[HN Gopher] Lego has designed a set that can't be taken apart
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Lego has designed a set that can't be taken apart
Author : brycehalley
Score : 523 points
Date : 2021-12-03 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brickset.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brickset.com)
| YinglingLight wrote:
| So, this is Comms.
|
| Legos = symbolism for 'making plans'
|
| Comms are a way of communication using symbolism embedded in news
| headlines, articles, films, music, even memes. A headline such as
| 'President Bush trips over a Lego piece' describes a fictional
| event, but it exists solely as a Comms Vehicle.
|
| Thus, the article represents a Plan that cannot be Stopped.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > flagship PS700 set
|
| Holy crap... I used to love Lego as a child and I knew some of
| the kits were expensive. They would be our "main present" at
| Christmas. But now they are the best part of a grand?! I had no
| idea people were spending that much on things like this. Maybe
| stuff like this is why all my friends seem poorer than me despite
| earning similar money?
| fpgaminer wrote:
| LEGO sets are all more-or-less priced per piece, and the price
| per piece has on average fallen over the years when accounting
| for inflation.
| detaro wrote:
| There is some range.
|
| E.g. this is 11.8 cents/piece, where some other large "adult"
| sets are more along the lines of 6-7 cents. And the kid-
| focused ones have similar ranges, (or worse if you include
| the really small ones)
| [deleted]
| userbinator wrote:
| Isn't the orange piece hollow, so it should be possible to push
| something in it and drive the pin out (moving the red piece into
| the green one) after aligning the splines?
|
| _When it comes to attaching the body to the underframe, axles
| are inserted into holes in the side and, while they do not mate
| with an axle hole inside the body, they cannot be removed without
| putting the mechanised beast on its side, shaking it, and hoping
| for the best._
|
| That is definitely what is called a "blind pin" in machining,
| with a tighter interference fit, and they are usually avoided in
| components meant to be serviceable, since removing them requires
| drilling them out.
|
| It seems amusingly ironic that with the increase in the
| difficulty of disassembling consumer products, Lego also follows
| suit.
| bena wrote:
| The orange pin is hollow, but the red axle is behind it is not.
|
| That gray axle sleeve has a stop about halfway through so you
| can't push an axle all the way through. It's meant to join two
| axles.
|
| You could omit the green sleeve as it is completely smooth on
| the inside. That will give you better access to the dark gray
| axle, but the sleeve is probably there to provide structural
| support to the frame.
|
| They might do a small update where they replace the "4 axle
| with stop" with a "5 axle with stop" and put a bushing on the
| outside to provide support between the stop and the frame.
| Provided, of course, that there's a brick's width of room where
| that assembly goes.
|
| Edit: I just looked up the instructions for 75313 and found the
| section with the assembly. The assembly is the "hip" joint,
| where the leg connects with the main body. The assembly is
| connected so that the offending axles are parallel to the
| ground. The dark gray axle points inward and it looks like, at
| least on the front legs, it's too close to another frame to
| extend the pin so that it sits outside the frame.
|
| https://www.lego.com/cdn/product-assets/product.bi.core.pdf/...
| rtkwe wrote:
| No you can't push the red short pin through the grey piece,
| it's a 6538c [0,1] by the looks of it and those have a small
| wall in the middle to stop push through. They're meant to be
| used to connect two Technic axels and just sit on the two ends.
|
| [0]
| https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?id=674...
|
| [1] https://img.bricklink.com/ItemImage/EXTN/17834.png
| [deleted]
| ezconnect wrote:
| Hot wheels tracks are very hard to disassemble no ones
| complaining about it.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Perhaps there might be a market for alternative Lego designs?
| Like a Lego modding guide. Which is kind of ironic as the entire
| point of Lego is to build what you want... so modify the design!
| colechristensen wrote:
| The aggressive advertising on this site broke iOS Safari
| rizky05 wrote:
| well not on my iphone, installed adblock for safari
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Usually, I can guess when a site is likely to suck without
| adblock or on a different browser, but here my expectations
| were completely subverted.
|
| On Firefox (desktop) with uBlock Origin and a Pihole, it was a
| pleasant read. The site loaded quickly, and it worked nicely
| with a system dark theme and in reader mode.
|
| There are no obvious gaps where sponsored content would be
| inserted. The header and sidebar look complete yet unobtrusive.
| It looks like a well-made page that should cooperate nicely
| with a mobile browser. I'm sorry to hear your experience was so
| bad!
| patentatt wrote:
| Content blockers, pi-hole, and/or nextdns does the trick. I see
| no ads on this page and it works fine in iOS safari.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Is this by design or an aspect of the design? As a user of Lego
| since forever I know that there have been previous flaws that
| made things very difficult to disassemble.
| tills13 wrote:
| honestly? who cares?
| pbronez wrote:
| I love LEGO and have recently gotten back into it with my kids.
| There are tons of wonderful sets to choose from and the designs
| are much more realistic than they were when I was growing up.
| BUT... I've consistently had pieces missing from new sets! It's
| not catastrophic. Usually it's just one piece and I can
| substitute in another from my collection, though often the wrong
| color.
|
| Lego will send you replacements if you ask them, but that's a
| pain. Especially since something is deeply broken with my LEGO ID
| and I can't get into their stupid website.
|
| It's not enough to make me stop buying the sets, but it kills the
| fun when my kid works hard on a set and can't finish it because
| of a manufacturing error.
| janesvilleseo wrote:
| Really? I've put a ton of sets together over about 30 years and
| I have never had a piece missing.
|
| I'm constantly impressed that they just always all the pieces.
|
| What I have found is that sometimes there is 1 piece stuck in
| the bag after I have dumped it out. So I keep the bags until
| I'm finished building the set.
| teh_infallible wrote:
| I have received a set with pieces missing. I bought the set
| off eBay, and the seller swore it was new. I didn't just
| misplace the pieces either- one was a wheel, not a tiny part
| Sosh101 wrote:
| > and the designs are much more realistic than they were when I
| was growing up
|
| That's one thing I don't much care for in the modern sets. Sure
| the results look more realistic, but it means that half the
| pieces are now custom made for the particular set, and often
| have very little use in a general context. It seems that
| they've moved from a general building system to more of a per
| set focused approach.
| breuleux wrote:
| I've bought a bunch of LEGO during the pandemic and I very
| rarely see pieces that are only present in one set (and when
| I do they are mostly printed pieces, or standard shapes with
| unusual colors). I think that what makes the models more
| "realistic" aren't custom pieces, it's smaller pieces. A lot
| of models have a lot of 1x1 square, circle or quarter-circle
| tiles, or small slanted pieces, which allows for finer
| details. At the same time, these pieces are often smooth on
| top, so they are less composable than studded ones and harder
| to manipulate, especially for children, so I can see how this
| could be a problem.
|
| There are also a lot more colors and shades than there used
| to be, so it is a little harder to make substantial custom
| constructions that don't look like rainbows.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| It's a shame that this is still the perception because this
| actually was a real issue for a while in the early 2000s.
| Back then lego was losing money and was not as successful as
| it had been in the past.
|
| Then lego seriously addressed this problem and since then
| have made a large effort to avoid having unique parts in
| sets. And they were incentivised to do so, because the more
| unique parts you have, the more money it is going to cost
| you. Reusing parts is just simply a lot cheaper.
|
| Now there still often are unique parts in a lot of sets, but
| they are usually unique only in colour or printing.
|
| For example, the current set with the record for the number
| of unique parts is the Diagon Alley set.
|
| Here is the list of unique parts in the set:
| https://brickset.com/inventories/75978-1/unique
|
| The thing you will note is that even though there are a lot
| of parts that only appear in this set, I wouldn't say that
| these parts are not useful generally. They are mostly just
| bits of custom lego characters, which you would happily use
| in any context, or a custom colour for a generally applicable
| part.
| majormajor wrote:
| When I was a kid I loved specialized pieces and often re-used
| them to add flair or distinct touches to my own creation.
| Having alternatives to rectangles is great!
|
| I don't see what all the fuss is about, it doesn't seem
| either/or to me. The days of off the shelf models having
| enough general purpose 2x4 or whatever bricks to build
| totally arbitrary large structures have been gone for at
| least 30 years, but nothing really seems to be stopping
| mixing and matching and getting basic blocks for the backbone
| of a collection. They've just added the existence of $TEXAS
| display pieces with unique stuff.
|
| I even accidentally got some pieces stuck together in ways
| that required screwdrivers or pliers to get them out. No big
| deal!
| kevstev wrote:
| I am not too familiar with the current day sets, but around
| the early 2000s they started pushing the branded movie tie
| in sets really hard and I do remember seeing sets where a
| "piece" was essentially half a tie fighter wing and had no
| real reasonable reusability. I have heard they have pulled
| back on this almost entirely.
|
| I would agree though that some specialized pieces are fine.
| My memories from the early 90s were probably the best
| balance from my time using Legos. By the mid-late 90s the
| castle and pirate sets did start moving into imho overly
| specialized pieces which then lead to the 2000s nadir.
| jkepler wrote:
| I agree. My son is just getting into Lego, and I find I'm
| avoiding most of the newer sets in favor of decent-condition
| used vintage sets, simply because what he enjoys is having
| enough general pieces to create and imagine new things.
| lilyball wrote:
| Are you sure they're custom made? My impression was that LEGO
| rarely does custom pieces (beyond things like printing known
| character faces or logos onto existing pieces). It's just
| that they've been making these sets for so long that they
| have a large catalogue of rare pieces to draw from.
| ttmb wrote:
| > it means that half the pieces are now custom made for the
| particular set
|
| I do not believe this is true. There are Lego enthusiasts
| that thoroughly review every new set and are careful to point
| out the introduction of new pieces and new building
| techniques. The number of new pieces per set is very low, and
| even then the pieces are typically well received for the
| number of new build techniques they may open up.
| zzzeek wrote:
| we've purchased at least 40-50 lego sets in the past three
| years and there has never been a piece truly missing. This
| includes several really big sets like the Harry Potter Castle
| (~6000 pieces), Big Ben (~4000 pieces, though this is not as
| recent of a kit), the saturn V rocket (1969 pieces), two
| different space shuttles, and many many of the more consumer-
| level kits, many of them very recent, with no end of spiderman
| (at least 8 spiderman-related kits), star wars (at least 10-12
| star wars related kits), super mario world kits, lego motorized
| trains, at least three separate commerical jetliner-related
| kits, two or three helicopteres, frozen/little mermaid/moana
| etc, minions, etc. our house is totally taken over by many
| thousands of dollars in legos all over the place.
|
| through all of this, there has never been one single piece
| missing, ever. which is kind of mind blowing.
|
| What usually happens when a piece is "missing" is, we used the
| piece incorrectly in another spot - this takes some detective
| work some kind, but it always turns up, there's the piece! none
| ever missing, ever.
|
| once the things are built and our 7 year old takes complete
| charge of them, _then_ we lose pieces like crazy.
| duck wrote:
| Not sure if my kids have that many sets yet (they basically
| just want Legos for every present so we'll be there soon),
| but I can definitely relate to this. Every set there is a
| "missing" piece that they ask me about, but it is always
| either found in the wrong spot or on the floor somewhere. It
| is to the point now that they tell me a piece is missing, I
| give them the look, and then they go back and find it on
| their own.
| yurishimo wrote:
| I recently got the Fender Strat kit and I thought I was
| missing a few pieces but it turned out I was using the wrong
| color. The amp is made of a lot of gray pieces with various
| shades between them. The problem is that the instructions are
| printed on that glossy paper that doesn't really use the
| exact color of the brick so a direct comparison is
| impossible. For sets with very distinct colors, it's fine,
| but because this one had 3 different shades of gray, it was
| hard to tell which was which, especially when you factor in
| taking a day off in between building times.
