The Culture Code For The Commentator Is: Non-Sequitor And Chaos

Last year I read The Culture Code and shopping in a toy store today was reminded the part about Germany and Legos.

The German Code for Germany is perhaps best illustrated in a story.


Lego, the Danish toy company, found instant success with their interlocking blocks in the German market, while sales foundered in the U.S. Why?

The company's management believed that one of the primary reasons for their success was the quality of the instructions they provided inside each box that helped children build the specific item (a car, a spaceship) that a particular box of blocks was meant to build. The instructions were quite a breakthrough in the field: precise, colorful, and refreshingly self-explanatory. They made construction with Lego blocks not only simple, but in some ways magical. If one followed the path through the instructions, tiny plastic pieces methodically turned into something grander.

American children could not have cared less. They would tear into the boxes, glance fleetingly at the instructions (if they glanced at them at all), and immediately set to a construction project on their own. They seemed to be having a wonderful time, but they were as likely to build, say, a fort, as they were to build the automobile for which the blocks were intended. And when they were done, they would tear their fort apart and start over from scratch. Once purchased, to Lego's dismay, a single box of Lego could last for years.

In Germany, however, Lego's strategy worked exactly as intended. German children opened a box of Legos, sought out the instructions, read them carefully, and then sorted the pieces by color. They set to building, comparing their assembly progress to the crisp, helpful illustrations in the instruction booklet. When they were finished, they had an exact duplicate of the product shown on the cover of the box. They showed it to Mother who clapped approvingly and put the model on a shelf. Now the children needed another box.

Without even knowing it, Lego had tapped into the Culture Code for Germany itself: ORDER. Over many generations, Germans perfected bureaucracy in an effort to stave off the chaos that came to them in wave after wave, and Germans are imprinted early on with this most powerful of codes. It is that imprint which makes children reach dutifully for the instructions, and it is that code which prevents them from immediately destroying their neat construction in order to build it anew. Lego's elegant, full-color instructions had tapped into the German code in a way that assured repeat sales.

This excerpt makes me laugh.

It's rare perception and reality converge, but in this instance it looks like it does. Do any Germans with spunk or spontaneity exist?

Me? I was more like the American kids. Fuck the instructions. Open and over turn the box scattering a hundred pieces across the table or floor and start building idiotic things that made little sense. It was fucken Lego. I needed to get to other shit. Other toys. My mother is still finding pieces of Lego in the house.

Once, only once, I followed the instructions and wanted to vomit it was so boring. I built it up and smashed it with my A-Team truck and Star Wars figurines. I was always mixing up toys. There were no boundaries. Smash Up Derby was used to attack an Indian reservation or Union Compound. It didn't matter. What mattered was the imagination running wild. Legos were merely integrated into the larger canope of toys in the house. One time I took my sisters Barbie's, the ones that weren't defaced or given crew cuts, and pretended she was an evil giant to which my little figurines from Emergency or Star Wars or The A-Team or whatever teamed up to hunt and kill her. Now that I think about it, there were some sadistic tendencies in our play. Very few toys were safe from our marauding tendencies.

It wasn't a ver normal way to play, I admit that, but it was fun looking at my parents look on with a mixture of terror, horror and dismay. My brother and sister were no better.

Honestly, if you need instructions for Lego you live one rigid existence. I once stayed on an estate owned by a German millionaire in the Bahamas. They were miserable, cold people. They treated us as if we were lepers. All I remember was me telling my friend "I thought these people know you parents" and him replying with a confused shrug, "They do!"  Imagine if they didn't! Would they eat us?

We tried to touch them with human interaction but the most we got was that they were from Cologne. The German Higgins of the house loosened up somewhat after five days but by then we didn't care and were happy to leave.

Anyway. Now that I think of it, he probably was upset he couldn't play with his Legos since they didn't come with instructions.

My lego creations were so retarded my mother considered sending me to a psychologist.

Now that's how you live!

Kidding aside, you have to respect and admire the German adherence to order.