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Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

thewave.engineer

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Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#181

Post by MarsIronPI »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #133
MarsIronPI wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Lego needs to manufacture sets that are just "collections of bricks". In fact, I think they did that at least for a while. I know my past self would have loved to have a few sets that when put together would provide the kinds and variety of pieces used in books such as The Lego Play Book.

They still do that. I can go to the store right this very moment and get a bin of bricks. There's no problem here: people who want designed sets can get those, and people who want just bricks to use as building material can get those.

I'd be curious to know if those sets include more than just plain bricks.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#182

Post by mytailorisrich »

potatototoo99 wrote: post #156
mmustapic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lego was always expensive, you can compare prices adjusted for inflation. For example, the 1979 Galaxy Explorer https://brickset.com/sets/497-1 > was around $32, that's $144 today. The reimagined set from 2023 https://brickset.com/sets/10497-1 > was sold at $99, $106 today. Not only it is cheaper, but much larger and with many more pieces.

Yes, they have kept up with inflation, and that is the problem. Manufactured goods like Lego bricks should fall in price through innovation in processes, scale, etc. What does raise higher than the average inflation should be be labor-intensive products/services. In other words, it feels much stranger today how expensive Legos are compared to 47 years ago.

Anything that has only kept up with inflation over the last 50 years is cheaper today than it was 50 years ago relative to people's incomes, which is the relevant definition of "cheaper".

Not sure exactly how Lego prices have evolved but, as others have said, Lego is a brand and is unique. Their sale prices have little to do with their costs.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#184

Post by tokai »

throw310822 wrote: post #123
StilesCrisis wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#185

Post by kjkjadksj »

lqet wrote: post #11

> A 2x4 LEGO brick manufactured in 1958 will snap perfectly onto a brick molded this morning in Denmark, China, Hungary, Mexico, or the Czech Republic. In the late 90ies, I regularly played with my uncle's old LEGOs from the late 60ies and early 70ies. They were stored in an unheated attic for 25 years. I remember that some of the old bricks didn't "snap" at all anymore to my newer bricks. They were either extremely…

In my experience the bricks that didn’t snap well would have too many teeth marks

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#186

Post by bombcar »

Aurornis wrote: post #108
scatbot wrote: post #12

Lego 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…

> many sets feel like display models than something you can play with That’s what I thought when comparing to my childhood sets, but it doesn’t stop my kids from loving them and playing with them. My kids are learning a lot of cool building tricks from the advanced sets that I never thought of as a kid. Lots of angle pieces, hinges, and creative building.

That's probably the biggest change in the last few decades, they went from never doing anything out of the ordinary to SNOT (studs not on top) for "adult model" sets only (first in the trains I believe), to now where advanced techniques are used even it children's toys that aren't models.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#187

Post by maxglute »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #171
maxglute wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also only get so creative with lego. At the end of the day roblox/minecraft and video games trains kids to build more "relevant" things. Apart from tactility, I don't see what technic/mindstorm offers over digital.

You use your imagination. I had a tub of random parts from a bunch of old 80s and 90s sets that were since put into the blender that is a family of small children. I would build space craft. Big freighters with internal bays to hold smaller ships. Huge bases and compounds for my other toys. Various other vehicles and structures. I was basically constantly building for 10 straight years of my life. No sets. No plans.…

My point is lego has ceiling on imagination. Different in analogue world where most of building was physical. I grew up with buckets of mismatched lego and lots of technic sets, it was more interactive relative to other toys at the time, but now snapping bricks vs running server for minecraft city seems like baby mode.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#188

Post by bombcar »

bluescrn wrote: post #132
hypercube33 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Classic Technic was brilliant, but when they switched to 'studless Technic' it became far more difficult to build creatively with it (even if it enabled far more intricate builds with complex mechanisms, like the gearboxes in the supercar sets) - there was no natural 'up' direction any more, and building anything became more of a 3D logic puzzle than just building with bricks. Real shame that they discontinued Mindst…

I recall but can't find that there was a red technic car built with studs before the panels/studless took over - that thing didn't look terribly realistic but it DID look like lego.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#189

Post by roelschroeven »

arkh wrote: post #142
utopiah wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia... Lego was amazing decades ago so we want it to remain so. It's not anymore though. The whole raison d'etre, namely infinitely recomposable bricks to be creative, was lost the moment they realized they were a LOT more money in custom sets. Sets become collectible, perishable, trends can form, secondary markets exists, etc. It's simply about the baseline, not the principle. Sorry.

You can still buy basic brick sets. With lot of nice color nowadays. Like the CLassics or Creator lines: https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/classic And for $100 you get a lot of bricks to play with and let your imagination go wild. Just don't buy sets aimed at adults and IP fansumers.

The point is: when I was a kid, all Lego sets consisted almost completely of general bricks. You could, and would, start building different things from the moment you got your first set, and the possibilities would increase exponentially once you got a few more sets. Any set contributed to your collection of building blocks to create new things.

Re: Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

#190

Post by gmueckl »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #95
brazzy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has almost 4 times the number of pieces, but is only about 50% longer and wider - there's just way more smaller pieces. Price per piece is very misleading when comparing older and newer sets. The newer ones have more details, look slicker, but have a lot less "meat". Which is not that great for creative play.

I bought a set recently which was definitely padding its piece counts. The interior structure of a solid shape was constructed out of dozens of small 1x2s and could easily have been a handful of much larger pieces with no downside. I didn't consider the "more pieces = more perceived value" logic until this comment.

I had a weird build recently with the Luxo Jr model. There are a couple of cavities in the model that are partially filled in with very small parts. These parts don't connect in a way that makes then structural. I'm still puzzled why these parts are there.
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