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| we've had a few issues with missing pieces but it's usually a
| color problem: extra red brick, one less white brick. There's
| roughly the same weight of contents but not the exact item.
|
| A bigger issue is the reliability. some pieces have been
| broken in the bag, specifically longer flat plates. other
| pieces literally crumbled upon assembly, specifically low-
| grade sloping pieces near the edge. doubt these pieces will
| last as long as the pieces from 10 years ago
| Fatnino wrote:
| My Saturn V was "missing" 2 pieces and I even went to a Lego
| store in the mall and was given some replacements. Turns out
| they were stuck by static to the bag they came in. Luckily I
| hoard the bags in the box the set came in for no good reason
| so the missing pieces turned up.
|
| Much later I decided to rearrange the letters near the bottom
| of the first stage and I got 4 spare S pieces from the
| missing pieces website Lego has.
| h2odragon wrote:
| I'd say someone earned a free AT-AT for the bug report.
|
| On the one hand that's a minor quibbling little problem there, "I
| have to use tools on this _one_ part when disassembling it ", and
| then the dearth of such problems during their run is an amazing
| testament to their engineering process. That they have fans that
| can catch this issue and explain it so well is another testament
| to the standards they've maintained.
|
| Can we call "lego instructions" an example of software design? I
| think we must. Programs designed to run on meat CPUs of unknown
| specs.
| kortex wrote:
| Lego instructions are the unparalleled 5-star tier on my
| "ranking of assembly instructions." No words (at least when I
| grew up, I haven't made a set in a long time), complicated
| assemblies, yet it's totally clear every step of the way.
| Glossy, high-res, colorful diagrams. Modular sub-assemblies.
| Every step is so clear.
|
| Ikea gets a 4-star rating, sometimes 4.5.
|
| Words? Immediately dock 1 star.
|
| If using a manifest ("part A, B, E used in this step"), which
| is necessary because not everything is as distinct as Lego
| bricks, and you don't provide a scale printout so I can sort
| the M6x10's from M6x12's, dock a point. Another point if you
| don't label the diagram with callouts and expect me to visually
| discern two similar parts by their 10pixel wide render.
|
| Using fasteners of very similar geometry (see above) for no
| discernible reason, dock a point.
|
| Low print quality of diagram with the toner chipping off? Insta
| fail.
| city41 wrote:
| Yup, still no words. The benefit that provides them is
| probably quite large, so I doubt they'd move away from it.
| loosescrews wrote:
| You might enjoy this video: Making Fake Directions & Hiring
| Someone to Build my IKEA Furniture
|
| https://youtu.be/5_FCKzhN_dY?t=334
|
| They make instructions in the style you described that are
| thoroughly ridiculous and hired people to follow them.
| moviuro wrote:
| Ikea are _really_ missing 1:1 prints of screws and parts I
| shouldn 't mix. See e.g.:
|
| * https://www.ikea.com/us/en/assembly_instructions/malm-
| storag... Page 9, step 3
|
| * https://images.brickset.com/news/67650_3.png
| rightbyte wrote:
| That is a genius drawing detail. Many manuals would benefit
| from assuming the appliance was operated by children ...
| kortex wrote:
| Ha, I have the Malim!
|
| Yeah, ikea doesn't do the 1:1 (or at least I haven't seen
| it) but they tend to use unmistakable parts. Like each of
| the metric cylinder head machine screws are different
| enough in aspect ratio it's easy (for me) to tell them
| apart. But I'm good at flatpack assembly (likely due to
| lego obsession growing up). I can see how that might be
| confusing for some.
|
| Contrast that with the Anderson door I build last month.
| Didn't have any scale indication, really small diagrams,
| lots of nearly interchangeable fasteners, and way too
| wordy.
| Arrath wrote:
| I've only ever had one complaint about Lego instructions, and
| it goes way back to the first big star destroyer set. Early
| on you're assembling a triangular frame that is the core of
| the model. After what felt like 50+ pages, you're finally
| complete and ready to move on to the next part. Except the
| last page has a 'x2' indicating you need to make two of the
| bloody things, only at the end rather than the beginning so
| you can't build two in parallel as you go along.
|
| Being an excited kid I might have missed it on the first page
| of instructions for that assembly but I sure was annoyed when
| I saw it.
| savanaly wrote:
| It's experiences like that that teach me to not just follow
| the instructions but to think about how I would do it, then
| follow the instructions. It's a delicate balance of blindly
| following instructions (which is essential-- oftentimes I
| think I see a better way and start to do it only to realize
| later on it's not going to work and there was a reason they
| did it their way) and thinking for yourself, which in your
| example would probably have sped things up.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| I've been reassembling my Christmas legos, and I noticed
| the same thing. Except I went back and checked, and every
| single time I just missed the 2x on the submodule
| introduction.
|
| So I am also doubting my childhood memories now. Maybe they
| were always consistent, and I was just in a hurry?
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| Unfortunately, they've moved to electronic instructions for
| many of their kids sets that also include electronics. You
| have to use the iPad/Android app to assemble. For example,
| the playable Super Mario kits.
|
| Now, as far as I've seen, this _is_ limited to kits that are
| designed to use their apps for play. Those apps are really
| cool though, so I am willing to look at it benevolently (all
| the more complicated steps give you an optional assembly
| video for that step which makes it nicer for smaller kids).
|
| The app for the Duplo train is really surprising. It lets you
| mirror your custom track setup in the app and then play games
| with it while controlling the train.
| lyrrad wrote:
| From what I can tell, for those sets without physical
| instruction books, you can still get the traditional
| instructions in PDF form from the LEGO website or in the
| instructions app. That way you don't have to use the
| interactive instructions in the LEGO Super Mario app.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| Thanks, I'll look for that. I didn't know you could get a
| pdf out of the app
| h2odragon wrote:
| There is a perverse charm to the worst of the worst
| instructions too. The diagram shows the item, but then
| clearly the parts list and the instructions are from (at
| least) two different things completely. "It's a couch! there
| _are_ no wheels "
|
| We should appreciate the incredible joy given to the world by
| such phrases as "Make sure the knob is well before screwing.
| Do not unclockwise the tread backwards."
|
| One of my favorites is the mystery part. It's clearly the
| same finish and stamping line as the rest of the thing, but
| it doesn't seem to have a functional use anywhere in the
| product. it's not a spare... is it an optional bracket for a
| different thing? did it fall out of the inside of something?
| is it just included in _my_ particular package accidentally?
|
| Of course occasionally you get really lucky and its an
| Interociter.
| techsupporter wrote:
| > Interociter
|
| Oh, this thing? I use it to make hot chocolate.
| jaywalk wrote:
| No, we can't call Lego instructions "software design" because
| they're simply not comparable to software in any meaningful
| sense. They're nothing more than step-by-step instructions on
| how to assemble a fixed set of pieces. There's no varying input
| or output, no calculations being done. They're the same as the
| instructions to assemble a bookshelf, just with more pieces and
| steps.
| easrng wrote:
| The inputs are the pieces and the output is the finished set.
| motoboi wrote:
| What a time to be alive.
| [deleted]
| wirthjason wrote:
| I saw a term in the comments: AFOL. I had to look it up: Adult
| Fan Of Legos.
|
| I loved legos as a kid and would spend hours building stuff. Now
| the kits seem more like models to be assembled and put on display
| and not touched rather than "a paint brush of blocks" where I can
| use my imagination. It lost my interest. My attention is now on
| software where I feel I can build anything. I liken it to my lego
| experience as a child.
|
| I don't necessarily think there's a right or wrong thing here.
| It's interesting to note how our mind changes as we age and grow
| older. The "do anything" mentality get displaced with something
| else. This would make for an interesting PhD topic. :)
|
| I found another quote from a related article that captured this
| feeling. "It's like a blast to the past,
| straight to our childhoods," said Deason, 40, who lives in
| Connellsville, Pa. "It took me by surprise, but it makes sense:
| Life is so structured. But with Lego, you can do anything."
| Deason has a few million Lego pieces, which she organizes by type
| and color. The Star Wars and Architecture sets, she says, are the
| most popular among adults, who almost always look for the
| instruction manuals. "The younger kids come in and
| it's all about their imaginations -- playing pretend, building
| zombie towns," she said. "But at some point that gets lost. The
| adults seem to value the final finished project. That's where
| they get their satisfaction."
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My wife is very much an AFOL. I buy her a couple of the
| expensive creator/expert sets each year.
|
| We also have several bins of generic legos of all shapes &
| sizes for the kids. They occasionally get technic sets, too, as
| gifts.
|
| These are not at odds with each other, Lego is successfully
| marketing to two demographics that are complimentary to one
| another. It's a good strategy. What's not a good strategy is
| their really lackluster pace of creating new sets, or the speed
| with with they take old ones out of production so they become a
| thousand bucks on the secondary market.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Some of the newer sets have the "issue" in my mind that they
| aren't balanced. Either they use tiny bricks and build up
| everything, or they're based on pretty large single pieces.
|
| The mid-size bricks seems less used now compared to the sets I
| got as a kid 30 years ago. When I pick out Lego sets for my
| daughter it's often based on the type of bricks included, and
| sometimes we just get classic brick sets. Building using the 1
| - 4 stud piece, especially the flat ones, get boring pretty
| quickly.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| The AT-AT model that they are talking about here is a UCS
| (Ultimate Collector's Series) set. These are definitely
| intended for adult builders to assemble a model and put on
| display. They are more focused on detail and less focused on
| "playability" as with some other sets that have moving or
| reconfigurable elements.
| ip26 wrote:
| _The "do anything" mentality get displaced with something else_
|
| I disagree, I think plenty of adults still have that mentality,
| but for them Legos is not the place to fulfill it. As a kid,
| Legos are one of the most approachable medium to manifest your
| imagination. But they are also very limited. As an adult, with
| more skills, knowledge, and money you might get into wood or
| metalworking or software instead, where you have significantly
| more freedom.
|
| An AFOL might be looking for something more nostalgic or
| meditative (e.g. rock gardens, bonsai?), and so they approach
| it differently.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| > I don't necessarily think there's a right or wrong thing
| here.
|
| Yeah, I feel like the giant, expensive Star Wars sets are for
| adults that don't intend to take their creations apart, and are
| actually concerned about keeping them whole while moving
| between apartments, condos, or homes. In that regard, I think
| this is kind of a feature for them.
|
| Most parents are going to buy smaller sets throughout the year
| for their kids, budget permitting.
| saturdaysaint wrote:
| I agree. It feels like most Lego sets on the market have
| several major/foundational pieces which are essentially useless
| outside of the model they're built for - some huge chunk of
| molded plastic. A big part of the joy of Lego sets in the past
| was that they showed you what was possible with these
| unassuming bricks. Sure, any big/intricate set would have some
| funny pieces, but they would mostly lend themselves to many
| forms of re-use that even a 10-year old could easily figure
| out. My 4 year-old has had a great time with Duplos, but I'm
| sort of leary about transitioning to Legos because to me,
| they've become more emblematic of consumerist collecting than
| creativity.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| They still sell the unassuming legos? And they are quite
| cheap (compared to the branded ones) and still quite popular
| andai wrote:
| Are you referring to the Chinese clones?
| mcphage wrote:
| Not the OP, but they're probably referring to the Classic
| sets: https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Classic-Medium-
| Creative-Brick/dp... which exist in any possible size,
| full of bog standard bricks. There's also a _large_ line
| of 3-in-1 sets, which have the instructions for 3
| different models, all using the same set of bricks.
| tspike wrote:
| This article is due for a refresh, but it's still relevant on
| this topic: http://www.realityprose.com/what-happened-with-
| lego/
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It feels like most Lego sets on the market have several
| major/foundational pieces which are essentially useless
| outside of the model they're built for - some huge chunk of
| molded plastic.
|
| Do you have an example of a one of those pieces?
|
| I haven't had a Lego set in decades, but I do recall feeling
| that the ratio of fiddly pieces vs "foundational" pieces
| getting out of whack towards the end of my time with them.
| When my kids get old enough I suppose I'm going to have to
| get them one of those "classic" sets, because I'm not sure
| they'll be able to get enough by just collecting regular
| sets.
| saturdaysaint wrote:
| I feel like almost any new kit I look at is composed of big
| specially-molded bricks that would seem really odd and
| difficult to find a use for if they were deconstructed in a
| big box of bricks. Maybe I'm misremembering or am being too
| harsh on the newer kits, but I feel like the Lego sets I
| grew up with in the 80's and 90's were more reusable. I had
| the sense that every Lego kit I bought was also giving me
| cool new tools to build bigger/wilder spaceships and
| trucks, whereas these just look like a nice weekend project
| with no application thereafter.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Legendary-Mountain-Awesome-
| Build...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Creator-Adventure-Building-
| Creat...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Champions-McLaren-Building-
| Piece...
| paavohtl wrote:
| All I'm seeing in these sets is mostly standard pieces,
| possibly with custom prints or stickers. The waterfall
| pieces might be entirely custom, but pretty much
| everything else is something you find in a lot of sets.
| Most things are made from small & reusable pieces like
| before, but there are just more kinds of bricks and they
| are assembled more creatively (especially in more
| expensive sets like the Creator Expert sets).
| specialist wrote:
| The older pieces fell out of copyright. So Lego
| differentiated by making new peices, to stay ahead of the
| knockoffs.
