Up until couple of weeks ago I would have entirely agreed with Lego ‘puritan’ Roger Highfield that the toy was better when there was a far more limited range of pieces. The puritan argument boils down to this – Lego should be about building things from your imagination not from a plan. If you do not have an ideally shaped piece for a job then you have to find a creative solution to that problem.
Being a Lego puritan, my Mum was careful – for my recent Birthday – to buy me a box that only contained old school basic rectangular prism pieces (carefully adding a 0 to the +4 age guideline on the box). It was whilst working with Eve constructing a ship from these pieces that I ceased to believe in Lego puritanism. It was suddenly clear that, so long as you are prepared to break up your factory designed constructions full of custom made pieces, then the fact that there is now a vastly improved range of pieces to make your imaginative freestyle constructions from is nothing but an excellent thing.
Bust open your paradigms.
However, most children with complex kits, build the kit (with or without help) then display it in a fairly permanent way. It would be better if the packaging encourage experimenting and making your own designs.
Yes, that is the thing about paradigms, they’re tough to bust open. I almost never read or follow instructions but it still took me a while to break down the models built to plan – though in my defense they were my daughter’s models!