[HN Gopher] Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications fo...
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Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing
(2025)
Author : scrlk
Score : 332 points
Date : 2026-03-11 13:22 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thewave.engineer)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thewave.engineer)
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| "that familiar click is the sound of a carefully engineered
| interference fit designed to hold firm but still be easy for
| small hands to pull apart."
|
| My recent experience calls bs on pulling them apart.
| intrasight wrote:
| The tolerance is definitely more applicable to the getting them
| apart then putting them together.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I always remember the small, weird pieces being hard to get
| apart.
|
| What I don't remember was every kit being made up of so many
| small, weird pieces.
| ralferoo wrote:
| When I was a kid, the first "special" Lego kit I remember was
| the Star Wars sets in 1983 (and especially that everybody
| wanted a Millenium Falcon but I didn't know anybody who had
| parents that could afford one!)
|
| Apart from those Star Wars kits, everything I had were
| generic blocks and strips (not sure what they're called, the
| ones that are 1/3 the height of a block) and some different
| designs of people. The closest I had to previous special sets
| was a town thing that my brother and sister had before me
| (they were 10 years older), which was a bunch of large floor
| tiles with roads and grassy areas with studs, some flowers
| pieces (single stud) and a handful of special buildings. But
| they were designed to be relatively generic, and the fun was
| using those building blocks to make a new city each time, not
| trying to recreate exactly someone's model. Apart from the
| flowers and the men, basically everything was a standard
| part, except perhaps a different colour.
|
| When I was a teenager, the trend had become sets with lots of
| specialised parts for one specific model, such that they
| didn't really make sense as generic pieces. I enjoyed the
| technics kits because the early ones were just generic
| building blocks (apart from the wheels and rack and pinion,
| but again they could be re-used in lots of subsequent
| designs), but more and more the kits in the shops were for
| specialised models with unique pieces that were never
| designed to fit aesthetically with anything other than the
| model they came with. I'm sure _some_ people built other
| things with them, but equally I'd bet than probably 90% of
| those kits were built exactly once following the instructions
| and then never disassembled again.
| bena wrote:
| The elements that are 1/3 the height of a brick is a plate
| if it has studs, and a tile if it does not.
|
| Lego did not have Star Wars sets until 1998. The original
| Lego Millenium Falcon set 4504 would have retailed for
| right around $100. Which was high, but just as high as the
| bigger Castle sets at the time.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They definitely had lunar/space themed sets in the '80s,
| but they were generic (at least the ones I had). I don't
| recall when the Star Wars sets came out, they might have
| been one of the first cross-promotional tie-ins that Lego
| did?
| bena wrote:
| Star Wars sets started coming out in 1998. They weren't
| the first licensed sets, but the first fictional license.
|
| Prior to Star Wars, they had Shell, Exxon, and Esso
| branded sets. I think sometimes they licensed the Ferrari
| brand as well.
|
| And yes, Lego has had a Space theme since the late 70s.
| But it was a general "Space" theme. They would later make
| Space Police, Blacktron, Magnetron, etc.
|
| But actual Star Wars was 1998. I have some of those sets.
| It was a big deal to get an actual lightsaber hilt and
| blade.
| ralferoo wrote:
| Very interesting. Googling shows some generic space
| themed things from the 80s like you say, but no Star
| Wars. I guess my old age is finally catching up on me and
| my memories have all blurred into one. I did find a
| Millennium Falcon from 1983, but it's definitely not
| Lego.
| Zanfa wrote:
| Having grown up playing with LEGOs, I can still distinctly
| remember the feeling of sore fingers pulling tiny pieces apart
| after a long session. It wasn't until a few years ago I learned
| there's an official brick separator tool [1]. Would've changed
| my life as a kid.
|
| [1] https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-
| topics/article/lego-...
| bombcar wrote:
| There are _multiple_ brick separators, with different
| strengths and weaknesses.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > It wasn't until a few years ago I learned there's an
| official brick separator tool
|
| You mean a little brother?
| WillAdams wrote:
| Curious how this might have played out over the long-term with
| their licensed/abandoned/revived/then bought to kill permanently
| "Modulex":
|
| https://archinect.com/features/article/149974598/the-brief-a...
|
| I wish one of their competitors would take up this dimension
| standard --- it would be a lot more useful for making structures
| which interact across dimensions/rotations.
| vidarh wrote:
| More than just bricks fitting into each other at a superficial
| level, it matters how firmly they fit together, and it's one of
| the areas where LEGO is generally superior to the similar types
| of bricks.
|
| A detail I didn't realise until I was an adult was the difference
| between the black and grey technic connecting pins. They look
| interchangeable, and for a lot of things they are.
|
| But there's a fraction of a mm raised lines on the black one, and
| it's enough to produce significantly more friction, and that
| difference is _utilised in designs_.
|
| And apprently there's now a new version of the black one, and
| people notice these things, and measure them - this article gives
| an idea of just how these tiny changes, well below tolerances for
| some of the "knockoffs", can produce a different effect:
|
| https://ramblingbrick.com/2021/01/27/what-if-they-introduced...
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| _> it 's one of the areas where LEGO is generally superior to
| the similar types of bricks_
|
| Imho, this is, objectively, not true (anymore).
|
| Pantasy with GoBricks are superior in coloring and fit; Cobi
| are excellent for things that should not be taken apart anymore
| (like tank models); Lumibricks are excellent in fit and have
| amazing illumination solutions that are lightyears (haha) ahead
| of lego.
| samrus wrote:
| True. But lego has stood the test of time. Thats way harder
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| What do you mean by that?
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Not OP but from my experience, the LEGO I had in a bin
| since I was a kid still fit perfectly with LEGO I'm
| buying for my kids 30 years later. That's unbelievably
| impressive to me.
| afandian wrote:
| More anecdata.
|
| Lego from my youth, which was a hand-me down at the time,
| doesn't fit well with new lego. So it might be 40 years
| old, (which seems like a long time until you actually
| reach that age!)
|
| I think it's more likely do to plastic aging than the
| original tolerances though.
| jonhohle wrote:
| To add even more - I was handed down Lego that belonged
| to my mom in the 60s, played with them through the 80s
| and 90s, and now my kids have them today. I wouldn't be
| able to tell you which were hers and which were mine.
| afandian wrote:
| A plausible defence if anyone asks for it back!
| ambicapter wrote:
| Especially when most LEGO storage is done is gigantic
| bins of all kinds of pieces, periodically hand-tossed in
| order to find the one piece you need :)
| mproud wrote:
| They've been around over 90 years and have been making
| plastic bricks since the 1950s and are arguably the most
| successful children's building toy product in history.
| They have amazing brand recognition, and beyond the toys,
| they have successful video games and movies.
|
| According to my local news outlet, they're up 12% in
| revenue growth in the last year (which outpaces the rest
| of the toy industry) and up 1,200% since 2004.
| dfedbeef wrote:
| Lot of time left, by my count
| jonhohle wrote:
| I got the Pantasy Neo Geo set a while ago, and was pretty
| blown away compared to the better known imitators that have
| been available at retail. The mechanics are not as robust as
| I'd expect from Lego, but it was about a quarter of the price
| and externally looks as good with some really fun and well
| thought out details.
| vidarh wrote:
| Interesting - never come across Pantasy/GoBricks, or
| Lumibricks but then it's a few years since my son decided he
| was too old for LEGO, and I see Pantasy is just a few years
| old, and Funwhole/Lumibricks just a few more. Great if there
| are more options of similar quality.
|
| But "should not be taken apart anymore" fits into an entirely
| different category for me. If you don't need to be able to
| take them apart any more, it fundamentally changes
| requirements.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Do you mean between black and light grey? Light grey pins have
| always been the kind you use for rotating connections (low
| friction), whereas black was for non-rotating ones (high
| friction). Newer blue pins are also high friction, IIRC. I
| haven't bought new lego technic in a while, so I don't know if
| there's been any new colours added
|
| EDIT: I think I also had some dark grey pins, but I don't
| remember if they were high or low friction
| normie3000 wrote:
| > Light grey pins have always been...
|
| I think the black ones were a later addition, likely late
| nineties.
| vidarh wrote:
| Per the article I linked to, '93.
|
| Which is presumably why I didn't notice until my son
| started playing with it, as I'd stopped playing with mine
| by then.
| fwip wrote:
| My memory of twenty years ago says the dark-grey pins were 1
| stud wide on one side, and half-wide on the other, and low-
| friction like the light-grey ones.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I think they were light grey as well. They were commonly
| used to make cranks out of the 4185 belt wheel or attach
| objects to the wheel.
| ragebol wrote:
| Ha, I noticed this too! And even my 3 y/o picked up on this.
|
| We have a set (something with Spiderman IIRC) that attached
| wheels with yellow pins that allow for better rolling of
| wheels. The black pins are too tight for this indeed.
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| IIRC there's also light yellow pins that are also light
| friction
| Thorrez wrote:
| >The frequently cited "0.002mm tolerance" is misleading without
| context. LEGO's actual mold precision is 10 microns, but
| different features have different critical tolerances.
|
| The article never mentions what piece has a 0.002mm tolerance. Is
| there any such piece? If there's no such piece, then "0.002mm
| tolerance" is not just "misleading without context", it's
| straight up false.
| ozlikethewizard wrote:
| Is it a language mixup, +-0.001mm being called a 0.002mm
| tolerance? Otherwise I cant figure it out either lol.
| Karliss wrote:
| 0.001mm is 1 micron not 10.
| butILoveLife wrote:
| After working in automotive, this is less impressive than it
| appears.
|
| Tons of dimensions on 100k/yr injection molded(and otherwise)
| parts have similar dimensions. (Although admittedly, after
| testing in pre-production, I don't know if they are tested again
| and have drift)
|
| Lego has been making the same parts for decades and their parts
| are extremely simple. I imagine their 1-off parts for
| intellectual property based sets do not have this requirement.
|
| I think Lego has a huge incentive to promote this idea that they
| are high quality to justify the enormous price of decades old
| technology.
| thowawayko1 wrote:
| After working both in automotive and at LEGO, I think LEGO is
| more impressive tolerance wise when it comes to molds, molding
| and tolerance quality control.
|
| Also to correct you, LEGO has been making most of the parts for
| decades, some have had changes due to new materials (which you
| can read upon online) but besides the ones that remained the
| same (not really), many new system elements got released in the
| last decades and new I.P tied elements get released on a yearly
| basis.
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| Agreed. Same or greater injection molding challenges for bottle
| caps, small plastic containers, things that also are in the
| hundreds of millions of parts annually. More challenging as
| they are often using polypropylene which is harder to mold due
| to its high anisotropy (shrinks in different rates depending on
| if it's flow or cross-flow direction).