|
| At least that was my understanding in the mid-90s, when I
| worked in the toy industry.
|
| I'm still conflicted about it. Though I can't deny the
| creativity on display at any LUG or brickcon, I greatly miss
| the simplicity. I own too much Lego and I've given up trying
| to rationally organize loose peices.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| This is literally the core conflict driving the plot of the
| Lego Movie.
| airstrike wrote:
| I guess I know what I'm watching this weekend...
|
| EDIT: I see someone made a reference to 'This Island Earth'
| elsethread, so now I've got to pick one of the two
| JamesAdir wrote:
| Lego still sells basic sets that can used to build everything.
| rhplus wrote:
| > _I had to look it up: Adult Fan Of Legos._
|
| An AFOL would likely tell you that it's actually "Adult Fan Of
| _Lego_ "
| andruby wrote:
| I loved Lego as a kid. Used to build so many things without
| manuals. My brother built houses and I built a lot of vehicles.
|
| Now I've got 2 boys and I buy tons of lego's for the three of
| us. We're trying to get mom involved and bought her the
| Parisian Restaurant (10243). We still use the 20 year old
| ground plates from my childhood. You can rejuvenate most lego
| in a dishwasher (put them in a washer net)
|
| I still think it's great fun. I do focus a little more on the
| manuals then when I was younger. But most builds inevitably get
| destroyed and the bricks re-used for our ever evolving lego
| land.
|
| Pirate Roller Coaster (31084) is inexpensive if you want
| coaster parts for your DIY city.
| erulabs wrote:
| I mean, it's also an AT-AT... You know, from 1980? It's not
| just that it's not simple bricks, it's that it's still our
| generations fantasy, too.
|
| If our generation will be remembered for one thing, it will be
| our iron-fist clenched around our childhood culture. Our
| children will have toys, yes, too many to count, but they will
| be 50 year old references to things kids only see the
| regurgitation of. New stories? Bleh, give them GhostBusters 19
| in 2035, screw it.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| These kind of lego sets still exist, mostly under the "Lego
| Classic" brand. Also, many "yes we are making legos but can't
| use that name" companies exist which produce more of a playset
| instead of a model to assemble.
| nkrisc wrote:
| It's been a while, so maybe there are better ones now, but I
| never found a company that produced bricks anywhere near the
| quality that LEGO does.
|
| If anyone knows of LEGO alternatives that are high quality
| I'd love to know.
| mcphage wrote:
| I believe the current best is Mould King or Decool? At
| least for Technic sets. But check out r/lepin on Reddit and
| people will be talking about all of the alternative brick
| manufacturers, and people will say which ones are the best.
| nouveaux wrote:
| As a kid, I was given a random box of legos with no guidance. I
| wanted to make things but I couldn't. Didn't know "how". I
| quickly lost interest.
|
| As an adult, I've purchased a couple of sets and had a great
| time putting it together. Following the instructions, I can see
| more easily see how different combinations of bricks, when put
| together, makes a certain shape. I wish I had something similar
| growing up.
|
| Some kids can be given a paint brush and develop enough
| interest by themselves to become an expert. Most kids need
| guidance. Whether its a coloring book or more formal
| instruction, having concrete and achievable goals is how most
| people stay interested in learning a skill. For people who do
| not have any artistic skills, it's not realistic to ask them to
| just pick up some paint and a canvas, and just "use your
| imagination". IMO, what Legos is doing is the right thing for
| most people.
|
| For the people who can be motivated to learn in a vacuum, they
| have a valuable gift.
| flerchin wrote:
| AKA President Business.
| biztos wrote:
| When I was a kid in the 70's we would (more or less) build the
| "picture on the box" (sometimes with, sometimes without
| instructions) exactly once after getting a new Lego set, then
| liberate the bricks to never inhabit that form again.
|
| Can't imagine what the attraction is of having the same boring
| thing as everybody else.
| cout wrote:
| The kits I got in the 80s and early 90s often came with
| instructions for alternative builds. It was like they wanted
| you to know you could build things other than the picture on
| the box.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| They still do this. I have a 341-piece LEGO kit of a Space
| Shuttle on a transport truck from a couple of years ago. It
| also includes instructions for building two additional
| models that use nearly all of the pieces: a jeep with a
| camper trailer, and a flatbed truck with a helicopter
| landing pad with the helicopter. I don't think the set has
| any specialized pieces at all.
| octorian wrote:
| The designs of those kits from the 80s and 90s were also
| very flimsy and would break easily if you started to play
| with them. So really, the original build falling apart and
| becoming spare parts was almost expected.
|
| This really changed once they started including Technics
| pieces as structural parts of builds, rather than as a
| totally separate product line. Most things I've built in
| recent years are far more robust than what I built as a
| kid.
| biztos wrote:
| Can't comment on kits from after about '80 but this
| reminds me, when I was a kid my older brother would labor
| extensively to build the most elaborate and beautiful
| spaceships, while I would pack my bricks tight into a
| minimalist indestructible vessel. When the inevitable
| clash arrived, my ship almost always prevailed, though I
| usually had to run away after.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| They still have the original sets that come with guides to
| build many things out of the same set of bricks, and a box to
| put them in. These are the best ones to get kids just starting
| out.
|
| Plus the lego stores have pieces sorted in buckets like a candy
| shop, you buy a container and fill it up with whatever you
| want. I've never used it, but the website lets you choose from
| 1400 different bricks https://www.lego.com/en-
| us/page/static/pick-a-brick
|
| The Sets will sometimes have a unique piece or two, but outside
| of the mini figs it is way rarer than you might think. And as
| others pointed out if it's unique now it doesn't mean they
| won't find a way to reuse it later.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| >Now the kits seem more like models to be assembled and put on
| display and not touched rather than "a paint brush of blocks"
| where I can use my imagination.
|
| This isn't true at all. You can still buy a box full of bricks.
| You can even go online and purchase single bricks if you have a
| specific build in mind. Even the model kits are still just a
| box full of bricks--Lego abhors creating unique blocks unless
| they can be used in other sets.
|
| The reason a lot of adults gravitate toward the finished kits
| is the same reason adults stop picking up cool sticks outside:
| We just lose our imagination.
| spicybright wrote:
| Everything you said is very true.
|
| ANY Lego set you buy lets you arrange the bricks how you
| want. If you want different parts you can buy different sets.
|
| Why are people saying Lego should be responsible for this?
| Take your model and drop it on the floor. Start building.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| > Lego abhors creating unique blocks unless they can be used
| in other sets.
|
| Its always my favorite thing to see how some of the semi-
| unique pieces get re-used. I put together Anakin's Podracer
| recently and part of the decorative elements on the engine
| part were the Lego LOTR Orc Swords!
| mcphage wrote:
| I purchased the Spring Lantern Festival earlier this year,
| and the decorations on the corners of the pagoda are blue
| bananas :-)
|
| And the lightposts used paint rollers as part of their
| design.
| abbub wrote:
| I think the fins on the back of a batmobile set I have are
| from a dragon in one of the 'castle' sets...
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Or the original blasters in the Star Wars sets that were
| backwards megaphones with a piece on the end.
| GLGirty wrote:
| bullwhip + lightsabre hilt = ghostbuster proton wand
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| I have discovered a way to reverse that effect of aging, but
| it's painfully expensive: I have a son in my fifties. It has
| rejuvenated my sense of play.
| kzzzznot wrote:
| I have recently been enthusiastically playing with my
| daughter and her Duplo sets (Lego for younger children,
| basically just larger blocks). Now eyeing up various adult
| sets for myself...
| dave78 wrote:
| > Even the model kits are still just a box full of bricks--
| Lego abhors creating unique blocks unless they can be used in
| other sets.
|
| I've heard this again and again, and I believe it used to be
| true. But is it still really the case? My daughters have been
| gifted a number of Lego sets in the past few years that are
| simply full of very one-off looking pieces that are hard to
| use for much else, with very few standard bricks.
|
| I don't doubt that the molds can be repurposed for some other
| sets potentially, but as an example look at this set that we
| have and see if you really think it's "just a box full of
| bricks".
|
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/anna-elsa-s-frozen-
| playgr...
|
| What bugs me about sets like that is there's very little
| ability to build something completely different with it,
| which to me is what Lego used to be about. The most fun I had
| as a kid (and what my kids seem to enjoy most) is just
| building random things from a pile of bricks (which is why I
| buy them the generic brick packs rather than the sets like
| above).
| [deleted]
| cout wrote:
| I don't see any specialty pieces in there that I would be
| unable to use in another build. The problem is that the
| ratio of specialty pieces to generic pieces is too high;
| you would need a lot of generic rectangular bricks to build
| anything substantially different from what's in the
| picture.
|
| I wonder how much the ratio of specialty to generic pieces
| differs between the lego junior sets like the one you
| linked vs sets intended for older children.
| pavon wrote:
| The counter argument to this are the Creator 3-in-1 sets.
| The whole point of these sets is to take apart and rebuild
| something different, teaching by example the different
| things you can do. These didn't even exist when we were
| kids (first released 2003). I remember some of my old sets
| having supplemental build instructions, but I also recall
| them never being as interesting as the main build, which
| isn't true with these 3-in-1's. Plain buckets are also
| still sold. Both of these are on the shelves of Target and
| Walmart, and are often featured as Christmas gifts at
| places that just stock them seasonally, like Costco. Lego
| has just as many of these sort of sets as it always has, if
| not more.
|
| First off I don't think the existence of large, expensive
| adult-targeted "display model" kits doesn't really detract
| from what is happening in the kids sets.
|
| On the kids sets, Lego is doing a lot more licensed sets
| than in the past, and these inevitably have more custom
| pieces. But I think adults really over-estimate the
| negative impact this has on reuse and creativity. The first
| thing the kid in me thinks when I see that kit you listed
| is "How can I build a ramp at the end of that slide?" "How
| can I extend the slide at the top to make them go faster?".
| Sometimes pieces having having a purpose can prompt ideas
| and creativity. Sure those big ice blocks will only every
| be used for ice/glass, but there are lots of things you can
| build with ice/glass especially when playing with Frozen
| characters. Many of the custom pieces in licensed sets are
| just flourishes (like that snowflake or ice-flame) which
| are fun things you can add to your model, and 80-90's kits
| definitely had those as well. I think the biggest obstacle
| to reuse on that kit is just that it is a small kit - it
| really needs to be combined with other kits do do
| interesting things (and for which reason I don't think they
| should have included those large ice blocks in _this_
| particular kit, as that just exacerbates that problem -
| they would be fine in a larger kit). And again, I remember
| getting bored with small kits received as a kid after a few
| days of play (visiting grandparents), and looking forward
| to getting home and combining some of the cool new pieces
| with the Legos I already had.
|
| In other words, the licensed kits are the equivalent of the
| castle and pirate kits we had as kids, with the exact same
| complaints. I think those complaints were overblown then
| and they still are now.
| ttmb wrote:
| There are only a few pieces in that set that don't appear
| in hundreds of other sets:
|
| The baseplate is custom and the most egregious example of
| what you are talking about, of course. The slope at the
| front with the swirl on it is also custom. There's a round
| tile with a snowflake on it, that appears in two other
| sets. The giant snowflake on top, about two dozen other
| winter-themed sets. The slide also appears in only a couple
| of dozen pieces, but this basically all pieces that include
| a playground or similar. The slide is functional for play
| so it can't be trivially made of smaller pieces without
| compromising that. There also an ornamental swirly
| translucent smoke-like piece that only appears in a handful
| of sets, again, all winter themed.
|
| That's it, the rest of the pieces in the kit appear in
| literally hundreds of other sets.
| dave78 wrote:
| It's not so much about whether the pieces are used in
| other sets - of course Lego is going to want to build
| molds and use them in multiple sets, dedicating a mold
| for just this set would not be smart.
|
| I think my concern is more nuanced - if you're a kid and
| you _only_ get sets like this one, when you get past the
| "let's build what's on the box" stage and they end up as
| just a pile of bricks, the number of more generically-
| useful pieces is low compared to all the specialty
| pieces. I think in an ideal situation, you have lots of
| generic pieces and a selection of custom (like the
| typewriter mentioned in another post), but these sets
| seem to be the opposite with lots of quirky custom pieces
| and few generic pieces good for general building.
|
| I'm sure as another poster pointed out that this is a
| result of "gift-priced" sets, and trying to have
| something impressive while keeping the part count low.
| And for my kids it doesn't matter as I've bought them
| plenty of "just a bunch of brick" sets to go with all
| these specialty parts. But if you're a kid whose parents
| aren't willing to drop a lot of $$$ on Lego (which have
| always been on the pricey side), then you're more likely
| to end up with a collection made only from the $10-25
| kits with an over-emphasis on specialty pieces.
