(snippet of keyboard music)

(clacking)

(steam)

Star Wars has done to Lego what Emperor Palpatine

did to Anakin Skywalker.

Let me break it down for you.

Once upon a time, in a previous century,

Legos were the ultimate DIY toy.

An unfettered tool for building and creating.

Now, sure, there were generic spacemen and pirates,

but the focus was on stuff like Technics

and Mindstorms, which expanded the possibility space

of what you could make with Legos.

It used to be about the bricks, man.

But that was before the dark times.

Before the Empire.

(suspenseful music)

See, in 1999, Lego released a line

of Phantom Menace-branded toys.

It was the first time the Lego group licensed

another property, and the franchise clearly

infected Legos with a cross-media marketing virus.

Lego went on to license IP from Spongebob,

to Avatar, to Ben 10, to Lone Ranger,

all with specialized parts that betray the ideal

of infinite interlockability.

And then, well, then it wasn't about

the building toys anymore.

It was

computer games.

In 2005, the Lego Star Wars game came along,

followed by the Lego Harry Potter game,

the Lego Raiders of the Lost Ark game,

Batman, Pirates of the Caribbean,

Lego Marvel, Lord of the Rings.

(frustrated outcry)

And the CG cut-scenes in these games begat

a genre of stand-alone Lego films that are

even more annoying than their original IPs, like Ninjago.

Familiar characters do tongue-in-cheek reenactments

of familiar set pieces, from familiar franchises,

but the action is consequence-free,

because everything's made out of bricks.

And the pirotic elements are toothless

because the rights-holder gets to sign off on it.

The tactile creativity tools have morphed

into a purely virtual mix of CG and IP.

Awesome!

Could you make one of these in orange?

I only work in black.

And sometimes very, very dark gray.

(percussive music)

(record scratch)

What, you think that was funny?

Noooo!

That's the power of the dark side.

(clacking)

(steam)

What is your least favorite co-branded Lego kit?

Let me know in the comments and subscribe

to the Wired channel.