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Ill admit that their parts do have higher quality than their
| competitors (various Chinese and other companies) making
| similar or compatible parts - some have injection molding
| blemishes or whatever on them that I've purchased from
| AliExpress or Walmart so in this space they are above everyone
| else in their space.
| adamzwasserman wrote:
| The reason this is impressive has less to do with the
| tolerances themselves and more to do with backward
| compatibility across decades at scale. That's the genuinely
| hard part.
|
| The history here is deeper than most people realize. The United
| States spent fifty years (roughly 1800 to 1853) at the
| Springfield and Harper's Ferry armories trying to achieve what
| LEGO now does routinely: parts manufactured to tight enough
| tolerances that they are truly interchangeable without fitting.
| In 1853, a visiting British inspector randomly selected ten
| muskets made in ten different years, disassembled them, mixed
| the parts, and reassembled ten functional muskets using only a
| screwdriver. Tolerances of a thousandth of an inch. It was
| considered impossible by most of the engineering establishment
| of the time.
|
| The way they got there was by building machines, then using the
| parts those machines made to build better machines, then using
| those improved parts to build even better machines. A virtuous
| circle of transferring skill from human hands to tooling. This
| is the actual origin story of what historians call the American
| System of Manufacture, and it's the foundation the entire
| modern automotive supply chain sits on.
|
| So yes, any competent injection molder holds tight tolerances
| today. But that's precisely the point: the reason it seems
| unremarkable now is that two centuries of compounding precision
| made it so
| lqet wrote:
| > A 2x4 LEGO brick manufactured in 1958 will snap perfectly onto
| a brick molded this morning in Denmark, China, Hungary, Mexico,
| or the Czech Republic.
|
| In the late 90ies, I regularly played with my uncle's old LEGOs
| from the late 60ies and early 70ies. They were stored in an
| unheated attic for 25 years. I remember that some of the old
| bricks didn't "snap" at all anymore to my newer bricks. They were
| either extremely difficult to stack onto a new brick, or didn't
| have any friction left.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| In my experience the bricks that didn't snap well would have
| too many teeth marks
| bombcar wrote:
| There were some bricks from the very early days that were not
| made from ABS, nor did they have the current box and pin style.
| Those are often loose (or broken).
| scatbot wrote:
| Lego is one of those companies that is simultaneously amazing and
| kind of sucks. On one hand the core product is incredible. The
| tolerances on the bricks are micrometer-level precision and the
| fact that pieces from the 70s snap perfectly into ones made today
| is mind blowing.
|
| On the other hand, a lot what the company does today just sucks.
| Set prices are outrageous. Printed bricks get replaced with
| stickers and many sets feel like display models than something
| you can play with. The Mindstorms/NXT line had huge potential but
| then just sort of fizzled out. And the push towards smartphone-
| dependent toys feels weird. Who actually wants their kids staring
| at a phone to play Lego?
|
| It's so sad, because the core product is basically perfect.
| utopiah wrote:
| Nostalgia... Lego was amazing decades ago so we want it to
| remain so. It's not anymore though. The whole raison d'etre,
| namely infinitely recomposable bricks to be creative, was lost
| the moment they realized they were a LOT more money in custom
| sets. Sets become collectible, perishable, trends can form,
| secondary markets exists, etc. It's simply about the baseline,
| not the principle. Sorry.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Lego is still amazing and you don't have to buy expensive
| sets for your kids to enjoy them. My son loves Legos and if
| he gets a set for his birthday it doesn't last long before he
| takes it apart and starts building other stuff with it.
|
| This is one of those instances where it feels like people are
| terminally online. Or like the meme of the guy standing in
| the corner while everyone else is having fun at the party.
| You can find Legos being given away in a local buy-nothing
| group. It's still just as magical for kids as it ever was.
| These complaints are only from an adult who doesn't play with
| Legos. Who cares if sets become collectibles? Get other sets
| and have fun with Legos. These are toys that are meant to be
| played with. Play with them.
| Latitude7973 wrote:
| *Lego
| mmustapic wrote:
| Lego sets aimed at children are still good! They work as
| standalone toys, and can also be reassembled, modified and
| combined. Very few toys are like this.
|
| Adults collect them, true, but there are whole lines
| dedicated to them.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I recently built the NES and Game Boy sets and thought both
| of those were really great. The NES is probably not priced
| for most people (we try to stay under 10C/ a brick), but
| the level of detail, whimsy, and mechanics are all really
| well done. There are hidden scenes and Easter eggs built
| into the system that are revealed as you build rather than
| highlighted as features on the box. I was genuinely
| surprised and had a lot of fun sharing that with my family
| as we realized what was coming together.
|
| The Game Boy was much more affordable. Less whimsical, but
| brought back memories of taking apart electronics and
| marveling at what these circuit boards and components could
| possibly be doing.
| mmustapic wrote:
| The Game Boy is apparently one of the best sets of 2025,
| cleverly built and a nice display item. Still, it is for
| adults, kids have tons of other sets to choose from.
| wincy wrote:
| I often look at these and think they'd be fun for me to
| display, then think I'd prefer an actual Game Boy
| disassembled as a piece of wall art [0]. This sort of
| stuff is just so cool in my opinion.
|
| Edit: now that I look on EBay building my own display
| like that would probably cost maybe $60 vs $189? Broken
| Game Boys are $40 on eBay, so maybe a project I could do
| for fun!
|
| [0] https://xreart.com/products/xreart-game-boy-pocket
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| The "Creator" sets in particular I feel harken the most to
| the company's roots. They usually have a few different
| builds per set and include all sorts of unique pieces for
| making your own creations. They also usually have very fun
| designs.
| wincy wrote:
| My kids got a Minecraft set and just use the Warden as a
| toy and build with all the other bricks and a mat to put
| the poor lego characters in bad situations where they've
| woken the Warden up (he's a strong enemy in Minecraft)
| bombcar wrote:
| Part of the problem is a solid 1/3 or more of Walmart's
| LEGO aisle is now various flowers -
| https://www.walmart.com/brand/lego/botanicals/10056123
|
| These aren't being bought by _kids_ and if the entire
| market becomes nostalgic adults, eventually they all die.
| tokai wrote:
| Its a kit for adults, ofc they are not being bought by
| kids.
| bpev wrote:
| It was kinda funny to see the Lego Movie, which puts a bunch
| of emphasis on breaking the rules and mixing and matching
| everything, and then seeing them release the sets for the
| movie. I mean, it makes perfect sense. But it was still kinda
| lowkey humorous. But imo they're still a great toy; very fun
| to go to conventions and the like, where people just have
| giant piles of loose pieces you can buy by weight.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| They still sell the sets of generic bricks. At that point it
| is up to the individual customer to buy them if he prefers
| that. I could see your point if they stopped selling the more
| free form product, but they haven't.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Look at it from the corporation's viewpoint:
|
| - they have a finite production capacity
|
| - they have a finite warehousing capacity
|
| - there is a certain number of sets which will be bought
|
| - crates of bricks without an established design have a
| limited appeal and while a consistent SKU, don't have the
| baked in demand a new set will have
| qingcharles wrote:
| These collectible (read: branded) sets are what saved them
| from bankruptcy, though.
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| Harry Potter did. Lego didn't anticipate that they would
| ship ONE MILLION copies of the first large Hogwart's
| school-castle set.
| Keyframe wrote:
| How can you go bankrupt with Lego? That's almost like going
| bankrupt with Coca Cola. It's probably one of the most if
| not the most recognizable toy brand there is. I'll have to
| read up on this, sounds like a fantastic voyage of
| mismanagement, if true.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| https://blog.firestartoys.com/how-the-lego-company-
| almost-we...
|
| It happened in the early 2000's. They actually posted a
| loss one year.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| You can still buy "generic" lego sets if you want. Look for
| "Lego Classic" sets.
| bluescrn wrote:
| They're a bit too simplistic though.
|
| Some of the classic 80s themes, like Space and Castle,
| primarily used regular bricks of reasonable sizes in a very
| limited palette of colours, with a few special parts unique
| to the theme. They were much more suited to taking apart
| and building your own creations.
|
| These days, there's just too many specialised and small
| parts, and too many colours. Even if you buy a big grey
| Star Wars set, you'll find that the internal structure is
| often brightly coloured to make the instructions clearer -
| but this isn't ideal if you want to take it apart and build
| something else.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you like City, Lego has you covered, even now (cue the
| old jokes about Lego City having 500 police stations, 400
| fire stations, 20 gas stations, and no shops and no
| houses).
|
| The other themes of old have been replaced by movie tie-
| ins, and it's hard to build a pirate world out of Pirates
| of the Caribbean sets
| Aurornis wrote:
| The existence of specialty sets doesn't subtract from
| creating building.
|
| My kids get some of the specialty sets, build them, then
| hours later they're either taken apart or heavily modified.
|
| The specialty sets can provide some interesting unique pieces
| too. My kids have a photographic memory of each of those
| special pieces and which set they came from. They'll remember
| them and search until they find that exact piece.
|
| > Sets become collectible, perishable, trends can form,
| secondary markets exists, etc. It's simply about the
| baseline, not the principle. Sorry.
|
| I don't know what this is supposed to mean, but you can
| completely ignore secondary markets and collector sets if you
| want.
|
| There are more sets and pieces than ever. You don't have to
| collect anything.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Off-topic, but:
|
| > My kids have a photographic memory
|
| How do you know it is photographic memory? More than one of
| your kids have it? Do you know why or what may have
| contributed to its development?
| eszed wrote:
| > Of each of these special pieces
|
| I didn't see him making any generalized claim. I recall
| the things I'm really into better than I do things I'm
| not, which is all I think he was saying about his kids.
| (My four year old remembers facts about volcanos -
| including the name of the scientist who made the claim -
| waaay better than he does where he left his shoes, so it
| tracks for me!)
| panzagl wrote:
| > My kids have a photographic memory of each of those
| special pieces and which set they came from.
|
| Read the whole sentence- this is clearly an informal use
| of 'photographic memory' to indicate that his kids are
| really into Lego and keep track of details in the way
| only kids can.
| johnisgood wrote:
| That is what I was thought, but I thought I was wrong.