|
| When I was a kid (in the 80s), I remember getting lots of
| Lego sets along these lines:
|
| https://brickset.com/sets/6375-2/Exxon-Gas-Station
|
| Notice the cars - they are very blocky and do not look
| much like real cars because they're almost entirely made
| out of generic bricks. The gas pumps and roof and such
| are mostly just regular pieces, possibly with stickers or
| screen-printing. Compare it to something like this:
|
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/fire-rescue-police-
| chase-...
|
| Yes, there's still generic pieces in there, but my eye
| sees a lot more specialty pieces like the hoods, car
| roofs, fenders, motorcycle, etc. IMHO, the 80s set offers
| more potential for rebuilding into other things, but
| maybe I'm wrong and it is just nostalgia or something
| like that.
| wirthjason wrote:
| I had that gas station!
|
| I agree with you on the blocky -ness of the cars. I
| wonder how the distribution of sizes changed. As the
| complexity of the design goes up you need different
| distribution of sizes, smaller for more detail and larger
| for bigger structures. I always had a good balance of
| blocks, never too many of one size and never running out
| of others.
| kergonath wrote:
| My parents used to say exactly that circa 1990, and yet I
| managed (to build my own designs without instructions).
| Now, I definitely agree that there are more sophisticated
| bricks than there used to be, but my daughter manages as
| well. I think it's just different.
|
| In your example, the ice-looking things can be repurposed.
| The slide could be anything from an emergency exit from a
| secret lair to a thing for kids to play on a beach. Plenty
| of stories if you think a little. The snow flake could be a
| sign for an ice cream shop or anything decorative in a
| fancy home, or an exotic rock on another planet. The other
| bricks look fairly standard. I'm pleased that the chest
| hasn't changed, I quite liked it ~30 years ago.
| shagmin wrote:
| I believe it's true for some sets more than others. In my
| experience any sets with Disney on them or sets based on
| partnerships with other brands are the worst for this
| however.
| OskarS wrote:
| I just bought and built the relatively recent Lego
| typewriter set [1], and I had this exact same question: how
| much of it was going to be purpose built, and how much
| would be just generic pieces. The answer is: almost all
| pieces are just regular Lego pieces.
|
| A small number of components (the curved edge just above
| the keyboard, for instance, or the roller handle) seemed
| purpose-made for this model, but, like 99% of the pieces
| were totally generic. And this is in a set with more than
| 2000 pieces with lots of very intricate mechanics (there's
| a roller, a carriage, air pistons, and a ratchet/escapement
| mechanism that moves the carriage), but virtually all of it
| was made up of standard bricks, rods, connectors and
| generic components. I was super impressed. Even the keys
| are just Lego disks with stickers on them. The spacebar is
| just regular Lego with a smooth surface.
|
| I feel like people have been making this complaint against
| Lego forever, and it's always "when I was kid, we just got
| a box of bricks and let our creativity take over!". The
| harsh truth is that Lego didn't change. We just grew up.
|
| [1]: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/typewriter-21327
| Zachery wrote:
| Lego very very rarely will design a new element for a
| set, let alone a Ideas/Creator set. For a new part, its
| in the neighborhood of 300-500k for a new injection mold
| for a single new piece. That's not going to happen for
| most one off sets. Sometimes sets do get designed with
| new pieces in mind, or when they really have a
| shortcoming. But I don't see anything obvious in the
| typewriter set that is purpose built.
|
| Reviewing the bricklink entry for the typewriter, the
| only noticeable new items are the painted key tiles for
| the typwriter. Painting is a great way to give new life
| to old tiles. I see some new color options as well, but
| nothing "new"
|
| https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=2
| 132...
| OskarS wrote:
| You're right, I misremembered: the keys didn't use
| stickers, they were painted on. But as you say, they were
| standard Lego pieces, just painted.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| For good creative play, they have to limit the diversity
| of pieces and colours within a single theme. Different
| sets from the same theme need to have similar pieces in
| the same colour scheme so they can co-exist nicely. Take
| these 3 sets from the classic 1990s Pirates, for example:
|
| 6259 "Broadside's Brig"
| https://brickset.com/sets/6259-1/Broadside-s-Brig
|
| 6267 "Lagoon Lock-up"
| https://brickset.com/sets/6267-1/Lagoon-Lock-Up
|
| 6265 "Sabre Island"
| https://brickset.com/sets/6265-1/Sabre-Island
|
| Combining these 3 on a big baseplate can give you
| something completely new and interesting that still
| belongs to the Pirate theme. The bulk of the parts are
| white and yellow-coloured bricks for walls and
| architectural elements.
| Zachery wrote:
| Was this reply meant for me? I agree overall!
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I only see two bricks in there that I don't recognize from
| when I was a child. Three if you count the bear, but there
| have always been animals that aren't actually part of
| building anything. Yeah, that particular set would be
| difficult to build anything else with, but not because the
| pieces are unique, there just aren't that many. It's a
| cheap set, there have always been cheap sets that you can
| only really build one thing with.
| tspike wrote:
| That you're unable to find uses for those pieces speaks to
| a lack of creativity, ironically :)
|
| Check this out: https://www.newelementary.com/2017/10/pdc-
| parts-festival-day...
| xahrepap wrote:
| I find this to be more true in "gift-priced" sets. ~$25 and
| less.
|
| But once you hit the ~$30+ sets, you see more and more
| creativity with the generic pieces. I would assume that the
| cheaper sets need to look good but have fewer pieces, so
| they reach for bigger pieces to fill in the gaps.
|
| $100+ sets are mind-blowing in how fun they are to assemble
| and to see the level of creativity the designer(s) used to
| create the set. I got the recently released Mario question
| block cube. And I can't get over how fun it was to
| assemble.
|
| I think the summary is: to really get to the "reusablility"
| there's a tipping point in those price ranges I listed
| above. If you buy a bunch of little sets or one big set,
| you'll hit that point.
| thrower123 wrote:
| This is a textbook example of the widespread
| "juniorization" issue Lego had for a while 15-20 years ago.
| You'd get a Town car set, and it would have about 17
| pieces, because the entire chassis would be one piece. You
| have linked a set explicitly in their Junior product
| offerings, bridging between Duplo and real Legos.
|
| I think things have actually swung too far in the other
| direction now with their main-line sets. As much as 25% of
| the part count typically consists of tiny 1x1 or 2x1 plates
| and tiles, or 1x1 cheese wedges. There are often many cases
| where they will use more smaller bricks rather than a more
| structurally-sound brick - 1x3 bricks and the corner
| L-shaped bricks in particular.
| robbyking wrote:
| Absolutely! I wasn't into building with Lego growing up, but
| my 5yo is and we often go to an aftermarket Lego store to buy
| bricks in bulk that aren't part of a specific kit.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Can't be taken apart easily. A lot of my old lego pieces have
| bite barks on them because the fit was too tight regardless of
| best practice. Apart from the Lego Brick separator, wasn't there
| instructions for unmating a bunch of common stubborn connections?
| Maybe they need better tools to cater to more flexibility. A set
| of ifixit/legoit shims and picks perhaps.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I honestly don't understand this article.
|
| Why exactly can't the parts shown be taken apart by reversing the
| action?
|
| Could someone explain it for someone who have never played Lego
| other than simple bricks.
| Karliss wrote:
| Imagine a nail without head that has been fully hit into a
| piece of wood. Reversing the action doesn't pull the nail out
| unless you weld the hammer to the end of nail. It can't be
| pulled out either because there is nothing sticking out from
| surface and can't be pushed from other side because it's
| blocked.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Ah, thanks! Now I finally get it.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The dark grey 4l flush end axel sits flush with the rectangular
| block when properly inserted so it's not possible to get a grip
| strong enough to pull it out of the grey piece and the light
| grey piece the red pin goes into has a wall in the middle so
| you can't push it out through that end. It's impossible to take
| out non-destructively.
| hk1337 wrote:
| I think they're expecting for it to _easily_ be taken apart but
| a lot of things they mentioned would require special tools and
| risk damaging the parts. Honestly, though, that 's part of
| engineering, you're going to break things to figure out what
| works and doesn't work.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Until now Lego had been careful to not produce this kind of
| configuration where destructive disassembly was required
| which is an interesting shift in their design philosophy
| (assuming it's not just this slipping through the cracks of
| course).
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| Just use superglue, and you wont be able to take apart any parts.
| anarchy8 wrote:
| The article title made it sound like it was intentional on their
| part, and not a design flaw.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I assumed this was going to be an Apple brand deal.
| jzawodn wrote:
| I'm sure there's a critical flaw that was designed in, waiting to
| be discovered by the Rebel Forces.
| authed wrote:
| I'm currently printing a 3D puzzle that probably won't be able to
| be taken apart (I think I made the gaps a bit too small, but
| we'll see).
|
| But it makes business sense for Legos to do that (short term)...
| it is basically single-use and discard Legos.
| r00fus wrote:
| Lord Business has advanced his operations to placing moles in
| Lego design team, I see.
| V__ wrote:
| Lego is really a shadow of what it once was. Brand partnerships
| seem more important than the quality and fun/playability of the
| products. It's becoming more and more a collectors toy rather
| than something for kids to play with.
| dagw wrote:
| More charitably, those brand partnerships and $700 collector
| sets is the thing that let them avoid bankruptcy, become
| profitable, and still be able to also sell toys for kids to
| play with.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I've always considered the $700 collector sets to not be
| toys. They're models that will be built and put on display
| rather than played with, and will never be torn down to be
| added to the big bucket of Legos.
| [deleted]
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I don't agree with that. The lego sets of the last few years
| were the best I ever built. They have increased tremendously in
| quality of the build steps and manuals.
| fpgaminer wrote:
| The modern LEGO landscape is the best it's ever been, IMO. The
| Saturn V set is absolutely incredible, and for a kid the manual
| comes with a wealth of knowledge about the early space program.
|
| The NES set has a TV with a moving Mario level. A _moving_
| Mario level. It's insane. My mind is blown as an adult; I can't
| imagine what child me would have done with that engineering
| knowledge.
|
| I haven't built the piano nor the typewriter yet, but from what
| I've seen they are similarly impressive sets.
| MattRix wrote:
| Sets like this are clearly designed for adult collectors, but
| they they still have lots of fun kits for kids. I'd argue that
| some branded sets like the Mario series are more interesting
| and fun than almost any sets from the past (other than technic
| and mindstorms).
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Nonsense - there is no reason they can't provide display type
| models for people who enjoy building them to showcase (Like
| Airfix models for instance), whilst still providing the
| standard build-destroy-change cycle of products.
|
| My kids are getting into Lego currently, and the quality is
| just as good as it has been. My Lego works perfectly with their
| Lego, and is just as fun!
|
| My wife has been buying the Harry Potter Lego, because she
| likes to build them and display them, whilst I like to dig out
| old instructions and build old stuff with the kids, which they
| can change and tweak.
|
| Swings and roundabouts etc
| bluetomcat wrote:
| The present core "child themes" (City, Ninjago, Creator) are
| a far cry from the golden era during the 1990s (Castle,
| Pirates, Space). Back then, most bigger sets had baseplates
| (flat or 3D), the latter primarily used with castles and
| fortresses. You could easily combine sets from the same theme
| from different years and build something completely new which
| feels like a new set from the same theme. The variety of
| parts and colours wasn't so huge.
|
| With a modern theme like Ninjago, most of the sets are some
| imaginary vehicles with very specific parts and colours. You
| could probably build a new vehicle from the same set, but
| combining different sets is much less enjoyable. The few sets
| with buildings have no baseplates and the structures feel
| very airy and unharmonic.
| [deleted]
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| This appears to be unintentional, but it does remind me a bit of
| the somewhat recent trend of "Legacy" board games, where you make
| permanent changes to core pieces, like putting stickers on the
| game board or tearing up cards.
|
| That's interesting to me, because "replayability" has always been
| one of the core considerations in game design, but with a Legacy
| product, locked-in choices and permanent consequences are one of
| the selling points.
| Kinrany wrote:
| Interestingly enough, it might actually be good for
| replayability because the guaranteed absence of a card can
| change the optimal strategy in otherwise exactly the same
| situation.
|
| You could also design the game so that the destroyed cards are
| intended to be replaced with new editions.
| Kinrany wrote:
| Of course instead of destroying the cards you can always
| rotate them back into the replacement deck.
| fho wrote:
| Its a compromise between replayability and the feeling of
| achievement that you get from a long running campaign game.
