[HN Gopher] Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)
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Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)
Author : martinlaz
Score : 212 points
Date : 2022-02-07 10:39 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.todaysparent.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.todaysparent.com)
| clean_send wrote:
| Another good way to get lots of random pieces cheap is go to eBay
| and look for bulk lots. Most people sell by the pound and
| ultimately it's just your imagination holding you back!
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I think traditional Lego died when they introduced the parts
| separator tool - back in my day, you destroyed your fingernails
| (and sometimes even used your teeth) separating parts. Attaching
| two 2x1 thin bricks was considered horrific, because you knew
| you'd never be able to separate them anymore.
|
| Kids these days have it too easy.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Pro tip: push a brick at a 45 degree angle between the two
| stuck plates, instant separation.
| dekhn wrote:
| I've been trying to find an article I read as a kid (late 70s)
| about a guy who made custom LEGO models, by putting bricks
| together incompletely. Like, you can make a cylinder with
| slightly-out-of-perfect snap-together pieces. I think he made a
| 747 out of regular pieces. At the time I don't think I was even
| aware of model kits.
| clean_send wrote:
| A good hack to getting lots of random legos cheap is buying bulk
| lots off of eBay. Most people sell by the pound and it's always
| fun to see what you'll get!
| sequoia wrote:
| > Lego did extensive research and found that girls preferred to
| play with the characters rather than build sets. So they created
| the Lego Friends line where the characters own beauty salons, pet
| boutiques and can be news reporters working on stories about
| cakes. The sets do not come with hundreds of pages of
| instructions because most of them are fairly simple to build. The
| Lego Friends line is immensely popular.
|
| i.e. they figured out what the market wanted, then sold that
| thing, and it was profitable. I too prefer older legos but if
| people generally prefer another kind, what is lego supposed to
| do? The market also isn't the same as it was in 1980, how
| realistic is it to expect their offerings to be the same?
| bil7 wrote:
| title correction: 9 ways lego has researched and expanded it's
| product line to increase profits while continuing to sell less
| popular traditional products
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| Yes, it is so much fun to tell stories with cherry picking.
| mcv wrote:
| Largest toy manufacturer in the world. Can't really argue with
| that.
|
| I do miss the old, simpler lego from the early 1980s, but those
| things still exist in the Classic and Creator lines. Buy them.
| I love Lego Star Wars, but Classic and Creator are the soul of
| Lego.
| oaiey wrote:
| And leaders in plastic piece production ... and interestingly
| also long-time IT experts.
| retSava wrote:
| I feel many of those points ring true, in our case. What I
| discovered was that Minecraft is the Lego of today, but digital.
| It fills many of the same creative urges.
|
| We have quite some Lego Friends and different kits on shelves,
| which can't be touched according to the Creator :). A big bag of
| second hand parts lies in peace, but Minecraft on the PS5 is now
| the go-to. We sometimes play 2 player together, building things.
| Basically almost always in "creative mode", and never online.
|
| I kind of wanted my daughter to feel the same positive way as I
| did with Lego, but no dice. Minecraft seems to do that.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| That dark pattern where a website gives you the next article it
| thinks you should read does not work well here on this older
| article. Below the Lego article I get "Hate math? Then don't help
| your kid with their homework" -- which it proceeds to load
| hundreds of times (a search for the word 'homework' yields over
| 1000 hits now) below each iteration just because I tried to
| scroll to the bottom. Somehow its recommendation engine ended up
| recommending the same article, recursing endlessly.
|
| Stupid me, why would I expect to be able to just scroll to the
| bottom of the article for the website's footer?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Are your surfing without protection? Scrolling to the bottom
| for me works perfectly. I tried disabling uBlock, then I got
| the behaviour you mentioned.
|
| I always have uBlock on to disable scripts and fonts. Quite a
| lot of sites work perfectly well that way and I enable the
| minimum scripts and fonts for those that don't.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I'm using uBlock Origin in Firefox, and I also got the
| infinite scroll on Math Homework article loop.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Yeah, I got what I posted above with uBlock Origin on, in
| Firefox.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| Ditto. Chrome on Windows. It is the perfect example of
| Doom Scrolling. You Scroll And Scroll, yet nothing new
| appears. ;)
| toyg wrote:
| A website optimizing itself for freeloaders rather than ad-
| watching users, seems... counterproductive for their bottom
| line.
| alexb_ wrote:
| Almost every single website, especially anything involving
| articles, is completely unusable without an adblocker. I
| don't know how those who don't use adblockers do it...
| robotnikman wrote:
| I still have tubs full of legos sitting in the attic.
|
| My favorite moments as a kid were starting with a lego mindstorms
| kit, I think that ended up leading me down a path where I started
| to learn programing.
| k__ wrote:
| I was a kid in the 90s and most of the things written in that
| article were already true.
|
| I still broke down all the elaborate sets, put them all together
| in a big box, and built my own things later.
| MivLives wrote:
| Honestly I think people also underrate how fun it is to add on
| to existing sets. This is harder to do with technic sets, but
| for the traditional block stuff it was easy enough to build the
| set to instructions and just keep building.
|
| I've been doing more of this recently as I picked up some knock
| off mech based lego sets and adding more arms/building them
| more weapons/other things is fun way to make them look better.
| logifail wrote:
| > I still broke down all the elaborate sets, put them all
| together in a big box [..]
|
| In a _box_?!!
|
| Our kids store piles of bricks on more or less every horizontal
| surface in their rooms.
|
| > the elaborate sets
|
| Our kids will always build each elaborate set once, according
| to the instructions, wait a day or three, then it's fair game
| to be cannibalized for their latest homespun supermegagiga-jet,
| -spaceship, -car or -house.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| A more interesting comparison would be to put the core themes
| of the 1990s (Castle, Pirates, Space, Town) against the modern
| popular themes (Ninjago, Creator, Star Wars, City). The old
| sets had less specialised parts and less colour variety, which
| allowed kids to combine sets from the same theme easily. The
| buildings (castles, fortresses, harbours) almost always had a
| big baseplate (flat or 3D). Minifigs were themed and textured,
| but weren't cartoonish with facial expressions.
|
| Nowadays, most of the sets are some imaginary vehicles with
| Creator-style builds. You can probably build a new vehicle out
| of the same set, but combining different sets from the same
| theme is much less enjoyable. The few sets with buildings
| rarely have baseplates and feel very airy and unharmonic.
| tokai wrote:
| If you look at Lego Space during the 90s it is a long list of
| new versions (almost yearly) each with their own specialized
| parts.
|
| Personally I don't feel like this narrative about a
| substantial shift in Lego sets fits with reality. To me it
| feel like people conflates it with the rise of licensed sets.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Space
| watwut wrote:
| Afaik, lego went through changes. They had period when then
| introduced a lot of special parts (I think nineties or so)
| and then period when they simplified again.
|
| They introduced special parts at the height of popularity
| and money success. Simplified when they had money issues -
| simple parts are cheaper to manufacture. Now that they are
| popular again, they are having more special parts again,
| but still less then used to be.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| Let's take a look at this particular small set from the old
| Pirates theme:
|
| 6259: Broadside's Brig
| [https://brickset.com/sets/6259-1/Broadside-s-Brig]
|
| For what was a very small and cheap set at the time, you
| are getting 3 minifigs and a small building on a baseplate.
| The bulk of the parts are yellow- and white-coloured bricks
| for walls and architectural elements. There is a
| specialised yellow-coloured edge panel with a red brick
| texture, but it plays very nicely with the rest of the
| parts architecturally. You can easily combine this set with
| the bigger forts and harbours. The colours are compatible,
| the parts are compatible.
|
| This is not certainly the case with modern Lego sets.
| tokai wrote:
| Then lets look at this one, from the same period:
| https://brickset.com/sets/6834-1/Celestial-Sled
|
| Weird ski bricks, seethrou chain saw, antenna, big
| arrowshaped structural piece, etc.
|
| I'm not surprised the one you linked is from 91. Noone is
| disputing that the complexity rose from the 80s. But the
| complexity we are seeing now is not a new thing. It
| started in the 90s.
| Xylakant wrote:
| The ski bricks are standard technic skis. The chain saw
| and is found in the entire series of kits. The arrow
| shape plate is a very common piece in all space kits back
| to the 1980, though the usually were grey or black. Often
| used for wings with hinged plates. I have literally
| dozens of those in my childhood lego collection. Antennas
| were on each an every space piece, though the thin and
| slender ones only started showing in the early 90ies.
| They're still around.
| brimble wrote:
| Some of the late Ice Planet (dunno the real name) space
| stuff from that same series, and some of the underwater
| exploration sets from IIRC about then or a year or two
| later, are _specifically_ what I think of when I think
| "where did lego start to go wrong?" I kept getting them
| for Christmas and kept building and playing with them but
| the 80s (through _very_ early 90s) themed sets were peak
| for those, IMO. I never did as much combining and
| modifying /expanding with those later sets as I did with
| earlier ones. I was _still_ playing with the earlier ones
| and changing them to other things and combining them when
| I had those later sets, but the later ones could only
| really fit in if they could do it _whole_ and _as-is_ ,
| that is, the earlier sets had to change to fit them, they
| couldn't really do the reverse.
|
| ... I don't think that era was especially complex,
| though, and in fact when I think about the worst sets
| from that era they were ones that were built with like
| half a dozen huge pieces for the bulk of the structure
| (there was some kind of Ice Base from that same series
| you linked that stands out, in particular).
|
| Complex is the modern sets. Fiddly, even. Look at the
| size of a finished largish modern set (for kids, not one
| of the adult stick-it-on-a-shelf models), and its part
| count, and look at similar-sized sets from the 80s
| through, I dunno, maybe '95, and see what their part
| count was. The modern sets have _so_ many itty bitty
| pieces. 500-something piece sets used to be _really big_
| when assembled.
| acdha wrote:
| > Nowadays, most of the sets are some imaginary vehicles with
| Creator-style builds. You can probably build a new vehicle
| out of the same set, but combining different sets from the
| same theme is much less enjoyable. The few sets with
| buildings rarely have baseplates and feel very airy and
| unharmonic.
|
| "Most" doesn't feel right to me - my son's mostly had City
| sets and they're all repurposable, buildings use large flat
| pieces with configurable roads so it's not quite as big but
| also allows more combinations than "large square", etc. There
| are definitely specialty pieces but I'm skeptical that
| they're that much more common given all of the pieces I had
| as a kid which were pretty specialized, too.
| where-group-by wrote:
| The number of specialised parts is one thing I dislike about
| modern Lego sets. They do look great and have really smart
| building techniques, but I just want to build a brick house
| with my kids.
|
| There is always Lego classic sets, and smaller creator houses
| do have a lot of regular bricks too. But it is a bit annoying
| once you amass a few sets from other lines.
|
| Still, I'm glad they are in business. I will take whatever
| they do now Vs them going bust, which was a risk a decade or
| so ago (or maybe longer, I can't remember the details).
| mcv wrote:
| My brother and I got the first two grey castles in the
| 1980s (the first castle yellow; grey was a fairly new
| colour back then). Those castles mainly relied on fairly
| large castle wall pieces. At first, even as a kid, I felt
| that was cheating; we should have gotten bricks to assemble
| all those walls. Later I discovered what a boon they were,
| because they allowed me to rapidly design new and different
| castles. Sure, I couldn't build a spaceship out of them,
| but just exploring the space of all the possible castles
| you could build was amazing.
|
| Some of these specialised pieces inspire creativity.
| Especially with spaceships.
|
| But I do agree that many modern sets just invite you to
| build this one thing out of them. We did actually turn out
| Millennium Falcon into an X-Wing and a TIE-fighter once,
| but we did eventually turn them back into the Falcon. It
| feels more wrong than it used to to build something else.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If you still have the flag for that yellow castle hang on
| to it, that's a collectors item.
| mcv wrote:
| I don't think we ever had the yellow castle, although I
| do remember that flag. And we definitely had a set with a
| horse in the style of the yellow castle. So either we did
| have the yellow castle but lost the instructions, or I
| knew someone who had it, or that flag also appears in
| another set.
|
| But I really have no idea. It was a long time ago.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The reason those flags are so rare is because the grip of
| the 1x1 round brick at the bottom is much stronger than
| the strength of the flagpole so if you would remove it by
| pulling on the flag you'd break it.
|
| So these commend ridiculous prices for small pieces of
| plastic (about 8 euros or so last I checked).
| mcv wrote:
| 8 euros isn't that much. Certainly not an expensive
| collector's item. For an item that hasn't been made in
| almost 40 years.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It translates into 5000 euros / kg or so, which is pretty
| impressive.
|
| Of course if you had a kilo of them the price would
| crater :)
| googlerx wrote:
| I did use those castle walls for a space ship. It was
| massive, maybe 3ft long, vaguely resembling Spaceball
| One.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >The number of specialised parts is one thing I dislike
| about modern Lego sets.
|
| Lego started pulling back from that a long time ago because
| they were too expensive.
|
| They had a leadership change in 2004, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp
| came in and one of the first things he did was halve the
| number of different parts.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Legos are like coding. The simplicity of Lego yesteryear was like
| some of the simpler programming languages out there. Approachable
| and rewarding, but limited. Over the years, the language of Lego
| has added new programming constructs and is inherently more
| complex, more capable, and harder to approach.
