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LEGO Building Instructions

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Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#101

Post by roryisok »

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”.

Growing up, myself and my siblings built sets when we first got them as gifts, but after that they went in the pile. We would build whatever was in our imagination, from the multicolored heap.

Now I have my own kids, and they all want to build sets from instructions. The odd time we'll dive into the pile of orphaned bits and build a house or a boat or something, but mostly they want to recreate what they remember. My wife spends hours finding all the pieces of a set and bagging them up for the kids to build later (so she's gonna love this)

It's tempting to say "kids nowadays" but I think it's just different personality types. In other media, my kids are far more creative and imaginative than I ever was, but with Lego sets they prefer to recreate the perfect image than make a hodge podge thing that never existed.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#102

Post by roryisok »

Lego themselves have an archived copy of every instruction set going back to the 80s, available here - https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/buildinginstructions

But for whatever reason, the scans are poor quality and very dark, and it can be hard to make out what piece is which. These ones look much better

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#103

Post by lukebbutton »

FeteCommuniste wrote: post #83
JNRowe wrote: post #2

I sincerely applaud everything ending up on IA. However, if you're searching for specific instructions brickinstructions is excellent as it is far more navigable. For a random example see Starguider¹. I wonder if someone has already scraped that site for IA, beyond simply praying to the Wayback Machine. ¹ https://lego.brickinstructions.com/m/lego_instructions/set/6...

Wow, that just gave me a crazy flash of nostalgia. I think I must have had this set, or at least a very similar one.

Same, it hit hard

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#104

Post by lukebbutton »

bombcar wrote: post #59
jjkaczor wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The word 'Grüschteling' is a German word used by German Lego fans. It is used to describe the distinctive sound made when you sift through a large bucket of Lego, trying to find the right piece.

My grandfather used to say that whenever we played lego as kids

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#105

Post by dunham »

bombcar wrote: post #58
el_benhameen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for sharing this. I’m going to show it to my 6 year old and he’s going to lose his mind. Great way to make use of my massive box of childhood legos and empty summer hours.

There is/was a website where you could upload all your parts and it would tell you what you could build.

There is a app for that too, which works off of a photo of your parts: https://brickit.app/

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#106

Post by cortesoft »

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.

My kids never want to build the instruction versions, they only want to make their own designs.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#107

Post by lostlogin »

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…

> Wading through a mound of Lego has to be one of the most satisfying sounds I know

There are two sounds I associate with Lego. The one you describe and the other.

The words you can find and the tone you utter them with when you unexpectedly stand on a piece, or even better, when you kneel on a bit when trying to find the tv remote.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#109

Post by BanazirGalbasi »

jmmv wrote: post #98
mirkules wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no kids yet You will know no fury as when your kids intentionally mix up all the pieces for fun. We have hundreds of LEGO people, and my kids intentionally dismembered them into their individual pieces (including HANDS!). But how can you get angry at kids playing??? twitch

It sounds like you should watch The Lego Movie (:

I think having sets that you like to keep together and you don't want to mix up is fine. Too many people saw the Lego Movie and took it to mean that keeping sets as sets is bad. Note that the person you responded to isn't stopping their kids even as they cause more destruction than the Lego Movie showed, they're simply complaining about it here because what _they_ had is gone.

Yes, let kids mix and match and play. But also acknowledge that we all play differently, and for some people having a model of something that they built is where the fun lies. People who like organization can still have fun, let's not shame them for their preferences.

Re: LEGO Building Instructions

#110

Post by Tade0 »

nimajneb wrote: post #78
mirkules wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no kids yet You will know no fury as when your kids intentionally mix up all the pieces for fun. We have hundreds of LEGO people, and my kids intentionally dismembered them into their individual pieces (including HANDS!). But how can you get angry at kids playing??? twitch

My daughter will be getting her own Lego and possibly a selection of mine. I organized mine for the first time in my life last year. Some of the sets I've had since the very late 80s and early 90s. Those aren't getting lost :P She can play with them supervised, but she'll have her own. This is all assuming she's even interested, she's only 2 so who knows yet.

Mine is also two and really into Duplo, so Lego will be a natural progression, especially considering that the blocks are compatible, so I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Also some the ones she's playing with are currently over 30 years old and still going.

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