Good morning! I hope the world is being good to you and you’re being good to it.

Grab your coffee or beverage of choice and share a thought with me!

As the sleepy guard looked over the turret, across the mist-laden land stretching away from the Black Falcon’s Fortress, he thought fondly of the straw mattress awaiting him once his replacement finished breakfast. The night had been quiet as usual, but he still tried to maintain a keen eye on the surroundings after reports of Lion knights roaming the countryside. He finished a yawn then froze, unsure he had really seen shadows moving against the brightening dawn horizon. He leaned further across the turret, straining his eyes to pick out anything in the haze, and then he heard it, the sound of hooves beating the ground. The guard knocked an arrow and raised his bow, calling to his brethren that riders approached. Immediately, the castle burst to life as the other wall guards echoed his alarm. As the mist parted, the guard’s eyes widened at the sight of black armor atop a dark steed. The black knight was flanked on either side by two more equally imposing figures, charging toward the castle ready to take it apart, brick by brick.

Once upon a time, LEGO inspired magnificent and limitless imaginative world building. Pirate, castle, and space sets were my favorite as a kid. The yellow-sided boxes teased the fun within through tantalizing brick counts and a minimalist front-panel display showing the completed model, with a color tinted, but typically spartan background alluding to a broader world to be filled by play. There were no established stories using these sets as a marketing tool; they existed purely to be placed inside whatever world the holder desired. It was easy to get lost for hours in the world of minifigs and dream about which set was needed to further enrich the temple of creative whimsy.

Today, LEGO markets those sets to adults and collectors, only offering them if they are voted into existence by nostalgic fans. LEGO has strayed from offering the tools to create worlds and instead sells sets tied to IPs and targeted at fandom economies. While LEGO’s current state may be the company’s necessary evolution, it feels like a travesty that toy shelves are lined with mutant versions of Star Wars and Marvel properties that should never exist, and I seldom see my kids getting the same level of enjoyment from those sets as they do a simple box of bricks. Sure, it’s cool to play with mini Iron Man and Darth Vader, but their stories are told, their fates sealed. Imagination still has room to play, but it feels intentionally restrained.

I don’t want this to be a, “This isn’t what it was like when I was a kid, therefore it’s crap,” argument, but it certainly feels like the magic is missing from modern LEGO. Nostalgia is a powerful drug that paints past joys in a perpetually favorable light, so I get how tastes and products need to evolve in concert with an ever-changing world. I will, however, always look back upon my time defending my modest castle or springing my pirate brethren from their island prison with a warm heart and a longing sadness.