|
| The evolutions the article describes may be deplorable to some,
| but it was adapt or die. Anyone playing with Tinker Toys, Lincoln
| Logs, or Erector Sets anymore?
|
| I am 51 and still collect Lego. I realized some years ago, that
| my own four kids were not getting the same enjoyment out of them
| that I had. Chagrineldy I realized that in my attempt to help
| them love them, I had over glutted them. Two large bins (the kind
| you put in the back of pickup trucks), an explosion of piece
| types, and an explosion of color, made it too difficult to find
| the piece you wanted.
|
| So I sorted them. Today, I have more than 200 clear Sterilite
| storage containers with the whole collection sorted by basic
| shapes or types. Some are very specific (2x4 bricks), some more
| of a category (all technic gears). I had tried sorting them by
| color in the past, but all that led to was very mono color
| creations.
|
| When I build something, I use the whole set. But when grandkids
| and nephew/nieces come, I just get a few of them out. With about
| 20 boxes, it returns to that simple approachable phase and they
| do the coolest things. You can get a lot of mileage out of just
| the plates and bricks, plus one or two of the "specialty" boxes
| thrown in for grins (e.g. two of my nephews just love the big box
| of wheels).
|
| The most popular boxes are still the minifig boxes: heads, hats,
| vests, torsos, legs, tools, animals, foods, weapons. They'll
| "play dolls" with those all day. They generally push the few
| Friends pieces out of the way. When the kids were younger, we
| used to do a monthly bricklink order as a group. My 3 girls
| always opted for more female hair pieces.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| One additional thing...
|
| Reason 9 from the articles is exactly why no on plays with my
| Lego except in bare feet. Little shod feet break Lego. Little
| bare feet learn not to step on Lego.
| dhosek wrote:
| My brother found some Tinker Toy sets that he gave my kids for
| Christmas a few years ago. They loved playing with them.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I kind of don't like the huge push for sets, because it feels
| like it ruins childhood imagination. You're just following
| instructions and not actively building something new. I know Lego
| sells the "Classic" sets, but it's usually harder to find and
| relegated to the clearance aisle.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| When my daughter was about 3 years old,I went on Ebay and bought
| a huge bag of used Lego. I think it was 10KG or so. My wife
| nearly got a heart attack, especially when I poured all those
| little pieces into the bath and filled it up with water,so I
| could wash them a bit. Then ended up catching the smallest pieces
| when I pulled the plug. We poured all those pieces in the living
| room. Took like 3 days to dry out. We built so many things since
| then. There are lots of sets mixed together,I don't care nor does
| my daughter. It's still nice to build something, especially when
| all you do at work is sending emails and writing some code here
| and there.
| eru wrote:
| The advice I got was to stick your dirty second-hand Lego in a
| pillow case, zip it shut, and put it through the washing
| machine.
|
| Though that route can only take quite a bit less than 10kg at a
| time.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Glad to get this advice. My parents sent me all my old LEGOs
| a while ago and I'm still in the process of disassembling all
| the sets, though at least organized into plates, bricks, etc.
|
| Fortunately I know they're not truly dirty, though they're
| still pretty dusty so a good wash will help.
| phil21 wrote:
| Dishwasher (on low temp) also works fairly well, just don't
| use any (or a very small amount) of detergent. I like to
| put about 1kg or so in the "delicates" laundry mesh bags
| when I have a lot of used legos to wash.
|
| Also need to reiterate do _not_ heat dry or use hot cycles
| if you go this route :)
| usefulcat wrote:
| I've run duplos through the dishwasher many times with no
| problems at all. On the regular cycle with dishes. Our
| dishwasher (Bosch) doesn't have a heating element for
| drying, it just makes the water really hot and waits for
| the water to evaporate from the hot dishes.
| phil21 wrote:
| Fair enough, I've used quite cheap dishwashers in the
| past for this - where the heating element is used to heat
| the water up. Due to general cheapness, I'm sure there
| were hotspots.
|
| That said, under hot loads with an old/cheap dishwasher
| I've only had issues with the large baseplates and very
| large/thin elements typically found in Technic sets -
| everything else has turned out fine.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Our dishwasher is newer so I think I'll try it in the
| washing machine first, but that's a good idea as well.
| delecti wrote:
| They're made of ABS, which doesn't begin to soften until
| a bit over the boiling point of water (~104-105 C). It's
| a bit close to risk it, but even the hot cycle might be
| fine as long as it doesn't go much past boiling off the
| water.
|
| Definitely avoid cleaning with acetone though; that'll
| turn it into goo.
| raldi wrote:
| What exactly is wrong with Lego making a line of products for
| children who prefer to play with the characters than build
| complex models? Particularly when it was based on extensive
| research rather than just prejudice.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Maybe I'm wrong, but the vibe I get from the article is that Lego
| has become less creative and more about marketing/profit; sort of
| faulting Lego. I think this shift to complex, structured sets
| says more about the parents than the company though.
| Unstructured/unguided sets are still available.
|
| It seems many more parents today want brag about what their kid
| did, want some Instagram worthy end product, or instill that
| structured/conforming result-driven mindset today. Again, I could
| be wrong about all this. This certainly isn't every parent, but I
| just feel like it's a larger percentage than the past, just like
| the amount of time kids spend in structured groups/activities vs
| self-organizined friend groups running around the neighborhood.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| From the post:
|
| > Now: The bricks still exist, obviously, but now each set
| contains many odd shapes that are specific to that particular
| set and do not work with any other creation.
|
| To further this point, there are central components like
| motored hubs that are only available to specific sets and can't
| be bought as individual pieces.
|
| A lot of people will point at token actions Lego still does
| that match the old philosophy, but at its core Lego thinks in
| sets, and new pieces, new mechanisms etc. are introduced for
| specific sets, never in the buckets.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Well sure, new pieces and specialized pieces are going to be
| sold in the set they work with. The point is, parents are
| choosing to buy the new sets with specialized pieces. You can
| also see in the article the points about the parents being
| frustrated while building, sad when the set is destroyed,
| etc.
|
| So yeah, Lego is marketing and making profit, but it's the
| parents that drive/enable that. As stated before, we see this
| in other areas of life too with the full schedules of
| structured group activities and less self organized time.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I enjoy modern Legos (with my now 7 year old) but only because I
| have them a giant bin, unsorted. I managed to get an enormous
| collection for $150 from a kid that I guess was growing out of
| them and wanted the money. And I immediately disassembled all the
| "kits" (like the Slave I ship now known as "Boba Fett's Firespray
| gunship") so they were just random pieces. Yes it is fun that
| there are a ton of weird minifigures, some recognizable and some
| not. There are all kinds of interesting pieces in there.
|
| But I really hate the idea that you should approach it like an
| airplane model or the like, where you put it together the one
| correct way. That is boring. I don't expect to ever buy a kit
| like that.
| foreigner wrote:
| My friends and I used to build Lego spaceships and then "battle"
| by physically smashing them in to each other. Fond memories.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| My brother (1 year my junior) and I did exactly this!
| PebblesRox wrote:
| We prefered a knock-off brand for special-effects for our
| home videos because the pieces came apart more easily.
| cestith wrote:
| If you don't like the licensed sets, or even sets with
| instruction books, then you're still covered. Lego, Mega Bloks,
| and others have buckets or bags of just parts. To stick to Lego
| without a themed set, look for The Lego Classic line. If you want
| them as a themed set but maybe without a media license, there's
| the Lego Creator line (which does include some licensed material
| like the Bond 007 Aston Martin DB5).
|
| Kit 10698 is a decent value for building toys and comes with its
| own storage container. Hasbro has multiple brands of brick
| building sets, but under their Kreo line there's A4585 or A4584
| value buckets. I have a 759-piece Zuru Max bucket that's like $20
| - the pieces fit but the quality/durability feels a little less
| than Lego or MEGA.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Lego City is also a good line for more modern basics.
|
| What I love is heir move to creating adult oriented sets which
| are much more complicated and intricate. I seems the article
| was complaining instructions are getting more complex but that
| is only true in their larger sets. They still have like you
| mention all the classic sets too.
| criddell wrote:
| I wish I could rent a set. I'd love to put a huge set
| together, but after that I don't really want it anymore and
| don't want to deal with the hassle of selling it.
| mikkergp wrote:
| This seems like a great business idea, so great I checked
| to see if anyone was already doing it:
| https://netbricks.biz/
| dawnerd wrote:
| Wow thats actually a really cool idea. At first I was
| worried about what would happen if you lose a little
| piece and they thought of that and seem to have a very
| generous policy. I'd give it a go but I have a huge
| backlog of sets to build.
| somethoughts wrote:
| One key mindshift is to realize that many of the newer sets are
| more in line with a 3D puzzle than a creative 1000's of blocks
| to invent your own thing. Its a lot less frustrating when you
| realize the replay value is in taking down the set and doing it
| again next year or passing it on to a friend - in a manner more
| analogous to how puzzles are engaged with.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I would say it's more like model building than a 3D puzzle.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| My 4- year old enjoys building Lego kits from instructions
| and I think it is a good learning tool that teaches to follow
| some rules (4 year olds don't have much patience but they can
| build it). The only problem that I find is that these
| instructions are often wrong and confusing and that's where I
| have to step in and become creative to get the puzzle in a
| finished state.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I see my kids use modern sets just the way I did as a kid.
|
| I would follow the directions to build the thing. Over time I
| would break it down and add it to my lego pile from which I
| made random things.
|
| Sure, some pieces are very specific. But you can still take
| those specific pieces and add it to some other random very
| specific piece.
|
| As far as I can tell, legos haven't changed _that_ much in 30
| years. There were a lot of specially crafted pieces back then
| too.
| _nalply wrote:
| But the colors! Back then you had black, white, blue,
| yellow, green and red. And today? You even have two
| different shades of light blue.
| slices wrote:
| from what I've seen, kids are likely to just ignore all
| the colors and just grab the shape they're looking for
| jacobolus wrote:
| > _the replay value is in taking down the set and doing it
| again next year_
|
| There is no end to the "replay value" in taking whatever
| miscellaneous collection of legos you have and making
| whatever you want out of them. This is what most kids do.
| Each new set gets added to the mixed-up pile. (This works
| because all of the pieces consistently follow a common
| geometric design, and connect together using a small handful
| of common interfaces. Note: sorting the collection can be
| helpful for finding pieces.)
|
| Making the set following the instructions and then displaying
| the finished model on a shelf, packing the pieces back in its
| box, or reselling the kit is something more common among
| adults.
|
| The "follow 3d-puzzle instructions" way of playing is pretty
| shallow. Even the hardest lego sets aren't really _that_
| hard, and with a couple years experience even very young
| children can do them. (A 5 or 6 year-old can easily make the
| sets that claim on the box to be for age 11+ or whatever,
| with a couple years' occasional experience.)
|
| But if you like 3d puzzles, legos are pretty good for
| inventing new ones, and there are a wide variety of ways to
| make puzzles that are harder than the instructions shipped
| with the pieces.
| josephg wrote:
| > There is no end to the "replay value" in taking whatever
| miscellaneous collection of legos you have and making
| whatever you want out of them. This is what most kids do.
|
| It's interesting watching my sister's kids interact with
| lego. Her daughter (the oldest) loves rules, and loves
| following the instructions on the set. Her (younger) son
| loves destroying her sets and mixing things up. He loves
| all the "boy" lego sets - flames, dragons, motorbikes, you
| name it.
|
| I've been trying to get them to relax into building
| whatever they want with their bricks. "Oh there's the eyes
| for a face. Which piece is a mouth?" "Wow cool motorbike. I
| wonder if this brick would look good as a helmet?". I try
| to make bad suggestions and get them to find something
| better.
|
| I struggle to break free from the instructions a lot of the
| time too. I think my problem with modern lego is how many
| individual elements there are. It doesn't feel like fun
| creative constraints when you have so many different pieces
| to choose from. More like, whatever element I use, I feel
| like there was something better out there I didn't think
| of. The huge variety of pieces makes the sets look great -
| so great that it overshadows anything I make myself. I love
| lego; but I wish they embraced the constraints of the
| medium more and let their sets be more blocky. Minecraft's
| 1x1x1 block shape constraint makes the game better, not
| worse.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Something like this might be useful:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Lego-Ideas-Book-Unlock-
| Imagination/dp...
| watwut wrote:
| I feel like people completely unnecessary put moral value
| on not following manual. There is nothing wrong with
| following it. There is nothing wrong if that girl wants
| to keep some building and play with them. She may or may
| not build own later, most kids move between the two kinds
| of play.
|
| If younger brother dostroyed her own creation, in my
| experience, the anger is even higher. And loss harder to
| fix - you can help to fix it if done based on manual. You
| just can't if it was own.
|
| The play is whatever kids do with it. When we demand that
| they play in certain way, so that they become more
| artistic ones, it is nit a play anymore. It is
| educational activity.
| [deleted]
| jacobolus wrote:
| One game I have enjoyed with my 5-year-old is to give two
| (or more) people an identical collection of 20-50
| miscellaneous pieces (just pull pairs of identical pieces
| randomly and dump into 2 piles) and then each make
| something and compare.
|
| Or have one person make something and see if the other
| person can copy it, then switch.
| somethoughts wrote:
| The "follow 3d-puzzle instructions" way of playing is
| pretty shallow.
|
| >> I don't disagree that its shallow but its similar to a
| jigsaw puzzle, sometimes you want to just do something to
| keep your mind active and have a sense of accomplishment.