|
| I feel like those are on opposing ends of a spectrum: one the
| one end you have games like chess, go or even Magic the
| Gathering that are infinitely replayable but have little to no
| story.
|
| On the other end you have story driven games (Gloomhaven or
| even Descent) that can be played only once because the second
| time through does not offer too much new content.
|
| Somewhat tangential to that are roleplaying and wargame
| campaigns where new "content" is introduced constantly by the
| GM or, even better, as a consequence of player interactions.
|
| I feel like there is still some niche for some kind of game
| that randomly/procedurally generates new content (maps, stats,
| scenarios) each week that players then print out and use for a
| session.
|
| [/rambling ... it's time for the weekend]
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| One thing that gives me comfort when looking at "Legacy" games
| is they are upfront about the lack of replayability. I don't
| feel deceived going into it.
|
| With Lego, my expectation is to be able to take things apart,
| build Model B or create something new. This breaks the design
| principle and doesn't do a good job of advertising it's going
| to do so.
| usefulcat wrote:
| It gives customers a possible incentive to buy multiple copies
| of the game.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| I thought that was the ploy the first time I heard about
| legacy games, too. But these things cost more than a hundred
| bucks, and typically offer 40+ hours of play. I don't think
| they're expecting many repeat buyers.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Although as you point out the "replayability" is not the main
| selling point of the Legacy games, but with many of them you
| can still replay it like a "normal" board game once you reach
| the end of the campaign. And you end up with a game that is
| uniquely yours. I know in Risk Legacy this is possible.
|
| There is a really cool Legacy-type game as well (I'm struggling
| to remember the name, Arcana I think?) where in the Legacy
| version you basically go through a campaign and develop a
| character that you can then use as another character to play as
| in the base game.
| losvedir wrote:
| I played a legacy game with a group of friends and loved it. We
| got together every week at the same time for about 15 weeks (I
| forget exactly). Each week, the core mechanics were similar,
| but the board changed and there were new goals and such.
|
| You put "replayability" in contrast to "legacy" but honestly we
| played that game more times (15) than a lot of traditional
| board games.
| savanaly wrote:
| >You put "replayability" in contrast to "legacy" but honestly
| we played that game more times (15) than a lot of traditional
| board games.
|
| You hit the nail on the head. The unfortunate truth is the
| vast majority of board games get played <5 times, often no
| more than once or even zero times! There's a long tail of
| games that get played way more than 5 times but the median
| has got to be down there. So the legacy games are less
| radical than they appear. If they're replacing one of those
| games in the very large bucket of quickly dropped games then
| they have no downside in terms of loss of replayability. And
| as you said, they incentivize replayability for my groups at
| least by essentially forcing someone to say "ok, when are we
| gonna play again?" because a lot of their value prop comes
| from the continuity.
| smilekzs wrote:
| I would even go one step further and suggest the title be
| editorialized with the word "unintentionally" added.
| afterburner wrote:
| These days it's common for people into board games to only play
| a game 4 or 5 times, maybe even less, and move on to the new
| shiny. It's part of the reason there's so many new board games
| these days (chicken and the egg effect between buyers and
| publishers).
|
| In that environment, it's probably a lot more acceptable to
| sell a game that a group will "only" play 15-20 times until the
| campaign is completed.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| That's something that came out of MMOs, by my read.
|
| Impermanence is a tonic to cure obsession.
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| Can you give an example of what you mean?
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| Pandemic Legacy is probably the best known, and I think
| there's a version of Gloomhaven that is massive, but also
| single-play.
| dgritsko wrote:
| Risk Legacy is another fun one, although it also suffers
| from the same "permanent changes" issue (feature?)
| described above.
| iams wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0dDTbA1fq8
|
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/161936/pandemic-
| legacy-s...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Pandemic-Cooperative-Playtime-Z-
| Man-G...
| 0x138d5 wrote:
| Here's the wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_game
| evilotto wrote:
| There are some other games, like escape rooms in a box, where
| some of the puzzles encourage you to cut up the rulebook or
| things like that. On the one hand it hurts replayablity, but
| those sorts of games have next to no replayability to begin
| with. Once you solve the puzzle, there's not much left.
|
| On one level it bothers me because you should be able to replay
| stuff, but at the same time it's the experience rather than the
| game board and there's a lot of ways to spend more than 10
| bucks on an hour's entertainment.
| eloisius wrote:
| This site is so thick with ads that I cannot stand to read it on
| my phone. I made it through a paragraph several times and weird
| reload-like stuff keeps happing, making me lose my place so that
| the obnoxious video ad stuck to the top of the viewport can
| replay. And that's after solving two captcha challenges to find
| all the busses. The internet is terrible now.
| cnokleberg wrote:
| FWIW if you create an account all of the ads go away.
| sh1mmer wrote:
| iOS Safari now support "content blocker" extensions which means
| you can download 3rd party blockers (such as Firefox Focus).
|
| It's pretty non-obvious feature until you know about it.
| quartz wrote:
| The site more or less emulates a memory leak for me in chrome.
| Have had it open for 2 minutes and I'm at 1gb ram and a
| constant 15% CPU use for the tab... ram use is continuing to
| grow and in the time it has taken me to write this comment the
| tab has become unresponsive.
| pwg wrote:
| Reading with javascript off (UBlock Origion in default deny all
| JS) resulted in zero ad, and the ability to read the full
| article without interruption.
| eloisius wrote:
| Not worth it to me. I was casually curious, but not curious
| enough to work around the fact that they've made their
| content almost inaccessible.
| soco wrote:
| That's fine, but please do install UBlock Origin in any
| case. Future you will be thankful.
| eloisius wrote:
| Of course I do on my laptop, but I've never really tried
| to improve the situation on my phone aside from
| installing AdGuard a long time ago. I just installed
| AdBlock and enabled every filter. Checked this site and
| the ads are gone! Thanks for the push.
| alickz wrote:
| While we're suggesting QoL extensions I would highly
| recommend both PrivacyBadger by the EFF (for blocking 3rd
| party trackers) and SponsorBlock for YouTube (mark and
| optionally auto-skip all the annoying sponsor / intro /
| self-promotion)
|
| SponsorBlock is also available for YouTube Vanced on
| Android and I couldn't recommend it enough.
| afterburner wrote:
| Firefox mobile allows addons, including uBlock origin
| (and Dark Reader!)
| criddell wrote:
| You should install a blocker for security reasons.
| moron4hire wrote:
| The ads placed _inside_ user comments, as if they are content
| the user included in their message themselves, is particularly
| obnoxious.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Brickset is impossible on mobile unless you have uBlock or
| aggressive content blockers. You expect a punch-the-monkey
| popup like it's 1999.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Pi-hole, my brotha
| yoursunny wrote:
| iOS Safari is crashing, 30 seconds after opening the article,
| every time.
| amelius wrote:
| You don't own your Legos, Lego does.
| [deleted]
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Is it possible they've created a new device to separate them,
| similar to the existing brick separator?
| khazhoux wrote:
| So to summarize, this is a 6785-piece set, and if you decide to
| break it down after hours and hours assembly, you'll be left with
| a couple of pieces that can't be separated. Outrage!
| bombcar wrote:
| The classic presentation on these is Stressing the Elements by
| Jamie Berard:
|
| http://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress-bf06.pd...
|
| However, illegal setups have slipped through in the past.
| vlunkr wrote:
| It's amazing that people can look at that model and think that
| lego has gone downhill. This is one obscure flaw.
| julianozen wrote:
| Seems like an apple Lego set
| IiydAbITMvJkqKf wrote:
| I have a Cobi ship at home. It's for all practical purposes
| impossible to take apart without specialized tools. The
| construction of Cobi bricks is such that if when you stick two
| bricks together, they _will_ stick together, whether you want
| them to or not.
|
| It's an absurdly robust model.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Lego can't survive on patents forever. They make money by:
| - being a known brand, - having a good reputation,
| - superb quality of its parts and - exclusive sets.
|
| Lego became a toy company that explore Hollywood franchises fans.
| The possibility of assembling and disassembling anything is a
| smaller value-added today.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Yeah they are probably counting on the fact that this is a
| Ultimate Collector Series aimed at Adult Fans Of Lego designed
| to be a display piece not a playset that gets taken apart and
| remixed into your pool of Lego pieces. It is a new thing though
| that is interesting given how long they went before making a
| set that was this hard to fully disassemble. Till now every set
| could come apart and besides stickers parts were fully generic
| and didn't get stuck together permanently. [0]
|
| [0] Except for things you need the brick separators to fix,
| those configurations have always existed. I have noticed
| there's more of those being called for in sets lately. eg: 2x
| 2x1 flat plates together, it's very hard to impossible to
| separate those without tools.
| adolph wrote:
| Probably Lego needs to add something like these to the orange
| tool:
|
| https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/Precision-Screw-Extractor...
| avalys wrote:
| This is a borderline inaccurate headline. This is an incidental
| characteristic of one tiny subassembly in a much larger model.
| The headline leads one to believe the entire set can't be
| disassembled at all and that Lego deliberately designed it that
| way, perhaps for nefarious corporate purposes.
| miahi wrote:
| I remember encountering something similar in the Lamborghini Sian
| kit - I think around one of the diffs; I left the axle a bit
| loose just in case, and that was good, because of course I
| mounted the diff the other way around and had to take it apart.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Lego is a display-piece company now; like a plastic model but no
| glue required.
| 83457 wrote:
| There are two types of people in this world. Lego shelf and
| Lego bucket.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| There is a less common hybrid third type: design a model in
| bricklink studio then buy individual bricks to build it, then
| shelve it.
| kortex wrote:
| I bemoan having gone from being a bucket person, to shelf
| person, to not even playing with Legos anymore person.
| Adulthood kinda has a way of doing that.
|
| My friend and I wanted to start a Beer, Brats, and Bricks
| night, but right when that was gonna materialize, the plague
| struct. I should hit them back up. I still have buckets on
| buckets.
| wirthjason wrote:
| Sounds like a great time! From the brats comment I'm
| guessing you're in Wisconsin or may Chicago.
| kortex wrote:
| Upstate NY, like Albany ish. We have bratwurst here.
| Actually being at the nexus of historic Dutch, German,
| Polish, and Italian immigrant populations, we have quite
| the selection of tasty cured pork products.
|
| Sindoni Italian sausage is world-class. Aldi has a good
| selection of brats. And my family is from Western NY so
| we get Salen's hotdogs occasionally. I forget the name
| but there's a really good kielbasa at the grocery too.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Brats being children or hotdog sausages [Bratwurste]? (Or
| brothers [in Anglicised Russian]?)
|
| Either sounds good.
| kortex wrote:
| I meant sausages, but I guess both, it's a double
| entendre :p Grilling and also we would involve his young
| son who is a big Lego fanatic.
|
| He doesn't get to sample the beer, of course.
| ragebol wrote:
| And then there's closely related Venn diagram of any-color-
| will-work-lego-house people vs. single-color-walls people
|
| EDIT: the current two child comments are of parts in that
| diagram, great. No judgement, I just wonder what type my son
| is going to be :-)
| teekert wrote:
| Haha, didn't even realize the second kind existed until I
| watched my wife build from the big bucket with my son, I
| was like "What is THIS?"
| ethbr0 wrote:
| That's the core beauty of Lego, I think. There are _so_
| many meta games one can decide to play with a single
| bucket, and at least one caters to pretty much everyone
| under the sun.
|
| And then you get amazing synergies when people who play
| differently combine their efforts.
|
| Which is one of the reasons I'll admit I cried during the
| first Lego movie ending. They nailed that aspect.
| ragebol wrote:
| Saw the 1st Lego movie on a plane once, did not expect to
| tear up. Spaceship!
| teekert wrote:
| Ok now I need to see that movie.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I saw it on a plane, and IMHO it was way better than it
| needed to be.
|
| Tip: Just kind of relax into the goofiness and have fun,
| but make sure you watch the entire movie if you start
| criddell wrote:
| I never understood the any-color-will-work people. When you
| were a kid and were painting something, did you cover all
| surfaces do random blotches of color?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Bad analogy: If you dipped your brush in the pot and it
| came out a random one of a small selection of colours,
| would you wash it off until you got the "right" colour
| when the only requirement was to put paint on the paper?
| criddell wrote:
| Do you build with lego by picking random pieces and
| sticking them together? If you are choosing the next
| piece by shape, why not add color to the selection
| criteria?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Not random, but functional equivalence is fine.
| criddell wrote:
| I always cared about how it looked too.
| pavon wrote:
| I know! I remember as a child spending forever digging
| through the Lego pile looking for the right color. I had
| to reluctantly teach myself that it was okay to build
| with any color first and then go back and swap out with
| matching colors afterwards once I was happy with my
| design.
| cout wrote:
| Think of it like dithering. Not all of us could afford
| full 24 bit color displays and had to make do with 256 or
| 16 colors or 8 colors instead. Sometimes the right color
| brick isn't there and it's better to have the odd colors
| spread throughout the whole thing than one brick that's
| off.
| criddell wrote:
| I lived near a Samsonite factory (they manufactured Lego
| in Canada) and my bricks were purchased in giant shopping
| bags. They were all seconds which means some parts had
| color problems, some were a bit melted, some were
| cracked, etc... Mostly they were fine and I had a _lot_
| of bricks.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Do the "Lego bucket" people buy $500+ kits? Do the "Lego
| shelf" people ever disassemble the $500+ kits?