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| > My kids have a photographic memory of each of those
| special pieces and which set they came from. They'll
| remember them and search until they find that exact piece
|
| I had the same skill (still do). Imagine following the
| instructions the first time. A part you're encountering for
| the first time stimulates the memory. I knew my collection
| like a dragon's hoard. For instance, I owned twelve white
| 1x2 tiles, all from Coast Guard Station, so that was the
| limiting piece when building tiny space-fighters...
| arkh wrote:
| You can still buy basic brick sets. With lot of nice color
| nowadays. Like the CLassics or Creator lines:
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/classic
|
| And for $100 you get a lot of bricks to play with and let
| your imagination go wild. Just don't buy sets aimed at adults
| and IP fansumers.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| The point is: when I was a kid, all Lego sets consisted
| almost completely of general bricks. You could, and would,
| start building different things from the moment you got
| your first set, and the possibilities would increase
| exponentially once you got a few more sets. Any set
| contributed to your collection of building blocks to create
| new things.
| robertfw wrote:
| I really don't get this sentiment. The only sets that I
| think didn't contribute like this were the bionicle
| stuff. Getting a few more unique parts with a set gives
| you more options, not less.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| I don't think this is true at all. What do you mean by
| "general bricks"? If anything there is more brick-built
| stuff nowadays.
|
| For example the Creator 3-in-1 Castle (which I got for my
| son for Christmas) is pretty similar to castle sets I had
| as a child but basically way better and with brick built
| horses rather than large mould ones
| Freak_NL wrote:
| The 3-in-1 sets (where the set numbers actually begin
| with 31) should really be the first thing you look at
| when choosing a set for a child, and they deserve more
| praise. There are a lot of cool 3-in-1 sets out there.
| That castle (31168) is really good (and those horses are
| too!), and the haunted mansion (31167) is just cool with
| minifigs which are a hit with any kid.
|
| For a small and cheap present that hamster (31376) is
| just too cute to pass up too.
|
| It feels like those sets are where the Lego designers get
| to do their thing and do it right, without the weight of
| licenced IP (of which there is so much) and the trite
| offerings of the City range.
| maxglute wrote:
| You can also only get so creative with lego. At the end of
| the day roblox/minecraft and video games trains kids to build
| more "relevant" things. Apart from tactility, I don't see
| what technic/mindstorm offers over digital.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You use your imagination. I had a tub of random parts from
| a bunch of old 80s and 90s sets that were since put into
| the blender that is a family of small children. I would
| build space craft. Big freighters with internal bays to
| hold smaller ships. Huge bases and compounds for my other
| toys. Various other vehicles and structures. I was
| basically constantly building for 10 straight years of my
| life. No sets. No plans. No eye strain from screens. Just
| pure creativity and imagination.
| maxglute wrote:
| My point is lego has ceiling on imagination. Different in
| analogue world where most of building was physical. I
| grew up with buckets of mismatched lego and lots of
| technic sets, it was more interactive relative to other
| toys at the time, but now snapping bricks vs running
| server for minecraft city seems like baby mode.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| And that is the thing about raising a kid these days.
| Those damn machines have replaced so much... because yeah
| Minecraft is like a souped up version of Lego where in
| creative mode you have every part you need. And you don't
| have to dig for it or anything. And it has survival mode
| and a whole huge thing on top of that.
|
| It's so difficult to know the boundaries. People from
| older generations giving advice about screen time and
| stuff simply don't understand... "screen time" for me
| growing up was broadcast tv and a limited set of video
| games. If you didnt like what was on tv, too bad. Do
| something else. If you were bored of whatever Nintendo
| game you had... too bad, do something else. But now...
| you can get literally anything. Plus the iPad gets used
| to make videos of playing with the cat, or she will have
| tea parties with her stuffies and make them tea using
| some weird cooking game. Etc.
|
| No previous generation had to face this. It's an order of
| magnitude or more shifted from when they raised us.
| Tablets basically can replace almost every single toy
| from growing up besides ones that require being physical
| (rc cars, bricks, digging in the yard)... but books,
| cameras, light brights, etc... all replaced.
|
| It's completely uncharted water us parents are facing.
| Anybody that claims to "know the right rules" for tablets
| and technology is lying to you. They don't. Nobody does.
| All we can do is use our best judgement and try to give
| ourselves credit for doing the best we can.
| maxglute wrote:
| > completely uncharted water
|
| Good thing with analogue toys like legos is you know your
| kid is playing with legos that is wiring X brain cells
| for Y skills, even if Y skills are deprecated in digital
| world. It's hard to say with current gen, there's screen
| time to try to shape behavior, there are occasional kids
| who are tech literate maestros which every generation
| has, but plenty of kids who rely on LLMs, can only finger
| type because they grew up with touch screens. We're in
| tech timeline where passive users, i.e. most kids are
| impressed by millennials who can write cursive and touch
| type, other kids build stuff that previously required
| teams of 100s of engineers.
| anthk wrote:
| Without a tangible feedback you won't get any digital
| skills for spatial memory and coordination, peiod.
|
| And the kids you mention can barely understand files,
| filesystems and don't even mention them about O(n)
| notation. If any, these kids doing the jobs of 1000s of
| engineers are proportionally _worse_ than the average
| secretary skills in the 80 's.
| maxglute wrote:
| Plenty of tangible feedback on screen, just not tactile.
| I'm bucketing 2 types, the maestros who have deep
| understanding and the ones who don't bother. The former
| are the otherwise top 1% talent who are better off
| playing with with LLMs/comptuers where ceiling is high vs
| lego. The latter are being distracted that yeah their
| personal skills worse than past, but fake floor is also
| raised so much that functionally they can fake junior
| work, they just lack critical skills to get past.
| anthk wrote:
| The ones with LLM's lack introspection, researching
| skills, analisys and who knows more. They are doomed and
| worse, they aren't even aware of it.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| There's nothing stopping you from buying the basic sets and
| only the basic sets. They didn't stop making basic sets,
| unless you're objecting to the new colors that go beyond blue
| red yellow and black?
| throw310822 wrote:
| > the fact that pieces from the 70s snap perfectly into ones
| made today is mind blowing
|
| Is it? It's not like it's hard to keep producing the pieces to
| the same original specifications. If they snapped then they
| snap now.
| flatline wrote:
| I think it's more the consistency of product design than the
| manufacturing process. Everything around me, especially in
| the software world, seems to change for no good reason on a
| frequent basis. Companies change products all the time for
| reasons other than utility/functionality. A consistent
| specification over 50+ years is an outlier.
| StilesCrisis wrote:
| How many plastic things from the 70s still work perfectly
| with no cracking or warping?
| throw310822 wrote:
| Not sure, but is this about the backwards compatibility or
| the chosen type of plastic?
| tokai wrote:
| Yes
| Paratoner wrote:
| Did you even read the article? No, even just the Title?
| Nothing is ever impressive I guess. Certainly not a 60 years
| running manufacturing process where your childhood pieces can
| be passed down and combined seamlessly with a set you just
| bought for your kid. So trivial and easy to do guys.
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| The precision in tolerance over the years is truly
| breathtaking.
|
| It speaks to Ole Kirk Christiansen's impossible standards:
| "Even the best is not good enough" (Det Bedste Er Ikke For
| Godt.) (usually translated "Only the best is good enough.")
|
| Much more strenuous in Danish than the usual quoted
| translation! but I know some Danish, and most of all that's
| how Kjeld Kirk Christiansen explained it to an American
| audience at Brickfest 2003 (IIRC the year).
|
| As I commented elsewhere, it's not 60 years. Sure, the
| outer dimensions have not changed and are very strict
| metric Lego Units. [1] But there have been continual
| improvement that render old and new less than wonderful to
| use together. You don't really want to mix 70s-early 80s
| bricks.
|
| Conversely, if you're reselling those old sets, you need to
| find vintage pieces (though also Lego would use up older
| pieces and begin to use newer ones in that set)
|
| But bricks from the mature design of the 80s even didn't
| age so well (clutch too hard, walls can warp), and there
| have been many improvements to the interior of a brick. All
| for sound engineering reasons. Thinner walls and internal
| voids to prevent warp, subtle changes to fine-tune clutch
| power.
|
| It's a story of continual improvement, but it makes the old
| bricks seem less wonderful.
|
| Weird thing Lego started to advertise in the 2000s: Lego
| bricks reach the proper clutch power after 7 insertions! I
| guess you have to stress-work the new plastic...
|
| [1] I've used a micrometer on pieces of various age and
| can't get a difference from the outside. Doesn't help that
| they compress under measuring.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It's not like it's hard to keep producing the pieces to the
| same original specifications.
|
| It's extremely hard to build consistent products to the spec.
|
| There are a lot of knock-off LEGO on the market now. We get
| them as gifts. Some of them stack okay, some are too tight,
| some are too loose.
|
| It's hard to manufacture at scale at these tolerances and
| keep it that way for decades.
| sammy2255 wrote:
| Maybe if something is too expensive don't buy it?
| awkward wrote:
| The decline of technic sets is such a shame. There's so little
| support for anything but representative models of specific
| cars, despite the platform being able to support a ton of
| mechanical creativity.
| amelius wrote:
| ^ This
| georgefrowny wrote:
| The disappearance of real metal Meccano is really crazy. I
| know metal is expensive, but also bulk processing of it has
| never been cheaper or faster.
|
| It's also a shame because it's really good for mechanical
| rapid prototyping and you can bend and cut it in a pinch and
| it stays put. But buying vintage Meccano to abuse like that
| is expensive and feels like a war crime.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| My son inherited (well, we're co-owning it I guess) my Lego,
| and that includes two sets of Technic aimed at educational
| use (1030 and 1032) which come with a stack of instructions
| for fairly simple mechanical models to build -- each
| demonstrating basic mechanical principles like gear reduction
| and pulleys. Those sets used the 4.5V motors which have all
| broken down, but we also have the 1990 Technic Control Centre
| fully working and use those instead. That Control Centre is a
| simple controller used with 9V motors. It is brilliant for
| explaining the basic principles of computerised automation.
|
| No app. No Bluetooth. Just wires and a simple controller
| built to be used and understood by children.
|
| https://rebrickable.com/sets/8094-1/technic-control-centre
| jacquesm wrote:
| They suck because instead of buying the rights to the bricks
| they outright stole the design, the packaging and the marketing
| materials from the original inventor.
|
| And then they sued the pants of everybody that tried to do the
| same thing to them.
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| That's a simplification of the Kiddicraft story.
|
| Yes, it was a shame. After Lego lost in court (to Hilary
| Page's heirs I think by then) I believe they finally atoned
| for that.
|
| Still, Lego didn't just sell the Kiddicraft brick unmodified.
| Lego patented the tubes inside, which gave it superior clutch
| power. (I have a lot of 2x4 bricks with "Pat Pend" molded on
| them!)
|
| As I've heard it, Ole Kirk Christiansen had seen Hilary
| Page's brick as a sample from a molding machine vendor. Lego
| previously made wooden toys (until his son Godtfred allegedly
| set the factory on fire) and was casting about for what
| production to invest in for the future.
|
| The Kiddicraft brick was a little rectangular box, no tubes
| inside. A lot of brick toys came out in the 60s that were
| little shells with varying clutch power.
|
| For a museum of the many brick toys, go to
| https://www.architoys.net
|
| In particular, Betta Bilda, Block City, American Bricks.
| jacquesm wrote:
| He took them back to Denmark and copied them.
|
| https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/02/l-is-for-
| legos-...
|
| The tubes came (much) later. Even the boxes were direct
| copies.
| bdunks wrote:
| Agree. They seem to have a "price per piece" equation. Perhaps
| as a result, the 5+ sets are made of hundreds of small pieces.
|
| Older sets had larger foundational and platform pieces which
| gave a good starting place for new creative builds.
|
| Today, airplanes fuselages, wings, and car chassis are instead
| built up piece by piece.
|
| It's hard for my 6 year old to start creative builds that are
| stable when he hardly has any pieces larger than 2x6 across
| dozens of sets.
|
| My wife found a huge mixed bin from the 80s and 90s at an
| estate sale. It really helped.
| eru wrote:
| > Today, airplanes fuselages, wings, and car chassis are
| instead built up piece by piece.
|
| Well, people did complain about the whole 'special pieces'
| trend that you praise.
| alexjplant wrote:
| As a kid I loved the giant boat hull piece because it was
| sealed and _actually floated_. This in combination with
| some larger pylon-type pieces from the Star Wars set meant
| you could build floating cities and vehicles and such and
| mess with them in the kitchen sink.
|
| I wish I had hobbies as cheap as LEGO now...
| bombcar wrote:
| They still make "boats that really float" today:
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/arctic-explorer-
| ship-6036...
| Aurornis wrote:
| Lego suffers from a fandom problem among adults: They have
| strong nostalgia for how it was when they were kids and
| they think everything since then is against the natural
| order of Lego.