|
| >> As mentioned in the other posts, there are just a lot of
| custom parts in the new "licensed" sets to have a proper
| return on investment - particularly once Harry Potter,
| Marvel, Architecture, Star Wars all get jumbled together.
| The suggestion for creative play is to buy the City Legos
| or 1000 random piece sets which seems to scratch this itch
| really well.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Nearly all of the parts in a "Harry Potter" or "Star
| Wars" set are generic. And there's nothing stopping you
| from making up a game/story mixing robots with your
| wizards.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Also, even the "non-generic" parts see plenty of reuse.
| For example, the wand pieces originally created for the
| Harry Potter sets have regularly popped up in unrelated
| sets as a decorative part of builds.
| MisterTea wrote:
| As a kid I had a ton of legos and my main obsession were
| technic sets (Still have them). But, before technic sets I
| had a bunch of the early town themed sets. So for example if
| you bought the gas station, it comes with a little mechanic
| figure and tow truck. Most of the blocks were standard and a
| few specialty blocks rounded out the set like windows, doors,
| auto chassis parts, wheels, even trees and plants. Of course
| the majority of the blocks were generic enough so you could
| build whatever. Even the technic sets gave you a ton of
| freedom to build whatever.
|
| Now have a look at the modern licensed sets and notice how
| MOST of the pieces are specialty. Those specialty parts are
| there to add more features but they are completely useless
| outside of their intended position in the licensed puzzle.
| How do you turn that fancy haunted house into a boat or
| truck? Lame.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Assuming you're talking this one - https://www.lego.com/en-
| us/product/haunted-house-10273 - I'm failing to see the
| specialty parts, outside of a couple of things like the
| spiderweb. Even the organ is brick-built from parts that
| could be repurposed in a number of ways (for example,
| exhaust pipes on a car or truck).
| squarefoot wrote:
| > If you don't like the licensed sets, or even sets with
| instruction books, then you're still covered. Lego, Mega Bloks,
| and others have buckets or bags of just parts.
|
| Unfortunately it seems this is not true also for Meccano (my
| favorite). By looking at their products I see only
| branded/licensed sets and none of generic parts.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| This is it. People often complain that Lego is all about
| licensed sets, and yeah, that type of set has taken over your
| local toy aisle, but the regular sets are still there, and
| there are even more of them that there used to be.
|
| The only real change is that Lego gives kids more choice.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| It's not all that different from an independent record store
| promoting the latest collectible vinyl drop to pay the bills
| so they can continue selling niche recordings, or an
| independent theater playing Marvel titles so they can afford
| to run arthouse fare.
|
| Lego has adopted the "keep a corporate job to fund your side
| projects" outlook, and given the consistent results in the
| Creator series and the continuing legacy of classic product
| lines, more power to them.
| nimajneb wrote:
| I really enjoy the Creator series. I don't really have
| money to spend more than $30 on a set at a time. It's also
| cool all(?) of them are 3 in 1, so you can choose between 3
| instructions. It's fun to mix them and build new as well.
| dudul wrote:
| One thing that has changed is the quality of some of the bricks.
| I used to play with Legos in the 80's. I had dozens and dozens of
| sets that my parents kept, and now my kids are playing with them.
| Very very few pieces are broken.
|
| Compare that with the current sets. My kids have a few of these
| and parts seem to break very easily. Especially minifigures.
| Hands, arms and "hips" deteriorate quickly. They crack slightly,
| become loose, etc.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| 2014? What's new since then?
|
| Fairly common knowledge that Lego basically saved the company and
| earned a ton of new money by focusing on branded sets and
| marketing-tie-ins etc, which was a change from the generic box of
| colored pieces and more independent-creativity-encouraging
| approach many of us grew up with. But that ship sailed so long
| ago and they made _so much_ money, it isn 't gonna stop any time
| soon.
| tzmudzin wrote:
| One other change: the gradual introduction of weapons and
| violence-related styling.
|
| Back in the 80s some "minifigs" may have had sad faces, but never
| angry/violent ones. That changed a lot over time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_LEGO
| ezconnect wrote:
| When I was a kid I always wanted to build a doll house because of
| the intricate details you can see inside the house. It was so
| hard I gave up and just bought scale model planes then use
| firecrackers to blow them up during new year. You will never
| experience the freedom of a kid once you're an adult.
| bondolo wrote:
| One thing that seems to have changed is the understanding of
| impermanence. I loved the things I built with Lego but quickly
| had to accept that none of them was permanent. Kill your darlings
| to build the next thing. Being too enamoured with what you built
| before reduced your options for building new creations and you
| found that you loved nothing so much that you weren't willing to
| destroy it to accomplish your new goals.
| alfor wrote:
| Is it still controversial that girls have different interest than
| boys? Please stop pushing ideology and let kid be.
|
| I can see it plainly with my kids and with my wife and that is
| fine. It is just our nature expressing itself with variations
| through each person.
| biorach wrote:
| Yes, many, but not all, Lego sets these days are more specific
| and have more specialised parts. But in the end, most children
| end up with a big box with a jumble of many sets, same as past
| decades. Maybe the first few days of a new set being introduced
| is dominated by following the instructions, but after that
| imagination takes over.
|
| My son and his friends played with Lego for over 10 years - there
| are few toys that comes even close in terms of longevity and
| value for money (despite the high up-front cost).
| [deleted]
| glanzwulf wrote:
| Alternatively we could say Lego didn't change that much. We still
| have Lego classic which is still quite popular and often out of
| stock. So other than advertising I think nothing else changed
|
| Now it's true that there are new alternative "lines" to bring in
| new people, but we also had that back in the day. I remember when
| I got my first Lego Technic for example.
| [deleted]
| brjiro8 wrote:
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| I started reading disagreeing with many points of the article, I
| did realize that she is from a different generation then me, so
| her "then vs now" is very different from my "than vs now". But
| still, when I look at what sets were available when she was a
| child I would say that her points "1. The instructions", "2. The
| sets", and "The building method"; were based mostly on what
| specific sets she happened to have, and no on what sets were
| available at the time.
|
| Yes, up until the 60s (before even that author's time), Lego sets
| were mostly generic bricks with just a small set of specialized
| pieces (just some wheels, doors and windows), for example sets of
| the "Universal Building Set" family [0] like the one pictured
| early in the article. But by the time of most of our childhoods
| (the 70s or even 80s), Lego had already introduced sets with
| plenty of specialized pieces. Also at that time they already
| introduced some more complex sets tailored for a specific build,
| some of them, the kind of set some people may chose to build only
| once (as if it was a glue-on plastic model kit).
|
| The thing is, most rants about old Lego being better more
| generic, are just misguided rose-tinted nostalgia talking. Lego
| still sells awesome generic sets, even better than the ones we
| used to have when we were kids. They just happen to also sell
| some hobbyist sets. For example, my son's big box consists of a
| mix of my old 80s era (e.g. [1]) plus my niece's 00s era
| (e.g.[2]) Legos, and I have to say that the 00s era is much more
| generic and full of bricks, allowing for much more varied
| imaginative play, than my old 80s spaceship sets full of large
| single-use pieces.
|
| [0] https://brickset.com/sets/theme-Universal-Building-Set
|
| [1] https://rebrickable.com/sets/6971-1/inter-galactic-
| command-b...
|
| [2] https://rebrickable.com/sets/31025-1/mountain-hut/
| samwillis wrote:
| I would love to know what percentage of Legos revenue is now from
| adults buying the incredible large, complex and expensive sets to
| build themselves. Lego is so associated as a toy for children
| just as computer games are, but gaming is a larger industry for
| adults than children.
|
| My wife and I now regularly buy these large lego sets for each
| other (birthdays, Christmas and anniversaries) and do them
| together in the evenings after the kids are in bed. Its such a
| lovely way to relax.
| mcv wrote:
| I think 1980s kids who grew up and got well-paying tech jobs
| are their largest customer demographic now. Kids play Minecraft
| instead.
|
| That's what my oldest son said, at least; he doesn't see the
| point in Lego now that Minecraft exists. Breaks my heart. I
| mean, Minecraft is fantastic, but it's not Lego.
| watwut wrote:
| Overwhelming majority (but not all) of kids I know have
| parents that limit how much they can play on computer or
| tablet. They play with legos regularly (among other things).
| BrS96bVxXBLzf5B wrote:
| An alternative viewpoint: Minecraft is Lego, and Lego isn't.
|
| When there were fewer themed Lego sets, Lego was a sandbox.
| You had a mish-mash of generic pieces and your creativity.
| Modern Lego sets are extremely tailored, both in theme and
| with sets having bespoke pieces - even if you throw all of
| your newer sets together in a pile (which people tend not to
| because each is supposed to be _a_ thing), the pieces aren 't
| as modular, allow for less extension of your imagination.
|
| Minecraft is blocks and what you do with them. Minecraft
| isn't a digital extension of Lego, it's serving the
| experience Lego did a few decades ago but no longer does.
| dhosek wrote:
| There are a lot fewer bespoke parts than you might think.
| Creating new molds is expensive and if you look closer
| you'll see that odd shapes are reused for different
| purposes in different sets.
| Fiahil wrote:
| > I would love to know what percentage of Legos revenue is now
| from adults buying the incredible large, complex and expensive
| sets to build themselves.
|
| Small enough that I still can drive envy from every child in
| the store when I buy big Technic sets. Like the huge CAT
| Bulldozer (https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/app-controlled-
| cat-d11-bu...) from last year.
| dudul wrote:
| I don't have a number for you, but I recently read an interview
| of their head of the "adult division". He basically said that
| it was their fastest growing segment. All the IDEAS sets are
| targeted at adults and they seem to be doing very well.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Lego is working hard to make it an adult thing too. See the
| many Lego Masters tv programs in many countries, were it is
| mostly adults competing. I would say the have unlocked the
| adult market, and this is why the had such good results lately.
| mcphage wrote:
| > I would love to know what percentage of Legos revenue is now
| from adults buying the incredible large, complex and expensive
| sets to build themselves.
|
| If you have a Lego store nearby, stop in, and it's mindboggling
| how many $100+ sets they carry. Not great for shopping for a
| Lego Friends set for my daughter, but if I wanted to drop $300
| on a Ninjago set they'd be able to help.
| samwillis wrote:
| Exactly, thinking though what lego we have brought each other
| and the kids (3 and 7) in the last year we could easily be
| spending twice as much on "adult" lego than on the kids, and
| we get it for them even more regularly.
| MivLives wrote:
| I'd also wonder if their cost per part on the bigger sets is
| higher or lower.
|
| I've been building the adult sets over the last few years and
| you're right it's a nice nondigital way to unwind. Unlike my
| job everything works, has a place, and is all neat and
| organizable.
|
| Interestingly my mother who is retired has gotten into lego.
| Initially she got into it because she decided to resell all my
| childhood sets which were stored in a large bins. I had kept
| all the instructions so she just build lego sets one at a time
| and sold them off. It got her hooked, and now she regularly
| buys used or new sets, assembles, and then resells them. It's
| interesting to see someone get into lego rather late in life
| with no childhood nostalgia of them what so ever.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| There was an average price by piece comparison a few years
| ago but I can't find it back.
|
| The gist of it was that price by piece didn't change that
| much, while sets are getting bigger and more complex. I'd
| also wagger that we now have a lot more smaller pieces that
| make these kind of calculations more flawed.
| watwut wrote:
| It is not even that sets would be universally bigger. You
| can buy middle sized, small and super small sets still.
| Lego sets literally start from small bag for 5e that builds
| something super small.
| furyofantares wrote:
| In any creative endeavor, be it lego or minecraft or anything
| else, you can endlessly watch the global greatest hits on
| youtube, things you have no chance of "competing" with. I have no
| idea how this affects people growing up in this environment. Is
| it stifling? Inspiring? Just normal, since you start out as a kid
| not knowing how to do anything and surrounded by people who do?
| How different is it really from how we grew up, listening to
| professional music, surrounded by professional visual art?
|
| I don't know any of the answers. But I'm grateful that my kid can
| assemble a complex thing from a lego kit. For her, it looks
| empowering to me. And when she's done, she almost immediately
| starts tweaking it, then disassembles it completely within a few
| days and the kit ends up in the pile of assorted bricks for "free
| play."
| tasha0663 wrote:
| > you can endlessly watch the global greatest hits on youtube,
| things you have no chance of "competing" with
|
| I think it is pretty much normal. I'm reading _Art & Fear_
| (1985) right now, and it discusses a lot of myths about talent
| and genius that would be relevant to this.
|
| Whenever my kids ask me how I got to my level of ability in art
| or music, I make sure to let them see paintings and prints that
| I abandoned on the way to a final piece. They see me reworking
| things on the light box. They hear me practice and flub my
| scales. I'm at least trying to instill the notion that there's
| always an effort and a huge mess on the cutting room floor.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| I find the act of building a set and putting it on a shelf to
| gather dust a bit sad, but big piles of similar shaped blocks are
| also a bit uninspiring.
|
| So I was pleasantly surprised to find the BricQ Motion sets aimed
| at classroom use. They come with lessons plans and videos to give
| some direction, but even without them it's a great self-contained
| box with very carefully selected pieces to encourage learning
| about physics and a pile of more "silly" pieces to add character.
| There's a good selection of wheels, springs, weighted blocks,
| "ropes" and Technics style pieces. They come in a segmented tray
| and are colour coded to make finding particular blocks and
| experiment with related blocks easier.