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Do the "Lego shelf" people ever disassemble the $500+
| kits?
|
| I've turned into a Lego Shelf person. I like to buy the
| architecture kits. I put them on the shelf in my office,
| but every so often when I get frustrated and no one is
| watching I will take one and smash it to bits on the floor
| like a child. It's great because it lets me vent, and it
| gives my future self the gift of building a Lego set.
| Really, it's an act of self-care.
| MivLives wrote:
| They'll be disassembled when they want to resell the kit.
| BongoMcCat wrote:
| If the 500+ price kit is a huge bucket of random pieces,
| then I guess the bucket people would. =)
| samastur wrote:
| I disassemble some of mine. I'm a Lego shelf person because
| I actually like the intricate designs and attention to
| detail of modern Lego sets AND because I don't have enough
| free time to be a bucket person in a way that would be
| satisfying to me as an adult. I think I'm pass making
| approximate version of my ideas and using them as toys.
|
| I've never sold a kit and I don't intend to ever do it.
| tejohnso wrote:
| I appreciate the construction process of an intricate shelf
| piece, but I wish I had the creativity of a bucketeer.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I think there's a reason bucketeers skew younger:
| imagination is replaced by knowledge as we age.
|
| We look at a pile of bricks and see whatever it's supposed
| to be.
|
| An 8 year old looks at it and sees whatever pops into their
| head.
| genewitch wrote:
| They've always had both types of blocks, the custom stuff and
| the standard array.
|
| If you're in stores often you catch the 50 piece standard piece
| sets for $10 or whatever. Lego stuff lasts generations.
| grassgreener wrote:
| Why would you say that? (Honest question)
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| There's been a marked increase in custom bricks for a
| perfected, rendered look on newer models. That does make
| shelf builds look more like actual miniature models of the
| thing being built, but it makes the parts more difficult to
| use in creative builds, and makes it much more difficult to
| add a creative flair to a shelf build in a cohesive way.
|
| My son is 5, and recently graduated from Duplos to classic
| Legos, he started with this set:
|
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-medium-creative-
| bric...
|
| It's basically a box of hundreds of colorful plates and
| bricks. There are a few wheels and eyes, too, but it's mostly
| just bricks. We make bulldozers and airplanes and robots and
| houses and all manner of things! Yes, there are studs instead
| of smooth tiles on top of the engine compartment, and yes,
| there are about 7 shades of yellow, cream, and orange making
| up the dozer, and no, the tracks aren't functional, but it
| slides fine. Mom might need to ask to know that the pink 1x1
| brick sticking out the top is the bulldozer's TURBO BOOSTER
| MODE BUTTON, or she might guess that because she knows our
| son.
|
| He's received a few sets once we let family and friends know
| that he's using legos now. He got this Ninjago set:
|
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/tournament-of-
| elements-71...
|
| which focuses the design on a bunch of stickers and printed
| parts and custom weapons made to look like a show he's never
| seen. He does love all the little Lego people, they have fun
| adventures, but he built it once, took it apart, and now most
| of the parts end up in the bottom of the brick box unused.
| Another typical one is this monster truck:
|
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/monster-truck-31101
|
| https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/set/assets/bltd6f7b204e1e11893/3.
| ..
|
| Kudos to Lego for the cool Technik functional rubber
| suspension design, my son loves that and has rebuilt it on
| other vehicles! And kudos for the 3-in-1 design that reuses a
| lot of the custom pieces for a truck, a dragster, and a small
| car. But look at all the rounded tiles and cheese wedges and
| smooth surfaces. It's possible to build things that aren't
| one of the intended three things, but it takes a lot more
| planning. Like the random horns and staffs from the Ninjago
| set, he doesn't use these studless tiles much either. You
| can't click anything into the bed of the truck; it's supposed
| to be a truck, what's up with that! There's almost nowhere to
| put a pink turbo booster mode button at all.
|
| The truck looks like a plastic model. Anything built with the
| creative brick box has studs all over and looks like a pile
| of Legos begging to have something added to it or to be
| rebuilt into something else.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| My youngest (7) has watched Ninjago, but if he got a
| Ninjago set, I'm 100% sure he would build it once according
| to the instructions, then after a little while, take it
| apart and incorporate all of the pieces into a new creation
| from the bucket. It's his original creations that end up
| being displayed on a shelf.
| thrower123 wrote:
| These Creator Expert models certainly are.
|
| I'm not the greatest fan of the explosion in use of small tiles
| and cheese wedges in recent years. It's kind of like AAA
| videogames that have a billion vertices but are empty
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's two major categories of Lego sets IMO display pieces
| (the UCS or Creator Expert series) and playsets. They still
| very much make the second type of set for their younger
| audience but they realize adult fans wanted more intricate sets
| so gave them that. I think it's interesting they finally made
| this kind of hard/impossible to disassemble configuration a
| part of their build but I don't think it's a big knock against
| them. They know these UCS sets largely get assembled then sit
| assembled until they go into storage or get moved/sold, so it's
| not really a big issue imo.
| georgercarder wrote:
| LEGO has created a truly immutable blockchain.
| bflesch wrote:
| There is a Frankfurt-based toy store owner who has been very
| vocal on Youtube about the quality and value problems in recent
| Lego sets. Lego has sued him multiple times but Streisand effect
| set in and he has gained a large audience.
|
| If anybody who understands German langauge is up for some great
| irony from a charismatic toy professional on this topic, you
| should have a look.
|
| WARNING: You will waste some hours on this..
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9OKWm_x2RI&t=1504s
| mosselman wrote:
| I should have heeded the warning. I wasted too much time
| already. Very fun to see someone go off on a Lego set like
| this. Rightly so I must add.
| bschne wrote:
| Wait, is that what that set is supposed to look like? The
| cacophony of colors makes it look almost like it was built from
| a random bin of parts lying around.
| drainyard wrote:
| They do that to make it easier to find the bricks, make it
| more interesting to look at while building and because they
| likely produce more bricks in those basic colors (last one
| may be outdated).
| meibo wrote:
| Yes, this is common in modern sets. Quite a few have the
| color puke shining through, even if it's fully assembled,
| which is a common complaint.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| This youtube guy had me at "Die saufen Lack, ich kanns mir
| nicht anders erklaren".
| Semaphor wrote:
| "Lack saufen", or "chugging varnish" is a common German
| (internet?) saying for people who are just crazy.
| tremon wrote:
| The closest English equivalent then might be sniffing glue
| (intentional) or maybe huffing paint (unintentional)?
| [deleted]
| slightwinder wrote:
| That guy is kinda entertaining, but you shouldn't take him too
| serious. His complaints are often not much fact-based and very
| one-sided. He is quite infamous for this. And let's not start
| talking about his political rants...
|
| If you really care about the little bricks, you should also
| watch other channels to get a more rounded picture.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's a bad time to cut quality. Lego has never really had
| serious contenders in its decades of existence, but the Chinese
| knockoffs are getting pretty good from what I can tell. They
| are producing knockoff sets for 1/3 of the cost, and the
| quality is reaching lego-levels.
|
| And this isn't low profit margin. Lego has gotten the Chinese
| to raid several of these guys (Lepin) and it didn't slow them
| at all.
|
| The real gauntlet just got thrown down recently. Remember the
| UCS Millenium Falcon? Well a MOC builder made a UCS but with an
| interior model of the Falcon as well. Guess where you can buy
| that? Well, NOT Lego, and I think that's a problem in Lego
| management.
|
| With the internet there should be FAR MORE Lego-provided sets.
| Sure, have the Harry Potters and Star Wars sets. But we are
| talking about a company that (granted to very good tolerances)
| is charging a LOT for very cheap plastic. They should be
| exploiting far more of the long tail.
|
| Why can't I buy from Lego a complete set of old-school Classic
| Space? Or Castle? Why do sets go "out of print"?
|
| They are leaving money on the table, and the
| Chinese/Malaysian/etc companies will happily fill the void.
|
| From what I can tell, the fake Lego industry has already
| structured itself into a somewhat legal resistant form. The
| base legos are manufactured by one set of companies, which they
| can do 100% legally.
|
| Those companies sell the blocks to the companies that produce
| the knockoff sets. If you raid those companies, well fine they
| lose some stock and they just setup somewhere else with the
| exact same sourcing.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Why do sets go "out of print"?
|
| Injection moulds have a finite life, so _parts_ go out of
| print. Unfortunately their tendency to use set-specific parts
| causes this to make sets go out of print.
|
| (Obviously they could make another mould, but that commits
| them to a whole print run to make it economically viable.)
| svnt wrote:
| That is definitely the first-order engineering answer.
| However once the concept/possibility enters into executive
| consciousness all bets on the "why" shift to profit motive.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Why wouldn't they have a "profit motive"? They are a
| company, not a charity.
| mcphage wrote:
| Injection moulds do have a finite life, but since set-
| specific parts are only used in a single set, those moulds
| won't wear out nearly as fast as the moulds for common
| bricks.
| Grustaf wrote:
| > With the internet there should be FAR MORE Lego-provided
| sets. Sure, have the Harry Potters and Star Wars sets. But we
| are talking about a company that (granted to very good
| tolerances) is charging a LOT for very cheap plastic. They
| should be exploiting far more of the long tail.
|
| Lego now has infinitely more models than when I grew up, and
| they seemingly increase the catalog every year, so this is a
| very strange criticism. They have Marvel stuff, Friends,
| Harry Potter, Star Wars, Simpsons, etc etc etc. The number of
| sets is truly bewildering. Obviously they can't produce
| everything forever.
|
| Also, they are not selling "cheap plastic" anymore than
| Netflix is selling "cheap electrons". The plastic bricks are
| just the medium, the product is the design, the Lego brand,
| the licensed brand (if any), the whole experience.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I haven't had a close look at Lego bricks for years until a
| few weeks ago and got a chance to compare that with copycat
| set. That made me extremely aware of the high level of
| quality that a Lego set has: the bricks are extremely well
| made and durable, the sets are working and (more or less)
| exciting and the build instructions are designed
| meticulously to make it clear where everything needs to go.
| The instructions are broken into smaller steps for kits
| aimed at younger children.
|
| One thing they seem to have lost over the years is the
| flexibility of the kits: I remember many kits having
| instructions for several alternate models, encouraging you
| much more to take things apart again after building. Newer
| kits are mostly a single model and that limits the fun that
| you end up having with them. The invitation to tinker seems
| gone.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Yes, the re-build aspect is almost gone. As I kid I got
| maybe 5-10 original sets over a 10 year period, and a few
| bags of random bricks, and I played and played with that.
| Nowadays the idea is more build and forget. If you're
| lucky they'll play a bit with the finished model, but
| they don't seem to be making their own.
|
| One fun fact about the instructions, I recently learned
| from a Lego designer that the reason they use many
| different colours on the inside of most models is to make
| it easier to see what's going on while you're building.
| That explanation never occurred to me, but maybe it's
| obvious.
| tspike wrote:
| There is an excellent and extensive range of Creator
| 3-in-1 sets, as well as the entire Classic line which
| encourages specifically this. For the themed sets, they
| stopped including ideas on the back of the box because
| people would complain that instructions weren't included.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > For the themed sets, they stopped including ideas on
| the back of the box because people would complain that
| instructions weren't included.
|
| This is why we can't have good things _sigh_
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 1000% agree. My wife is into Lego creator/expert sets, in
| particular buildings. So I typically buy her a new one at
| least twice a year, for her birthday and Christmas. I'm
| having to work harder now to find sets she hasn't already
| built, and having to pay more because they're out of
| production already and Lego isn't building new ones too
| often.
