
What Happened with Lego - sarthakjshetty
http://www.realityprose.com/what-happened-with-lego/
======
bloopernova
I recently got back into Lego via buying _Avengers_ related sets. I'm in my
mid 40s and our kid has moved out.

I didn't set out to do this, but I've found that assembling Lego sets and idly
putting together my own creations has really helped with anxiety. Just being
able to follow the instructions and sort through different bricks is an
exercise in Zen and mindfulness that I hadn't realized would be so effective.

Similar with jigsaw puzzles my wife and I assemble together, Lego takes me
away from work and life stresses for an hour or two. PC games are also a
source of escape, and reading too. All of these seem more effective than
watching TV or reading/commenting on Reddit.

I recently bought a Lego Avengers SHIELD Helicarrier second hand. It was
already assembled but covered in dust. I've disassembled the whole thing and
can't wait to spend a few hours putting together all 3,000 pieces :)
[https://rebrickable.com/sets/76042-1/the-shield-
helicarrier/](https://rebrickable.com/sets/76042-1/the-shield-helicarrier/)

I think my current favourite "set" was a "MOC" (my own creation) designed by
someone else that I bought the pieces for. The pieces were bought from a
Danish and a German seller, and were very easy to get via Brick Link. Behold,
the Lego Rocinante from The Expanse:
[https://imgur.com/gallery/1sCBWNe](https://imgur.com/gallery/1sCBWNe)

If you are looking for a hobby, getting into Lego is something I can recommend
for those of us lucky enough to have disposable income. Once you start
registering on www.rebrickable.com and www.bricklink.com you can catalogue
your sets, see what your pieces can build, buy spare parts and discover
thousands of amazing models designed by people all over the world.

Have fun building!

~~~
tylerjwilk00
If you're looking for another Zen like hobby, try soldering. You can get a
Hakko iron [1] for $100 and fun kits [2] for under $20.

Few activities put me in a state of peaceful tranquility like soldering in
quiet solitude. Summer nights soldering with the window open listening to
crickets in the background. Heaven on Earth.

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANZRT4M/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANZRT4M/)

[2] Elenco FM Radio Kit
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YHZE0G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Fq...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YHZE0G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_FqGuEb1VYKG4F)

~~~
abledon
aren't the fumes bad for your health and can lead to MS and other nerve
related disease?

~~~
folkhack
Yep! As-such a lot of people like myself only solder in well-ventilated areas
and/or use fume extractors, ie: [https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FA400-04-Bench-
ESD-Safe-Absorbe...](https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FA400-04-Bench-ESD-Safe-
Absorber/dp/B00FZPSEY4)

------
burlesona
Really cool article. My kids have just gotten interested in LEGOs, and I have
to admit I thought they must have gotten more expensive, too. I think the
authors point at the end is the best explanation for this perception:

> As I showed before, LEGO has had $100+ sets for a while. However, only
> recently have they produced sets even more pricy than that. When we were
> kids, the $100 set was the pinnacle of LEGO. It was the set we all aspired
> to own. It was the set we all went straight to at the store. Of course we
> rarely ended up with that set, but that was our dream.

> Now, the dream set is closer to the $400 range. It doesn’t mean that LEGO
> doesn’t make sub-$100 sets. They do, and more than ever. It just means that
> in comparison the $25 set looks a lot smaller than it did when the largest
> set was only $100.

At another point in the article the author points out these new mega sets
aren’t really for kids, they’re for the adults, and Legos targeted at adults
didn’t really exist 20 years ago.

~~~
LoSboccacc
> When we were kids, the $100 set was the pinnacle of LEGO.

dunno I remember 90s technic to be quite expensive, I had the 8880 Super Car
and the 8851 excavator set and I think both retailed above that.