|
| I think they're the best of both - experiment, solve a challenge,
| learn something, build nonsense and then break it all up and put
| it away neatly ready to do it again. Big hit compared to sets.
| iamkroot wrote:
| I was a Lego obsessed kid through the 90s and 00s, and now I have
| a school age son who is similarly devoted to it. Lego today is
| waaaayyy cooler than it was when I was a kid.
|
| I got the very first Lego Star Wars set, Lukes X-Wing [1], and
| while I loved it as a kid the newest Xwing that my son just got
| [2] is so much better on every level. It's bigger, more detailed,
| looks sleeker, and has this really clever mechanism that opens
| the wings synchronously when you press down on a piece.
|
| All the new sets are this way. The care and detail that Lego puts
| into them has dramatically improved in the last 20 years.
|
| He still takes them apart a few months after he gets them and
| builds something new. I don't think that will ever change, the
| thrill of making something on your own will never go away.
| Furthermore, the online community of people making things and
| sharing their creations has exploded since I was a child. We had
| a single user forum (LUGnet) where a small handful of people
| congregated. All images were uploaded to a single, tiny website
| (brickshelf) to be shared. Now you have youtube channels,
| instagram pages, tiktok creators, subreddits, you name it. The
| resources available for creating and sharing your own designs is
| massive!
|
| 1: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9yXo6HF8hTo/hqdefault.jpg 2:
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/luke-skywalker-s-x-wing-f...
| deltaonefour wrote:
| >The ads were just plain awesome. Case in point: This 1981 ad
| featuring a young girl with her Lego creation.
|
| That picture of the girl holding up a lego set is only "AWESOME"
| for parents. As a kid if I saw that I would barf. First off as a
| little boy back then... there was no gender equality. All girls
| were stupid and had cooties and I was a little sexist tyrant.
|
| Second little boys aren't dumb... that blob of a thing made by
| girl is infinitely less interesting then a space ship designed by
| a professional adult with a cool color scheme. Case in point I
| loved the M-tron series: https://imgur.com/a/bK7w8. Of course
| being a little boy my skills were only good enough to produce
| that multi colored blob but that doesn't change the fact that I
| knew what quality was when I saw it.
|
| This article is just an adult projecting his opinion and woke
| sensibilities onto a kid. That being said yes it's ok for a boy
| to like doll houses. Perfectly fine, but let's be real, legos are
| mostly for boys and most boys would prefer dinosaurs over doll
| houses and any advertising that doesn't target that is
| advertising that doesn't understand the majority of its target
| demographic.
|
| My main argument is against the author of the article and their
| complete blissful ignorance about how kids think. Lego knew their
| shit though. That photo is an ad targetted towards parents. The
| M-tron legos had advertising targeted directly towards me when I
| was a kid, while this article on the other hand is an article
| targeting parents who don't understand how kids think.
| destitude wrote:
| I think you are missing the point.. The gender equality was
| portrayed by the company and therefore picked up by the
| parents. Nothing to do with what little boys thought of girls.
| Today you have marketing pre-disposing parents to thinking
| girls should follow X interests and boys Y. This is big part of
| why we have lack of females in STEM since for example "girls"
| Legos shows they should just worry about beauty salons and not
| rocket ships.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| >The gender equality was portrayed by the company and
| therefore picked up by the parents. Nothing to do with what
| little boys thought of girls.
|
| I know. Legos has two modes of advertising. One targeting
| parents, the other targeting kids. Both were accurate in
| their objectives. However the article itself fails to
| understand the psychology of kids.
|
| > This is big part of why we have lack of females in STEM
| since for example "girls" Legos shows they should just worry
| about beauty salons and not rocket ships.
|
| Don't want to turn it into a huge debate about gender stuff.
| All I can say is I disagree. Male and female preferences
| influence the advertising and the advertising in turn does
| influence preference but to a much lesser degree. Many
| studies show that the interest is innate:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox
|
| You can disagree, but there's no point in turning this into a
| debate... let's just agree that there's controversy around
| this area and definitely a lot of interest groups seek to
| color this area with their own agendas.
| destitude wrote:
| It's still interesting to note that boys wore pink and
| played with dolls in the USA 100-150 years ago.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| You can build dolls with legos. It is the act of building
| that is really the core that draws this line of
| demarcation IMO. Other stuff like whether pink is
| associated with masculinity is harder to judge.
|
| Additionally don't forget practically all of our
| technology and science from the dawn of human kind (with
| many exceptions) was built from the ground up by males.
| That is the key, despite the exceptions, men are
| basically responsible for all of it. It seems illogical
| to dismiss the difference with a simple answer like
| sexism.
|
| It may be that males in the past didn't permit women to
| enter STEM and that is WRONG. But there's also the fact
| that males built all of STEM and no parallel structure
| was built on the female side; that difference is worth
| exploring as is your remark about boys wearing pink and
| playing with dolls.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| The main difference is that the sets and instructions got way
| more complicated and elaborate. So much so that they stifle and
| discourage the creativity instead of feeding it.
|
| The first set I had was a minuscule "mineral detector" from the
| space set -
| https://media.brickinstructions.com/06000/6841/001.jpg
|
| There were 6-step instructions [2,3] AND there was a separate
| page with what else was buildable from the set [4]. That was the
| Lego magic ingredient, the most crucial part. It forced one to
| look and think and _imagine_ how those extra models were put
| together. That, in turn, kick-started the process of trying other
| things. Above all, all of it was _simple_. So when you got more
| sets you 'd look at the instructions as a starting point only and
| then dive right into building the alternatives.
|
| Modern sets have none of that. If anything, they basically
| demonstrate that you _can 't_ possibly come up with the thing you
| are building on your own. No way. And whatever you _can_ put
| together will be so inferior in comparison that it 's not even
| worth trying. It's really sad what Lego did to itself, because it
| _was_ something magical :- /
|
| [2] https://media.brickinstructions.com/06000/6841/002.jpg
|
| [3] https://media.brickinstructions.com/06000/6841/003.jpg
|
| [4] https://media.brickinstructions.com/06000/6841/004.jpg
| watwut wrote:
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/the-fox-lodge-21178
|
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/bricks-and-houses-11008
|
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/creative-suitcase-10713
| tills13 wrote:
| first-party extra models: https://www.lego.com/en-
| my/service/help/bricks-and-sets/buil...
|
| third-party extra models:
| https://rebrickable.com/sets/alternates/
| NeoTar wrote:
| On behalf of all Europeans, can I express the sentiment:
|
| LEGO is a brand, LEGO Bricks, or LEGO pieces are the individual
| bricks/tiles/plates, etc. 'Legos' looks very wrong to us.
| insickness wrote:
| > Lego has become more gender stratified
|
| In this day and age, I would be surprised if the Lego Friends
| line, which was created with girls in mind, were marketed
| explicitly to girls. My guess is that the girls stratify
| themselves by what type of toys they are attracted to. There's
| evidence that the preference is biological:
|
| Male monkeys prefer boys' toys
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-pr...
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I have a boy and girl, I purposefully made the effort not to
| push them into gender specific things, but hell they still
| ended up pretty stratified. They even play minecraft
| differently!
|
| I'm convinced there is a major biological underpining after
| watching these two grow up.
| astura wrote:
| Really weird you just jump to "biology," as I assume your
| kids have access to media and at some point interacted with
| someone else other than you (children and adults).
|
| I didn't learn gendered behavior or thoughts from my parents
| but I learned them from everyone else and society as a whole.
| I learned from a very, very young age that some of my
| interests were very much not acceptable for girls and I
| internalized a lot of it.
| bigthymer wrote:
| > They even play minecraft differently!
|
| Pls explain
| captainmuon wrote:
| That study doesn't show what most people think it does. Monkeys
| have no idea what a firetruck is, so how could a monkey have
| any preference towards it? The only thing they managed to show
| is that there is a flaw in the experiment. In a sense it is the
| ideal control question: do the monkeys distinguish based on
| something they cannot know? A more charitable reading which is
| mentioned is that male monkeys prefer hard shapes with wheels,
| but I doubt that is very relevant.
|
| And yes, companies absolutely do market towards boys and girls.
| They don't write "for girls" on the box, but they consciously
| produce two product lines. Often it is one unisex line and one
| that is "forbidden for boys", i.e. it has pink and glitter and
| you would be teased as a boy of you bought it. This way, they
| can create artificial market separation and increase sales.
| insickness wrote:
| A monkey doesn't know what a firetruck is, nor is it
| influenced by cultural pressures, such as glitter and pink
| are for girls. The difference in gender preference is that
| the females prefer people, such as faces and social
| interaction and boys prefer objects such as trucks.
|
| This preference was also shown in studies where female new
| born babies tend to look at faces more than male babies.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| All five characters of the Lego Friends line are female.
| watwut wrote:
| > I would be surprised if the Lego Friends line, which was
| created with girls in mind, were marketed explicitly to girls.
| My guess is that the girls stratify themselves by what type of
| toys they are attracted to.
|
| Lego themselves talked about lego friends being meant for
| girls, publicly and loudly. Also, all characters are girls. The
| kids in ads for lego friends are all girls too. It could not
| have been more clear that it is for girls.
|
| The other legos at that time and few years before were very
| very clearly for boys. They used colors used for boy toys. Toy
| stores are clearly separated to boy and girl section by color.
| They also used themes that literally any kid over 2 identify as
| boys.
|
| ---------
|
| As side note, claim that they are less about building then
| other lego sets for same age brackets is untrue. I dont know
| why the article felt the need to claim the difference is
| character vs building.
|
| Actual differences against other themes are colors, fight vs
| life, indoor vs outdoor, gender of characters.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think the point is capitalism gives people what they crave.
| Not necessarily what they need. But any alternative is
| unimaginable in individualized minds of modern people.
| toyg wrote:
| Oh, it does give them what they need, plus loads of other
| needs they didn't even know they had - and sometimes these
| other needs take priority regardless of whether that should
| be the case. I.e. they will sell you milk, which you likely
| need, but also all possible types of cheese and yogurt and
| cream, which you really don't but might actually end up
| consuming more than milk.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| Cheese and yoghurt may be healthier than milk, because
| bacteria already processed the lactose in the milk.
| iqanq wrote:
| bregma wrote:
| Perhaps the reinforcement of arbitrary culture-specific
| gender stereotypes is not the point of all toys? There are
| plenty of other ways parents impose programming.
| iqanq wrote:
| Gender stereotypes that have existed for millenia in a
| multitude of species are everything but "arbitrary".
| rgoulter wrote:
| I liked Deborah Tannen's remarks in the afterword of a
| reprint of "You Just Don't Understand".
|
| The book is about her observations that some conflict
| between men & women resembles inter-cultural conflict; i.e.
| men would talk with a different set of cultural attitudes
| than women.
|
| She said that people asked her how much that came down to
| nature vs culture. If nature, then the differences are what
| they are, and culture doesn't need to (and cannot
| fundamentally) change. If cultural, then inequality would
| reduce by ironing out the differences.
|
| As I understand it, worry about gendered-for-girls toys
| comes from the latter view. (Differences lead to
| inequality).
|
| (FWIW, Tannen's suggested solution is that differences as
| they are now should be recognised and worked-with).
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| I for one am glad that LEGO provides the girls series to get
| my daughter interested in building things with it.
|
| The photograph of the girl building things with the universal
| bricks is just marketing, not a report from the 60ies. It
| does not imply that girls actually did that en masse.
|
| Personally I remember building houses with Lego (so walls and
| a roof), but not much more. These days the Lego toys may
| actually be more fun.
| leokennis wrote:
| Large amount of "old man yells at cloud" going on here.
|
| Lego is still fantastic. My kids love them. They can build a cool
| ninja car or a police plane or a house. And later recombine the
| three into a fantasy jeep-truck combo with a ramp.
|
| The bricks are durable as f*ck. They learn fine motor skills.
| They learn to read instructions. They get creative. They role
| play.
|
| There's really no need to gatekeep Lego.
| sparrc wrote:
| A few counterpoints:
|
| - LEGO still makes bins of fairly generic pieces that can be
| built into all sorts of things: https://smile.amazon.com/LEGO-
| Classic-Medium-Creative-Brick/...
|
| - My daughter has a few LEGO duplo sets. One for example had
| instructions for building a Minnie Mouse house, but we only did
| that once. Now all the sets are taken apart and mixed together
| and she pretty much builds whatever she wants, mixing and
| building with pieces from 4-5 different duplo sets together.
|
| - It's super easy to buy bins of used legos online, especially in
| local parenting communities. I see people exchanging bins of LEGO
| pieces all the time and usually it's just bins of pieces, no
| instructions or defined sets or plans at all.
| dirtyid wrote:
| I was fortunate enough to have the "right" amount of legos,
| enough that I could mostly build what I wanted but not enough
| that I was always missing pieces / colours and pushed to engineer
| around limitations. I credit legos to developing my mechanical
| and spatial aptitude. I remember playing with less fortunate
| collections and wonder if these qualities would have been stunted
| if I had less, or if I could have been spoiled if given too much.
| I do know I'm very envious of not growing up with minecraft where
| having unlimited resources or being forced to manage resource
| seem to develop more skills. What's the situation with building
| legos in VR?