|
| The best way to enjoy Lego is to give it to some kids and
| watch them get creative with it. Unlike all of the Internet
| complaints, kids have no problem having fun with Lego and
| being creative in their own ways.
| eru wrote:
| You can also buy (used) sets or assorted blocks from when
| you were a kid.
| bluescrn wrote:
| > The best way to enjoy Lego is to give it to some kids
| and watch them get creative with it.
|
| But there's a very limited age range in which todays kids
| will appreciate physical toys, before they're introduced
| to screens...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I grew up with videogames. Still played lego pretty much
| till 7th grade.
| mmustapic wrote:
| 5yo sets have smaller pieces but also use big foundational
| pieces. Also the builds are simpler and better explained.
| Sets for 8yo are more complex.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Several years ago I wrote this reddit post analyzing LEGO
| piece pricing: https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/1328f52
| /detailed_lego...
|
| It's a little out of date, but the conclusions are still
| relevant.
|
| Main things of note: Brickheads are pretty economical as a
| "parts pack." No significant correlation between per-piece
| pricing and IP licensing (except for Star Wars). Star Wars
| and City sets are overpriced.
| SlinkyOnStairs wrote:
| > Older sets had larger foundational and platform pieces
| which gave a good starting place for new creative builds.
|
| They stopped doing the many unique parts because it was
| bankrupting them.
| xattt wrote:
| They've basically adopted the Nintendo model. People have
| strong emotional connections for both, which can then be
| exploited for money.
|
| It has momentum because they haven't let quality and innovation
| slide. They know customers will be out with pitchforks if
| quality drops.
| jiehong wrote:
| Maybe one last thing that sucks is that it's all plastic.
| antonyh wrote:
| True, but at least it's not single use. Is there a viable
| alternative? A non-petrochemical plastic that has the same
| qualities? It's not like they can whittle them out of wood or
| cast them with metal so it'll always be some form of polymer,
| and I'm sure they would jump at a more ecologically sound
| option.
| em-bee wrote:
| lego compatible bricks made from wood do exist. they
| probably don't last as long though.
| antonyh wrote:
| I'm sure they don't unless made from a stable hardwood or
| coated somehow to resist expansion/contraction which
| would defeat the whole point of using a sustainable
| material. Lovely idea though, I really like wooden
| objects.
| bombcar wrote:
| Lego has been testing making some pieces out of corn-based
| plastic or other natural plastics. https://www.lego.com/en-
| us/sustainability/sustainable-materi...
|
| Some of the first forays resulted in notably lower-quality
| bricks.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| At least LEGO is probably the toy that gets "passed down" the
| most, my own LEGO parts who I got from an older cousin, is
| now on its 4th generation (first my sisters children, then
| some family-friend to theirs), and I'm sure the pile(s) will
| get further passed down as time goes on.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| > a lot what the company does today just sucks. Set prices are
| outrageou
|
| This was all done planned and implemented by this one
| consulting guy (MCK?), who became CEO after delivering his
| report from his consulting company, Lego was near bankrupt back
| then - he started with all this subbranding shitty stuff and
| the "colorful" bricks and introduced all these many many
| "single-use-case-bricks" for more and more sets.
| kevinsync wrote:
| I was just about to reply about their financial woes over the
| years too [0][1][2]
|
| Being a collector of stuff ever since I was a kid (toys,
| comics, cards, physical media, printed collateral, etc), and
| being in my 40's (target market / demographic for expensive
| nostalgia) living in 2026 (the world is a casino!
| everything's a collector's item!), it _is_ a little annoying
| to see LEGO appear to turn into something that it wasn 't ..
| but objectively that doesn't eradicate the fundamentals of
| LEGO, and I'd rather see them be a healthy company with
| longevity (via current product strategy) than wither and die
| on the vine out of stubbornness.
|
| That said, aside from leaning on the AAA IP that drives
| prices through the roof in some lines, I do wish they'd stop
| with the tech gimmicks (Hidden Side, Smart Bricks), renew one
| of their focuses on real tech/engineering-adjacent platforms
| (Mindstorms / NXT / a modern version of these), and
| acknowledge that wealthy adults aren't the only customers. It
| really prices out young, fertile minds who a lot of their
| product and ethos should be directed towards.
|
| Of course, that's a huge problem right now with anything that
| can command aftermarket prices as collectibles! [3]
|
| [0] - https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/innovation-
| almos...
|
| [1] - https://blog.firestartoys.com/how-the-lego-company-
| almost-we...
|
| [2] - https://www.toypro.com/us/news/710/learn-the-story-
| behind-le...
|
| [3] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7FZWovUTmL0
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| The expensive sets _ARE_ display models. They still have the
| older style generic sets for significantly cheaper.
| bluGill wrote:
| I heard your same rant in the 1980s - only small details have
| changed (not mindstorms then ...) But kids who want to build
| have always been able to, and most sets mix and match for those
| kids.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > I heard your same rant in the 1980s
|
| The two options would be that either the perception is
| unsubstantiated but persists, or there has been a continuous
| decline for the last 40 years. I'm strongly leaning towards
| the latter. I also having the same issues in the 00s looking
| at old sets from the 80s, and looking back now the 00s look
| much better than what we have today. Obviously not in every
| way, and not all recent sets were bad. But overall I have the
| feeling that there's been a steady trend that the bricks got
| better but the sets got worse
| iso1631 wrote:
| Nostalgia 'aint what it used to be
| wongarsu wrote:
| Maybe my perception of 00s models is colored by
| nostalgia, hard to know. But I haven't been alive in the
| 80s, so my perception of them during the 00s should be
| pretty uncolored
| bombcar wrote:
| My recall was that the 90s was pretty awesome, and the
| 00s fell into BURPS and large pieces and tie-in sets.
|
| But I think most people either agree there was a dark
| ages where they went almost bankrupt and did some really
| questionable themes, or the best time was when they were
| a kid.
|
| The 90s catalogs _rocked_ in a way that no website ever
| can, though.
| bluGill wrote:
| Lego was always very expensive. They have long made weird
| custom pieces and those sets have sold well - despite not
| having the long staying ability that the more basic sets
| have.
| mmustapic wrote:
| Lego was always expensive, you can compare prices adjusted for
| inflation. For example, the 1979 Galaxy Explorer
| <https://brickset.com/sets/497-1> was around $32, that's $144
| today. The reimagined set from 2023
| <https://brickset.com/sets/10497-1> was sold at $99, $106
| today. Not only it is cheaper, but much larger and with many
| more pieces.
| brazzy wrote:
| It has almost 4 times the number of pieces, but is only about
| 50% longer and wider - there's just way more smaller pieces.
| Price per piece is very misleading when comparing older and
| newer sets. The newer ones have more details, look slicker,
| but have a lot less "meat". Which is not that great for
| creative play.
| StilesCrisis wrote:
| I bought a set recently which was definitely padding its
| piece counts. The interior structure of a solid shape was
| constructed out of dozens of small 1x2s and could easily
| have been a handful of much larger pieces with no downside.
| I didn't consider the "more pieces = more perceived value"
| logic until this comment.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I always charitably assumed that they designed models to
| utilize surplus pieces for the internal structures,
| pieces that might be hard to use elsewhere.
| bombcar wrote:
| They may do that (designers have a "part budget" they can
| spend in various ways) but the real reason for weird
| colors inside models is to make it easier to build;
| especially since many of the models consist entirely of
| various shades of grey and black.
|
| Various piece size also makes it easier to see if you got
| the wrong piece.
| ijk wrote:
| For a while the complaint was that Lego was making too
| many big, specialized pieces, so I'm amused that the
| current complaint seems to be that they're using too many
| small generic ones.
| cwillu wrote:
| They're not saying that they should be using big
| specialized pieces, they're saying that they should be
| using bigger boring _standard_ pieces.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I had a weird build recently with the Luxo Jr model.
| There are a couple of cavities in the model that are
| partially filled in with very small parts. These parts
| don't connect in a way that makes then structural. I'm
| still puzzled why these parts are there.
| StilesCrisis wrote:
| That's the one I was building too!
| mmustapic wrote:
| It is a set for nostalgic adults. In fact, it is 50% larger
| so a grown up can hold it in their hands and feel it
| massive, like kids did in the 80s.
| etrvic wrote:
| A 50% increase in dimensions doesn't directly transform in
| a 50% increase in volume.
|
| >The newer ones have more details, look slicker, but have a
| lot less "meat"
|
| I presume that the 2022 model has as target audience
| nostalgic adults, but otherwise I agree, the new sets seem
| far more fragile then the ones released a decade ago. I
| think this is due to a recent focus towards adults from
| LEGO.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's the other way around - because pieces cost roughly
| based on their size (amount of material) modern Lego sets
| are "denser" and heavier on average than similar sized sets
| of the past, because as piece count (and detail) goes up,
| piece _size_ has been going down.
| jdwithit wrote:
| Definitely agree on the reduced usefulness for creative
| play. My kids got a lot of Lego sets as gifts when they
| were younger. Which is great, I love them playing with
| Legos. But once they're done with the instructions that's
| just kinda it. A Star Wars or Frozen or Minecraft themed
| kit ends up being all weird one-off specialty pieces. They
| are necessary to make an extremely detailed replica of the
| Millenium Falcon. But they have no place if you just want
| to grab a handful of bricks and start building whatever
| your imagination comes up with. We have a tub full of
| thousands of pieces and it never gets used. I think it's a
| bummer that they've pivoted to pushing these intricate $120
| kits to adults rather than designs featuring more reusable
| components. You need to go out of your way to buy tranches
| of generic bricks if you want to have free play.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The Creator 3-in-1 sets are basically what you're looking
| for, they just don't get advertised much. A lot of them
| are more generified and rebuildable, sometimes even more
| refined versions of more expensive sets or parts of more
| expensive sets. Maybe the most obvious are the 3-in-1
| dragon and dinosaur sets, which to me feel obviously like
| more generic reworks of D&D and Jurassic Park builds
| respectively, and have a lot more in the way of generic
| tiles and bricks than the licensed sets they're derived
| from.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| Wow, childhood memory unlocked. I had set 497. And, yes, it
| was a _very_ expensive toy in its day.
| serallak wrote:
| I still got it. Has been in storage for a long time.
|
| My child did build it some years ago, now it's in his room.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I have the re-release secondhand unopened and I think I paid
| about that much, so even in a collector's market, not
| terrible at all. An expensive toy to be sure but a deeply
| satisfying experience if you like that kind of thing.
| Xerox9213 wrote:
| Buying buckets of used bricks is pretty cheap, too. I
| bought an adult's old lifetime collection for $30 CAD. My 2
| year old son and I are still sorting them.
| tylerflick wrote:
| Not to mention you can 3D print Duplo compatible bricks.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| Sorting Lego is such a pain in the ass. I have like a
| huge stash from when I was a kid. Back then we just had
| it all in a few tubs and dug to find a part. But somehow
| now I feel I must sort them... but the "right way" is ill
| defined and kind of sucks the joy out of playing
| (especially disassembling)
|
| And there is no "right way" that I've even found. Sort by
| color and now the little pieces fall to the bottom and
| are hard to dig for. The best I can see is part type and
| size... maybe... even then it sucks out the fun. I want
| to build cool shit with my daughter not spend every
| moment of Lego time sorting. There is no joy in
| sorting...
|
| Maybe I just revert back to the "big tub" approach.
|
| I dunno. Thanks for listening to my TED talk I guess.
| kroolik wrote:
| Build with what pieces you can find, rather than plan the
| perfect structure ahead. Improvising keeps the creativity
| going! Wheres fun if sorting legos sucks all the Joy from
| it
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Why sort by color if human eyes (unless colorblind) are
| great at recognizing different colors? Back when I was a
| kid, I used the big tub approach (with the Spyrius base
| octant as my shovel).
| fifilura wrote:
| The evolution of lego sorting [2001]
|
| https://news.lugnet.com/storage/?n=707
|
| (Bah Might as well submit that as a top level story,
| others may enjoy it)
| skyberrys wrote:
| Yeah go for it! I'll add a comment though, now we are
| working on automated shifting bins with stacks of
| different size grids to filter the littles to the bottom
| and still easily pick up the top bigs to see them. There
| was been a discussion (by my children) about something
| involving a Lego vacuum they saw online.
| seqastian wrote:
| There are so many better alternatives these days it's mostly
| fanboys and people who don't care who are still buying
| original Lego.
| mmustapic wrote:
| Lego is some kind of cultural icon now, and many people
| want to participate. That's why they have tons of sets
| aimed at adults over many themes, like plastic flowers,
| formula 1 helmets, old video game consoles.
|
| Many of them are a really bad and expensive purchase if you
| only care about the theme itself, like the latest Death
| Star (or almost any Lego Star Wars set). You can usually
| buy a similar and cheaper non-lego model. Or the Titanic
| set too.
| esafak wrote:
| Like what?
