What happened with LEGO • Hacker News Board

Re: What happened with LEGO

#91

Post by emddudley » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 5:43 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #86

Unfortunately, with the 3D printers on the raise, the faith of a LEGO(r) brick is doomed. In the near future, there will be printers especially designed to print small LEGO pieces. Of course none of those 3DP will market as "print your own LEGO bricks", but kids will figure this one quickly. It will work a bit like a baking machine. Turn it on, leave it overnight and bunch of blocks roll out when you wake up in the m…

I'm not holding my breath. There is no way that home 3D printers will be able to maintain the same manufacturing tolerances as the LEGO factories, definitely not within the next 5 years.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#92

Post by wiredfool » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 5:43 PM UTC

T-hawk wrote: post #73

Lego prices were my introduction to economics and budgeting as a kid. My parents worked out and explained that you should look for value per brick in the sets when choosing purchases. I learned how to rapidly estimate mental arithmetic largely from wanting to get the most Legos for my allowance. The benchmark was 10 cents per brick (in the mid 80's), sets which worked out below that were good buys, sets above that we…

The thing Im noticing with the sets these days is that overall, there are a lot more tiny pieces, variations on a 1x1 or a 1x1 flat, round, or light or something. That can really drive the piece count up on a set. I was just looking at the Fire Plane that my 6 yr old got yesterday (yay, birthday, 5 presents, 3 lego sets), and it's got a ton of little pieces to be the water that fills the plane's hold.

(Also, Compare the Tower Bridge @ 4k pieces for $250, vs the Death Star at 3k pieces for $400, though there's some licensing difference there as well)

Re: What happened with LEGO

#93

Post by wslh » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

Tloewald wrote: post #13

I don't have a problem with the price of lego, having — as a child in the 70s — saved my own pocket money to buy lego. The real criticism of lego is that it's gone from being a collection of parts that can make the thing on the cover of the box but also many interesting variations, to something that isn't very malleable. First, lego no longer has a consistent color scheme, so only pieces from one genre go with other…

Yes, when I was a child I played Star Wars using any brick compatible with the idea of a ship, transformers with some moveable pieces. The branding is bad because children think that to make a star wars ship you need a specific lego package instead of roughly creating something from the available tools (hacker mind)

Re: What happened with LEGO

#94

Post by tedyoung » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 5:48 PM UTC

Tloewald wrote: post #13

I don't have a problem with the price of lego, having — as a child in the 70s — saved my own pocket money to buy lego. The real criticism of lego is that it's gone from being a collection of parts that can make the thing on the cover of the box but also many interesting variations, to something that isn't very malleable. First, lego no longer has a consistent color scheme, so only pieces from one genre go with other…

Agreed -- in fact, it's hard to find a book or other instruction manual that describes how to build something cool, without it requiring a bunch of "special" pieces.

Also, I'm not sure what's happened, but I've noticed color variations in the standard bricks: yellow bricks that look washed out compared to other yellow bricks. It's a real bummer when trying to create a consistently colored model.

While my son loves the Star Wars and City sets, I encourage him to use the standard bricks (I buy 'em in bulk) to build what he wants and to help him learn how to come up with creative solutions given the "constraints" of standard "generic" bricks.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#95

Post by MichaelGG » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 5:49 PM UTC

cbr wrote: post #55

Alternate hypothesis: pieces are getting smaller. Cost per piece looks like it's falling because we've gone from http://brickset.com/detail/?set=WEETABIX1-1 to http://brickset.com/detail/?set=10223-1

I agree. I think there may be a dimension that's missing that isn't accurately captures in weight/pieces. I remember the Lego castles of old being large - the ones I see today in shops for $70 are like one piece of a wall.

OTOH, it might be that I was physically smaller when I made those memories, so they just seem smaller today.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#96

Post by Groxx » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

colomon wrote: post #51

acheron wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. I hope Lego will move back to the more generic themes by the time my kid(s) get old enough. (Currently my 1.5 year old loves Duplo blocks; apparently there are even licensed Duplo sets though he doesn't have any of them.)

You can get all the generic Lego blocks you would ever want. The "problem" is kids want all the fancy sets. For instance: http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Bricks-More-Builders-Tomorrow/dp/...

Well yeah. What's advertised? What's in stores? I haven't seen a 'plain' lego set in stores in years, outside of lego-brand stores.

If they don't know it exists, they're less likely to want it.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#97

Post by gwern » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 6:24 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #86

Unfortunately, with the 3D printers on the raise, the faith of a LEGO(r) brick is doomed. In the near future, there will be printers especially designed to print small LEGO pieces. Of course none of those 3DP will market as "print your own LEGO bricks", but kids will figure this one quickly. It will work a bit like a baking machine. Turn it on, leave it overnight and bunch of blocks roll out when you wake up in the m…

The stability of real prices per piece over the last decade or so even after substantial work on reducing costs suggests that Lego is pretty close to the limits on cheap manufacturing of Legos.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#98

Post by gwern » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 6:28 PM UTC

bonsai80 wrote: post #29

Profitable companies charge what the market will pay for their products. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5039567

Your link doesn't work for me:

> We've limited requests for old items. If you're running a crawler, you can get this data a lot more easily from http://hnsearch.com/api.

In any case, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_clone#Legal_challenges

Re: What happened with LEGO

#99

Post by pyre » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #87

pyre wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. They still have the generic sets. 2. You can go to places like bricklink.com to buy almost any block or set that you want. 3. Branded sets usually mean more specialized pieces which only increase the source material you have to draw from when building things. 4. Lego also puts out stuff like this: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=67132 . Highly specialized pieces that aren't tied to a brand. Whe…

When I was a kid, one of the things on which I spent a fair amount of time was trying to figure out how to make a Lego vehicle with independent front suspension (and steering). Nowadays, they have specialized pieces that have effectively solved that problem. I don't know whether I ever came up with a decent solution back then, but I do know that trying to come up with one was an excellent exercise, one that I probabl…

So your endeavour is replaced by others. Your logic could easily be used to rail against using calculators rather than slide rules or to rail against all Lego in favor of Erector sets, etc.

As others have stated, Lego was in trouble before adopting the franchise sets. Would it be better if Lego was 'pure,' but out of business? It's not like they removed the ability to do what you're talking about, they just added new things. You could easily limit yourself, or your children, from using the new things.

Re: What happened with LEGO

#100

Post by tlrobinson » Thu, Feb 07, 2013, 6:36 PM UTC

emddudley wrote: post #91

joering2 wrote: post #86

Unfortunately, with the 3D printers on the raise, the faith of a LEGO(r) brick is doomed. In the near future, there will be printers especially designed to print small LEGO pieces. Of course none of those 3DP will market as "print your own LEGO bricks", but kids will figure this one quickly. It will work a bit like a baking machine. Turn it on, leave it overnight and bunch of blocks roll out when you wake up in the m…

I'm not holding my breath. There is no way that home 3D printers will be able to maintain the same manufacturing tolerances as the LEGO factories, definitely not within the next 5 years.

I agree. On the other hand, 3D printing itself could displace LEGO as a creativity outlet for kids. But there's something about physically snapping blocks together and experimenting that couldn't be replaced by CAD software.