| layer8 wrote:
| The bricks also look cheaper (slightly glaze-like surface) since
| they started using the same translucent-white pellets for all
| colors, just with different dyes added when injecting the moulds,
| instead of full-colored pellets, around 2000. It's also a pity
| they changed the gray colors from neutral-warm to the bluish
| grays, which to my eyes slightly clash with most of the other
| colors. Along with the changes to the available bricks, sets and
| minifigures as mentioned in the article, this made me lose
| interest in "modern" Lego.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| > Blocks hide in the carpet until you are walking around barefoot
| in the dark. The pain of stepping on a a sharp Lego piece is not
| easily forgotten.
|
| My first parenting superpower was the ability to step softly on
| Lego bricks. If I'm in a serious hurry, I'll even grip the thing
| with my foot and keep walking.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > It would appear that, in the 1970s, equality of the sexes and
| creativity was the end goal for Lego
|
| No. Saying you can buy your daughter a spaceship and your son a
| doll house doesn't mean that was your end goal. More likely,
| having to come up with fewer differentiated toys to sell, i.e.
| broadening the market, was.
|
| I'm not saying that equality (although playing with
| nontraditional toys isn't synonymous with that) be an aim, but
| it's not the most obvious "end goal" explanation.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I grew up in the classic space era (of course the best, but then
| again everyone's childhood pop culture is "the best").
|
| The #1 thing that should be emphasized is that lego is cheaper
| than it was back when I had it. I think that's a good thing.
|
| What would I really like? I'd like Lego to do re-releases of old
| sets that are 20 or 30 years old. Or maybe megasets that re-
| release the entire year's sets for a line (Take my money for a
| UCS millenium falcon-pricepoint of all of the classic sets from
| 1980/1981 re-released)
|
| I bought a ton of used legos on CL (too much of course) when my
| kiddo was born. Then I sorted them to get a feel for the new
| pieces. I think wheels are better (there's basically 2-3 axle
| standards which I think is an improvement).
|
| I think the main bad thing is that there are too many colors and
| shades, due likely to over-perfecting a branded set or something
| like that (or its a conspiracy).
|
| The minifigs are a bit much sometimes, but I don't think it's
| that bad. THey still are largely minifigs.
|
| The amount of cool MOC/custom builds on the internet is great.
| The other great thing I didn't have was digital photography: I
| didn't want to take apart my own models as a kid because I know
| I'd never be able to rebuild them. Now you can take a whole bunch
| of pictures to remember it and rebuild it if I wanted to.
|
| I do think the overbranding of sets leads to them not being
| deconstructed. But I bought a ton of "spare bricks" so I don't
| think we'll have that problem.
|
| When lego does an occasional "classic space"-ish set like the
| mars rover or the mech, it is amazing. The creator sets are
| great.
| jstanley wrote:
| Is it just me or does the letter from 1974 look like it was
| typeset in Microsoft Word?
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| It does.
|
| And this is going to be my only comment on this topic because
| I'm too traumatised by people pluralising "lego" with an S.
| altacc wrote:
| Most of the now & then examples are both true now. The classic
| sets still exist and how children play with Lego depends on their
| personality and what they have available (and how it is stored).
| Children are individuals and Lego allows a larger variety of play
| than most other toys on the market.
|
| My kids have a mix of classic & branded sets and the play area is
| a mix of designed builds and improvised creations. The favourite
| and larger sets stay in their own bags when deconstructed but
| most others are added to the common boxes, which are sorted by
| rough shape based on what we've seen stimulates free building.
| There are a lot of complex shapes but many of those are useful in
| free building. I've purposely bought some sets with multiple
| complex flats & bricks as they allow more creativity than just
| the basic bricks.
|
| But I know other children who just like to follow build
| instructions or just like to play with the characters and that's
| OK. That's the flexibility of modern Lego.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _most others are added to the common boxes, which are sorted by
| rough shape based on what we've seen stimulates free building._
|
| I inherited a bunch of legos from older cousins when I was a
| kid (and I've since donated them to a school). My parents did
| get me a tackle box to go along with them, and sorting/putting
| them away is as much part of the play/learning as building, I
| think. Just like you can't really go fishing if you can't find
| the right lure, you can't really build that spaceship if you
| don't know where the cone piece is.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > My kids have a mix of classic & branded sets and the play
| area is a mix of designed builds and improvised creations.
|
| Amazing. My kid just wants to get the build over with so he can
| get back to gaming or youtube, where he watches other people
| gaming.
| wffurr wrote:
| My kid is only 3, but I am already contemplating time boxing
| and auditing gaming and YouTube time. It seems significantly
| more difficult than it ought to be, thanks to all the brain
| hijacking dark patterns out there.
| altacc wrote:
| Do so, no question about it! Once most children disappear
| down a YouTube rabbit hole of unboxing or gaming they're
| lost. It's scary to see how addictive our modern passive
| entertainment is. In my experience, the best thing to do is
| start limiting from early on. My kids are still under 10
| and it's 1 to 1:15 hours of gaming + same of TV on each
| weekend day, never on a school day. They are hardly aware
| that YouTube exists, they only watch it with us.
|
| This takes up a lot of our time, as we're their
| entertainment, but the times that I let go and let them
| watch more typically come back and bite me as they haven't
| had enough time to play & be creative and that leads to
| tantrums and bad bedtimes. We use Google Family to control
| their tablets and it's the timer on there that stops them
| playing, not us, which feels fairer to them.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| My childhood memory with Lego was the big box we had where all
| was mixed together. This ment lomg search firnthe "right" piece
| in the "right" color and the often resulted in finding some
| different piece and changing plans.
|
| On the side I had precious models, which were not to touch.
| watwut wrote:
| > The classic sets still exist and how children play with Lego
| depends on their personality and what they have available (and
| how it is stored). Children are individuals and Lego allows a
| larger variety of play than most other toys on the market.
|
| Yes. And also, many if not most kids combine approaches. Start
| by building based on manual, then they play with it and it gets
| gradually destroyed, then just use it is as material.
|
| Have few favorite sets they keep, the rest gets destroyed and
| used as bricks when in mood.
| rob74 wrote:
| I haven't really followed recent Lego developments, but I'm
| relieved to see the "classic" sets still exist - although it's
| understandable to not be aware of them, because all of the
| advertising goes into the branded sets, probably because the
| margin on them is much better (ok, they probably have to pay
| some license fees to Disney, Warner or whoever, but still...)
| thorin wrote:
| I'm pleased you said that, because we also have a mixture, but
| most of the sets that were built were broken up and are now in
| communal boxes. This seems pretty unusual compared to most
| parents, I guess it's mostly because the parents don't want
| things to get mixed up. In theory we could rebuild according to
| the instructions, but in reality it's never going to happen as
| it would take so long to find all the pieces. Almost every day
| my kids (Boy 6, Girl, 8) do free play with the mixed lego,
| sometimes for hours. I'm really pleased with it, as it makes a
| good break from Youtube etc.
| patwolf wrote:
| I wish my kids were more into free play. When their sets
| inevitably get broken and end up in the communal box, that's
| usually the last time they play with it. I should stop buying
| them more sets, but as an avid collector myself I enjoy
| getting sets as much for my own enjoyment.
|
| For them I think Minecraft scratches much that creative itch
| that Lego used to bring me.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Necessity is the mother of invention. I played with legos a
| lot to try and build a toy I didn't get. When I didn't get
| a Megazord action figure one year for Christmas, I tried
| the best I could to build something like it out of legos.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Bingo. I think this comment nails it. Minecraft is the
| digital lego for alot of kids these days. My youngest
| daughter is 9 with autism, and she is always talking about
| minecraft. She just absolutely loves it to death.
| planetafro wrote:
| This is absolutely the correct way Lego intends you to play.
| They even make the boxes flimsy and cheap on purpose to not
| encourage saving them. There are some Lego employees on
| TikTok that speak of their training and "secrets" if
| interested. Not a source of truth, but interesting none the
| less.
|
| Personally, I enjoy the modern Lego in that there is parental
| choice. As a company, they cater to all audiences without a
| strong opinion either way. This is the way.
| altacc wrote:
| Yes, I think a proper Lego setup for young children requires
| the parents to set up the right environment. We devote quite
| a bit of space to Lego so that it's always on hand and I'm a
| bit fanatical about Lego organisation. That helps both when
| starting a free build and also finding the pieces for an
| official manual. Flip side is the classic pain of stepping on
| Lego!
| watwut wrote:
| > Lego did extensive research and found that girls preferred to
| play with the characters rather than build sets. So they created
| the Lego Friends line where the characters own beauty salons, pet
| boutiques and can be news reporters working on stories about
| cakes. The sets do not come with hundreds of pages of
| instructions because most of them are fairly simple to build. The
| Lego Friends line is immensely popular.
|
| 1.) Majority of lego sets kinds have characters in them. That
| includes Star Wars sets, Ninja go sets, knights sets and what
| not. Lego Friends having characters in them is not something
| unique.
|
| 2.) Also, lego sets marked for similar age brackets have
| similarly complex manuals. It is just not true that Lego Friends
| for 7 years old would be much less complex them Minecraft for 7
| years old or City for 7 years old.
|
| 3.) The actual study lego made and wrote about distinguished
| "indoor vs outdoor" as differing preference between boys and
| girls. And I think "a lot of details" in that indoor (not sure
| about this one). This is the first time I hear about the
| difference being "character vs building". Which does not even
| match what sets lego makes. Knights series are all about
| characters.
|
| > Last year, Lego created a female scientist set on a limited
| run. It sold out quickly.
|
| The special thing about this was that they were based on actual
| real world scientists. It was very much collector item.
| chasing wrote:
| I have some issues with Legos, but a lot of these criticisms do
| not at all match my experience.
|
| For example, there are a crazy number of Lego shapes these days,
| but the degree to which they fit together satisfyingly -- even in
| unexpected ways -- is amazing. And I love this about Legos, and
| it's so much more interesting than just blocks. My kid builds
| whole scenes and detailed models thanks to the wide variety of
| little "unique" pieces.
|
| And from what I've seen, sets these days are big idea factories:
| My kid will build what's in the instructions a couple of times to
| learn it, and then will take things apart and do his own thing
| with it, make his own creations. I love that he gets an example
| and learns new techniques with these big sets and then applies
| that to his own ideas.
|
| The branded Lego stuff I don't care for -- I'd rather kids think
| about actual space exploration rather than Star Wars, for example
| -- but I appreciate how Legos are designed and sold right now.
| MikeMacMan wrote:
| Reminds me of this brief scene from Community. RIP Michael K
| Williams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8e2f9j-iJo
| seFausto wrote:
| I knew this would come up! "What happened to Lego? they use to
| be simple"
| tommica wrote:
| Some of the items here read less like lego changing, and instead
| as the person growing from a child to a parent, and their point-
| of-view changing (#2 and #3). Also the "now" in #5 does not even
| mention the modern advertising in it.
|
| All in all, this article from 2014 seems have not other reason to
| exist but to attract hate-clicks.
| throw7 wrote:
| I loved the general lego sets I had as a kid. One year my parents
| had gone on a short vacation to europe (germany?) and returned
| with an "expert lego system" kit of a front loader. Once built
| you could raise/lower and dump the bucket. Man I loved that thing
| also. One can like both types of "kits".
| gilbetron wrote:
| I really dislike all the bizarre "lego ain't what they used to
| be!" comments - they honestly come from people who haven't spent
| time with modern legos. For reference I was born in 1970 and
| played with legos probably from 1975-1985, and then seriously
| picked it up again in 2012 or so when my son was old enough to
| play with them. People paint this picture of these new legos that
| are made up of like 5 parts that you just click together and have
| a transformer or something. Reality is far from that - there are
| so many cool pieces that let you build things never before
| possible. I was going to make an analogy about it being like
| having 100 crayon colors instead of 1, but it is more like having
| a whole artist's toolbox at your disposal, including 100 crayons.
| People say, "but it is too complicated!" - well then just buy the
| classic bricks, they are easy to purchase in bulk, and you can
| find lots of instructions all over the place for fun ideas to
| learn with.
|
| And then there's this weird idea that it is so complicated that
| you have to build it once and then never take it apart. Please,
| taking it apart was a huge amount of the fun for my son. He'd
| repurpose parts into his never ending scene that sprawled a 10x10
| area in our family room. He (and us) would play with them
| literally daily for at least an hour, if not more, adding sets as
| they came along. Much of it stayed in bins, just because he had
| so much (youngest child of a youngest child, means you have lots
| of generous Aunts, Uncles, and cousins!).
|
| Even now, at 13, he literally was putting a set together with is
| friend just yesterday. It's rarer now, since he likes the intense
| interactively of computer-based "legos" (People Playground,
| Minecraft, Garry's Mod, Teardown, and modding for other games,
| not to mention VR stuff).
|
| Modern legos are awesome.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I've played with Lego (never Legos) since 1980. I love the
| modern sets. The branded sets, to me, make it even more fun.
| You can mix a Batman mini-fig and use the branded parts to make
| an uber-Batmobile of your own design. The Star Wars kits are
| fantastic. I actually bought all the Friends sets for myself
| because the brick colors are great.
|
| Even today I opened my mail to find a teddy bear valentine's
| heart Lego set from my girlfriend that is constructed from
| clever use of generic bricks, none of which would have been out
| of place in 1970s sets. In fact, I think Lego has become 100X
| more creative since the advent of the Internet, where people
| are making the more insane and elaborate constructions from the
| simplest bricks. It's become competitive in the nicest way.