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| The value proposition of the Chinese knockoffs is off the
| charts IMO.
|
| For what I spent buying JUST (
| https://www.brickeconomy.com/set/60229-1/lego-city-space-
| roc... ) last year for my daughter,
|
| I've since bought her a 3-floor hospital, a firehouse, a
| pink villa with pool, and about 2 dozen doctor and
| engineer minifigs for the same ~$120 outlay. Only
| disappointment is the legs on the Chinese minifigs, they
| are difficult to seat properly on studs because the legs
| are at a slight angle (almost like manspreading).
|
| I have to stop myself from going on a spending spree on
| AliExpress, I might order an entire Age of Sail LEGO
| navy.
| tokai wrote:
| You trust the Chinese knockoffs not to leach out poison?
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| Yes. What "poison" do you think they are leaching? Has
| anyone ever done any instrumented/lab testing that has
| shown ABS plastic toys to pose a threat?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I don't know enough about plastics, and if it's ABS it's
| ABS, but how is it dyed? Point is I don't know, so I buy
| from a company that has a reputation and would be held
| accountable, and would never buy kids toys from a fly by
| night business with no reason to care how carcinogenic
| their product ends up being
| radpanda wrote:
| I feel like I've seen essentially this same comment every
| time a Lego thread comes up but there doesn't seem to be
| unanimous agreement on which brick toys are better. Sure,
| some people have good experiences with brand X but others
| will say they've had bad luck with the construction.
| Someone else will talk up Brand Y and someone else will
| point out how terrible the instructions are. Are there any
| brands that actually do consistently deliver a Lego-quality
| experience without the Lego price?
| alexriddle wrote:
| Lumibricks is fantastic, built in lighting (or rather you
| build it in as part of the model) and as someone who has
| always turned their nose up at off brand Lego, the parts
| are definitely 99% of the way there. Instructions the
| same quality, if not better, than Lego as well - all for
| about the third of the price.
|
| Minifigs are terrible but I have hundreds of those spare
| anyway!
| dsr_ wrote:
| No, you'll always give up something.
|
| If you want to spend some time looking at critiques from
| someone with experience, I find JANG's Youtube reviews of
| both LEGO and non-LEGO brick toys to be well-balanced. We
| have differing opinions, but he has decent rationales for
| most of his opinions.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| I guess it depends on what a "Lego-quality experience"
| means to you.
|
| I grew up with the mid 80s to mid 90s kits, mostly
| castles and pirate ships, a few space sets. I think it's
| a very different experience compared to the nightmares I
| read about building the Mould King Eclipse-class Star
| Destroyer ( https://www.reddit.com/r/lepin/comments/1pdfx
| 5y/mould_king_e... ). The concept of "bad luck with
| construction" is foreign to me, because most of the kits
| I remember building as a child were comparatively simple.
|
| I'm working on this house with my 5yo daughter now: (
| https://ja.aliexpress.com/item/1005006068361257.html ).
| Costs ~$20, we work on it about 30-45 minutes several
| times a week, so it takes months to finish. If she tears
| it apart 6 months from now to build something from her
| imagination, mission accomplished.
|
| I hear people rave about this Cyberpunk-style kit, maybe
| this is closer to what you expect?
| https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_a_a4b2bvISsP6pyjkSxLw
| (Chinese language review) I plan to buy it at some
| point....for myself, not for my kids!
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| Yes, they have kept up with inflation, and that is the
| problem. Manufactured goods like Lego bricks should fall in
| price through innovation in processes, scale, etc. What does
| raise higher than the average inflation should be be labor-
| intensive products/services. In other words, it feels much
| stranger today how expensive Legos are compared to 47 years
| ago.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| Lego is branding, curation and quality bar, though. They're
| the Apple of bricks (weird sentence).
|
| There's tons of lego-knockoffs and of not even such lesser
| quality that the difference can be perceived by casual
| inspection. The set-to-set quality bar is really where it
| is, especially among their set lines not targeted at
| children or low-end of market.
|
| But none of those sets have any kind of staying power.
| There's Expert/Creator/Modular sets from 20 years ago that
| sell for $500-1000 _opened and pre-built/re-disassembled_.
| That's all brand power.
|
| So they're less about $/brick (though i know people
| scrutinize it) and more about price point and brand.
| Phrased differently, having your brick company race to the
| bottom sounds like a losing strategy.
| AdamN wrote:
| Yeah I don't know what this person is on about. Lego is
| obviously premium and ... charges premium prices because
| ... they're a business. People (consumers) who want
| premium products ... pay the premium.
|
| I would be much more frustrated if they became cheaper
| and reduced the quality of the product.
| pibaker wrote:
| There is a prevalent view of economy that insists
| businesses sell their products at the minimum price they
| can still make a profit at (but not lower or you are
| dumping.) A Marxist view of economy, if I must.
|
| Whenever I meet one of these people, I ask if they are
| willing to negotiate a wage _reduction_ with his HR. My
| logic is simple. If you think it is wrong for a business
| to sell a product at the maximum price they can
| demonstrably get away with like Lego does, then why is it
| right for you, a professional worker selling your labor,
| to sell your labor at a price higher than what is
| necessary for subsistence?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Anything that has only kept up with inflation over the last
| 50 years is cheaper today than it was 50 years ago relative
| to people's incomes, which is the relevant definition of
| "cheaper".
|
| Not sure exactly how Lego prices have evolved but, as
| others have said, Lego is a brand and is unique. Their sale
| prices have little to do with their costs.
| autoexec wrote:
| For most people anything that has only kept up with
| inflation over the last 50 years is more expense today
| than it was 50 years ago because wages have stagnated
| while prices have soared.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| No, that's not the case.
|
| For instance, the median household income in the United
| States in 1976 was $12,686. That's $72,857.55 today based
| on inflation (Google/Census Bureau Data + online
| inflation calculator).
|
| However, Google's AI overview says " _As of early 2026,
| the median household income in the United States is
| estimated to be approximately $84,000._ "
|
| So the the median household income in the US today is
| about $11,000 ahead of inflation since 1976. People in
| the US are richer now that they were then.
| autoexec wrote:
| > in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than
| 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January
| 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would
| today. (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-
| reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...)
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Ok, but, what about median household size? Shouldn't we
| calculate the "richness" based not on how much each
| household makes but how much each member of a household
| gets from it? My guess is that households are smaller
| these days, but don't know.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Well if today's households are smaller that makes them
| even richer (more money split over fewer people).
| rfrey wrote:
| Now what about the change in the number of earners per
| household? Houses don't earn wages, people do.
| sixo wrote:
| Prices are constrained by demand moreso than by cost of
| production. Lego pieces are expensive because they can be,
| they still sell, and this is largely due to the quality. As
| long as the quality moat persists, they can charge as much
| as people will pay, and--good for them!
|
| That you personally would prefer lower prices does not mean
| they "should" be lower. Those lower costs of production, to
| Lego company, "should" mean higher profits, not lower
| prices, and again--good for them!
| mcphage wrote:
| > As long as the quality moat persists
|
| The risk Lego faces is that _they don 't actually have_ a
| quality moat any longer. You can get non-lego sets with
| no stickers, plenty of prints, LED lighting, at a cheaper
| price, and with the exact same piece quality. I purchased
| this set:
| https://www.lumibricks.com/collections/steampunk-
| world/produ... over Christmas, and I paid $105 because it
| was on sale. The pieces were indistinguishable from Lego
| in quality, and the lights and lack of stickers was a
| quality increase from what Lego offers.
|
| What moat Lego has is: brand recognition and licenses.
| Which aren't nothing, but don't offer much protection.
| sixo wrote:
| A reputation moat is still a moat. It seems to me that
| Lego prices will drop as soon as they are forced to by
| competition, and not before, and this is fine.
| mmustapic wrote:
| What you mention is true, but Lego sets are (almost
| always) very well designed, specially the ones for kids.
| detourdog wrote:
| I remember the Lego 404 set being $40 in 1980. I actually
| can't believe my Mom bought it for me.
| sbcorvus wrote:
| Thanks for this reminder about the cost variable.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Yes! We were never bougie enough to get Lego, I played with
| Sears bricks growing up.
| rkangel wrote:
| > the push towards smartphone-dependent toys feels weird
|
| I haven't seen this push? The new Lego Smart stuff is
| explicitly "screen free play". There is an app but it's just
| for firmware update and configuration and you can't even
| connect it unless the brick is on the charger.
| bombcar wrote:
| Lego has been testing modern sets without instructions and
| instead tell you to download an app for your phone.
|
| The ones I know of are the Mario ones, but they apparently
| need a phone anyway to setup the little characters.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| All normal sets still come with a booklet don't they? They
| offer the option sometimes though.
|
| Plastic parts bags are getting replaced by paper ones, but
| the booklets aren't going anywhere.
