LEGO - a wide angle view

Pat had been talking about how much she would enjoy playing with Lego since we got Tesla a Baby Zoo Duplo set. I'm not entirely sure if it's something she would have gone through with on her own, but I took it as a cue to do some research into the scene.

There aren't any local hobby shops that specialize in importing Lego; I'd have to look at the regular mall toy stores, like Rustan's, Hobbes and Landes, or Toys R Us. Sad to say, local SRP seems to convert the official prices at around 1 USD = 100 PHP. But hey, shipping and shopkeeping costs money, and it's still better than importing it myself.

Taking a look at what's available, I noticed that Lego seems to be divided into several different lines. The most classic line would be Creator: it uses very generic parts, has instructions for 3 different builds per set, but it doesn't worry about scale or minifigs. I'd say it's aimed at adult builders who want to make their own creations. Probably best for Pat.

On the other extreme is Bionicle; it's still built from small parts, but it has almost no brick pieces. Instead it uses mostly specialized parts, joints, bars and axles from Technic. Put together, they look like action figures, not like Lego at all. I expect that the target audience here would be young boys interested in posable fighters.

In the middle are a huge number of minifig-scale lines. Castle, Space, City, and also similar licensed lines like Batman and Starwars. These lines are all heavily themed; there are many pieces that are specialized for use in a specific setting. The downside to this is that there's less versatility for customization, and the building experience is a little duller. The upside to all of this is that the finished products look pretty good, with detailed sculpting and prints. These themes are aimed at collectors (like me!) that want to have something that's not too hard to build, while being fun to play with and display. As a bonus, there are minifigs everywhere, and let me tell you: collectors love to army-build minifigs.