|
| Lego today is thriving and is better than it ever was.
| WheatM wrote:
| enriquto wrote:
| > Modern legos are awesome.
|
| Indeed they are!
|
| But, as much as I also dislike, like you, these bizarre
| comments; there's one place where I drew a red line and lego
| has sadly crossed it recently: lego sets that become obsoleted
| because lego removes some software from the app store.
| Previously, sets were standalone and eternal. But today you can
| buy an awesome technic set that will become "bricked" in a few
| years when they remove the controller software from the play
| store.
|
| This is not a theoretical concern. It has already happened
| (even for sets that were still on sale!). It sucks big time and
| it is really sad.
|
| If at least the apps were free software, we would have
| something to hang on to defend lego. But their current stance
| is indefensible.
| [deleted]
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| I mean, that isn't really new either. I had the first
| generation Lego Mindstorms set (pre-NXT, with the old yellow
| control brick), which required a USB device and special
| software to edit programs on the control brick. After
| ditching Windows XP for Windows 7, I could never get the USB
| device, or the required software, to function properly. The
| software and drivers just weren't maintained and updated, and
| I could never figure out how to fix that.
| xenomachina wrote:
| I have a few RCX Mindstorms sets, and the software was
| always a problem. Thankfully, there were some open source
| alternatives, like http://brickos.sourceforge.net/
|
| As an aside I'm pretty sure my RCX IR towers use serial,
| not USB.
| slavik81 wrote:
| What a blast from the past. I remember the finicky IR
| tower for uploading programs.
|
| I failed abysmally at programming my Mindstorms robot. I
| could never figure out how to make two things happen at
| the same time, so I couldn't make both motors run at
| once. As a result, my treaded robot could only spin in
| circles.
|
| Sadly, that was pretty much the end of my experience with
| Mindstorms. Eventually, I gave up and put it away,
| because it was such a frustrating experience.
|
| I assume it would be easier for kids these days. It was a
| lot more difficult to find help on the internet in 1999.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Eventually, I gave up and put it away, because it was
| such a frustrating experience.
|
| Wasn't there a cheat sheet in the manual for the puzzles?
| I think I only solved one without copying everything. Way
| too hard for 11-12yo me.
| xenomachina wrote:
| Yeah, the bundled software for the RCX was pretty awful,
| and was Windows-only. That's why I used brickOS, which
| let me write C (or was it C++?) code to run on the RCX,
| and it also worked on Linux.
|
| The next generation, "NXT", was somewhat better (I
| believe it's based on LabView), but I remember it being
| ridiculously slow and unstable on Macs.
|
| One of my kids uses Lego's "SPIKE Prime" at their
| robotics club, and while I haven't used the software
| myself, it seems much better.
| rhaps0dy wrote:
| > As an aside I'm pretty sure my RCX IR towers use
| serial, not USB.
|
| Both versions exist. Mindstorms 1.0/1.5 had serial IR
| towers, 2.0 had USB.
| kbouck wrote:
| i always felt that it should be possible to use a raspberry
| pi or arduino as the controller. with some tinkering i was
| able to generate IR signals that were accepted by the power
| functions receivers. and the power functions extension
| cable seems like a great way to propagate an i2c bus.
|
| there are some pi cases with lego pin-sized holes to help
| interface the two.
| pnathan wrote:
| Yeah, I have been getting Legos for my kid, and man, I just
| don't see the complaints. I'm very happy with the modern sets,
| as happy as I was when I was a kid.
| axbytg wrote:
| This rules
| ballenf wrote:
| What I've seen is that kids get that dopamine rush from putting
| together everything exactly according to instructions. From
| opening the numbered bags and methodically working through
| thick instruction booklets.
|
| The problem now is that they have this expectation of
| gratification from making something kind of perfect and their
| own creations are less interesting and fulfilling.
|
| I don't know what the name is for the idea that offering an
| "extra" optional path can detrimentally affect the other path.
| (I'd posit the same theory softly applies to Minecraft's
| creative mode.)
|
| But might just be my experience.
| jbmny wrote:
| I have definitely gotten that dopamine rush, and I think I
| still do. It's probably a big reason why I'm a programmer.
| There's a certain satisfaction you get from knowing
| definitively that you "solved" the problem. Making music is
| another interest of mine, but due to its open-ended, creative
| nature, I don't think it can provide this kind of
| satisfaction.
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with someone only liking the follow
| instructions aspect of Lego and not the fully creative DIY
| aspect.
|
| I think one of the weirder parenting things is a parent
| trying to get their kiddo to like something in exactly the
| way the parent wants and anything else is a failure. "I built
| my Legos without instructions and we had fun! Kids these
| days...!"
|
| But then parents don't realize they misunderstood the entire
| point from the beginning. Legos were never a magic device to
| make someone creative. They were always just a way to try and
| sneak creativity into people. It just doesn't always work.
| Some people pick up Legos and make castles and cars and all
| this stuff, while some people pick up Legos, make a box
| house, and give up.
|
| Maybe your kiddo is secretly part of the gives up camp, but
| it's satisfying for them to follow to build instructions.
|
| What matters as a parent is that you gave them an option to
| be creative. And that's super cool on its own, y'know?
| jeremyjh wrote:
| My son treats Lego sets like a model airplane: build it
| once exactly to spec, put it on your shelf in your room,
| never change it again. The one difference maybe is they
| will get played with more.
|
| Yet he's very creative with Magna-Tiles in exactly the same
| way we played with Legos when I was a kid (I was born in
| 1976). I do think part of the difference is the
| presentation and marketing of the set, and how specific
| some of the pieces obviously are. Yes, some kids can be
| very creative with these sets, but Lego the company would
| prefer you buy another set.
| DrBoring wrote:
| I find that I am qualified to offer the following data point.
|
| My daughter is 8. She enjoys both Legos and Minecraft.
|
| She mostly plays Minecraft in creative, but recently I've
| been playing through survival with her (first time survival
| for both of us).
|
| She still enjoys building in survival. If anything, I would
| say her survival builds are more satisfying because she has
| to do the work of obtaining the resources, and crafting them
| into the parts she needs. There is also the added challenge
| of not being able to fly and to easily undo a misplaced
| block.
|
| If I'm doing a complex build like an automated farm, she
| enjoys crafting the parts for me.
|
| Back to Lego:
|
| She mostly goes for the Lego Friends kits, but also has a few
| Lego Minecraft kits. After she'd built something, she does
| imaginative role play with her 6-yo sister. Sometimes,
| they'll take the kits apart and rebuild into something
| different.
|
| Regarding temperament: My 8yo is pretty easy going. She is
| generally patient and doesn't get easily frustrated when
| things go wrong.
|
| I could easily see how a different child could hate imperfect
| Lego builds, or survival Minecraft.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| My 4- yo kid likes to build from instructions but once that's
| done he'll take them apart and mix the pieces with all the
| other dismantled kits making it a nearly impossible task to
| redo the original kits. But he'd rebuild simpler variants,
| the play factor is still there. I on the other hand am bit
| stumped by the amount of small varied pieces. I'm thinking of
| getting a bucket with classic pieces, perhaps non
| branded/generic legos.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| My kids do the same. They get a set, build it, play with it
| for a while, and then it gets deconstructed and mixed in
| with the Big Bin O' Lego. Oddball pieces become wings, or
| arms, or showerheads, or whatever their imagination sees.
|
| To me, that's the spirit of Lego. Even as a kid, I had
| friends who had, e.g., the Space Shuttle set, and once that
| shuttle got built, it was sacrosanct. If I tried to pilfer
| something from it, a blood feud would ensue.
| usefulcat wrote:
| For me, the biggest difference between Legos when you and I
| were kids and now is that the sheer number of different pieces
| makes it too often nearly impossible to find the piece you need
| when building something from "the pile".
|
| My kids also have a lot of Legos (by volume, more than I ever
| had). When engaging in free play (i.e. not building a new set
| from the instructions), I find that the things they make tend
| to be much smaller than many of the things I built when I was a
| kid.
|
| I think this makes sense. When I was a kid, for the most part I
| had a bunch of bricks, a bunch of girders, a bunch of plates,
| and a bunch of smaller, more specialized pieces, but the latter
| were used more for adding detail. So it was relatively easy for
| me to find the pieces I needed to make something decent sized
| and them embellish it.
|
| When I look at my kids pile of Legos, it looks like 90% small,
| specialized pieces. As a kid, I remember spending a _lot_ of
| time looking for that one piece that I knew I had if I could
| just find it. But nowadays, that situation is far, far more
| common.
|
| The specialized pieces make for great looking creations on the
| outside of the box. In theory, they should also allow for great
| looking creations during free play, but in practice it ends up
| being too much trouble to find the pieces you need. And at that
| point, a new set looks even more enticing than spending all
| your time searching for pieces, so...
| brimble wrote:
| A ~550-piece set from my childhood (90s): 10 minifigs and
| accessories, end result will fill about a 1-foot cube. Plenty
| of room for small hands to get in and actually play with it.
| Construction simple enough you can easily put it back
| together if it's messed up during play, without resorting to
| the directions. Exposed studs everywhere for easy adding-on.
|
| A modern ~550-piece set, also from a line aimed at kids, not
| one of the adult-aimed models: 3 minifigs, fills 1/3 cubic
| foot at best because 450 of the pieces are little 1x1 and 1x2
| plates or similar. Finished set's too small for even kid
| hands to get in and play. If it gets messed up more than a
| _very_ tiny bit, you 'll probably have to re-build from
| scratch, because the construction is... very CAD, I guess.
| All surfaces clad in smooth bricks if at all possible, making
| adding on awkward.
|
| The modern ones do have more cool mechanisms and gadgets,
| though. Also they include extra pieces for the small ones
| now, and more sets come with a brick tool. Those are all nice
| changes. But the sets themselves seem to be tuned for
| inflating part counts and looking nice on a box, not for
| play.
| secabeen wrote:
| The sets you are looking for still exist today. For
| example:
|
| 428-piece, 1-foot cube, $55, 4 minifigs, 1994:
| https://brickset.com/sets/6571-1/Flame-Fighters
|
| 540-piece, 1-foot cube, $69, 5 minifigs, 2022:
| https://brickset.com/sets/60320-1/Fire-Station
|
| LEGO just has a much much larger catalog now than they did
| back then (200 sets vs 800 sets.) But the classic style
| sets are still there for you, if that's what you want.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| There's also the entire Lego Classic line which is just a
| box of multi coloured standard bricks.
| als0 wrote:
| Am I the only one who thinks the 1994 one looks nicer?
| enriquto wrote:
| Yes, the 1994 Flame Fighters is an outstanding set! My
| main dislike of the modern version is that the fire truck
| does not have a ladder (that would offer a lot of
| playability). The water gun just looks puny.
|
| EDIT: still, even if I have a weakness for even older
| fire sets, I acknowledge that the modern lego fire
| stations are very good toys. My son has spend countless
| hours playing with the 2016 version [0], which is
| incredibly playable, and whose fire truck is the best.
|
| [0] https://brickset.com/sets/60110-1/Fire-Station
| aksss wrote:
| The modern one reflects some... changes - the more
| contemporary window style, and the number of minifigs
| wearing ties in the firehouse has increased. I expect it
| reflects an assumption of a higher tax base in legoville.
| In all seriousness, the custom piece count is on full
| display, where the 90's set is dominated by reusable
| generic pieces.
|
| Those outward-sloping windows in the 90's set were the
| bomb though, useful in so many cool applications -
| (star)ship bridges, towers, and the like. :D
| dleslie wrote:
| Organizing becomes seriously important, now.
|
| I help my kids by organizing their pieces by colour, with an
| extra box for "bits". So there's a grey box, red box, etc and
| a box full of minifigs and assorted non-building accessories.
| jurassic wrote:
| It's generally accepted among online lego communities that
| organizing by part/shape makes retrieval more efficient
| than organizing by color. It's tough to find a red 1x2
| plate in a huge bin of red pieces, but it's easy to find a
| red 1x2 plate in a bin of small plates of multiple colors.
| If you don't have enough parts to justify breaking down to
| the specific part, you can do categories at whatever level
| of granularity makes sense for your collection: bricks,
| plates, modified bricks, rods and clips, etc.
| kbouck wrote:
| > "the pile"
|
| it's essential to organize them otherwise locating the piece
| of interest becomes too frustrating and time consuming. we
| use a stack of tool boxes from the hardware store to organize
| ours.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| I feel like a lot of people look at the intricate sets that
| cost hundreds of dollars, and conclude that Lego has abandoned
| play and creativity. In reality, there's an abundance of kid-
| oriented sets that are meant to be built, played with,
| deconstructed, and modified. But those aren't the sets that get
| shared through social media.
|
| Lego has embraced the adult collector as a valuable customer.
| But that does not mean they have abandoned the children who
| just want to play with some Lego.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| TBF the best advice for people who only want a bunch of
| "classic" bricks for their small child is to buy them used or
| of some generic conpatible brand.
|
| I totally understand Lego not putting any marketing power in
| that direction and pushing so hard for more branding and
| licensed sets.
|
| The other end of the spectrum is their educational sets, but
| then we're really into the multi hundreds of dollars sets.
| watwut wrote:
| Classic bricks are available in toy stores. Not like a rare
| item, it is there pretty much all the time, usually at the
| bottom shelf. And they are not expensive either.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Every so often Costco will have this giant "classic" lego
| box for $40 which is a pretty good deal:
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/bricks-bricks-
| bricks-1071...
| The-Bus wrote:
| Every major retailer that sells Lego sets will likely carry
| or stock some version of a "classic" set which is 1000+
| bricks that are the same as the ones from 40 or even 50
| years ago (just available in more colors & perhaps some
| bricks introduced in the 80s or 90s). There's no license,
| stickers, software, etc.
|
| Most of these sets are sub-$50, so relatively affordable.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Indeed: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-large-
| creative-brick...
|
| The promotional photos even echo that long-ago Lego ad
| the author laments as a bygone era, with a little girl
| building a house with no instructions (albeit the modern
| version is perhaps unrealistically restrained for
| something a kindergartner supposedly came up with).