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| Hmm, the comment I was replying to was deleted.
|
| I hate app obsolescence, and licenses that expire on your old
| hardware (Microsoft Word..) I exhibit 1980s video games. The
| hardware just continues to work. It's a disgrace what happens
| to mobile games, they just disappear. (Whattaya do, save all
| your old phones? I'm hating on you, Atari Classics app on
| iPad 2; revoked my paid license to use it.)
|
| But to be fair, Lego has gone to great lengths to keep their
| companion software alive. Still, the nature of mobile: apps
| require constant updates to stay listed for new OS versions.
|
| For one, Lego Commander existed uselessly on my phone long
| after it ceased to work... until one iOS it wouldn't install
| anymore.
|
| Lego giving you a CD with software and instruction was a
| comfort (challenge: find a CD drive!) but only Mindstorms
| really.
|
| For desktop apps in the 2010s, Lego relied on Silverlight to
| get Mac and PC compatibility. So what happens when you rely
| on a Microsoft framework... still as late as 2015 I was still
| able to download Mindstorms 2.0 (introduced 2002??) from
| Lego.
|
| With instructions pdfs, Lego has been ok to let hobbyists
| reproduce the downloads (last I saw.)
|
| Another thing Lego did was to provide SDKs for Mindstorms (a
| while after the community reverse-engineered a lot of it...).
| Opening it up that way was encouraging. (Lego even started
| distributing HiTechnic's 3rd party sensors, the folks that
| reverse-engineered the Mindstorms 1.0 RCX.)
|
| I was part of the fan movement from 1998-2001 that hammered
| on the message for Lego to open things up. What happened is
| that they hired several of us :)
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I mean it is a business after all, trying to make money..
|
| I must say, the new smart bricks with all sorts of
| sensors(color, gyro, distance etc) triggers the inner child in
| me. I can't wait to get them for my kiddo and teach him how
| that magic actually works beneath.
|
| The regular LEGO at this points feels "just plastic" and I
| won't feel bad offloading that purchase to AliExpress.
| foobarian wrote:
| Oddly enough I found the Duplo line much more fun to play with
| as our kid went through the blocks years. You could build
| something substantial with fewer block clicks, there were fewer
| different types of blocks, they were less fiddly and prone to
| vanishing into rugs/carpets, etc. Also the proper Legos tended
| to be sets which makes it very stressful to mix them into a
| misc bag.
| bntr wrote:
| Duplo is also compatible with regular Lego. We used Duplo for
| the big structure and Lego on top for details. Great way to
| build huge stuff quickly.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/LEGO-
| kom...
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Call me names, but I'll go to bat for stickers.
|
| Even when I was a kid, I wasn't keen on graphic designs on the
| pieces. I liked the uniformity of consistently-colored pieces.
| Most graphics only make sense in the context of the set they
| were packaged in. Stickers give the customer flexibility. Use
| them when you build the set, and remove them later if you take
| the set apart and don't want them anymore.
|
| Killing Mindstorms was a head-scratcher to me. Hell, there was
| an entire international tournament built around Mindstorms. I
| know FLL still exists, but why kill that darling specifically?
|
| NXT still kicks ass by the way. I have a backup of the NXT
| programming environment somewhere, it can be coaxed into
| running on Windows 11.
| closewith wrote:
| But you can only remove them once, and then never recreate
| the original set. Not great.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| You can argue this for their sets targeting children and I
| don't think anyone minds stickers on those.
|
| On display sets for multiple hundred Euros however it just
| looks cheap due to different surfaces and colors - especially
| as no one is ever going to disassemble these sets.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I have some of those display sets and I think the stickers
| look fine. Yeah it's less convenient than printed pieces,
| but I think the complaints are significantly overblown.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I think that's fair, though I'm sure we would disagree on
| plenty of edge cases in the definition of a "display-
| oriented" set.
|
| It just feels to me like AFOLs poopoo on any set for having
| stickers, without considering the advantages stickers have
| from the POV from the POV of a child with few LEGOs and
| fewer dollars.
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| stickers > just looks cheap due to different surfaces and
| colors
|
| They are cheap!
|
| To print on a piece you must run the inkjet assembly line,
| do QC on it.. With early Collectable Minifig series, I
| heard they outsourced that. I imagine inkjet lines that run
| all day for one piece type (maybe having changeable jigs.)
|
| It's cheap to print a whole sheet of stickers!
|
| Another approach that isn't so cheap is: in-mold transfer
| printing sheets. I learned about this at plastics shows
| around 2000; Apple used it on the all-in-one spotted iMac
| in 2001-ish.
|
| Now since Lego ships perpetually ships 1x4s and 1x2s with
| black smileys or such, I guess carbon black in-mold
| transfer must be cost-effective. (That's a guess)
|
| I know we're gonna be arguing taste in stickers forever.
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| Silverlight. 3.0 was built on Silverlight. And I guess other
| 3rd party proprietary stuff.
|
| I coached FLL 9+ and Junior FLL 6-8. FLL moved on to Boost
| and Java programming. These days I only do high-school FIRST.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > many sets feel like display models than something you can
| play with
|
| That's what I thought when comparing to my childhood sets, but
| it doesn't stop my kids from loving them and playing with them.
|
| My kids are learning a lot of cool building tricks from the
| advanced sets that I never thought of as a kid. Lots of angle
| pieces, hinges, and creative building.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's probably the biggest change in the last few decades,
| they went from never doing anything out of the ordinary to
| SNOT (studs not on top) for "adult model" sets only (first in
| the trains I believe), to now where advanced techniques are
| used even it children's toys that aren't models.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Not just NX but technics basically was a build things that do
| stuff mechanically and now isn't that seemingly at all. Most
| kits I had came with one or more alternative models you could
| build with the primary kit as well.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Classic Technic was brilliant, but when they switched to
| 'studless Technic' it became far more difficult to build
| creatively with it (even if it enabled far more intricate
| builds with complex mechanisms, like the gearboxes in the
| supercar sets) - there was no natural 'up' direction any
| more, and building anything became more of a 3D logic puzzle
| than just building with bricks.
|
| Real shame that they discontinued Mindstorms, though.
| bombcar wrote:
| I recall but can't find that there was a red technic car
| built with studs before the panels/studless took over -
| that thing didn't look terribly realistic but it DID look
| like lego.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Probably this one: https://brickset.com/sets/8865-1/Test-
| Car
|
| The difference in the instructions between classic and
| modern sets is interesting too, instructions for both the
| main and alternate build in just 38 pages. Compared to
| the modern instructions, which often add just a couple of
| parts per page.
| hibikir wrote:
| If you want advancements in engineering and plastics for much
| better prices, see the wonders that Bandai has made with modern
| Gundam models. A Gundam Aerial HG is under $20, and you end up
| with a large multicolor model that assembles easily, has
| minimal mold lines, and needs no glue. And that's one of the
| intro models
| ibizaman wrote:
| You weren't kidding. I just took a look and the models are
| gorgeous!
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| Yeah, that's some brilliant mold engineering!
|
| >minimal mold lines
|
| I think this comes from higher tonnage (clamp force) molding
| machines. Injected plastic exerts force at the mold seam.
| Pressing the mold open by even a teeny tiny amount is
| unpalatable. Mold lines also can result where a mold has
| insertable parts, like sliding rods to form inner holes.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Basic Lego is actually decently affordable. It's the
| collector's sets that adults would buy whose prices are jacked
| sky high, based on demand it seems.
|
| I've bought a decent amount of Duplo and Lego kits for my son
| (currently 3 years old) and it's great value.
| bombcar wrote:
| The fact that "10$ a pound for used, 10C/ a piece for new"
| has remained true as a good rule of thumb for 20+ years tells
| you something.
| georgefrowny wrote:
| In terms of creativity of model options, the Chinese
| compatibles are stomping them.
|
| You can even get a model of post-explosion Chernobyl. Not to
| mention all the sci-fi tie in from Star Trek to Warhammer that
| real Lego hasn't signed contracts for. But if you want an 60cm
| Gloriana class, there it is.
|
| Plus Technics-ish sets and bulk boxes that aren't 75% special
| body panels that only fit that specific model, since Technics
| itself mostly seems to have been downgraded to the automotive
| brands advertising department.
| conception wrote:
| When you build a knock off set, though, you can tell that the
| Lego versions have so much more thought put into the actual
| build process and the stability and functionality of the
| finished product.
| bityard wrote:
| I'm not a Lego nerd, but I recently saw a really sweet Lego
| DeLorean in Walmart priced at almost $200. Now that I have
| disposable income, I would have impulse-purchased that thing so
| hard if it would have been closer to $100. But I can't quite
| bring myself to part with a pair of benji's for a plastic toy,
| no matter how thoroughly it triggers my nostalgia.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I feel the same... I remember as a kid, being able to get kits
| of hundreds of just random blocks and variations and just being
| able to build/play... all the sets today are all custom blocks
| that just constrain you and often aren't significantly reusable
| while I'm not sure that I've even seen basic block kits
| anywhere in decades now.
|
| edit: I know you can get thousands piece brick sets from third
| parties or random bulk set sales on Amazon... the issue is the
| random bits are from the current sets mostly with little reuse
| value, and the bricks sets are from third parties of
| questionable tolerance compared to real lego. I just want to be
| able to get a classic 1000-3000 piece set of classic
| bricks/pieces from Lego proper, even if it's $100-200 total,
| still way more than 3rd party but maybe not the same margins
| for Lego as the bespoke sets.
|
| edit2: there are some "Lego Classic" sets that are closer to
| what I would like to see, this is probably the closest.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5FMF8BF/
|
| But even then, maybe need that many more bricks that are just
| bricks... again, there are third party sets that are all block
| variants that are much bigger/cheaper... would just be nice to
| be able to get more of those without paying an arm and a leg.
| detourdog wrote:
| I got my first Lego set in the early 70's through a Velveeta
| cheese mail in promotion. The company almost went out of
| business in the early 90's before they discovered movie tie-
| ins. I believe the quality of play was lost in this transition
| because the sets became more literal and less open ended. My
| first big set was a fire station which certainly literal but
| somehow seems more open ended then the movie tie/in sets.
| bombcar wrote:
| The fire stations et al still exist, its just that they don't
| sell nearly as well as the tie-ins do, at least based on
| shelf space allocations.
|
| This year's isn't huge: https://www.lego.com/en-
| us/product/fire-station-with-fire-tr...
|
| But the police station is pretty big:
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/police-station-60316
|
| (To me this looks more fun, but I'm a pirate guy:
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/police-prison-
| island-6041... )
| detourdog wrote:
| Here is the set I have. I think I still have most of the
| parts.
|
| https://brickset.com/sets/570-1
| abtinf wrote:
| Quality is expensive.
|
| Lego's net profit margin is only about 19%.
|
| They couldn't lower prices much even if they wanted to.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Lego was always expensive.
|
| > many sets feel like display models than something you can
| play with.
|
| That's because they are. There probably never been this many
| adults building lego than today.
|
| > The Mindstorms/NXT line had huge potential but then just sort
| of fizzled out.
|
| That's a small niche in today's world, a child is too young for
| arduino/feather/cyberbrick/whatever.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Isn't that just capitalism? The rule is for companies to keep
| pushing for higher margins and profit, so given enough time any
| company will default to shady tactics and product
| enshitification.
| basilikum wrote:
| Just buy from one of the many way cheaper way better
| competitors.
| vikingerik wrote:
| If you're complaining about the prices, remember how capitalism
| works. The price is set by buyers, not sellers. That's the
| invisible hand, the seller will set the price to what buyers
| show they will pay. If you're unhappy about $500 for a
| Millennium Falcon or whatever, your beef is not with the
| company for accepting that when people choose to pay it, it's
| with those other buyers for paying that much.
|
| As the other replies are saying, it's mostly brand power. If
| your complaint is that $500 for a Falcon is monopolistic
| because there's no competition because nobody else can legally
| sell Falcons, the monopoly is really with Star Wars not Lego,
| they're just delegating it to Lego. You're always free to find
| your cheapest source of bricks perhaps from other manufacturers
| and build your own equivalent.
