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Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

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Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#241

Post by googlerx »

mcv wrote: post #25
where-group-by wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of specialised parts is one thing I dislike about modern Lego sets. They do look great and have really smart building techniques, but I just want to build a brick house with my kids. There is always Lego classic sets, and smaller creator houses do have a lot of regular bricks too. But it is a bit annoying once you amass a few sets from other lines. Still, I'm glad they are in business. I will take whatever…

My brother and I got the first two grey castles in the 1980s (the first castle yellow; grey was a fairly new colour back then). Those castles mainly relied on fairly large castle wall pieces. At first, even as a kid, I felt that was cheating; we should have gotten bricks to assemble all those walls. Later I discovered what a boon they were, because they allowed me to rapidly design new and different castles. Sure, I…

I did use those castle walls for a space ship. It was massive, maybe 3ft long, vaguely resembling Spaceball One.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#242

Post by kingcharles »

gilbetron wrote: post #101

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…

I've played with Lego (never Legos) since 1980. I love the modern sets. The branded sets, to me, make it even more fun. You can mix a Batman mini-fig and use the branded parts to make an uber-Batmobile of your own design. The Star Wars kits are fantastic. I actually bought all the Friends sets for myself because the brick colors are great.

Even today I opened my mail to find a teddy bear valentine's heart Lego set from my girlfriend that is constructed from clever use of generic bricks, none of which would have been out of place in 1970s sets. In fact, I think Lego has become 100X more creative since the advent of the Internet, where people are making the more insane and elaborate constructions from the simplest bricks. It's become competitive in the nicest way.

Lego today is thriving and is better than it ever was.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#243

Post by phil21 »

usefulcat wrote: post #197
phil21 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dishwasher (on low temp) also works fairly well, just don't use any (or a very small amount) of detergent. I like to put about 1kg or so in the "delicates" laundry mesh bags when I have a lot of used legos to wash. Also need to reiterate do not heat dry or use hot cycles if you go this route :)

I've run duplos through the dishwasher many times with no problems at all. On the regular cycle with dishes. Our dishwasher (Bosch) doesn't have a heating element for drying, it just makes the water really hot and waits for the water to evaporate from the hot dishes.

Fair enough, I've used quite cheap dishwashers in the past for this - where the heating element is used to heat the water up. Due to general cheapness, I'm sure there were hotspots.

That said, under hot loads with an old/cheap dishwasher I've only had issues with the large baseplates and very large/thin elements typically found in Technic sets - everything else has turned out fine.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#244

Post by somethoughts »

josephg wrote: post #202
jacobolus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. 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…

Something like this might be useful:

https://www.amazon.com/Lego-Ideas-Book-Unlock-Imagination/dp...

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#245

Post by dleslie »

usefulcat wrote: post #146
gilbetron wrote: post #101

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…

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…

Organizing becomes seriously important, now.

I help my kids by organizing their pieces by colour, with an extra box for "bits". So there's a grey box, red box, etc and a box full of minifigs and assorted non-building accessories.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#246

Post by watwut »

josephg wrote: post #202
jacobolus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. 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…

I feel like people completely unnecessary put moral value on not following manual. There is nothing wrong with following it. There is nothing wrong if that girl wants to keep some building and play with them. She may or may not build own later, most kids move between the two kinds of play.

If younger brother dostroyed her own creation, in my experience, the anger is even higher. And loss harder to fix - you can help to fix it if done based on manual. You just can't if it was own.

The play is whatever kids do with it. When we demand that they play in certain way, so that they become more artistic ones, it is nit a play anymore. It is educational activity.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#247

Post by destitude »

deltaonefour wrote: post #239

>The ads were just plain awesome. Case in point: This 1981 ad featuring a young girl with her Lego creation. That picture of the girl holding up a lego set is only "AWESOME" for parents. As a kid if I saw that I would barf. First off as a little boy back then... there was no gender equality. All girls were stupid and had cooties and I was a little sexist tyrant. Second little boys aren't dumb... that blob of a thing…

I think you are missing the point.. The gender equality was portrayed by the company and therefore picked up by the parents. Nothing to do with what little boys thought of girls. Today you have marketing pre-disposing parents to thinking girls should follow X interests and boys Y. This is big part of why we have lack of females in STEM since for example "girls" Legos shows they should just worry about beauty salons and not rocket ships.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#248

Post by rightbyte »

slavik81 wrote: post #207
xenomachina wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What a blast from the past. I remember the finicky IR tower for uploading programs. 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 awa…

> Eventually, I gave up and put it away, because it was such a frustrating experience.

Wasn't there a cheat sheet in the manual for the puzzles? I think I only solved one without copying everything. Way too hard for 11-12yo me.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#249

Post by orthoxerox »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #153

Genuinely curious: Has anyone here personally experienced a The old "build from the bottom" Lego Technic was just so inviting for technical tinkering. We built all kinds of machinery out of them. Not kids any more on this occasion; we dug out the Legos from the late 1970s to play with them just for fun once we were grown up. But representative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw3dUbRfMSw The "What it is, is beautiful…

I remember my old studded Technic sets fondly. Back then you could at least see what you were building a few steps in. I bought and built a Jeep Wrangler set a couple of months ago, and I have no idea if I will ever be able to come up with an original Technic design myself using modern studless beams. I had no idea what I was building at least halfway into the instruction booklet.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#250

Post by jurassic »

dleslie wrote: post #245
usefulcat wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Organizing becomes seriously important, now. I help my kids by organizing their pieces by colour, with an extra box for "bits". So there's a grey box, red box, etc and a box full of minifigs and assorted non-building accessories.

It's generally accepted among online lego communities that organizing by part/shape makes retrieval more efficient than organizing by color. It's tough to find a red 1x2 plate in a huge bin of red pieces, but it's easy to find a red 1x2 plate in a bin of small plates of multiple colors. If you don't have enough parts to justify breaking down to the specific part, you can do categories at whatever level of granularity makes sense for your collection: bricks, plates, modified bricks, rods and clips, etc.
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