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Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

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Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#71

Post by mcv »

jacquesm wrote: post #29
mcv wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother and I got the first two grey castles in the 1980s (the first castle yellow; grey was a fairly new colour back then). Those castles mainly relied on fairly large castle wall pieces. At first, even as a kid, I felt that was cheating; we should have gotten bricks to assemble all those walls. Later I discovered what a boon they were, because they allowed me to rapidly design new and different castles. Sure, I…

If you still have the flag for that yellow castle hang on to it, that's a collectors item.

I don't think we ever had the yellow castle, although I do remember that flag. And we definitely had a set with a horse in the style of the yellow castle. So either we did have the yellow castle but lost the instructions, or I knew someone who had it, or that flag also appears in another set.

But I really have no idea. It was a long time ago.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#72

Post by mejutoco »

samwillis wrote: post #6

I would love to know what percentage of Legos revenue is now from adults buying the incredible large, complex and expensive sets to build themselves. Lego is so associated as a toy for children just as computer games are, but gaming is a larger industry for adults than children. My wife and I now regularly buy these large lego sets for each other (birthdays, Christmas and anniversaries) and do them together in the ev…

Lego is working hard to make it an adult thing too. See the many Lego Masters tv programs in many countries, were it is mostly adults competing. I would say the have unlocked the adult market, and this is why the had such good results lately.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#73

Post by cosmodisk »

When my daughter was about 3 years old,I went on Ebay and bought a huge bag of used Lego. I think it was 10KG or so. My wife nearly got a heart attack, especially when I poured all those little pieces into the bath and filled it up with water,so I could wash them a bit. Then ended up catching the smallest pieces when I pulled the plug. We poured all those pieces in the living room. Took like 3 days to dry out. We built so many things since then. There are lots of sets mixed together,I don't care nor does my daughter. It's still nice to build something, especially when all you do at work is sending emails and writing some code here and there.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#74

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

I started reading disagreeing with many points of the article, I did realize that she is from a different generation then me, so her "then vs now" is very different from my "than vs now". But still, when I look at what sets were available when she was a child I would say that her points "1. The instructions", "2. The sets", and "The building method"; were based mostly on what specific sets she happened to have, and no on what sets were available at the time.

Yes, up until the 60s (before even that author's time), Lego sets were mostly generic bricks with just a small set of specialized pieces (just some wheels, doors and windows), for example sets of the "Universal Building Set" family [0] like the one pictured early in the article. But by the time of most of our childhoods (the 70s or even 80s), Lego had already introduced sets with plenty of specialized pieces. Also at that time they already introduced some more complex sets tailored for a specific build, some of them, the kind of set some people may chose to build only once (as if it was a glue-on plastic model kit).

The thing is, most rants about old Lego being better more generic, are just misguided rose-tinted nostalgia talking. Lego still sells awesome generic sets, even better than the ones we used to have when we were kids. They just happen to also sell some hobbyist sets. For example, my son's big box consists of a mix of my old 80s era (e.g. [1]) plus my niece's 00s era (e.g.[2]) Legos, and I have to say that the 00s era is much more generic and full of bricks, allowing for much more varied imaginative play, than my old 80s spaceship sets full of large single-use pieces.

[0] https://brickset.com/sets/theme-Universal-Building-Set

[1] https://rebrickable.com/sets/6971-1/inter-galactic-command-b...

[2] https://rebrickable.com/sets/31025-1/mountain-hut/

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#75

Post by lnsru »

Xylakant wrote: post #54
lnsru wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no problem buying the parts separately needed to build such model. Of course, some exotic parts were discontinued. Lego provides instruction as pdf on their website. Edit: the other brick manufacturers have problems replicating brick quality with injection molding machines. I assembled thousands Lego parts with my son and their fit was exactly the same - perfect. The Chinese kits have one in hundred parts th…

Competitor brick quality is on par or better than Lego at least for some. You need to do a little research on which competitors use which brick producer, but for example the bricks I’ve had in the Mould King sets were absolutely indistinguishable from Lego bricks in quality.

