Forget yoga, play with Lego for inner peace
Children’s company targets millennials as ‘back to basics’ activities challenge smartphones and emails
IT HAS traditionally been a good way to keep a noisy child occupied for a few hours, but now Lego is being marketed at stressed young women.
New advertisements on the Instagram feeds of millennials show a woman trying to find inner peace by doing yoga, but finding it too difficult. Instead, the fashionably-dressed coffee shop worker finds her nirvana by making a Lego ship.
The advert shows her finding a moment of quiet in a busy day to create a Lego structure. The video is captioned: “Need an escape? Building with Lego bricks reduces stress and improves your well-being. It’s Zen, in the shape of a brick.”
Lego is trying to appeal to adults because of the rise in activities such as colouring in and jigsaws among older groups, a trend put down to a backlash against the rise of the smartphone and constant work emails.
The company has found that adults are increasingly wanting to go “back to basics” and take part in hands-on “real world” activities.
Tom Donaldson, vice president of Lego’s Creative Play Lab, told Wired: “There is a movement back to what may be more hands-on and physical. The boundaries between physical and digital play are blurring, and that is the future of play.”
Demand for toys aimed at “kidults” is on the rise, and out of every £9 of toy spending, £1 is spent by adults buying one for themselves, research by analysts NPD has found.
Additionally, toy spending by adults for themselves has risen by 8 per cent year-on-year, and has increased by £30 million since 2016 with building sets the most popular toys for adults overall. More than half of the “‘kidult”’ spend comes from 18- to 34-year-olds, who buy everything from £500 Scalextric sets to drones, Nerf guns and £2,000 Star Wars Lego models.
Lego earlier this year launched a crowdfunded set of toy fish. The user builds a fish skeleton and customises it with a skin, which can be coloured in, and the model can then be made to swim by turning a crank.
Lego said the kits, called Lego Forma, “are designed to help you reconnect with your imagination and disconnect from the stress of life [and] discover the simple satisfaction of building with your hands”.
Research by the company showed that 91 per cent of adults said playing was good for their well-being, and 86 per cent said it makes them feel more relaxed. Lego said: “We have a strong adult fan base who share the passion for Lego and the endless possibilities it brings to creative expression.”