Both of my boys (9 and 11) still enjoy both the sets and the classic Legos. They're constantly building trucks, trailers, etc. One even designed his own working dump-truck. They're still great toys for imaginative play, and the fact that the sets can be broken down and used in new ways just keeps the fun alive. My oldest even designed and had his grandpa build him a lego table with a removable/reversible top so he could paint different geographies for his cities and whatnot that he likes to build.
Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)
121–130 of 343 posts
Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)
#122After working in automotive, this is less impressive than it appears. Tons of dimensions on 100k/yr injection molded(and otherwise) parts have similar dimensions. (Although admittedly, after testing in pre-production, I don't know if they are tested again and have drift) Lego has been making the same parts for decades and their parts are extremely simple. I imagine their 1-off parts for intellectual property based se…
Ill admit that their parts do have higher quality than their competitors (various Chinese and other companies) making similar or compatible parts - some have injection molding blemishes or whatever on them that I've purchased from AliExpress or Walmart so in this space they are above everyone else in their space.
Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the fact that pieces from the 70s snap perfectly into ones made today is mind blowing Is it? It's not like it's hard to keep producing the pieces to the same original specifications. If they snapped then they snap now.
How many plastic things from the 70s still work perfectly with no cracking or warping?
Not sure, but is this about the backwards compatibility or the chosen type of plastic?
Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)
#124Lego is one of those companies that is simultaneously amazing and kind of sucks. On one hand the core product is incredible. The tolerances on the bricks are micrometer-level precision and the fact that pieces from the 70s snap perfectly into ones made today is mind blowing. On the other hand, a lot what the company does today just sucks. Set prices are outrageous. Printed bricks get replaced with stickers and many s…
Not just NX but technics basically was a build things that do stuff mechanically and now isn't that seemingly at all. Most kits I had came with one or more alternative models you could build with the primary kit as well.
Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)
#125More than just bricks fitting into each other at a superficial level, it matters how firmly they fit together, and it's one of the areas where LEGO is generally superior to the similar types of bricks. A detail I didn't realise until I was an adult was the difference between the black and grey technic connecting pins. They look interchangeable, and for a lot of things they are. But there's a fraction of a mm raised l…
Do you mean between black and light grey? Light grey pins have always been the kind you use for rotating connections (low friction), whereas black was for non-rotating ones (high friction). Newer blue pins are also high friction, IIRC. I haven't bought new lego technic in a while, so I don't know if there's been any new colours added EDIT: I think I also had some dark grey pins, but I don't remember if they were high…
My memory of twenty years ago says the dark-grey pins were 1 stud wide on one side, and half-wide on the other, and low-friction like the light-grey ones.
Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are so many better alternatives these days it’s mostly fanboys and people who don’t care who are still buying original Lego.
Like what?
The value proposition of the Chinese knockoffs is off the charts IMO.
For what I spent buying JUST ( https://www.brickeconomy.com/set/60229-1/lego-city-space-roc... ) last year for my daughter,
I've since bought her a 3-floor hospital, a firehouse, a pink villa with pool, and about 2 dozen doctor and engineer minifigs for the same ~$120 outlay. Only disappointment is the legs on the Chinese minifigs, they are difficult to seat properly on studs because the legs are at a slight angle (almost like manspreading).
I have to stop myself from going on a spending spree on AliExpress, I might order an entire Age of Sail LEGO navy.
Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a kid, the first "special" Lego kit I remember was the Star Wars sets in 1983 (and especially that everybody wanted a Millenium Falcon but I didn't know anybody who had parents that could afford one!) Apart from those Star Wars kits, everything I had were generic blocks and strips (not sure what they're called, the ones that are 1/3 the height of a block) and some different designs of people. The closest I…
The elements that are 1/3 the height of a brick is a plate if it has studs, and a tile if it does not. Lego did not have Star Wars sets until 1998. The original Lego Millenium Falcon set 4504 would have retailed for right around $100. Which was high, but just as high as the bigger Castle sets at the time.
They definitely had lunar/space themed sets in the '80s, but they were generic (at least the ones I had). I don't recall when the Star Wars sets came out, they might have been one of the first cross-promotional tie-ins that Lego did?
Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by that?
Not OP but from my experience, the LEGO I had in a bin since I was a kid still fit perfectly with LEGO I'm buying for my kids 30 years later. That's unbelievably impressive to me.
Especially when most LEGO storage is done is gigantic bins of all kinds of pieces, periodically hand-tossed in order to find the one piece you need :)
Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Call me names, but I'll go to bat for stickers. Even when I was a kid, I wasn't keen on graphic designs on the pieces. I liked the uniformity of consistently-colored pieces. Most graphics only make sense in the context of the set they were packaged in. Stickers give the customer flexibility. Use them when you build the set, and remove them later if you take the set apart and don't want them anymore. Killing Mindstorm…
You can argue this for their sets targeting children and I don't think anyone minds stickers on those. On display sets for multiple hundred Euros however it just looks cheap due to different surfaces and colors - especially as no one is ever going to disassemble these sets.
I have some of those display sets and I think the stickers look fine. Yeah it's less convenient than printed pieces, but I think the complaints are significantly overblown.
Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are so many better alternatives these days it’s mostly fanboys and people who don’t care who are still buying original Lego.
I feel like I’ve seen essentially this same comment every time a Lego thread comes up but there doesn’t seem to be unanimous agreement on which brick toys are better. Sure, some people have good experiences with brand X but others will say they’ve had bad luck with the construction. Someone else will talk up Brand Y and someone else will point out how terrible the instructions are. Are there any brands that actually…
Lumibricks is fantastic, built in lighting (or rather you build it in as part of the model) and as someone who has always turned their nose up at off brand Lego, the parts are definitely 99% of the way there. Instructions the same quality, if not better, than Lego as well - all for about the third of the price.
Minifigs are terrible but I have hundreds of those spare anyway!