research isn't required any more when writing articles for widely published newspapers. Just note down the most insulting, stupidly inapt thing that comes to your mind and publish it without giving it a second thought. Professionalism at its best. What's wrong with these people?! Thanks to Big Sal for his great blog post, now that's how it should be done! Take a hint, TheGuardian >:|

I actually have come to expect nothing less from newspapers. They've picked up on a few things from their 'journalistic investigations' on the internet and throw together garbage like this.

Recently we got rid of all our duplo and have replaced with the creator bucket which I bought a few months (all small-ish parts, no boards, minifigs or anything more complicated than a single 1x2 technic brick and a 2x2 plate with pin) Now, this does have an instruction booklet to be fair, showing you how to build a few animals and the likes but is mostly a bucket of bricks in various colours and sizes. When we brought it down from the attic for the kids the first thing my son (4) asks me to do is build a hulk and a spiderman - he's obsessed with super heroes. He keeps asking to play with grown up Lego now since we brought it out the first time.

Meanwhile my daughter (3) is asking for all the little bricks (2x2's) and sticking them to a small base plate I took down for them, in a sort of random fashion so we sat and made a smiley face mosaic from mostly 2x2 bricks and then went on to build a beach house picture. she was totally fascinated.

Both of them sat for 2 hours playing with this and anyone with little kids knows fine that getting 2 little kids to sit for 15 minutes, let alone 2 hours.

Besides, I love sets with instructions and the kids love playing with them too. What's the big deal??

If the journalists only think to ask the AFOL community about things like this they'd see the rubbish they are writing is just that. Also, give them a mid-sized technic set and see what they get from building the thing from instructions.

Is this the same Guardian that knows absolutely everything a secretly operating intelligence agency knows?

On the plus side, that must mean said agency does not know the first thing about LEGO, either.

@ Legozebra, Lego has made sets based on Shell petrol stations since 1978, as well as other petrol companies such as Esso. In 1992, they came up with Octan, as a unique Lego world fuel brand as to avoid the need of re-licensing with Shell and therefore having to pay royalties to that company.

Of course they ended up going back to the iconic brand with Shell not only in promotional car sets and themed sets, but in actual stations and so forth, even with Octan firmly established.

As for the stifling in creativity, apparently the journalists haven't heard of the Lego Ideas concept. Where Lego fans both young and adult come up with unique ideas entirely from scratch, or supported by something from popular media, like the Back to the Future Delorean. Those fans who collaborated in this creation used the films and car as a guide then proceeded to make the project work.

I have a set from the mid 70s witch came in a wooden box no instructions just pictures of the sort of things u could make but no instructions to make them

Lazy journalism really annoys me, but I think theres an inherent laziness in most UK sectors these days, which I think stems a lot from our broken education system - but thats another rant for another day.

The article about the architecture studio I can forgive a little, because it's clearly written by someone from an architecture background rather than a journalistic background. But the article saying Lego sets stifle creativity is awful. The writer is clearly doing what most people do and remembering any Lego they had as a pile of bricks, not realising that it probably came from a mix of sets and creator buckets, I've been out of dark ages for about 5 years now and I still occasionally see a set referenced on Brickset that I had forgotten I had as a child. They've obviously also never seen a child play with a Lego set. The majority of kids might build the set as per instructions to begin with, but it rarely takes long for them to pull the set to bits and make their own creations.

As for saying sets with instructions stifle creativity you might as well say that story books do the same - a story is only encouraging a child's imagination if they make the story up themselves.

/endrant!

The articles are brainless and ill-informed; however, I had a quick look through the first page of comments and the vast majority I read were critical of the piece and praising Lego as a creative toy. It didn't sound like many readers were impressed by the so-called expert.

The Greenpeace/Shell article is simply more leftist nonsense. These people will take issue with anything and everything to make it seem like they have a cause and are for the greater good when in actuality they are simply in support of a different type of totalitarianism, one where political correctness reigns supreme and anyone that rejects it shall be shunned. It is so easy to criticize others and find faults. I could rip the author for being "ageist" since she singled out the age of the girl commenting about Friends. I could say, "Is the author implying that people of a certain age are limited in intellect? This age-based stereotyping must stop! I propose a ban on the Guardian!" See how easy it is?

I object to the phrase "leftist nonsense" - one poor article does not discredit an entire side of the political spectrum. Nor do I think this is appropriate place for a political discussion.

You could tell it was gonna be bad when they used the word "kit" instead of "set". Ugh, it annoys me when people do that.

@TaylorPlacePro - here, here !!

Ha! I can relate to a specific point in Big Sal's article. "Parents complained children couldn't build the pictured models." As a kid I did indeed grow frustrated that I couldn't figure out how to build the various models shown on the back of the Blacktron and M-Tron boxes. I understand, now, that they were meant to be ideas, but I wanted to see inside those 'idea' models. =)

I see ads posted routinely on Kijiji.ca (classifieds) from people wanting "just regular legos, I'd like to buy a bag/bin or regular legos." Sometimes I reply to inform that, right now at Toys R Us or Wal-Mart, there are bins of bricks on the shelves at reasonable prices. We are also privileged to live in a major centre with a LEGO store, with the brick wall. Yet the belief that LEGO is not selling "bins of regular bricks" persists.

The refrain of "it used to be so simple" is horrendously outdated. I was born in 1981. By the late eighties when I was into space and castle, we're talking Blacktron, M-Tron, the 1991 Dungeon Master castle, etc etc. My brother was into City, it wasn't a pile of 2x2 and 2x4 bricks. My point: the sets I am talking about are over two decades past.

The article about the architecture set has several mistakes in about Lego in general, but I suspect it might be right about the architecture set specifically. Apart from its all-whiteness I really don't see it being a success amongst architects and/or architecture students- it just isn't either big enough or flexible enough. And, for inspiring people to become architects or city designers in the first place, a few basic buckets is enough for that, just as it has always been (in training courses I present, I use the 6177 box for building cities).

And. Why is it that any article about Lego in the mainstream press has to include a reference to stepping on Lego bricks on the floor? We know! Get over it!

And. It doesn't annoy me when people say "kit" instead of "set" (and in the case of the architecture set I think it might be more appropriate) but it does annoy me when people say "here, here" to indicate agreement with a comment, instead of the correct "hear, hear" :)

^ I'm in total agreement about how tired I am of every article written about LEGO feeling obligated to include a joke about stepping on one.

Just a quick note to say that to avoid being lawyered, I've changed the name and address of my blog to bigsalsbrickblog.com. So the post is now at: http://bigsalsbrickblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/it-was-all-basic-bricks-in-my-day-part.html. Sorry for any inconvenience!

I missed this earlier. The second article is a load of baloney. "The Sydney Opera House is formed almost entirely out of parts that can't be used anywhere else." 70% of the thing is the base, which is made of plates, tiles, and cheese slopes, and the rest is hinges and basic curved slopes, more or less. In this day and age, anything qualifies as journalism. What is this world coming to?!

The other one is also nonsense. Kids can still build anything they want without being told how to do it from a Superheroes set!

Blog links been removed, but here's the new URL: http://bigsalsbrickblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/it-was-all-basic-bricks-in-my-day-part.html