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Companies that don't change tend to go under. Lego has to
| innovate just like everyone else.
| andrewgioia wrote:
| 100% agreed. Our 5yo started getting into them about a year ago
| as we sunsetted the Duplo bricks and they're by far his and my
| favorite toys.
|
| We have a bunch of Star Wars sets and while the builds
| themselves are great, 90% of the fun has been breaking them
| down and building our own ships and designs. I watch him
| completely immersed in the world when he makes and flies these
| ships around, it's amazing. I hope we're still doing it when
| he's 13 too.
| lhorie wrote:
| But you're literally admitting that legos aren't what they used
| to be. My exposure to legos was very similar to yours. Yes,
| there are more variety of pieces now, and it can be both a
| blessing and a curse, depending on what angle you squint at it
| from.
|
| In my experience, old legos had a far more rigid feeling:
| idiomatically, sets relied heavily on the verticality of system
| (i.e. usage of the traditional tall or short bricks). Nowadays,
| sets come with a huge variety of 1x1 and 1x2 pieces with
| sideways elements, and a good portion of pieces are of the beam
| variety (i.e. pieces that require connectors to be put
| together[0], commonly found in mindstorm sets)
|
| So with a modern mindstorms set, you can build some really
| elaborate things with high degrees of motion, in a way that
| _is_ intended by Lego, but conversely, the traditional blocks
| look dull in comparison. I was building some random robots w /
| my kids a while back, and the way we approached the bricks was
| fairly different. They largely build following the system as
| intended. _My_ childhood techniques, by contrast, are
| distinctly "illegal" (according to what Lego considers
| valid/stable brick arrangements in official sets). For example,
| this[1] is a technique to achieve a movable joint that I used
| to chain together to create things like arms, animal tails,
| etc.
|
| The entertainment environment for kids has also changed,
| through no fault of Lego itself. Despite the availability of
| high range of motion components, there are so many other ways
| for kids to entertain themselves nowadays that it would just
| never occur to them to exploit Legos in unintended ways the way
| I did.
|
| [0] https://img.brickowl.com/files/image_cache/larger/lego-
| dark-...
|
| [1] http://www.publishyourdesign.com/design/102080
| rightbyte wrote:
| > For example, this[1] is a technique to achieve a movable
| joint that I used to chain together to create things like
| arms, animal tails, etc.
|
| It can only revolve a little before the next "button" hit the
| fork, right?
|
| EDIT: Nvm it should be able to bend alot. I am going to steal
| that technique. =)
| lhorie wrote:
| No, the second button is clear from the tip of the top
| piece, so that specific configuration has a range of motion
| of well over 270 degrees. It isn't considered kosher by
| Lego because obviously the second button does eventually
| hit the side of the top piece and if you force it, you can
| break your build or damage a piece.
|
| You can, of course, modify it to use a tall brick and some
| 1x1 flats to achieve a swiss-army knife setup[0] with a 360
| degrees range of motion. I'd use this variation for things
| like retractable wings.
|
| [0] http://www.publishyourdesign.com/design/102082
| wiredfool wrote:
| Eh, I think the biggest change is that technic style bricks are
| pushed down much farther in the line than they used to be (late
| 70's early 80's). There are a lot more moving parts, more wheel
| and tire styles, and the average part is now a 1x or flat rather
| than a full height 2x4. There's also just a lot more sets and
| options.
|
| The other big change is that all of the sets have instructions
| that the kids seem to start out following, and some of that comes
| from the branding, but some also comes from the more complicated
| nature of the more technic style sets.
|
| There are a couple of unique parts per set, but nowhere near what
| most pundits claim. Most of the parts are interchangable for
| builds, especially if you're not too worried about the colors.
|
| (source, 3 kids now in their teens with 10+ years of someone
| getting at least one set for christmas/birthday, and 1/3 m^3 of
| lego that's less and less used now. And my own collection of ~
| 1/2 ft^3 from way back when)
| shimonabi wrote:
| Are resin 3D printers any better than FDM in printing Lego
| bricks? I hope they get good enough so that every kid can make
| all the pieces.
|
| It's a shame that a new 8880 kit costs an arm and a leg.
| lnsru wrote:
| There is no problem buying the parts separately needed to build
| such model. Of course, some exotic parts were discontinued.
| Lego provides instruction as pdf on their website.
|
| Edit: the other brick manufacturers have problems replicating
| brick quality with injection molding machines. I assembled
| thousands Lego parts with my son and their fit was exactly the
| same - perfect. The Chinese kits have one in hundred parts that
| doesn't fit well. However it was one in ten some years ago,
| Chinese learn fast.
|
| I doubt one can 3D print anything as Lego replacement.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Competitor brick quality is on par or better than Lego at
| least for some. You need to do a little research on which
| competitors use which brick producer, but for example the
| bricks I've had in the Mould King sets were absolutely
| indistinguishable from Lego bricks in quality.
| lnsru wrote:
| Building Mould King right now. The difference is almost
| gone. Cada is worse than Mould King. Anyway with 5x price
| difference I can live with a bit lower quality. Lego
| pricing is just sick. Even used sets from not that distant
| past.
| rkangel wrote:
| There are two counterpoints that mean that this is unlikely to
| be what happens:
|
| Lego bricks are made to micron tolerances. When you add up
| tolerancing errors over 10 or 50 bricks in a row the
| differences can add up and things don't fit. This is a big part
| of how Lego saw off the cheap competition - they were generally
| not satisfying to build. This is achieved with very careful
| injection moulding, and the only rapid prototyping tool at that
| level of precision is 3D CNC.
|
| There is more to the sets that pieces of plastic. Look at
| Warhammer - the figures are all plastic, they could easily be
| 3D printer, they might not look quite as good but they'd work
| just fine. Yet, Games Workshop sells set after set. Lego sets
| are also designed, come with instructions etc. There's more
| than just the components.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The tolerance to which Lego bricks are fabricated is impossible
| to achieve using affordable gear.
| captainmuon wrote:
| You can make Duplo blocks. I printed some nice adapters that
| let you build a bridge for wooden Brio railroad tracks, with
| Duplo stands. And it think you could make specialty parts, like
| it excavator arms. But for regular Lego pieces, printing is too
| expensive and not accurate enough (don't know about resin, but
| I can imagine it is not flexible enough or too toxic?).
|
| What's really holding us back is copyright. I wish there were
| high quality Ninjago or especially Star Wars clones.
| cracrecry wrote:
| They have much much better quality, but the resin is usually
| brittle compared with ABS.
|
| Also it releases fumes that are extremely bad for children.
| There are quality resins but costing $100 per litter or so.
|
| Today with 3d printers you just can print connectors and
| connect aluminum beams and wood boards to do whatever you want.
|
| I teach children to cut wood boards with a fret saw and to mark
| holes that we drill super fast with a column drill machine.
|
| They also know how to create basic shapes with the FDM machine,
| and print standard connector sets.
|
| They have today way more advanced options that Legos.
| mcv wrote:
| A friend prints lego rail tracks that don't exist but should.
|
| For regular bricks, however, Lego's manufacturing process is
| incredibly precise in a way that I don't think 3D printing will
| ever be.
| hughrr wrote:
| It'd cost more money and time to print inferior parts.
| The-Bus wrote:
| Today's Parent dot com, what you've just said is one of the most
| insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your
| rambling, incoherent article were you even close to anything that
| could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on this site is
| now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God
| have mercy on your soul.
|
| With that out of the way, let me try and address this article, as
| someone who played with LEGO bricks in the 1980s and 1990s and
| has offspring that do so today:
|
| 1. The Instructions: There are more instructions in sets that are
| complex. The Model Team truck and helicopter set had 1,000+
| pieces and tons of instructions almost thirty years ago. [1]
| There are still sufficient sets that are not complex and a wide
| variety of sets that come with no instructions. Not a valid
| argument.
|
| 2. The sets: Again, another fallacy. Non-branded sets still
| exist. Branded sets existed twenty years ago. This is a complaint
| about bad parenting (giving in to every demand from your
| children), not Lego.
|
| 3. The building method: Another fallacy. The building methods are
| up to individuals. You are free to buy whatever set you want and
| build whatever you want. You are, in fact, still allowed to take
| apart sets the day after you make them. (I notice that my
| children are very excited to do this as I was at their age but I
| am not).
|
| 4. Gendered toys: I have pored over local bylaws, UN directives,
| and have asked my priest. You can buy a Lego Friends set for your
| son, and a Lego Speed Champions set for your daughter. This is a
| parenting problem, not a Lego problem.
|
| 5. The advertising: This may be a valid point, but not for this
| argument because it does not affect the toys themselves any more
| than I could buy Legos at Toys R Us thirty years ago but not
| today.
|
| 6&7. The blocks & minifigs: Simple blocks are still available and
| you can build exclusively with those if you wish. Minifig choices
| are better as it allows to build different things (i.e. the cast
| of Top Gear UK).
|
| 8. Branding: I don't like branding in Lego, but this has been the
| case for at least twenty years. If you don't like the branding,
| you can buy unbranded sets.
|
| 1 =
| https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=5590...
| thrower123 wrote:
| You have to go way, way back to the 70s or very early 80s for
| some imagined Golden Age of Lego where the things this article is
| moaning about were not the case.
|
| The most concerning issue with Lego to my mind is that they seem
| to be creatively bankrupt. Licensed IP kept the company afloat in
| their dark days, but they don't even try to put out their own
| themes anymore.
| flerchin wrote:
| Soda was sweeter when I was a kid. The playgrounds were taller. I
| never needed money. Cartoons were so good I could sit and watch
| them for hours after school everyday, and the advertisements
| never bothered me. My computer had a 4MB hard drive, and that was
| enough for everything I ever needed. My Dad still loved my mom...
| onpensionsterm wrote:
| That's not the original minifig. That's not even the original
| minifig that had a face.
|
| https://blog.hobbydb.com/2018/11/05/the-evolution-of-lego-mi...
| ilikerashers wrote:
| Trying to buy lego for kids these days is a nightmare.
|
| I went looking for a spaceship lego set. Just a simple rocket or
| something.
|
| Instead it's heaps of adult themed/Star Wars/NASA licensed stuff.
| The alternative seems to be a bucket of standard bricks.
|
| The adult orientation of LEGO these days makes me hesitant to buy
| it.
|
| I don't mind Adults having LEGO sets, I do mind if that becomes
| so lucrative it stops kids being able to enjoy it.
| [deleted]
| mmustapic wrote:
| A simple spaceship
|
| https://www.lego.com/en-be/product/space-shuttle-adventure-3...
| ilikerashers wrote:
| You have to sift through pages to find this one and it is 50
| euro for a small set.
| onychomys wrote:
| In my head, Euros are worth basically the same, maybe a
| little bit more, than USD. But the US version of that set
| is only $40 (although it's sold out, so maybe the EU
| version is higher in price due to scarcity).
