51–60 of 301 posts
Trying to buy lego for kids these days is a nightmare. I went looking for a spaceship lego set. Just a simple rocket or something. Instead it's heaps of adult themed/Star Wars/NASA licensed stuff. The alternative seems to be a bucket of standard bricks. The adult orientation of LEGO these days makes me hesitant to buy it. I don't mind Adults having LEGO sets, I do mind if that becomes so lucrative it stops kids being…
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A more interesting comparison would be to put the core themes of the 1990s (Castle, Pirates, Space, Town) against the modern popular themes (Ninjago, Creator, Star Wars, City). The old sets had less specialised parts and less colour variety, which allowed kids to combine sets from the same theme easily. The buildings (castles, fortresses, harbours) almost always had a big baseplate (flat or 3D). Minifigs were themed…
If you look at Lego Space during the 90s it is a long list of new versions (almost yearly) each with their own specialized parts. Personally I don't feel like this narrative about a substantial shift in Lego sets fits with reality. To me it feel like people conflates it with the rise of licensed sets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Space
6259: Broadside's Brig [https://brickset.com/sets/6259-1/Broadside-s-Brig]
For what was a very small and cheap set at the time, you are getting 3 minifigs and a small building on a baseplate. The bulk of the parts are yellow- and white-coloured bricks for walls and architectural elements. There is a specialised yellow-coloured edge panel with a red brick texture, but it plays very nicely with the rest of the parts architecturally. You can easily combine this set with the bigger forts and harbours. The colours are compatible, the parts are compatible.
This is not certainly the case with modern Lego sets.
1.) Majority of lego sets kinds have characters in them. That includes Star Wars sets, Ninja go sets, knights sets and what not. Lego Friends having characters in them is not something unique.
2.) Also, lego sets marked for similar age brackets have similarly complex manuals. It is just not true that Lego Friends for 7 years old would be much less complex them Minecraft for 7 years old or City for 7 years old.
3.) The actual study lego made and wrote about distinguished "indoor vs outdoor" as differing preference between boys and girls. And I think "a lot of details" in that indoor (not sure about this one). This is the first time I hear about the difference being "character vs building". Which does not even match what sets lego makes. Knights series are all about characters.
> Last year, Lego created a female scientist set on a limited run. It sold out quickly.
The special thing about this was that they were based on actual real world scientists. It was very much collector item.
Are resin 3D printers any better than FDM in printing Lego bricks? I hope they get good enough so that every kid can make all the pieces. It's a shame that a new 8880 kit costs an arm and a leg.
There is no problem buying the parts separately needed to build such model. Of course, some exotic parts were discontinued. Lego provides instruction as pdf on their website. Edit: the other brick manufacturers have problems replicating brick quality with injection molding machines. I assembled thousands Lego parts with my son and their fit was exactly the same - perfect. The Chinese kits have one in hundred parts th…
Most of the now & then examples are both true now. The classic sets still exist and how children play with Lego depends on their personality and what they have available (and how it is stored). Children are individuals and Lego allows a larger variety of play than most other toys on the market. My kids have a mix of classic & branded sets and the play area is a mix of designed builds and improvised creations. The fav…
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I think the point is capitalism gives people what they crave. Not necessarily what they need. But any alternative is unimaginable in individualized minds of modern people.
Oh, it does give them what they need, plus loads of other needs they didn't even know they had - and sometimes these other needs take priority regardless of whether that should be the case. I.e. they will sell you milk, which you likely need, but also all possible types of cheese and yogurt and cream, which you really don't but might actually end up consuming more than milk.
That dark pattern where a website gives you the next article it thinks you should read does not work well here on this older article. Below the Lego article I get “Hate math? Then don't help your kid with their homework” — which it proceeds to load hundreds of times (a search for the word 'homework' yields over 1000 hits now) below each iteration just because I tried to scroll to the bottom. Somehow its recommendatio…
Are your surfing without protection? Scrolling to the bottom for me works perfectly. I tried disabling uBlock, then I got the behaviour you mentioned. I always have uBlock on to disable scripts and fonts. Quite a lot of sites work perfectly well that way and I enable the minimum scripts and fonts for those that don't.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the point is capitalism gives people what they crave. Not necessarily what they need. But any alternative is unimaginable in individualized minds of modern people.
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I may be misremembering, but when I was a kid in the 90s there was a much larger variety of sets to pick from. As a space nerd I love their ISS, Shuttle and Apollo themed sets, but it's still disappointing how limited are their kids' options these days.
Are resin 3D printers any better than FDM in printing Lego bricks? I hope they get good enough so that every kid can make all the pieces. It's a shame that a new 8880 kit costs an arm and a leg.
Lego bricks are made to micron tolerances. When you add up tolerancing errors over 10 or 50 bricks in a row the differences can add up and things don't fit. This is a big part of how Lego saw off the cheap competition - they were generally not satisfying to build. This is achieved with very careful injection moulding, and the only rapid prototyping tool at that level of precision is 3D CNC.
There is more to the sets that pieces of plastic. Look at Warhammer - the figures are all plastic, they could easily be 3D printer, they might not look quite as good but they'd work just fine. Yet, Games Workshop sells set after set. Lego sets are also designed, come with instructions etc. There's more than just the components.