Watne Household Site

The Cult of LEGO by John Baichtal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book caught my eye as the cover screamed out to me from the shelves as I was spending the day working from the local public library, and I just had to check it out. There was a lot of interesting information on the history of the LEGO company, its place in Danish culture, and about the different kinds of builds done by various types of Adult Fans of LEGO (AFOL).

Perhaps it is just the nature of the beast for a company that continuously updates multiple product lines but, unfortunately, having read it 12 years after its publishing date, much of the information felt dated. It got frustrating finding that the overwhelming majority of the URLs printed in the book led either to 404 errors or “this domain up for sale” squatter pages.

The section on LEGO software was the most dated, with virtually all of the listed software being discontinued. [One nice exception was, as I write this, for a LEGO photo mosaic making software that, while nowhere close to being actively maintained, at least still had a live site, including downloadable, open source Java code, which I intend to work with to update and, I hope, eventually extend to work as a web application, and not software that needs to be downloaded and run only on one’s own computer.] It was frustrating that it seemed like too much of the book was devoted to this and similarly short-lived, discontinued product lines, while failing to even mention something like the modular building sets. These were what first brought me into LEGO as an adult, and could easily be mentioned as being part of elaborate city builds. Plus, as of the book’s 2011 publishing date, either 5 or 6 (depending on when in the year the final copy went to print) had already been released since starting in 2007 – already a longer-lasting product line than many of those constituting a good percentage of the book’s coverage.

I do want to give the authors credit for covering some social concerns with LEGO, such as the section on “Minifig Controversy”, about whether the “ostensibly ‘race-neutral’ yellow coloration” is really so, or whether “‘yellow equals light-skinned'”, and the rarity of darker-skinned minifigures in more recent years. They also point out that the overwhelming majority of minifigs can be interpreted as either male or gender-neutral, with distinctly female minifigs – distinguished by “hair, facial details [such as eyelashes and lipstick], and printed body contours.” The section on “pink LEGO”, different themes such as the discontinued “Homemaker” and “Belville” figure lines addresses an issue that still arises. Unfortunately, the book was released only one year before the introduction of the “LEGO Friends” line. While the line has had similar “pink LEGO” criticism, it is one of LEGO’s most successful lines and, a decade later, has already lasted considerably longer than the earlier “half-hearted attempts at girly themes”. AFOLs can note that this line actually has some of the strongest offerings for various types of buildings, with much better representation of housing than in the police- and fire-heavy “City” line. These houses are often more complete than the small apartments (and single house included in the “Bookshop” model) in the more complicated Modular Buildings sets targeted at adults. It makes me think in the scene in the movie “Oppenheimer” when, upon first entering the house just built in Los Alamos, his wife points out that they forgot to include a kitchen.

One disappointment with a book that is clearly a “coffee table” book is some of the poor decisions from a design perspective. The chapter title pages all have their titles in nearly impossible to read white text on a bright yellow background. On the handful of pages where there is enough text that it is put in two-column format, there is only a single space between the two columns, making it very hard to distinguish where the left column ends and the right begins without looking closely. Finally, as other critics have noted, many of the photos could have been better edited to have them highlight their subjects better. Such design missteps seem out of place in a book about a product having a strong design esthetic as one of its primary features.

One final criticism I have is about the section on “Autism Therapy” – the one section that, as the father of a son on the autism spectrum, I found truly offensive in its over-generalizations. This is the paragraph that really sets me off [emphases added]:

Autistic children suffer from a limited ability to interact with other children; it’s a handicap that can’t be overcome by forcing the child into social situations. Autistic kids must be coaxed into these critical interactions, lured into building the social skills most kids learn automatically. And what better way to challenge a kid’s critical weakness than to involve them in an activity that appeals to their strongest suit?

I found myself getting angrier the more I went over the paragraph for this review. One phrase that is very well known in the autism community is that, “if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism”. How about, “Certain autistic children have….” My son may interact a bit differently that neurotypical children, but he most definitely does not have a “limited ability to interact with other children”. His superpower is making friends with people he meets by default. He and his twin brother love to get together with good friends from the neighborhood, school, church, Cub Scouts, and their baseball team. No “coaxing” is required. And even if his autism did present itself in greater difficulty interacting with the neurotypical world, to refer to that as a “critical weakness” is extremely ableist language.

On a more positive note, it was good to see my local Twin Cities Lego Users’ Group (TwinLUG) make a couple appearances in the book. It was very fun to see a discussion of their “microcity standard”, which has made the rounds nationally, and I have been lucky enough to see locally.

Overall, this was an entertaining book, with just the one cringe-worthy section, and a lot of material that has not aged well over 12 years. However, there is enough about the core products and how they are used by various groups to provide for some interesting reading and pictures.

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