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/space-shuttle-
| adventure-3...
| em-bee wrote:
| EU has about 20% VAT, but even taking that into account
| it's still more expensive
| mcphage wrote:
| > I do mind if that becomes so lucrative it stops kids being
| able to enjoy it.
|
| I've got 3 young kids, and trust me, that's nowhere near
| happening. Kids love lego.
| ilikerashers wrote:
| It was about making it accessible. No doubt they love it!
| gjvc wrote:
| Lego, singular. Never "Legos".
| ysamjo wrote:
| Lego really dialed the monopoly rent to 11. I wonder what the
| material cost for a 2,000 pieces set really is? After all it's a
| bunch of formed plastic pellets. My journey and a product idea:
| https://medium.com/hyperlinked/whats-missing-creator-platfor...
| tills13 wrote:
| Seems like you're missing the part where they have to pay
| someone (or more accurately, entire teams of people) a lot of
| money to actually come up with the set idea and instructions.
|
| Boiling LEGO down to just "a bunch of formed plastic" is
| criminal.
| shantara wrote:
| I went through an experience of picking up LEGO Christmas gifts
| for my little cousins (boys and girls, age 6-11). It was very
| difficult to find anything that wasn't a promo for a massive
| Disney franchise. After filtering by the age group and removing
| all comic book/movie/cartoon tie-ins on LEGO website, what was
| left was just several options for each child.
|
| I may be misremembering, but when I was a kid in the 90s there
| was a much larger variety of sets to pick from. As a space nerd I
| love their ISS, Shuttle and Apollo themed sets, but it's still
| disappointing how limited are their kids' options these days.
| rnernento wrote:
| Legos are still one of the most satisfying toys to buy your
| children. Yes they are expensive, yes it's annoying that a lot of
| them are built just once. That being said when you look out at
| the competition the bar is low.
|
| I have a 5 and 3 year old and watching them patiently page
| through the instructions and put together something complex that
| they really care about is incredibly satisfying. Some of the sets
| have relatively complex mechanisms in them as well (I'm thinking
| specifically of the Lego Friends Shopping Mall and the Minecraft
| sets) and the kids are forced to understand them at least on some
| level.
|
| I don't know that my daughter would be interested in classic
| Legos, it's Lego Friends that caught her and will keep her in
| front of a 200 page instruction manual for 4 hours and in my mind
| there's nothing wrong with that.
| tills13 wrote:
| > yes it's annoying that a lot of them are built just once
|
| how is this a point people are hung up on. nobody is telling
| anyone they can only build a set once. hell, Lego has even
| started offering "alternative instructions" for certain sets to
| encourage you to take it apart and rebuild it.
|
| You can do whatever you want with LEGO after you buy it and it
| has never been a better time to be an enthusiast.
|
| People just like complaining about now vs. the Good Old Days
| (tm)
| rnernento wrote:
| I can speak to this a little, the issue is that the sets are
| designed to not be as friendly to rebuilding. The walls and
| floors to buildings are made out of very specific pieces that
| aren't easily reconfigured into new structures.
|
| Honestly some of it is so weird that I think they do it on
| purpose specifically to discourage re-use.
| nix23 wrote:
| >That being said when you look out at the competition the bar
| is low.
|
| Bluebrixx, Cobi and Xingbao are probably much better.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Haven't tried those specific brands (and they tend to change
| brand every time they get sued), but I had a bunch of Lepin
| and whatever else.
|
| You can tell the difference if you start mixing pieces. The
| official ones SNAP together, the cheapo copies just smush and
| don't really stick. They tend to get loose way faster too.
|
| They're good if you want to get that 5000 piece car, build it
| and put it on a shelf. But if you're looking for something
| you can give to your kids and grandkids, get the real deal. I
| still have the same lego sets I got when I was a kid and now
| they're with my kids.
| cardanome wrote:
| Competition has made huge quality leaps in recent years.
| They can not be compared to Lepin anymore.
|
| Cobi, a Polish Company, has actually better quality than
| Lego and is the only one producing in the European Union.
|
| The Chinese brands are already at 95% percent there,
| especially as modern Lego is actually getting worse (and
| probably producing in the same factories anyway). Sadly the
| remaining 5% can make all the difference and can be a bit
| frustrating at times but we should hopefully see parity
| soon especially a those brands try to go into the quality
| segment more and more.
|
| As an adult, I don't see a reason to pay Lego prices when I
| can have nicer and bigger sets for much cheaper. I can cope
| with a little bit of frustration and some pieces not being
| perfect.
|
| For children though, yeah Cobi or Lego any day.
| em-bee wrote:
| quality of alternative bricks has improved remarkably over
| the last few years. and the reputable importers of chinese
| brands pay attention to not import cloned sets and make
| sure that the MOC sets they get are properly licensed from
| the MOC designers. so what you get is much better than what
| it used to be.
|
| bluebrixx is a german brand btw. they import many chinese
| brands but also design and produce their own sets. they
| recently started producing officially licensed star trek
| sets.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I would be absolutely floored if any of those other toy brick
| manufacturer had the quality of LEGO, they are injection
| molding wizards.
| Xylakant wrote:
| I haven't tried a kit of those three mentioned, only other
| competitors, but brick quality hasn't been any different
| from Lego.
| wink wrote:
| I have one Cobi model and while it hasn't been playtested
| by a kid longterm the bricks look solid and the model
| looks good.
| amelius wrote:
| Doesn't the actual injection molding happen in China
| anyway? Wouldn't it be more surprising if the Chinese
| didn't learn the tricks of the trade by now?
| japanuspus wrote:
| No, for Lego the injection molding is strictly
| headquarter business. To the extend that the old
| molds/tools are literally encased in concrete beneath the
| buildings (you can see examples if you go to "Lego House"
| museum at the headquarters in Billund, Denmark).
| amelius wrote:
| So, no patents, but trade secrets?
| nix23 wrote:
| Ah yes checkout Bluebrixx, they are German...the
| quality...not where it's produced of curse.
| cardanome wrote:
| I am a big Bluebrixx fan but the quality is a bit shite
| at the moment.
|
| Their medieval sets are stunningly beautiful. Probably
| the best looking set on the market.
|
| They are great for experts but definitely not great as a
| casual first buy for people that try Lego alternatives.
| They love to use insane build techniques that are fun for
| experts but not really suited for beginners.
|
| The Star Trek series has been a huge disaster for both
| design issues but also quality of pieces. They have
| serious stability issues and barely hold together. I am
| unironically considering plastic glue for my models.
|
| They are constantly improving and I am sure the kinks
| will get worked out but currently I can only recommend
| them for people that like a challenge. Again, they have
| some stunningly beautiful sets and are worth keeping an
| eye on but do not buy them for children or inexperienced
| people.
| em-bee wrote:
| interesting, the reviews that i saw about the star trek
| models pointed out some issues but were not as bad. and
| besides that i have not seen any other star trek set that
| was better, with the exception of the mega bloks one, but
| their way to connect the warp nacelles i would consider
| cheating.
| cardanome wrote:
| Yeah, some things are really difficult to do any better
| with standard pieces but honestly that can't be excuse.
| The quality of pieces that xingbao can deliver is simply
| not up to the task and they should have expected that.
|
| Plus the pressure that is put in the pieces by the weight
| of the models might cause them not age well. So the
| benefit of using standard pieces might not be that great
| in this case.
|
| As for the reviews, Held der Steine is sadly very biased
| towards towards Bluebrixx. Look at the comments under the
| last video where he shows the big Enterprise. They are
| extremely negative.
|
| Also quality is very inconsistent. Some people are very
| lucky and get good pieces while some others have less
| luck. So you can't really know if you get a good batch.
|
| Honestly they are still OK display pieces but the price
| is not really justified by the quality.
| em-bee wrote:
| i have read through the comments. most complain about the
| price and the hanging nacells. none of the commenters
| have built this model yet. most sound self righteous and
| they were never going to get this thing anyways. i'll
| wait until i see more reviews from people who actually
| built the thing.
|
| maybe i am biased towards lego alternatives, but i don't
| think that the same model with original lego bricks is
| going to be any better. i highly doubt that the quality
| of xingbao bricks is the problem here.
|
| rather this model is at the limit of what plastic can
| hold, and unless you cheat, like mega bloks, i don't
| think it is possible to do better.
|
| in my personal opinion, if the model doesn't fall apart,
| then the quality of the bricks is good enough. yes, there
| are issues with inconsistent quality, and i have seen
| models that actually do fall apart. if that happens, then
| criticism is justified. but for the model as presented in
| the video, i didn't see such quality issues, and hence i
| don't agree that the review was biased.
| rnernento wrote:
| Sorry to be clear, when I say competition I mean non-lego or
| knockoff toys, things like LOL Surprise or Shopkins, or Paw
| Patrol figures.
| fullstop wrote:
| I got some of the Lego Elves sets for my daughter, but the line
| was later discontinued and prices skyrocketed. I ordered some
| Communist Bricks / "Illegos" from Ali Express, and the quality
| was decent if you wanted them to sit on a shelf. Some of the
| parts, though, did not hold up to "play time" and I had to buy
| a few critical components from bricklink to put the dragon's
| wings back on.
|
| My daughter loves the intricate Friends sets, but dislikes the
| Friends minifigs.
|
| edit: you may find this interesting --
| https://brickset.com/article/38929/a-survey-of-communist-leg...
| The-Bus wrote:
| The Friends minifigs are terrible! Their hair never stays on.
| fullstop wrote:
| The fact that the legs don't move independently of each
| other is what she dislikes.
| Fnoord wrote:
| > Lego did extensive research and found that girls preferred to
| play with the characters rather than build sets.
|
| I barely _role_ played with Lego, I was all about building (first
| by following the exact instructions, then by ignoring them and
| trying to figure it out on my own, and finally by building my own
| stuff based on my own imagination). When I became about 11 or 12
| I finally got, via a friend, into roleplaying, with Lego (I got
| bored of the other 3 purposes). He used the lego in the garden
| and made entire plays with stories, and I joined in, and we co-
| interacted a lot. I didn't even know you could _roleplay_ like
| that!
|
| His parents and me, we kinda didn't like each other (they were
| quite hardcore Christian, while my parents were more loose
| Christians who let me decide for myself and I was atheist from
| elementary school because even at age 5 or 6 I asked questions
| with answers which I found inconsistent in [the] religion and
| ended up seeing it as just a story). Eventually that difference
| between us ended our friendship. I look back fondly to my past
| friendships.
| asiachick wrote:
| I thought the Mario sets were pretty awesome. My friends kids
| showed me there and I had to have them too. Mario also Bluetooth
| connects to a smartphone for various activities and there are 3d
| rotatable build instructions
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq3hw4imZ3g
| kergonath wrote:
| I was a kid in the 1990s, and my parents were already making the
| same complaints (except for the film merch one). The kits haven't
| changed that much in the last 30 years. At least those for kids;
| there weren't many kits for adults back then.
|
| I hate the branded kits with a passion (Batman and the others),
| but thankfully there are many others available, including great
| ones. I would have killed for a rocket like the newer ones when I
| was 10. OTOH recent trains are not much better than older ones.
| Andrex wrote:
| Good. If Lego won't evolve, they'll die. I'm glad Lego is still
| around and thriving, as that didn't always seem like it would be
| the case (from my personal experience as a kid).
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| All I want from Lego these days is a reintroduction of a full
| medieval Castle style lineup again.
|
| If they did I think I would collect and build the entire lineup.
| I see things like the Medieval Blacksmith set and I want an
| entire village and castle like that theme.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| What about:
|
| 1. Massive online community
|
| 2. Virtual simulators
|
| 3. Part numbers and 2nd hand retail
|
| 4. Computer and phone interfaces
|
| 5. Patent expired so more community
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > 5. Patent expired so more community
|
| This should probably read "competition". Some of the stuff
| secondary brands offer puts shame to Lego, both in creativity
| as well as in pricing. Bluebrix and Xingbao both have models
| that are a lot more playable than anything Lego has ever
| offered.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Their patent was bogus anyway.
| mcv wrote:
| > Now you don't have regular Lego cops and robbers--you have
| Batman and the Gotham criminals.
|
| You also still have regular Lego cops and robbers. Cops and
| robbers is still by far the largest sub-theme of the City theme.
| Almost every set, even some sets that aren't about cops and
| robbers at all, will have a cop and a robber in there.
| wmeredith wrote:
| That was a particularly weird gripe, considering some of the
| themes that have in fact been replaced by licensed stuff
| (looking at you LEGO Space/Star Wars) but the cops and robbers
| is definitely not one of them. The LEGO City theme has always
| been packed with cops and robbers and still is to this day.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Genuinely curious: Has anyone here personally experienced a <20
| year old doing real engineering with the modern "studless"
| technical Legos? You can find truly awesome contraptions on
| Youtube, sure. But has anyone seen it first hand?
|
| The old "build from the bottom" Lego Technic was just so inviting
| for technical tinkering. We built all kinds of machinery out of
| them. Not kids any more on this occasion; we dug out the Legos
| from the late 1970s to play with them just for fun once we were
| grown up. But representative.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw3dUbRfMSw
|
| The "What it is, is beautiful" aesthetic. Who cares what colour a
| piece is; it's the shape that matters.
|
| In this respect, Lego has changed. Sure you can still get buckets
| of basic parts to build with, but the Technic sets of easy-to-
| engineer-with parts, with lots of the studded beams and the ever
| so handy 40 tooth gears have gone away.
| [deleted]
| orthoxerox wrote:
| I remember my old studded Technic sets fondly. Back then you
| could at least see what you were building a few steps in. I
| bought and built a Jeep Wrangler set a couple of months ago,
| and I have no idea if I will ever be able to come up with an
| original Technic design myself using modern studless beams. I
| had no idea what I was building at least halfway into the
| instruction booklet.
| oaiey wrote:
| LEGO Technic is different. I was a vivid user as child and now
| as adult I rediscovered it. It is indeed more challenging to
| build inside out (what you need with the new beams/pins) than
| bottom up (old stackable & studded beams).
|
| I however, would not agree with your statement that this block
| kids. I think nowadays tinkering is possible with so many more
| things than when I have been small. I had LEGO and
| alternatively real tools with wood. Nowadays, you have that and
| also things like Minecraft, Gravitrax, City Skylines, ..
|
| Also LEGO Technic is too expensive. I luckily bought the 42082
| giving me 4000pc for 160EUR ... but usually that many pieces
| would go for 400EUR. And what I have is a bare minimum to build
| something meaningful like a robot arm, plotting thingy, some
| cars, etc. The modern Technic motors/battery hubs are also
| extremely expensive (ignoring the other flaws).
|
| I think the kids have so many choices that they do not pick up
| LEGO Technic for the price.
| belval wrote:
| It's fun when you read an article about lego changing and realize
| that the author is old enough that the "new" legos he's talking
| about are actually the legos you played with when you were ~6-7
| years old.
|
| Take it from an adult raised with "new" legos, if your kid has
| some imagination, it does not really matter if the kit is made
| with simple bricks or more complex pieces with a rudimentary
| mechanism, I had ton of fun with those.
| kzzzznot wrote:
| This is a really refreshing point.
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