|
| I accidentally bought a Chinese knock-off set, and it was
| surprisingly good. The brick quality was totally comparable
| to Lego. The part that was lacking was the build methodology
| -- it was damn near impossible to build successfully the way
| the instructions said. But there's more variety in the knock-
| off sets, more accessories like lighting and such, they cost
| half as much (and probably still have a ridiculous margin).
| Lego should be worried, and they should step up their game.
| Becoming known for collectibility seems to be their strategy
| right now, but it is going to make people like me look
| elsewhere.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| _The part that was lacking was the build methodology -- it
| was damn near impossible to build successfully the way the
| instructions said._
|
| How much does good documentation and designing models
| costs? You can't just copy pieces of plastic.
|
| I have a Creality 3D printer. The hardware itself was good.
| But the tinkering needed to get it working was a lot. All
| the useful help came from the community. The official
| support is useless and every time I contacted them they are
| incapable of telling me if something is in spec, out of
| spec, or even point me to documentation.
|
| Imagine giving a child a physical toy that you need to
| consult the internet for instructions because the included
| ones are incomplete or wrong. Maybe you have a piece
| missing and the instructions are wrong.
|
| Even if Lego is charging too much, they may have head room.
| When they feel they are being threatened, they can lower
| prices and still have the best kits and we'd all flock
| back.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Why can't I buy from Lego a complete set of old-school
| Classic Space? Or Castle? Why do sets go "out of print"?
|
| Unlike digital copies, molds have a limited lifespan. Making
| a one-off piece for a set needs to be done in the tens of
| thousands (or more) or not at all.
|
| Meanwhile, if I understand, they have a program to assemble
| parts lists and instructions for one offs.
| solarkraft wrote:
| AFAIK the lawsuits were mostly about him using "Lego" as a part
| of his brand (Legoheld). He had to rebrand and now exclusively
| uses the generic term "Klemmbaustein" (press-fit brick) instead
| of the name Lego and also now mainly promotes other brands.
|
| The story is pretty well known on the german internet.
| undersuit wrote:
| Trademarks seem kinda abusive in a language like German with
| a tendency to make compound words. Farwell Lego Hero.
| liversage wrote:
| In Denmark there's Galleri Lego (an art gallery) named after
| the owner Louise Lego. LEGO sued her but the lawsuit went all
| the way to high court where she won the right to use the
| name. Presumably people don't easily confuse art with toys.
|
| http://www.louiselego.dk/
| bierjunge wrote:
| You recall it wrong, his brand is "Held der Steine Inh.
| Thomas Panke" (hero of the bricks, owner Thomas Panke) and
| his old logo contained a 4x2 brick, but without "LEGO" marks
| anywhere. LEGO claimed it could be confused with their
| bricks.
|
| More info (in german, but deepl/google do pretty decent job
| at translating): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Panke#K
| ontroverse_mit_L...
| mountainb wrote:
| Lego's legal team uses every possible angle under every
| possible IP registration method and in every major
| jurisdiction. They are similar to Apple in this regard.
| Their attitude is one of maximum aggression down every
| possible avenue of attack. No defendant is too small, no
| infringement too petty.
| dhosek wrote:
| Trademarks are in a weird place for IP law. They don't
| expire like copyrights or patents, but failure to defend
| them can cause the trademark to be invalidated, so if a
| trademark holder doesn't engage in this sort of behavior,
| they could end up losing all rights to the trademark.
| From the outside it seems like bullying and aggressive
| behavior, but for better or for worse, that's how things
| are set up.
| eqvinox wrote:
| > if a trademark holder doesn't engage in this sort of
| behavior, they could end up losing all rights to the
| trademark
|
| [citation needed]
|
| Other trademark owners aren't asshats like this about
| their marks and haven't lost them, have they?
|
| Yes you need to enforce your trademark. But not against
| reviews of your very products, even if those reviews make
| their authors money through YT ads.
|
| [Add.: and not in this way. I've read up a bit more, and
| they had a "valid" problem in that he used "LEGO" to
| refer to plastic brick systems in general. They do need
| to enforce that so the term doesn't become generic. But
| they could've just sent a message or letter first.]
| timfi wrote:
| Iirc the argument bind this would be along then lines oft
| precendes. I.e., you didn't defend your TM against person
| A so why are you sueing person B.
| eqvinox wrote:
| I wasn't implying a choice in _who_ to enforce it
| against. I 'm saying there's a wide spectrum _what_ to
| try to enforce against. LEGO here even tried to enforce
| their trademark because the logo "looked like a LEGO
| brick". Apparently that didn't fly.
|
| (The "using LEGO as generic label" one was a separate
| instance and did cause the guy to remake a bunch of
| videos.)
| jjoonathan wrote:
| "It's not our fault that we're assholes, it's just that
| being an asshole is to our advantage!"
|
| Uh-huh.
|
| IP law is the cudgel of choice when a company doesn't
| like what an individual is doing. It's loosey-goosey
| enough that they can always stir up a somewhat plausible
| complaint, and they only need a somewhat plausible
| complaint plus money to make a small person's life a
| living hell.
|
| Understanding the mechanism does not make it good or
| right.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Your attempt to paraphrase comes across as snide and
| insincere. It also would seem to indicate that you didn't
| comprehend the point being made regarding the current
| framework of trademark law and enforcement within which
| companies must operate.
| kuschku wrote:
| If you tried to call yourself Applehero, made videos
| about electronics, tried to trademark that term and sell
| merchandise with it, with a logo referencing Apple's
| apple... well, you'd end up sued as well.
|
| Lego is already close to losing their trademark, they
| can't let anything like this slide without risking their
| IP.
| nitrogen wrote:
| A 4x2 press-fit brick is more like using a rounded
| rectangle in a phone repair shop logo, not "Apple"
| itself.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| for the uninitiated: rounded rectangles as a shape for
| phones is an apple design patent, they sued samsung for
| that
| kuschku wrote:
| First, he called himself _Legoheld_ and then he tried to
| trademark that name and his logo, specifically an image
| trademark for any visualization containing a 4x2 or 2x2
| brick.
|
| Only one company can hold that trademark, Lego currently
| holds it, so if his trademark claim had succeeded, Lego
| would have lost theirs.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| > _he called himself Legoheld and then he tried to
| trademark that name_
|
| can you give some citation for that? Because i can find
| zero sources for that claim. Sources for the conflict
| around the logo are ample, see his filing for the logo
| (1) and the one from the corporation (2). I can find no
| source for your claim about the name, only that in 2013,
| years before the first conflict with the corporation, his
| brand was already established as "Held der Steine". (3)
|
| 1: https://www.stonewars.de/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/01/held-der... 2:
| https://www.stonewars.de/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/01/legostei... 3: https://www.welt.d
| e/regionales/frankfurt/article121164920/Ve...
|
| I think you are making stuff up
| smabie wrote:
| Don't hate the player hate the game.
| [deleted]
| Semaphor wrote:
| According to the wikipedia link, both of you are correct.
| One was about his own brand, the other was about him using
| "Lego" to refer to the bricks of other brands (which he
| only started doing after they sued the first time).
| rjzzleep wrote:
| In Germany that's very common though. Basically small is
| called lego, big is called duplo. No matter who it's
| from. It's kinda how people I google things, no matter
| whether you search on duckduckgo or google.
| avar wrote:
| It's also common to say "just google things", but I'm
| fairly sure (and the domain is even free!) that if I buy
| justgooglethings.com and setup my own search engine there
| that Google will find issue with that sooner than later.
|
| The same goes for something like Lego, just because
| people commonly call similar plastic bricks "lego"
| doesn't mean that they'll get away with it if they open a
| store to sell those bricks.
| indigochill wrote:
| > if I buy justgooglethings.com and setup my own search
| engine there that Google will find issue with that sooner
| than later.
|
| Well, LMGTFY has been a thing for as long as I can
| remember, but it's not a new search engine, it's just a
| way to snarkily direct people asking questions to Google
| for their answers. It's also not critical of the Google
| brand (and although the URL doesn't have the Google name
| in it, the website title does), so who knows if Google
| would find more issue with it if it was.
| easrng wrote:
| It actually is a search engine now. (It uses Google
| Search via
| https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/about/)
| squarefoot wrote:
| I seem to recall that the problem with "just google
| things" or LMGTFY is that if "google" becomes a verb (to
| google) it can't be trademarked once it becomes of common
| use. That's the reason many companies often issue
| official statements discouraging the use of their names
| as verbs when they see them used as such. I think Google
| themselves did this many years ago.
| svnt wrote:
| Yeah that's probably why Lego sued. If they don't take
| action to prevent that they can lose their protection of
| the term.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Lego is a great toy produced by a very shitty company with
| a _long_ history of fraud and legal aggression. All the way
| back to day #1 when they ripped off the Kiddiecraft toy,
| packaging and marketing materials and passed them off as
| their own.
| jkepler wrote:
| When I was a kid and full of enthusiasm for Legos, I bought a
| very small pirate set---a rowboat, a canon, a pirate and a
| soldier---with money I'd earned, because my friend had a
| larger set with the canon, and it fired a piece via a spring
| mechanism. To my great disappointment, Lego had changed the
| design and the canon wasn't functional. I wrote them a letter
| (pen and paper, back before the Internet), and when they
| replied it was legal-speak about liability concerns if the
| small piece ended up in someone's eye.
|
| On top of my disappointment, they criticized me for having
| written "Legos" and told me that their products should be
| called Lego bricks or Lego toys... great way to give an
| elementary-aged boy a poor impression of Lego's customer
| relations.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Up to about 1990 pirate legos had shooting cannons. Then
| there were a few years in the early 1990s where the cannons
| had the necessary plastic parts to fire cannonballs, but
| you had to first disassemble them and add your own
| ballpoint pen spring. I'm not sure when they switched to
| non-shooting cannons. From a web search it seems like they
| have since switched back to shooting cannons.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I remember having shooting cannons, and I must've had
| sets after 1990.
|
| Seems like this may have been a thing only in the US?
| fortysixdegrees wrote:
| I have shooting cannons from post 2000 (New Zealand)
| gambiting wrote:
| I was born at the start of 90s and I definitely had sets
| with shooting cannons and they were bought new.
| technobabbler wrote:
| In America, kids are only allowed to play with real guns.
| Xylakant wrote:
| That's sad-funny because the cannons nowadays fire pieces
| again.
| [deleted]
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| I had a lot of legos when I was a child. I kept them and gave
| them to my son a few years ago. They still mostly work just
| fine. I also bought new legos for my son, and the quality in
| the newer pieces is degrading at an alarming rate. A few pieces
| got too lose and simply don't connect anymore. Some arms from
| minifigures are extremely loose and will soon not be able to
| maintain a pose. None of my old legos are loose like that in
| the arm, although some traditional pieces are indeed barely
| sticking. Things are getting to the point where some of the
| newer pieces are already in worse quality than pieces I bought
| in 1992 and used for years and years. I'm sad, I don't think
| his son will be able to inherit his legos.
| seized wrote:
| Haven't spent a lot of money on Lego sets over the last two
| years, that hasn't been my experience at all. Every piece has
| been high quality. It's the old pieces from mine and my
| wife's youth that are cracking and breaking, which isn't
| unexpected.
| fifilura wrote:
| Mentioning the Streisand effect. I would claim that the
| original post had the same but still opposite effect on me.
|
| Now i really want an AT-AT set!
|
| Edit: oops the price tag.
| Arrath wrote:
| Classic Lego price tag. I've long assumed I grew up in a
| small house because my parents bought me so many of those
| bricks.
|
| Edit: And that looks a good deal more complicated than what I
| grew up with, wow!
| HWR_14 wrote:
| That's still the Streisand effect. No publicity is bad
| publicity, etc.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > Now i really want an AT-AT set!
|
| > Edit: oops the price tag.
|
| That's a fairly good summary of the state of LEGO. Add what
| some call slipping quality or simply cheaping out, while the
| competition is rapidly catching up in quality for lego-
| compatible brick models (and in some ways surpassing LEGO),
| and you have a perfect storm.
| tpmx wrote:
| So when you say "competition" you mean these various crappy
| Chinese companies that create sets by copying almost every
| single LEGO brick in existence, right?
| wongarsu wrote:
| The patent on the original LEGO bricks was filed in the
| 50s and has long since expired. Reproducing them is not
| different from producing generic drugs. The innovation is
| in the models you design, and how well it is executed.
| And while production quality of the bricks is only now
| approaching levels comparable to LEGO, model design is an
| area where LEGO provides a wide opening for competitors.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Lepin copies the sets, including the licensed ones.
|
| This article has a good photo illustrating what we're
| talking about.
|
| https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1199653.shtml
| tpmx wrote:
| The Lepin brand is out, it was "raided", with plenty of
| photos of said raid published by chinese news agencies to
| show how committed the PRC is to IPR.
|
| But then of course other brands took their place, pretty
| much immediately.
| tpmx wrote:
| I'm talking about 100% direct copies of 0-20 year old
| designs of e.g. studless Technic bricks.
| mcphage wrote:
| As well as make their own sets, and then sell those sets
| for 25-30% of the price, at 95-90% of the quality.
| tpmx wrote:
| More like 30% of the price at 60% of the quality (and
| that's generous).
| rrix2 wrote:
| >> Now i really want an AT-AT set!
|
| >> Edit: oops the price tag.
|
| > That's a fairly good summary of the state of LEGO.
|
| And it's been the state of LEGO since I was young enough to
| wait excitedly for the print catalog/magazine to show up so
| that I could lust over a bunch of Technic and UCS kits my
| family couldn't possibly afford.
| rickstanley wrote:
| If anyone is wondering the title of the video is: "700EUR??
| Ernsthaft, LEGO(r)? Die bunte Pest : Star Wars 75252 UCS Star
| wars Destroyer Devastator"
| hazelnut wrote:
| He's getting paid by the competitor. His comments are amusing
| but take it with a grain of salt. His opinion is paid.
| lqet wrote:
| Do you have a source for that?
| chki wrote:
| How do you know that his opinion is paid?
| golemotron wrote:
| What if someone is paid for an opinion they already have?
