alt Hacker NewsUnfortunately Lego kind of went backwards, evolution-wise, in the last 20 years or so. I had quite some Lego blocks in my youth and the best part was free assembly rather than those overpriced build-xyz-mega-sets one sees today now. I get it that they cater to another market, e. g. also collecters, but the creativity part really went down. And that was a deliberate decision made by Lego.
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I have noticed that the self-directed part has been deemphasized in favor of selling to adults (with more money than they'd spend on plastic toys for kids), but you can still totally buy the "Classic brick sets" and "Creativity" toys, or just bulk bricks by the pound.
In those bulk sets, there are now way more colors than just the primary and secondary colors that original sets came in, way more flat tiles and wedges with stickers or screen-printed imagery from the branded product lines, but kids don't seem to mind.
My 9yo has a bunch of bulk bricks as well as planned sets - Minecraft in particular - and when he gets a new set, he builds it to the instructions, brings it out to the living room to show off his creation, and then before he's walked back to his room he's in the process of adding new stuff or taking it apart to integrate into the rest of the jumble of bricks. I think there are only two builds (both from this Christmas) that are currently intact, and they probably won't last long...
My personal gripe is that they did away with the studded beams in Technic and everything is smooth beams now with axles and pins.
While it might look marginally better, everything is 3x the parts and the building time, and you can just sit down and slap stuff together any more, in fact with the rise of things like Arduino, and 3D printing, I think it's easier to just do electronics + CAD (even with kids) than to work with this stuff.
Which is a shame, because older sets used to be cheaper and contain much less parts for the same amount of functionality, and something like a crane truck set that could do all the tilting and motor stuff was categorized as suitable for kids 2-3 years younger.
> And that was a deliberate decision made by Lego.
A prime example of this are the flower sets they sell. You'll get, like, 90 purple flippers. What are you supposed to do with that besides make flowers? It's an excessively overengineered and wasteful jigsaw puzzle.
Even their line of Technic stuff is super watered-down. It's really hard to get useful components, and they have changed the design of their motors and controllers several times (no cross compatibility, obviously). People are moving to buying bootleg components.
Yea as somebody who played extensively with Lego as a kid, almost exclusively just the "base components", I never really got the appeal of those set with all sorts of custom, single-use items
Someone I know who is about 65 years old has been getting the space shuttles and super car ones the past couple years and it's unlocked a creative side of them they haven't had in years. Nothing wrong with those mega sets. There's nothing really stopping people from just buying bulk legos or even breaking down sets and reusing their pieces elsewhere.
My son has ... SO MANY LEGO sets; he is twelve and has been collecting regular LEGO since he was four or 5. Yes, the sets get built, but soon after they get broken down into their constituent parts, and we have massive build sessions where we sit in the middle of all his LEGO and just build stuff. It's some of the most fun I have with him.
That is where the money is. Grown adults in their 20s-30s with expendable income looking to collect Lego sets. It helps that Lego is a big part of people's childhood, combine that with pop culture references and you are golden.
Ngl, I enjoy my fair share of Lego sets from my favorite fandoms.
I agree - technics sets used to be really awesome function wise, then came mindstorms and it kept getting better, then all of that seemingly vanished for new sets and cosmetic sets instead.
These days Legos are more akin to model kits. Except they dumb down everything that not even a monkey can screw up assembling whatever is being built.
There’s no creativity in it.
To wit, I’ve bought some kits for my nephew cause his mom asked for them for Christmas, he assembles them while we are still unwrapping gifts, then never or hardly ever goes back and touches them again. They just stay built and untouched on a shelf. Like a model kit.
I remember 20-30 years ago when you’d just get a bucket containing an assortment of pieces and if you were inclined to build a house then you’d have to get creative with the pieces that you had.
The fun part was playing with a friend, agreeing to build a house but having too wildly different designs. Then learning from the experience and tearing it down and building it again but bigger and better.
they're doing this because their market has shifted to adults and toy collectors spending large amount of money on them.
The two main issues with Lego sets I have are:
The huge amount of specialized parts that are pretty useless for basic building. They're basically adornments.
Prices are insane. I.e. quantity and often quality (as in: how good is the set play-/ construction time wise) is just shite.
I usually buy competitors. Here in Germany Blue e.g. bricks have opened some stores so that's where I take my nephew.
Their sets are much more like the Lego I grew up with. Using more basic parts that exist in creative ways so the specialized/adornment meaning is derived from context, not the part itself/its shape.
Which also requires more imagination from the kids playing with this.
My son has a enormous bin full of lego that he just free builds with.
Every time we go by Lego Land when we're on a road trip we make a stop and gets to pick out a bunch of stuff from the "random brick wall" and he just adds a bunch of stuff to his pile.
He got a Minecraft set for christmas a couple years ago. I was the one that built it but he just uses the blocks and minifigs for whatever he wants now.
it was a deliberate choice that made them absolute mountains of cash
My kids will build a set according to the instructions and then a day or two later it's disassembled for parts so they can build something else.
The reason they sell sets is because the people who buy these are parents, uncles, grandmas, and other people. The sets make it easy for them to identify something that seems like kids would love it and possibly intersects with some brand the kids like, such as the Marvel crossover sets.
Once the bricks get in the kids' hands, they can do whatever they want with them.