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LEGO Building Instructions

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Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#11

Post by onemoresoop »

photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

Neither did I till I had a kid. My kid loves following instructions, builds a set a few times, then he goes into creative mode and builds his own way. Instructions helped my kid learn the basics of instruction following which is a good skill to have for a 5 year old.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#12

Post by jjkaczor »

photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

I am in-between - so, the way I used instructions was for ideas on how things could be put together that were "non-obvious".

I would build it once, then play with that model for a bit, then deconstruct it, put it into my box of loose LEGO and then build whatever I wanted - sometimes it would look similar, but it was never the same way twice.

I fail to understand expensive sets that get built and sit on shelves or in glass enclosures... Might as well break out the Kragle (I think many people failed to see the point of that movie...)

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#13

Post by celticninja »

Waterluvian wrote: post #4

My kids being 4 and 6 means we’re full into Lego. I grew up with two brothers so we have like three hundred pounds of it. But lost most of the instructions. It’s been amazing to go online and find any instruction and re-assemble these kits. It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.

Get the brickit app, saves some time

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#14

Post by hugi »

photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

I'm in my early forties but I still grew up with instructions and sets. Usually I'd assemble a set and probably learn a thing or two along the way, then I'd tear the sets down and build stuff myself.

As a father of three, that's exactly how I see my kids using the sets today. The sets get built once, then they get torn down and the bricks get reused.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#15

Post by jjkaczor »

kroltan wrote: post #10
Waterluvian wrote: post #4

My kids being 4 and 6 means we’re full into Lego. I grew up with two brothers so we have like three hundred pounds of it. But lost most of the instructions. It’s been amazing to go online and find any instruction and re-assemble these kits. It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack.

> It also made me realize something: half the value of buying a kit these days is that you aren’t spending hours finding needles in a 300lb haystack. What! That is the best part! Wading through a mound of Lego has to be one of the most satisfying sounds I know, the clatter of a bajillion pieces of precision plastic, each with their different cavities and sonority, moving around each handful you scrape off to the side…

The sound of swishing through a mound/box/bin of LEGO has to be the most relaxing thing for me ever...

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#16

Post by chias »

Oh man, this sent me down a trip to memory lane. I had a lot of the Spyrius set as a little kid, and I loved them to bits. I just looked up how much they'd cost to buy them again, and they're like $1000 a pop :o

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#17

Post by dsr_ »

photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

My own take:

Some people want to play with playsets. Some people want to display models. Some people want to create art. Some people want to construct machines. Some people want to assert allegiance. Some people want to collect.

All of these aims are valid. The diversity of ways to buy LEGO supports them all, while maintaining a high-quality, largely compatible, reasonably consistent medium.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#18

Post by thirteenfingers »

photonerd wrote: post #8

Probably an age thing, but I’ve never understood the point of Lego instructions. Or the sets. The whole point of Lego was creative free form building. Remove that & it’s dull as hell. It just becomes model building with poor quality models as the result. I’m happy other people find it fun, but to me it misses the entire point in favor of weak licensed “kits”.

I personally agree about the whole point of Lego being free form building - and I still have some Lego magazines from the days when that was explicitly encouraged by Lego - but you need kits and instructions to get to the point where you can do free form building. It's like composing music, you're going to have a very difficult time of it if you don't first study a whole lot of existing, well-constructed music.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#19

Post by jjkaczor »

mrweasel wrote: post #7

Now if someone would just make an app that can figure out which set my bricks belong to. I have at least two sets that I can't find the instructions for, because I have no idea what they're called or which number they have. The bricks are fairly unique, they can't be in more than 10 sets.

There are typically numbers somewhere on bricks that you can lookup.

Or ... Reverse image search.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#20

Post by bennyp101 »

mrweasel wrote: post #7

Now if someone would just make an app that can figure out which set my bricks belong to. I have at least two sets that I can't find the instructions for, because I have no idea what they're called or which number they have. The bricks are fairly unique, they can't be in more than 10 sets.

I'm sure there was a brick scanning app that appeared a while ago, or try and find a number and enter it on Lego site [1], otherwise post a picture on BrickLink and I'm sure someone will know what it is! Then you can look on BrickLink or Rebrickable to find sets that it came from

[1] https://www.lego.com/en-gb/service/help/building_instruction...

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