|
| As for stickers and apps and the other stuff... yeah that's the
| enshittification that also always accompanies capitalism. It's
| lamentable but it only changes if enough customers vote no with
| their wallets.
| tbihl wrote:
| >If you're complaining about the prices, remember how
| capitalism works.
|
| Why get up at all, when gravity always just pulls me back
| down?
| MaKey wrote:
| Other manufacturers give LEGO a run for their money nowadays.
| Look at the CaDA Mercedes-AMG One for example.
| Diederich wrote:
| I believe the inflation adjusted price per piece has remained
| fairly consistent? https://flowingdata.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2013/02/priceperp...
|
| Perhaps sets of a given physical size have more pieces now
| compared to before? Not sure.
| derriz wrote:
| Historically Lego was a construction toy. This is what it was
| in my youth. These days Lego sell model construction kits -
| most are constructed once and then the owner plays with the
| model. This represents a radical and fundamental change. I'm
| not sure when it happened or how suddenly it happened as there
| is a large (decades) gap in time since I played with Lego as a
| kid and my current exposure to Lego via my own kids. Our home
| is full of Lego models but I don't recall seeing my kid using
| his vast amount (compared to the shoe box I used to store my
| Lego as a kid) of Lego to actually construct something. The
| "studless" change - with its inside-out building technique
| makes it virtually impossible to alter a model once built -
| unlike the old bottom-up approach where it's trivial to alter.
| It makes me sad because I remember with nostalgia the hours I
| spent building all sorts of fanciful constructions with my box
| of generic Lego pieces but I also acknowledge that model
| building -- which I do with my kids - is also fun. But it's
| just not the same play/toy as it was years ago.
| conception wrote:
| Set prices are a lot more reasonable if you stay away from the
| branded options, Disney and Star Wars sets, especially have a
| intense premium associated with them.
| skyberrys wrote:
| The smartphone dependent is a line to not cross. Anytime we get
| the phone dependent sets they are returned and analog toys are
| chosen instead.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| If you buy any knock off legos, you are guaranteed 3 things, 1.
| Crappy instructions 2. Noticing the snap pressure is inconsistent
| and often too tight our bouncy. 3. Swearing at that manufacturer
| after every page.
| lnsru wrote:
| The 2. is very annoying. Especially when big sets fall apart
| due to this issue.
|
| Let me add this: 4. no spare parts available. So when I break
| weird Chinese invention the whole set becomes useless without
| that very special part. It happened few times and I got back to
| used Lego sets.
| zvqcMMV6Zcr wrote:
| For me it is 1. Terrible quality of all rubbery/soft elements.
| 2. If it is original model (instead of ripping of existing
| set), it often contains huge, shell like elements, that can't
| be easily be in custom designs. 3. I guess the previous point
| doesn't really matter, when bricks are designed to be assembled
| once and are impossible to pull apart without hurting your
| fingers.
| em-bee wrote:
| not true at all for most alternative brands (they are not knock
| offs, the patents are expired so they are legal, and comparable
| in quality), same for cloned sets (shady companies cloning lego
| sets using alternative bricks (the bricks are legal, the cloned
| sets aren't). the quality of alternative bricks is good. the
| quality of the instructions as well.
| wek wrote:
| For me, the beauty of Lego was just a huge bin of
| interconnectable parts that I used to make whatever my
| imagination came up with. For my kids, Lego is pre-built model
| airplane set that they build one time and then display. I liked
| my Lego better :)
| brightbeige wrote:
| Makes me think there could be a big cognitive difference when
| playing with Lego as well, for example, divergent vs convergent
| thinking.
| Thlom wrote:
| You can still buy LEGO Classic which is just a bunch of bricks.
| antonyh wrote:
| From experience there's a motivation, almost a compulsion, to
| follow the instructions to build the cool thing. Then... they
| sit there, those bricks never taken apart.
|
| That compulsion doesn't seem present in freeform building,
| and there's been zero interest in it in our household. I know
| that's not true for all, but it seems like a lost art. Maybe
| it's because the IP sets show how but not the why it's
| constructed in a certain way, so given a bag of Lego most
| wouldn't know the process of creating something they can see
| in their minds eye within the constraints of the available
| bricks.
| wffurr wrote:
| When I was a kid and I got a new set, I would build it
| according to the instructions, play with it, and then
| disassemble it and sort it into my brick collection.
| Occasionally I would get the instructions back out and re-
| build it, and other times I would kitbash and make random
| cool stuff.
|
| My parents still have all my Legos from the 90s, including
| the instructions, and I've been able to rebuild a bunch of
| the space ships with translucent neon accents. It's pretty
| sweet and my kids love it.
| beastcoast wrote:
| Lego used to encourage building new things by putting
| alternate builds on the back of the box, but intentionally
| not giving you the instructions. Now they do 3-in-1 for
| certain sets instead, which misses the point of that.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Not really. Even LEGO Classic has way too many different
| colors (and only a few bricks of each), and too many weird
| shapes. Even if you buy a lot of it, it's hard to make your
| own designs that actually look nice (as in, not having that
| one incorrectly-colored brick in that one place, and so on).
|
| I for the love of God can't comprehend why LEGO Classic has 4
| shades of blue. It makes everything worse.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| Maybe Lego needs to manufacture sets that are just "collections
| of bricks". In fact, I think they did that at least for a
| while. I know my past self would have _loved_ to have a few
| sets that when put together would provide the kinds and variety
| of pieces used in books such as The Lego Play Book.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| They still do that. I can go to the store right this very
| moment and get a bin of bricks. There's no problem here:
| people who want designed sets can get those, and people who
| want just bricks to use as building material can get those.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| I'd be curious to know if those sets include more than just
| plain bricks.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=10698-1 is
| an example, doesn't include just bricks, but things like
| windows and wheels
| exabrial wrote:
| Backwards compatibility is something lost today. Incredible
| they've kept it this long.
| jimmar wrote:
| I've never regretted buying Legos for my kids. Yeah, the kits can
| be expensive, but they last forever. We've thrown out or donated
| lots of old toys, but the Legos will never be given away.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| In terms of toys which my son got from my childhood, Duplo and
| Lego stick out. We kept everything; booklets and parts. We
| built the classic town square (set 1592) recently, and we've
| got all the parts, including the statue bits! Only the printed
| lettering on the sign's 1x8 white brick had faded.
|
| Sure, some puzzles and books survived, but the Lego stands out.
| If he ever has children they are in for a treat...
| pubby wrote:
| Lego's original moat was their patent. This expired in the 80s,
| and so their new moat became their manufacturing tolerances. None
| of their competitors could match the quality of their product.
| This lasted until about the 2010s when clone brands in China
| finally caught up, and coincidentally, Lego's own quality started
| slipping. Thus, they needed a new moat, and the choice was
| obvious: licensing.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I wish Lego would find a digital equivalent as universal as the
| bricks for programming. I think it could be another moat for
| them. But it seems they keep changing it and it does not seems
| as simple or as universal as it could be. I am thinking more
| programming with blocks than using a tablet etc. to program the
| blocks. IMO it is a wasted opportunity.
| herpdyderp wrote:
| What knock off brands come even close in quality? Everything
| I've tried that isn't name brand LEGO is hot garbage.
| operation_moose wrote:
| I've ordered 2 sets off of AliExpress (the Stargate BC303 and
| BC304 MOCs) and was quite impressed. No box, digital
| instructions, and a few minor color swapped pieces; but
| complete and everything went together very well.
| lich_king wrote:
| This is an LLM-written article. It also _doesn 't say anything_.
| I get it that it's a cue for us to reminisce about childhood and
| say that LEGO isn't what it used to be, but we're being played
| for clicks. Open the article and look for a single statement that
| actually tells us something meaningful. It's just a sequence of
| impressively-sounding factoids like this:
|
| > A 2x2 brick can withstand over 4,000 Newtons of force, which
| lets children build tall structures.
|
| > But in an assembly system like LEGO's, small errors accumulate.
| Stack ten bricks end-to-end and the cumulative tolerance is ten
| times larger. This is why LEGO models larger than 1 meter become
| difficult to build
|
| > The lesson isn't that everyone should match LEGO's tolerances.
| It's to understand what your product actually requires, then
| build your manufacturing system to deliver that at the scale and
| cost your business model demands.
|
| I know I'm tilting at windmills, but come on.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I too hate it when my kids apply 4 kN of force to off-brand
| construction bricks and they turn to ABS paste. Only LEGO (R)
| for my spawn!
| rkangel wrote:
| I agree, it doesn't say a lot. It also very confidently
| specifies a series of tolerances with no citations.
|
| Lego does indeed have very tight tolerance, but I don't know if
| the numbers are in the public domain.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| We use a Lego phantom[0] to control for geometric distortions in
| a few of our MRI studies. The tolerances are so tight that it
| works really well. Especially important in multi-site studies.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_phantom
| khalic wrote:
| Really cool trivia, thanks for sharing :D
| rob74 wrote:
| Was this written using AI? It does contain some interesting
| information, but the same information is repeated (with small
| variations) over and over again in a mind-numbing way that made
| me stop reading after about half of the article...
| Tossrock wrote:
| It certainly feels that way. Some tells:
|
| "Precision, for LEGO, isn't an engineering choice, it's a brand
| promise." - The classic "It's not just x, it's y", just minus
| the "just".
|
| "One philosophy optimizes for cost, the other for perfection."
| - Again we see the x/y structure; AI writing often features
| these forms, eg comparisons (x vs y), conversions (x into y),
| negated emphasis (not x, but y), etc.
|
| "When you have multiple parts in an assembly, use statistical
| analysis for tolerance stack-up rather than worst-case math.
| Traceability matters. Track your defects so feedback turns
| precision into reliability." - More x/y followed by a short
| stinger ("Z matters"), and the closing sentence again follows
| the "x/y" pattern.
|
| For funsies I tossed the whole thing into a purported AI
| detector and it said 90+% confidence of AI. I don't trust those
| types of things very much and suspect they have high false
| positive rates, but I have read that AI writing generally has
| measurably lower entropy, so maybe it's plausible, and in this
| case it aligns with my existing beliefs, so it obviously must
| be true.
| antonyh wrote:
| This is why Lego has nothing to fear from 3D printing.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Not in terms of people printing lego bricks. But at least as an
| adult, designing things in Fusion and printing them scratches a
| similar itch as building lego. And 3d printing is now pretty
| accessible to the 14+ age group. I doubt this will completely
| replace legos, or that it's even their biggest threat, but I'd
| be surprised if it had no impact
| antonyh wrote:
| Framed that way yes, but wouldn't it be cool to 3D print
| interlocking parts that can be reassembled in different ways?
| tmaly wrote:
| It would be interesting if 3D printers could reach this
| tolerance
| antonyh wrote:
| I'm sure they will if they can't already, but the price of
| the tech & the materials could be the limiting factor. How
| much would a hobbyist be willing to spend on consistent
| 10-micron 3D printing?
| spatular wrote:
| The trick is to redesign the bricks for worse tolerances. With
| 3D printers you can print very nuanced springy elements that
| are impossible to achieve with injection molding. I got some
| reasonable bricks years ago on cheap printers with PETG, should
| work even better now with modern printers and ABS.
