201–210 of 301 posts
I really dislike all the bizarre "lego ain't what they used to be!" comments - they honestly come from people who haven't spent time with modern legos. For reference I was born in 1970 and played with legos probably from 1975-1985, and then seriously picked it up again in 2012 or so when my son was old enough to play with them. People paint this picture of these new legos that are made up of like 5 parts that you jus…
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One key mindshift is to realize that many of the newer sets are more in line with a 3D puzzle than a creative 1000's of blocks to invent your own thing. Its a lot less frustrating when you realize the replay value is in taking down the set and doing it again next year or passing it on to a friend - in a manner more analogous to how puzzles are engaged with.
> the replay value is in taking down the set and doing it again next year There is no end to the “replay value” in taking whatever miscellaneous collection of legos you have and making whatever you want out of them. This is what most kids do. Each new set gets added to the mixed-up pile. (This works because all of the pieces consistently follow a common geometric design, and connect together using a small handful of…
It’s interesting watching my sister’s kids interact with lego. Her daughter (the oldest) loves rules, and loves following the instructions on the set. Her (younger) son loves destroying her sets and mixing things up. He loves all the “boy” lego sets - flames, dragons, motorbikes, you name it.
I’ve been trying to get them to relax into building whatever they want with their bricks. “Oh there’s the eyes for a face. Which piece is a mouth?” “Wow cool motorbike. I wonder if this brick would look good as a helmet?”. I try to make bad suggestions and get them to find something better.
I struggle to break free from the instructions a lot of the time too. I think my problem with modern lego is how many individual elements there are. It doesn’t feel like fun creative constraints when you have so many different pieces to choose from. More like, whatever element I use, I feel like there was something better out there I didn’t think of. The huge variety of pieces makes the sets look great - so great that it overshadows anything I make myself. I love lego; but I wish they embraced the constraints of the medium more and let their sets be more blocky. Minecraft’s 1x1x1 block shape constraint makes the game better, not worse.
For example, there are a crazy number of Lego shapes these days, but the degree to which they fit together satisfyingly — even in unexpected ways — is amazing. And I love this about Legos, and it's so much more interesting than just blocks. My kid builds whole scenes and detailed models thanks to the wide variety of little "unique" pieces.
And from what I've seen, sets these days are big idea factories: My kid will build what's in the instructions a couple of times to learn it, and then will take things apart and do his own thing with it, make his own creations. I love that he gets an example and learns new techniques with these big sets and then applies that to his own ideas.
The branded Lego stuff I don't care for — I'd rather kids think about actual space exploration rather than Star Wars, for example — but I appreciate how Legos are designed and sold right now.
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For me, the biggest difference between Legos when you and I were kids and now is that the sheer number of different pieces makes it too often nearly impossible to find the piece you need when building something from "the pile". My kids also have a lot of Legos (by volume, more than I ever had). When engaging in free play (i.e. not building a new set from the instructions), I find that the things they make tend to be…
A ~550-piece set from my childhood (90s): 10 minifigs and accessories, end result will fill about a 1-foot cube. Plenty of room for small hands to get in and actually play with it. Construction simple enough you can easily put it back together if it's messed up during play, without resorting to the directions. Exposed studs everywhere for easy adding-on. A modern ~550-piece set, also from a line aimed at kids, not on…
428-piece, 1-foot cube, $55, 4 minifigs, 1994: https://brickset.com/sets/6571-1/Flame-Fighters
540-piece, 1-foot cube, $69, 5 minifigs, 2022: https://brickset.com/sets/60320-1/Fire-Station
LEGO just has a much much larger catalog now than they did back then (200 sets vs 800 sets.) But the classic style sets are still there for you, if that's what you want.
In any creative endeavor, be it lego or minecraft or anything else, you can endlessly watch the global greatest hits on youtube, things you have no chance of "competing" with. I have no idea how this affects people growing up in this environment. Is it stifling? Inspiring? Just normal, since you start out as a kid not knowing how to do anything and surrounded by people who do? How different is it really from how we g…
I think it is pretty much normal. I'm reading Art & Fear (1985) right now, and it discusses a lot of myths about talent and genius that would be relevant to this.
Whenever my kids ask me how I got to my level of ability in art or music, I make sure to let them see paintings and prints that I abandoned on the way to a final piece. They see me reworking things on the light box. They hear me practice and flub my scales. I'm at least trying to instill the notion that there's always an effort and a huge mess on the cutting room floor.
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I got some of the Lego Elves sets for my daughter, but the line was later discontinued and prices skyrocketed. I ordered some Communist Bricks / "Illegos" from Ali Express, and the quality was decent if you wanted them to sit on a shelf. Some of the parts, though, did not hold up to "play time" and I had to buy a few critical components from bricklink to put the dragon's wings back on. My daughter loves the intricate…
The Friends minifigs are terrible! Their hair never stays on.
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I mean, that isn't really new either. I had the first generation Lego Mindstorms set (pre-NXT, with the old yellow control brick), which required a USB device and special software to edit programs on the control brick. After ditching Windows XP for Windows 7, I could never get the USB device, or the required software, to function properly. The software and drivers just weren't maintained and updated, and I could neve…
I have a few RCX Mindstorms sets, and the software was always a problem. Thankfully, there were some open source alternatives, like http://brickos.sourceforge.net/ As an aside I'm pretty sure my RCX IR towers use serial, not USB.
I failed abysmally at programming my Mindstorms robot. I could never figure out how to make two things happen at the same time, so I couldn't make both motors run at once. As a result, my treaded robot could only spin in circles.
Sadly, that was pretty much the end of my experience with Mindstorms. Eventually, I gave up and put it away, because it was such a frustrating experience.
I assume it would be easier for kids these days. It was a lot more difficult to find help on the internet in 1999.
> Lego has become more gender stratified In this day and age, I would be surprised if the Lego Friends line, which was created with girls in mind, were marketed explicitly to girls. My guess is that the girls stratify themselves by what type of toys they are attracted to. There's evidence that the preference is biological: Male monkeys prefer boys' toys https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-pr...
I have a boy and girl, I purposefully made the effort not to push them into gender specific things, but hell they still ended up pretty stratified. They even play minecraft differently! I'm convinced there is a major biological underpining after watching these two grow up.
I didn't learn gendered behavior or thoughts from my parents but I learned them from everyone else and society as a whole. I learned from a very, very young age that some of my interests were very much not acceptable for girls and I internalized a lot of it.