What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
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What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
#2This is very interesting because I as I'm sure many did agreed with the sentiment at the time and assumed that community was trying to create some sorta social commentary about how toys have become expensive, but now we see that the price of legos hasn't actually changed so much, though it's had a long term downward trend.
Re: What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
#3The problem that I have with Lego isn't the cost of them, the price-per-brick or whatever. The problem is that when I go to Target or someplace to just buy a big tub of generic bricks--like I grew up with--I instead see an aisle packed full of special-use packages. I don't want Harry Potter or Pirates of the Carribean or super-specialized Technics...I just want a big gallon of assorted, simple bricks.
Seriously, it's like Lego has somehow turned into the same microframework hell that Javascript has--hundreds of toolkits, all useless outside of their niche.
Re: What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
#4This is very interesting because I as I'm sure many did agreed with the sentiment at the time and assumed that community was trying to create some sorta social commentary about how toys have become expensive, but now we see that the price of legos hasn't actually changed so much, though it's had a long term downward trend.
I think Community was more making a comment about how Lego has become less generic and more based on marketing. You could say this correlates to less creativity in favor of recreating existing properties. The bits about smaller pieces and brand tie-ins line up with the changes mentioned in the article (more pieces per set, more brand specific sets).
Re: What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
#5In the early 80s, my parents went to garage sales and bought me tons of used Lego sets. None of the sets were anywhere near complete, and most of them didn't even come with a picture of the set they belonged to.
My parents just dumped everything into a large bin and gave me no instructions other than what the shape of the blocks themselves suggested. There were parts of cars, parts of airplanes, parts of castles and police stations and pirate ships.
So I made flying cars, pirate castles, police ships, and everything in between.
Later, when my parents could afford to buy me a brand-new Lego set for a special occasion, I wouldn't even try to build what was shown on the cover. All the new blocks would go into the bin with the old ones, and I'd mash them together to build crazy things.
I think those Lego blocks made me become a programmer.
These days, when I browse the Lego section at any large toy store, all I see are heavily customized ("licensed") sets that seriously restrict what you can build with them. The bow of a ship is no longer a jagged stack of rectangular blocks; it's a large, smooth, custom-molded piece that can't easily fit in anything but a ship. They look beautiful, like a nice iOS app, but they no longer inspire creativity like they used to. Instead of Minecraft, you get FarmVille.
I could still build a pirate-themed spaceport with that set, of course, if I had a lot of rectangular pieces. But most sets don't contain a lot of versatile, rectanguler pieces anymore. You need to buy a very large set for that.
So maybe that's part of the reason why we think Lego is getting more expensive. There have always been small, cheap sets and large, expensive sets. But unlike in the 80's, most of the small sets are no longer worth buying. They are so heavily themed and custom molded that the average kid can't do anything truly creative with them. Serious players are therefore forced to buy large, expensive sets. Because if you buy a 1000-piece pirate ship, maybe half of those pieces will still be useful when you later decide to build a nuclear missile silo.
Some time ago, I heard that you could just order a bag of generic blocks from Lego. I wonder if this is true, because if and when I have kids, I'd like to buy them that. Or maybe I'll just ask my parents if they still have my old bin of mismatched secondhand bricks.
Re: What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
#6The problem that I have with Lego isn't the cost of them, the price-per-brick or whatever. The problem is that when I go to Target or someplace to just buy a big tub of generic bricks--like I grew up with--I instead see an aisle packed full of special-use packages. I don't want Harry Potter or Pirates of the Carribean or super-specialized Technics...I just want a big gallon of assorted, simple bricks. Seriously, it's…
Looking at the Lego website, that does seem to be the case - but I couldn't tell if that has always been the case. Many of the sets don't look like you'd have much freedom other than to follow the directions due to the large number of set-specific pieces.
Re: What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
#7The problem that I have with Lego isn't the cost of them, the price-per-brick or whatever. The problem is that when I go to Target or someplace to just buy a big tub of generic bricks--like I grew up with--I instead see an aisle packed full of special-use packages. I don't want Harry Potter or Pirates of the Carribean or super-specialized Technics...I just want a big gallon of assorted, simple bricks. Seriously, it's…
I think the inventory carried by retailers is more driven by marketing theme sets, but LEGO itself still carries generic building sets. (e.g. http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Ultimate-Building-Set-Pieces/dp/B...) You can even IIRC order specific parts in bulk directly from LEGO. But if you google, bulk lego, the most likely thing you'll come across lots of ways to pickup large amounts of used bricks from ebay or similar sources.
Re: What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
#8The problem that I have with Lego isn't the cost of them, the price-per-brick or whatever. The problem is that when I go to Target or someplace to just buy a big tub of generic bricks--like I grew up with--I instead see an aisle packed full of special-use packages. I don't want Harry Potter or Pirates of the Carribean or super-specialized Technics...I just want a big gallon of assorted, simple bricks. Seriously, it's…
They do make a couple of generic bins. ($0.61/brick on Amazon) and you can pick up clean lots on eBay. Though I've not seen it myself I'm also told you can buy from bins at the Lego stores.
I know what you mean though, as none of these yields exactly the set I'd prefer (lots of variety in very few colors).
Re: What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
#9The problem that I have with Lego isn't the cost of them, the price-per-brick or whatever. The problem is that when I go to Target or someplace to just buy a big tub of generic bricks--like I grew up with--I instead see an aisle packed full of special-use packages. I don't want Harry Potter or Pirates of the Carribean or super-specialized Technics...I just want a big gallon of assorted, simple bricks. Seriously, it's…
Perhaps you need to go to a different store? Lego City is still by far the biggest representative in most stores I visit. Whilst they do have Star Wars, Marvel/DC, Minecraft etc, their own branded pirates, Ninjago and Chima represent a far bigger slice of their offering across their range.
If you're after something even more generic than that, Lego have always had "creative" boxes available as well. They've actually just come out with a new series: http://shop.lego.com/en-AU/Classic-ByTheme
Re: What Happened with Lego: The price of a brick
#10The problem that I have with Lego isn't the cost of them, the price-per-brick or whatever. The problem is that when I go to Target or someplace to just buy a big tub of generic bricks--like I grew up with--I instead see an aisle packed full of special-use packages. I don't want Harry Potter or Pirates of the Carribean or super-specialized Technics...I just want a big gallon of assorted, simple bricks. Seriously, it's…
Paying ten cents for a bring you can reuse hundreds of time is much cheaper than paying ten cents for a brick that can only be used once and has to be kept with its mates in order to preserve the "value" of the kit.
Also, paying suggested retail price for an "in demand" kit is unheard of. When my nephew got the "Black Pearl" for Christmas a couple of years ago, his parents paid $250. TIL the MSRP was apparently $100 (although that information was not available to them at the time.) If someone knew they were paying $250 for a $100 kit, maybe they wouldn't think it was Lego who was ripping them off.