Building Mould King right now. The difference is almost gone. Cada is worse than Mould King. Anyway with 5x price difference I can live with a bit lower quality. Lego pricing is just sick. Even used sets from not that distant past.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#76

Post by Freak_NL »

dotancohen wrote: post #57
kwhitefoot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are your surfing without protection? Scrolling to the bottom for me works perfectly. I tried disabling uBlock, then I got the behaviour you mentioned. I always have uBlock on to disable scripts and fonts. Quite a lot of sites work perfectly well that way and I enable the minimum scripts and fonts for those that don't.

I'm using uBlock Origin in Firefox, and I also got the infinite scroll on Math Homework article loop.

Yeah, I got what I posted above with uBlock Origin on, in Firefox.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#77

Post by tweetle_beetle »

I find the act of building a set and putting it on a shelf to gather dust a bit sad, but big piles of similar shaped blocks are also a bit uninspiring.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find the BricQ Motion sets aimed at classroom use. They come with lessons plans and videos to give some direction, but even without them it's a great self-contained box with very carefully selected pieces to encourage learning about physics and a pile of more "silly" pieces to add character. There's a good selection of wheels, springs, weighted blocks, "ropes" and Technics style pieces. They come in a segmented tray and are colour coded to make finding particular blocks and experiment with related blocks easier.

I think they're the best of both - experiment, solve a challenge, learn something, build nonsense and then break it all up and put it away neatly ready to do it again. Big hit compared to sets.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#78

Post by huhtenberg »

The main difference is that the sets and instructions got way more complicated and elaborate. So much so that they stifle and discourage the creativity instead of feeding it.

The first set I had was a minuscule "mineral detector" from the space set - https://media.brickinstructions.com/06000/6841/001.jpg

There were 6-step instructions [2,3] AND there was a separate page with what else was buildable from the set [4]. That was the Lego magic ingredient, the most crucial part. It forced one to look and think and imagine how those extra models were put together. That, in turn, kick-started the process of trying other things. Above all, all of it was simple. So when you got more sets you'd look at the instructions as a starting point only and then dive right into building the alternatives.

Modern sets have none of that. If anything, they basically demonstrate that you can't possibly come up with the thing you are building on your own. No way. And whatever you can put together will be so inferior in comparison that it's not even worth trying. It's really sad what Lego did to itself, because it was something magical :-/

[2] https://media.brickinstructions.com/06000/6841/002.jpg

[3] https://media.brickinstructions.com/06000/6841/003.jpg

[4] https://media.brickinstructions.com/06000/6841/004.jpg

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#79

Post by samwillis »

mcphage wrote: post #68
samwillis wrote: post #6

I would love to know what percentage of Legos revenue is now from adults buying the incredible large, complex and expensive sets to build themselves. Lego is so associated as a toy for children just as computer games are, but gaming is a larger industry for adults than children. My wife and I now regularly buy these large lego sets for each other (birthdays, Christmas and anniversaries) and do them together in the ev…

> I would love to know what percentage of Legos revenue is now from adults buying the incredible large, complex and expensive sets to build themselves. If you have a Lego store nearby, stop in, and it's mindboggling how many $100+ sets they carry. Not great for shopping for a Lego Friends set for my daughter, but if I wanted to drop $300 on a Ninjago set they'd be able to help.

Exactly, thinking though what lego we have brought each other and the kids (3 and 7) in the last year we could easily be spending twice as much on "adult" lego than on the kids, and we get it for them even more regularly.

Re: Lego has changed since we were kids (2014)

#80

Post by robertlagrant »

> It would appear that, in the 1970s, equality of the sexes and creativity was the end goal for Lego

No. Saying you can buy your daughter a spaceship and your son a doll house doesn't mean that was your end goal. More likely, having to come up with fewer differentiated toys to sell, i.e. broadening the market, was.

I'm not saying that equality (although playing with nontraditional toys isn't synonymous with that) be an aim, but it's not the most obvious "end goal" explanation.

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