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On the market since 1949, Lego is still as popular as ever with today’s youth. You can buy sets based on almost anything, from Harry Potter to Star Wars, and there’s probably nothing more satisfying than admiring a fully finished piece after you’ve put your heart and soul into building it up.
But why should kids get to have all the fun, you may ask? Fortunately, that’s not the case anymore.
Enter LEGO FORMA, a new premium LEGO experience specifically designed for adults who are looking for a fun and engaging way to get back in touch with their creative side.
According to LEGO's most recent Play Well report, almost 90% of a group of over 9,000 surveyed parents across the world said that they enjoyed having the opportunity to sit down and play with LEGO with their children. The LEGO FORMA project is an attempt to get them to do exactly that, without needing the excuse of being parents.
Adults spent around £383 million on buying toys for themselves during 2017 alone, which is a huge increase from what they were spending five years earlier. The toy market is growing particularly fast among millennials, who account for nearly half of the spending on puzzles, building sets and general games. With the popularity of ‘nerd’ activities becoming more socially acceptable among those in their twenties and above, it’s not hard to see why adults feel more comfortable in letting themselves indulge in nostalgic activities such as LEGO building and toy collecting.
The intricately designed LEGO FORMA mechanical models, currently available in the form of some funky fish, are much simpler to assemble than they look. Sturdy rods and parts are combined with customisable skins to create a visually interesting and creatively challenging piece that, when finished, is able to reproduce swimming movements using a built-in hand crank mechanism.
The conversational and sleek designs of the prototypes were all developed from previous feedback taken from adult focus groups around the globe, with the outcome being a strong preference for natural and organic themes. Even the packaging is elegant, splashed in beautiful shades of blues and purples.
A batch of 20,000 of the LEGO FORMA sets hit Indiegogo's virtual shelves in late September. Customer feedback will decide what the next steps taken by LEGO will be, such as which skins, if any, they choose to commercialise on a wider scale. From here, the company says it will be able to test the appetite for the set, generate data, take in live feedback from customers and decide whether or not to go through with a full launch of the final products.
The driving force behind these sophisticated pieces is a hope that LEGO can successfully achieve a goal of getting more people to ditch their digital tools for a while in favour of focusing their attention on a more tactile activity.
For more information and a look at the sets, check LEGO FORMA on Indiegogo.