yeah I know op talks about basic lego but the new lego set, with their
intricate pieces and purpose built part that only exist for one set, are
closer to the technic boxes than the original bricks sets

~~~
jeroen
I have the same feeling about prices, but I also remember the excavator as a
big set. It’s only about 350 pieces. Even with the pneumatics, I can’t imagine
a price above $100.

What changed since then is that the new Liebherr excavator has more than 4000
pieces.

------
smcameron
When I was a kid, we couldn't really afford legos. But one year my brother got
a big plastic bucket of Brix Blox[1], a lego clone (but not compatible). They
were just as fun as Legos to us. They weren't a kit, just a bucket of bricks
to build what you want. I think it might have come with a little pamphlet of
suggested designs, but we made spaceships and weird little rocket-boat things
and little stormtrooper-ish guys to ride them. It's kind of weird how I can
picture those little guys in my mind so perfectly all these years later.
Pretty sure I could build one right now exactly as we did then, if I had some
brix blox.

Edit: this is the bucket we had:
[https://www.cutetoyus.com/product_detail.php?c=town%20toy%20...](https://www.cutetoyus.com/product_detail.php?c=town%20toy%20brix%20and%20blox&p=17)

[1] [https://www.retrothing.com/2008/07/brix-blox---
leg.html](https://www.retrothing.com/2008/07/brix-blox---leg.html)

~~~
pier25
As a middle class kid in Spain during the early 80s we didn't have Legos
either. Spain was barely starting to enter the international market after the
Franco era.

But we had Tente which was amazing. I spent hours and hours building stuff
(vehicles, space bases, robots, etc) and making up stories about these things.

See some images here:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=tente+toy&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=tente+toy&tbm=isch)

Edit:

The sets were fun for like 1 hour, but in the end all the pieces ended up in a
huge bucket (actually a big wooden drawer hidden under my bed) and the real
fun began.

~~~
selimthegrim
Did you guys have Meccano?

On the other nice things in childhood front, I was always jealous of a country
with Chupa Chups.

~~~
pier25
Yeah we did have Meccano although I never had a set myself or knew anyone who
did.

You didn't have Chupa Chups?

I also remember eating lots of square shaped Sugus although these are not from
Spain.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugus)

~~~
selimthegrim
In USA they were only available starting when I was few years old although
mostly I remember their product placement in Zool

------
jnurmine
This article is like 7 years old.

Also, Lego is great. The reuse value is tremendous. The blocks can be reused
so many times to build something new.

I grew up with Lego. Didn't have a huge amount of them, but what I had, I
passed on. The old blocks still work fine and it was an amazingly nostalgic
feeling to see e.g. my Lego Fireboat (#4025) rebuilt. The first question after
building it was the same as I had: "does this really float in water"...

If you have your old blocks, the instructions are around the net. It's nice to
build something from ones past.

------
hrktb
I have a different perspective: I’d say Lego is having a hard time keeping its
core principle (building stuff) while going along with the times.

In particular Lego has a “Technic” and “Boost” series that in particular
allows remote control, with motors, actuators and these recent years bluetooth
hubs.

The first saliant point: Lego doesn’t sell the “Control +” bluetooth hub
alone, and it’s been a while now that the piece has been in sets.

You’re SOL if you break/lose the one from the set, there is no legit way to
get one if you want to use it on other creations in parallel, even if it’s
arguably the central piece of a lot of constructions. It’s not listed with the
other bricks in the order site, and it’s not handled by sites like bricklink.

Then Bricklink: taken over by Lego, they got rid of most custom parts and
anything that was extending what you could do with lego bricks ahead of what
Lego publishes.

Last, their whole latest Control + app has customizations for their specific
sets. For the Top Gear one for instance there’s specific mini games and efen
the motor control is slightly tweaked to have a “racing” effect. This goes
pretty far astray from having generic playing tools.

In general their efforts in the Power Functions/Boost/Mindstorm/NXT/Control +
area seem overly proprietary, limited and way too expensive for what we get.
So much that at this point third party hubs are better than Lego’s in almost
every respect especially ability to use vanilla Scratch), but get limited by
Lego stalling the whole ecosystem. Why is there even 4 different systems doing
the same thing, it’s insane.

I guess the people staying on more classic sets feel it less heavily, but for
me Lego is really lost in how they want to move forward, now that kids playing
with gears and programmed parts has become realistic and commercially viable.

~~~
lubujackson
I couldn't disagree more as a parent of a 5 and 3 year old.

I remember LEGOs being a big bucket of like 4 colors when I was a kid (80s)
and never got too into them. Now there not just the designed sets but a whole
community around the creative process, like Lego Ideas (fan made designs that
get turned into sets for sale based on fan votes) and "3 in 1" sets where you
can make 3 different things from the same set. My 3 year old loved the Queen
Waterva "Build Whatever" set where there are instructions for about 20
different designs and he builds them with his brother over and over.