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is what all spokespeople are trying to convince you is
| happening. We only ask people to mention that they're
| sponsored, not to declare their current opinions are lies.
| wpietri wrote:
| That is a very present question when looking at a lot of
| think tanks and whatnot.
|
| Personally, I'd say it undermines my trust in a few ways.
| The broadest is undue weight: if some kinds of opinions are
| being paid for and others aren't, we're going to hear more
| of the paid-for opinions. But it also creates more direct
| incentives to a) say what _might_ be rewarded, and b) once
| on the gravy train, say what one 's sponsors like to _keep_
| getting rewarded. And worst, I think, is that money
| distorts cognition. As Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to
| get a man to understand something when his salary depends
| upon his not understanding it."
|
| So for me, any conflict of interest like that undermines
| the offered opinion. It's somewhere between hard and
| impossible to know how much influence is involved.
| ragazzina wrote:
| I had a disagreement with a famous (in my country)
| snowboarder on the internet about this topic. He goes on
| secondhand gear and beginners snowboarding forums and
| suggests boards by the brand that sponsors him. I told him
| he should at least put on a disclaimer on his comments
| explaining he is paid. His reply was that he chose the
| sponsor because he likes the product. I still think it's
| immoral.
| gsich wrote:
| It's not.
| proctrap wrote:
| That's wrong. He was partnered with lego as a store, so he
| had exclusive access to stuff you can't get otherwise. After
| he brought up certain issues and they sued him he dropped
| that.
|
| So he's now selling lego and he's selling stuff from the
| competition. But he has no more access to the partner
| exclusive stuff (like lego bags). The only thing you can
| actually say is that he went all-in on bashing the stuff lego
| does wrong. I mean, he's living from PR and selling stuff.
| georgercarder wrote:
| LEGO has created a truly immutable blockchain :)
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Ironic, the author designed a page that can't be read because of
| the massive blitz of ads and the crushing impact it had on my cpu
| avar wrote:
| It can't be taken apart because you'll need something like a
| sewing needle to pry an axle out of a Technic piece? That seems
| trivially surmountable. I've had much larger problems just prying
| two small 1x2's apart.
| colanderman wrote:
| Agreed -- once you've stacked two 1x2 plates... might as well
| just treat them as a single part from then on. With two pairs
| of pliers of the correct shape, you might be able to get them
| apart.
| JorgeGT wrote:
| There is a LEGO separator tool for this:
| https://www.lego.com/es-es/product/brick-separator-630
| kemayo wrote:
| Those do work for most pieces, but the stacked-plates issue
| is tricky even with one. Stacked 1x2 or 1x1 is the worst
| because it's almost impossible to even bring leverage into
| it.
| colanderman wrote:
| Stacked 1x1s are trivial -- rotate them 45 degrees!
|
| A 1x1 in the middle of a large plate though can be a
| challenge though. While the remover tool works for e.g.
| 1x2s, 1x1s don't quite have enough surface area, so the
| tool often slips off.
|
| 2x plates I find tend not to give as much trouble, if
| only because they require more force to have been pushed
| together perfectly flush in the first place.
|
| (My context is teaching Lego professionally to middle-
| school children for a few summers. You get given all
| sorts of fun things to take apart, and having a pocket
| knife around isn't a good idea. My other takeaway from
| that experience is that the LabView-based Mindstorms
| software is/was total shit.)
| colanderman wrote:
| Yes, I'm well aware of these (and the older, chunkier, grey
| version from the 90s). It does not help in the case of 1x2
| plates.
|
| Beside using a knife, the only trick I've found to work for
| these is to stack longer 1x plates on either side of the
| pair, which give you more leverage on the center pair,
| while themselves being easier to take apart.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Two brick separators also do the trick. If you've bought
| any of the bigger sets, you probably have a handful lying
| around.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > It does not help in the case of 1x2 plates.
|
| This:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLqi7F0QWoI
| rtkwe wrote:
| Brick separators can get 2x1 flats apart where this will
| require you to damage the 4l axel which to me seems like a
| notable difference.
| avar wrote:
| It really won't require damaging anything, you just gently
| stick a sewing needle into the small gap and leverage the
| axel out. Annoying? Yes. But "can't be taken apart" seems
| rather overblown.
|
| I've got a 42043, Mercedes-Benz Arocs 3245[1] here which
| allowed me to reproduce this. If you look on page 322 (step
| #59) of the instructions at [1] it requires the same 4l axel
| to attach the bucket to its boom, and is held in place by a
| "bush" piece[2].
|
| That one's trivial to take apart "correctly", but I just
| tried (without cheating!) by tightly showing the 4l axel in
| and gently prying it out with a sewing needle.
|
| It took around 10-15 seconds, there's a tiny bit of external
| visible damage the size of the sewing needle head on the
| piece the 4l goes into, but I being careful.
|
| Otherwise it's no worse for wear. I also tried it with a
| wooden toothpick, but the gap is too small for that.
|
| I'd put that into the "annoying" category, rather than Lego
| having produced a "display-only" set. For comparison on the
| Arocs I had to spend 5-10 minutes gently trying to get a gear
| into the engine once with a chopstick without disassembling
| the whole front of the car after it fell off.
|
| 1. https://www.lego.com/en-
| us/service/buildinginstructions/4204...
|
| 2. https://www.toypro.com/en/product/968/technic-bush/light-
| blu...
| evilotto wrote:
| Compared to a real Mercedes-Benz which needs a toolbox full
| of specialized tools to do routine maintenance, a sewing
| needle is a cinch :)
| rtkwe wrote:
| I'm not clear on what you were testing, did you replicate
| the design in the AT-AT set from the article or just using
| a bushing piece?
|
| It's still pretty notable that it requires a sewing needle
| to disassemble fully instead of just hands or a brick
| separator as previous sets did.
| avar wrote:
| I replicated the relevant part of the design. I put the
| same 4l axle into the same sort of Technic slot, it's
| specifically designed to be flush with those, so there's
| no easy way to pop it out other than to push it out from
| the other side.
|
| I then used the "bush" piece to hold onto the axle from
| the other side, so you have to pull it out of that piece
| to get the axle out. It's not the exact same piece that's
| holding onto the 4l axle in the article, but from
| experience they've got about the same hold on the axle,
| so the difference won't matter.
|
| Yes it's annoying. I'm just pointing out that it's far
| short of the "can't be taken apart" claim in the article.
|
| I'd be willing to bet that it can be taken apart
| conventionally. You can probably push the orange piece a
| bit from the other side.
|
| Of course it will run right into the frame on the other
| side, but even Lego doesn't make components with
| micrometer precision, there's usually a bit of give in
| the plastic. If you can get some play in it of even a
| half a millimeter it'll be sufficient to do this with a
| toothpick instead of a sewing needle.
| colanderman wrote:
| I've never had such luck, with either the new or old
| separators. What's the trick?
| Fricken wrote:
| Attaching the stuck pieces to a base plate before
| separating them often works. When it doesn't I reach for
| the pliers.
| kemayo wrote:
| It seems like a weird complaint for this specific set, because
| this is one of those huge and expensive display pieces aimed at
| rich adults. I would be _genuinely_ surprised if even a small
| fraction of these kits were ever disassembled -- it 's not the
| sort of thing where you just break it down and throw the pieces
| back into a box for reuse.
|
| If this had shown up in one of the smaller kid-focused kits which
| _are_ building playgrounds, yes, that 'd be a problem.
| ziml77 wrote:
| This was my thought too. Are people really disassembling these?
| To me these things feel more like typical crafts/construction
| where you make something once and then put it on display.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Years ago I completely disassembled some of my larger sets
| and stored the parts into large Ziplock bags when I had to
| move.
| abliefern wrote:
| There's a large used market, especially for these super
| expensive sets. Many people will resell sets after having them
| on display for a few months or years. For some like me 90% of
| the enjoyment is in putting huge sets together, so it'll be
| sold on after just a few weeks. But even then, a few pieces
| being stuck together permanently doesn't matter much.
|
| But there is a small monitory of people who absolutely do break
| up sets to add to their brick collection in order to build
| custom models.
| [deleted]
| gwbas1c wrote:
| V2 will just replace the few legos that can't come apart with a
| custom whole part molded from solid plastic.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| It seems accidental. Instead of "we have a new brick type that
| only goes together once", what has happened is that there's a
| configuration of normal lego bricks that can get pinned into
| place.
| oaiey wrote:
| It is an accident ... but one which happened already a dozen
| times. Their manuals are the only thing which separate them
| from their knock-offs. Material quality is no longer.
|
| A reviewer will see this immediately. Someone screwed up. They
| should hire an intern to simulate that and run a check in their
| modelling software.
| sersi wrote:
| As someone who hasn't played with legos in 20 years but who
| is eagerly looking forward to my son being slightly older so
| that he can start with legos, did the material quality of
| legos degrade so much?
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| Childhood pieces have survived years of abuse, but some
| recent pieces from the last few years have had issues,
| either outright breaking or crumbling.
|
| For example, the 1x3 sloped pieces in some of the newer
| sets are super fragile near the edge. Similar pieces from
| many years ago survived.
|
| It's unclear whether the modern set designs are putting new
| strains on weaker points or if the material quality is
| worse, but either way the result is a doubt about the
| longevity of the pieces
| evilotto wrote:
| There were certain pieces in my childhood sets that broke
| regularly. something like "1x1 plate with horizontal
| clip". The clips broke off very easily if there was
| something attached.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Some colors, notably brown, are just more brittle.
| neolefty wrote:
| The material quality of the competitors has certainly
| improved! We bought some knockoffs while living in China
| that were pretty darn good. We learned which were better
| than others for sure.
| bllguo wrote:
| i think it's more that knockoffs are catching up. i
| certainly dont feel that my newer lego is any worse than
| before. i suppose you could say newer specialized pieces
| are inherently more fragile? i wouldnt make that argument
| myself though.
| matthewmorgan wrote:
| Can we just agree that the plural of lego is lego :P
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Depends, there are legos: technik, Duplo, standard, space, etc.
|
| But multiple lego bricks are just lego
| agumonkey wrote:
| lego = lego : lego
| JasonFruit wrote:
| 1 lego, 2 laygo
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| How about this? | singular | plural
| nom | legum | legi voc | lege | legos
| gen | legi | legorum dat/abl | lego | legos
| evan_ wrote:
| Lego bricks/elements
| sandreas wrote:
| Major alternative more cost efficient brands to Lego / Duplo
| (compatible bricks) are: CaDA Q-Bricks
| XingBao Mould King Wange Cobi Winner
| Sembo bloxbox ZHE GAO Panlos Klemos
| Ausini MunichBricks BlueBrixx Unico
|
| There are much more, take a google and you'll see that there are
| many cheaper alternatives...
| etskinner wrote:
| Are there any that come close to the tolerances achieved by
| Lego batch-to-batch? I'd genuinely consider buying them if I
| know that when I buy more 10 years from now, they'd all work
| together
| sandreas wrote:
| Depends on the category... I think that especially Cada and
| Cobi have good quality in all kinds of vehicles and planes,
| Qman and Wange are more into buildings and other stuff.
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