Facing the onset of a digital world is difficult for any brand but for a product built around the tactile joy of real-world building it must have been a challenge to dwarf the scale usually adopted by devotees of Lego.
Here is a brand built around the simplicity of a connecting brick. A children’s toy to unlock the imagination, Lego has been adopted by the enthusiast like almost no other toy before or since. But it, at its heart, a physical product. And like so many traditional toys, it faced a difficult future as video games and the internet stole our children away from the floor space and put them in front of the computer monitor. It would, on the surface, seem unlikely that Lego could make the transition to the digital sphere in the way more social games could and did.
Of course, Lego did exactly that, building itself around the concept of imagination and the character of those amazing Minifigs. The idea that you can build anything with Lego was seized upon and translated literally into some of the most fun video games we have today.
Even better, for me, is the new Lego Games range, extending the brand within the real world by creating fun versions of classic games. Minotaurous and Creationary are two I’ve seen and been captured by but the range is extending all the time. It’s hard to see a possibility not suitable for these dynamic little bricks.
Well done Lego. Other classic toys could learn a lot by dismantling your example.
