In the late 1990s, Lego went the other way with those big single-purpose pieces, and were heavily criticised (particularly by older Lego fans) for "juniorisation" - over-simplifying sets so you just couldn't build anything different with the pieces. You can't build buildings out of big vehicle parts.

Sounds like it's gone too far the other way now and they're still not managing to find a middle ground? But it does depend partly on what age of kids we're talking about.