My childhood was spent away in a room, in a makeshift tent made with towels and quilts. Inside, the tent would have blocks of yellow and white, red and green strewn all over.
LEGOs. Those little blocks made of plastic, which holds the power to make one feel like an architect, comprised a major part of our childhood (at least mine did).
The hours spent putting the blocks together to create yellow-walled houses with red roofs and bizarre abstract sculptures similar to the likes of Picasso used to be the stuff of pure joy.
LEGO used to be limited to just building houses of wonder. But that is long lost now.
You won’t find that simplicity in the sets nowadays. The LEGO boxes, now, are smaller and based on ‘larger themes’ and these are rolled out every single year. Your favourite movie franchise? They might have a LEGO set too!
Back in the day we just had one big LEGO box and that served us for a good four years before a number of pieces were lost to our mothers’ jhaadu ka sweep.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with the direction LEGO is heading in. However, having no clue about how the final thing post assembly will turn out to be, it kept us adding and removing bricks for hours in the end.
However, once you finally pile the bricks the way it was designed to be, it gets tucked away in a shelf somewhere, never to be touched again.
What seems lost in the process is the imagination which goes into building something out of nothing.
Another major element which seems to be missing, or rather goes unnoticed nowadays is the minifigs.
There used to be this one guy with colour options for the tee, trousers, and hair.
Now? There are thousands of ’em, and every single one of them is unique. They’re more like collectables.
However, amidst all the change that LEGO has been through, one thing remains unchanged, and that is the pain that surges through the body when you accidentally step on it.
Change is inevitable. LEGO did what it did to remain at the top of their game. It was pure genius and magic what they did back in the day. However, today, after all the change, LEGO seems to lack a bit of that magic which hypnotized and occupied us for hours.