| rkangel wrote:
| The tolerance for interference fit ("clutch power" in Lego
| terminology) is important, but that's fairly simple. It's the
| cumulative tolerance when you assemble large structures that's
| important. Knockoff bricks can be fine for the first few you
| assemble, and then as the structure gets larger things don't
| _quite_ fit together.
|
| Also interesting is that in very large models, there is
| decoupling between sections. Lego has design rules for how large
| a well connected chunk of Lego can be, which are driven by the
| tolerances. Above that you are then loosely coupling those large
| "chunks".
| perfmode wrote:
| This is the most interesting point in the thread to me.
| Tolerance stack-up is the reason tight per-part tolerances
| matter at all. A single brick being precise is table stakes for
| injection molding. The hard problem is what happens when you
| compose hundreds of them. The decoupling strategy you're
| describing is really similar to how you handle error
| accumulation in any large composed system. You can't make
| individual components perfect enough to avoid drift at scale,
| so you introduce boundaries where the accumulated error gets
| absorbed rather than propagated. In Lego's case that means
| designing joints between sections that are forgiving enough to
| accommodate the stack-up from each chunk independently.
|
| It's also why knockoff bricks can feel fine for small builds
| and then fall apart (sometimes literally) on larger ones. If
| your per-part tolerance is 3x worse, it doesn't matter much for
| a 20-piece build, but for a 2000-piece build your cumulative
| error budget is blown long before you're done. The failure mode
| isn't that any individual brick is bad, it's that the
| composition doesn't hold.
|
| I'd be curious whether Lego publishes or talks about those
| chunk size design rules anywhere. That seems like the actually
| interesting engineering story, more so than the per-part
| tolerance numbers that get repeated in every article about
| them.
| jjk166 wrote:
| That's actually not too difficult. So long as your process
| variance is centered around nominal, the stackup will tend to
| cancel out. You might run into trouble if your kit involves
| hundreds of identical pieces from the same batch being
| assembled together, but that's rare. For large builds from
| multiple kits, it's very unlikely they have the same errors.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| "A minifigure head mold evolved from 8 cavities in 1978 to 128
| cavities today."
|
| Initially I thought this meant a lego minifig head has 128
| internal cavities, but finally realised it means a single mould
| now makes 128 heads.
| yubainu wrote:
| I always thought it was amazing how Lego pieces fit together so
| perfectly that they wouldn't come off even if you lifted them,
| but if you wanted to remove them, they came off so easily, and I
| had no idea they were that precise.
| twodave wrote:
| Both of my boys (9 and 11) still enjoy both the sets and the
| classic Legos. They're constantly building trucks, trailers, etc.
| One even designed his own working dump-truck. They're still great
| toys for imaginative play, and the fact that the sets can be
| broken down and used in new ways just keeps the fun alive. My
| oldest even designed and had his grandpa build him a lego table
| with a removable/reversible top so he could paint different
| geographies for his cities and whatnot that he likes to build.
| yubainu wrote:
| Rather than worrying about accuracy, please do something about
| the pain that will make you cry if you step on it!
| joering2 wrote:
| there is a solution for that, its called flip-flops. But it
| would be hilarious if LEGO would add a pair in one of their
| sets :)
| jlv2 wrote:
| https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/brick-clog-5010203
|
| Pricing is on-par for LEGO.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Make 'em sick, sell the cure
| lvl155 wrote:
| Worth mentioning that tolerance is that low for multi-stud
| pieces. For an individual stud it's closer to 0.02mm but as you
| add more studs tolerance spec goes up.
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| I would like to better understand the reasoning behind what the
| author says here:
|
| _A balanced 16-cavity mold costs 3-4x more than a single-cavity
| mold but only produces 16x the parts, which is why they only make
| economic sense above 500,000 units._
| s0rce wrote:
| I guess if a single cavity mold costs $30,000 and a 16 cavity
| mold costs $110,000 you have an additional expense of ~$80,000,
| divided over half million parts is 16 cents. So lets say
| somewhere from 5-10cents per part to go 16x faster. My numbers
| might be off a bit but seems in the ballpark. I also don't know
| much a lego brick costs to make in terms of materials/opex.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Something that took me years of working with custom plastic
| injection part experience to notice still kind of shocks me...
|
| _Legos don't have draft._
|
| That means nothing to 99% of you, but someone else here must
| understand what the implications of that are for releasing from
| molds at a mass scale.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Actually they do have a draft. The bricks are designed so you
| don't notice it, both by the draft angle being quite small, and
| the parting line is moved up slightly so by the time you get to
| the bottom of the brick you're back to the original width.
|
| https://medium.com/@bsather/breaking-down-the-perfect-design...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I was annoyed at this one time so I took two legos and put
| them under the microscope. I couldn't see it. Which is just
| to say how fucking tiny the scales are here.
|
| For production parts we're looking at drafts around 3
| degrees. Which is... not what they have even considering the
| tuck back in!
| nayuki wrote:
| Upvoted, and the English prose is pretty good in spelling and
| grammar, but the metric units in the writing need improvement.
|
| > 10 microns
|
| "Micron(s)" is a deprecated word since 1967 and "micrometre(s)"
| must be used instead. The reason is that it is a non-standard
| word; if "micron" is accepted, then we should also accept the
| nonsensical words "millin", "nanon", "kilon", etc. The metric
| system is supposed to be easy to learn with consistent rules and
| as few special cases as possible.
|
| > 4.8mm ... 0.01mm ... "0.002mm tolerance"
|
| These numbers are correct, but it's harder to quickly skim the
| text and make comparisons because the number of decimal places
| vary. It would be better to write 4.800 mm, 0.010 mm, 0.002 mm to
| make the reader's job easier. Or convert everything to whole
| micrometres, like 4800 mm, 10 mm, 2 mm.
|
| > withstand over 4,000 Newtons
|
| Almost correct, but the unit must be decapitalized to "newtons".
| This is similar to how other name-based units are decapitalized -
| like "100-watt light bulb", "12 amps", "3 gigahertz".
|
| > 2-3 Newton insertion force
|
| It must be written as "2-3 newtons". When the unit name is
| written out in full, it follows normal English pluralization
| rules (e.g. metres, seconds, volts, pascals, kelvins, ohms,
| teslas). The only exceptions are hertz and siemens, because they
| already end with -s or -z.
| jjk166 wrote:
| This is why we measure things in baby elephants per football
| field.
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| >A 2x4 LEGO brick manufactured in 1958 will snap perfectly onto a
| brick molded this morning..
|
| This is just manifestly NOT TRUE. The outward appearance may be
| the same. There were intentional improvements to the walls and
| tubes that make fit less than perfect. Generally, today's brick
| requires less force to snap and un-snap, because the compression
| is focused onto fewer points. (I guess this lowers the "hoop
| strength".)
|
| Older bricks can be either: completely loose, or clutch so hard
| to each other they are the devil to take apart.
|
| I have many bricks from 1962 onwards. The oldest 2x4s and 2x2s
| were made of cellulose acetate (CA) (in North America,
| intermediated by Samsonite.) CA were softer, and either had less
| clutch power to begin with, or lost it over time. When I got them
| in the 70s, they _fit_ but wouldn 't reliably stick to each
| other, nor later 70s-80s bricks (all ABS plastic by then.) (CA
| bricks were mostly red, and they have a pale orange tint.)
|
| 70s-80s bricks did not always age well. Aged 1x4 or 1x8 bricks
| can have the outer wall bowed inward slightly. This is a mold
| engineering problem anyway. Later, 80s bricks were improved by
| slightly thinner walls and some reinforcing tabs. The older, aged
| bricks can stick brutally to each other and to newer bricks.
|
| The 10x10 baseplates didn't age well (these were once box-tops!
| Tog'l Toys also had the baseplate as a box-lid.) Possibly made of
| polycarbonate (PC). Other large plates in ABS-- for instance 6x16
| (Auto Chassis, red) -- have warped. They were also more brittle
| to begin with.
|
| So inside Brick geometry has changed over the decades. 60s-70s
| bricks are closer to plain boxes with tubes inside - as the
| Kiddicraft prototype of the 50s. In the 80s, the outer walls got
| thinner and had tiny studs where the studs contacted the wall.
| And the tubes changed from cylinders to just slightly clover-leaf
| inside, so that a tube over a single stud now formed 4 points of
| contact, and came apart with lower shear force. (I believe this
| also made it easier to pry a plate off of a larger plate.)
|
| I have Fabuland sets from early 80s, whose plain bricks are so
| stiff, they are positively brutal to snap onto each other or 90s
| bricks.
|
| The brick geometry of today is much improved. And the ABS is more
| "plastic", perhaps more "B" (butadiene rubber) or less "S"
| (styrene): I can drill it more cleanly.
|
| Mid 80s and 90s bricks will interoperate just fine with today's.
| But bricks from before that period didn't age so well (and their
| corners, I believe, used to be harder.)
| novaleaf wrote:
| > The 66-year-old brick will have the exact same interference
| fit, the same clutch power, the same 4.8mm stud diameter.
|
| Pretty sure this is false. Old bricks had way higher clutch
| power, so high that it was deemed too difficult to separate.
| Sometime in the 90's the grip strength was reduced.
|
| This false claim is underpins the entire article :(
| runxel wrote:
| I concur. I had "inherited" the sets of my 10 years older
| brother, and they where a pain to play with. It was sometimes
| impossible to separate the pieces, especially if it were plates
| with no leverage and nothing to grip.
| tsoukase wrote:
| To make a bunch of plastic toy bricks a multi billion company you
| have to produce very special ones. LEGO is a marvel of human
| entrepreneurship, mechanical, designing and marketing. Diverse
| and totally different professions should cooperate together with
| a lot of innovation. To make one characteristic is doable, all of
| them is very difficult.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > They're cut from hardened steel using wire EDM, a process that
| erodes metal with controlled electrical sparks, achieving
| tolerances within a few microns.
|
| They're made by sinker EDM, not wire. The physics are similar but
| it's a radically different process.
|
| > But in an assembly system like LEGO's, small errors accumulate.
| Stack ten bricks end-to-end and the cumulative tolerance is ten
| times larger.
|
| That's not how these tolerances work. The super tight tolerance
| is the interference fit on the stud. This is a diameter. You
| don't stack diameters together. Each connection is independent.
| Where you can get tolerance stackup is brick height and stud
| spacing. Although even here random errors tend to cancel out as
| you mix lots.
|
| >LEGO's system reveals timeless truths about manufacturing.
| Process control beats precision machining. A stable, repeatable
| process produces better results than chasing the tightest
| possible mold tolerances. Invest in monitoring rather than just
| tighter specs.
|
| The whole article says the opposite. Lego relies on precision
| machining and tight tolerances. Process control is necessary in
| addition to these.
| post_break wrote:
| The whole article makes me mad when they factually get so much
| wrong. Like I had to stop reading.
| donquixote25 wrote:
| I could be wrong but this article reads like AI. I don't
| understand why its getting upvotes.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Lego is still the best toy, but man, I really miss the old style
| Technic sets where most of the pieces were very generic vs
| today's sets which are less versatile. 8480 and 8250 as examples
| (my two favorite sets growing up, though I didn't manage to get
| my hands on 8480 until I got my first job)
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