Back then there were none of these licensed sets. No Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. You got a box full of bricks and had to come up with your own ideas.
"Look, mummy! I've built a house?"
"That's lovely, dear. Now go away and let Mummy drink her Jesus Juice in peace."
No wonder the imaginations of today's children have withered and petrified like horrible old plums; they don't have to do any actual work any more. It's all handed to them on a platter. "Here you are, child - take this instruction manual listing everything you must dream about tonight."
But here's a thing - if you're a person of a certain age, chances are you've built a licensed Lego set. You've either done so for one of your children, or you've done it for yourself. Lego is still marketed at kids, primarily, but this seems ludicrous; playing with any Lego set is virtually impossible for adults, let along for stupid, clumsy, youths. Bits fall off. All the time. All you have to do is look at a Lego creation, and the damn thing falls apart.
And the sets are so complicated these days that invariably bits fall off from the inside, and you'll never get them back on unless you take the whole thing apart. Lego should not be touched by any child, lest you want hours of your life wasted. This might - at least in part - account for the enduring popularity of the Lego games from Traveller's Tales...