“[Maarten:] I would have stimulated playing with Legos or other construction-type toys a lot more.”

LEGO™ is no longer what it used to be either. As Kroc said, “it became too pre-defined”.

For those of you who really haven’t been playing with it any more let me tell you about it:

My father’s construction set, of which I don’t think I’ll ever find out the product name, were just white and red blocks. His LEGO™ used the same simple colour scheme but offered a few extras such as having window bricks. I don’t think I’ve ever found anything my generation would call a LEGO™ figurine between his stuff.

LEGO™ in my time was castles and things consisting of multi-colours bricks. The cars were bricks with wheels on them. Nearing the end of my childhood (what would this be, 5 years ago?) the cars had one flat piece to which multiple wheels could be connected and the complete hood was just one piece. A car had gone down from 20 blocks to 8.

My LEGO™ Hogwarts Castle (#4709, year 2001) has pieces twice as big as any piece in my LEGO™ Royal Knights Castle (#6090, year 1995).

It’s very hard to be creative with today’s LEGO™. I can break up Hogwarts but what are you going to build with rotating staircases and light beige wall pieces that really only fit together in one way? With my Royal Knights Castle broken up I end up with a lot of black and grey basic bricks and cornerstones—it could be changed into anything I wanted it to be.