There is something to be set for giving kids an entry point for creativity.
First they figure out how blocks go together, then they build things from
instructions, then they play with them and break them and rebuild them and
learn to be more careful. Then they notice how the sets always design walls or
ships or legs and start to modify designs for their own needs.

A gentle introduction is best. If I dump 1000 legos in front of my kid he
won't do anything, but if he has only 20 pieces I am amazed by the things he
comes up with. I know some school actually use legos in the classroom for into
robotics. It seems to me LEGO is doing very well engaging on multiple fronts
and hitting different age ranges.

~~~
hrktb
It’s a valid point.

Every kids are different, we went head first with the big bucket approach with
ours, so any further set we bought were more to have a group of coherent
pieces at a bundle price.

One side effect was that the stickers on the bricks made them weirder to
reuse. Also sets with a lot of specific shape bricks (like slightly curved
long flat and smooth triangular cover pieces for instance) can be reassembled
in one or two configurations, but those weird pieces are also harder to reuse.

We had Star Wars set which were long and pretty boring (following
instructions) to build for our kid, but he loved to try to make his own
spaceships with the monochrome pannels.

I see the value of Lego’s current approach, and am glad it’s working well for
you. I’d be even more happy if they were more commited to both approaches.
Forcing themselves to have any single piece they produce to be available in
their pick-a-brick section would go a long way.

PS: schools using Lego’s robotics introduction often use a 400$ set, released
and never updated since 3 years. The compatible consumer variant is 300$ and
the programming has to be done in the lego app. It is something, and it was
super fun for kids to discover programming, we were interesting in getting it,
but for instance their latest system (Control +) who technically could do the
same things has no interface compatibility with the EV3 ecosystem. Nor does
their “Boost” system for smaller kids, for that matter. At this point it looks
like a dead end.

The best system right now seems to be using their deprecated “Power functions”
motors and elements and plug them to third party central units like SBrick.
It’s a situation that feels really weird to be honest, and I am left wondering
why we ended up here.

~~~
geomark
I took a close look at Lego's robotics offerings. There didn't use to be many
options where I live; Lego was the main one. Had my kid go to a couple of
robotics camps based on Lego. They were good. But Lego price versus features
was unattractive compared to alternatives that have recently become available.
I ended up buying a kit that is similar in concept to Lego NXT and EV3 but
more feature rich with more "real" programming choices and a lot cheaper. I
kind of feel like Lego trades too much on their historical popularity and are
falling behind in the educational robotics space.

------
wagegrowthrow
Fascinating stuff! I think that the author left out one crucial point:
purchasing power. Per Pew Research[0], wages have not kept up with inflation.
EDIT: Until recently! I do wonder if the creation. of a perception of
increased expense has to do with the state of wages before the last decade.

[0] [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-
us...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-
real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/)

~~~
lacker
A bit of a nitpick but I think you are misrepresenting that link, it actually
shows average wages rising a small amount in purchasing power, about 10%, over
the time period analyzed.

~~~
wagegrowthrow
Thank you for the correction! I was bamboozled by the charts :) I do still
wonder if actual purchasing power has really kept up - the article does note
that the increase in benefit costs may eat into wages.

------
smoyer
My uncle bought me a set of limited edition gears for Christmas when I was
seven or eight ... both my uncle and my father are engineers and it was
several days before I got to touch my new toys.

This article debunks the idea that the per-piece price has changed but one of
the things I noticed when my kids were little was that so many of the kits
came with special-purpose parts. I don't remember any kits like that when I
was young - you either got more pieces or less pieces in a kit. Even my gears
were simply "available" to build into whatever my imagination came up with.

~~~
tasogare
> I noticed when my kids were little was that so many of the kits came with
> special-purpose parts

I noticed that and I hate that change. Before a plane set was a plane, made of
a lot of small parts [1]. Now, there is one or two giant hull piece that makes
of the plane, with few traditional parts here and there [2]. This totally
breaks the modularity of a set.

[1] [https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/I/51TtoiWamRL...](https://images-na.ssl-images-
amazon.com/images/I/51TtoiWamRL._AC_SX425_.jpg)

[2] [https://shop.r10s.jp/shop-
angelica/cabinet/imgdir/12/7557.jp...](https://shop.r10s.jp/shop-
angelica/cabinet/imgdir/12/7557.jpg)

~~~
ryanbrunner
There definitely was a period where there were a LOT of custom pieces, but in
more recent sets they seem to be moving away from that. Things are still
significantly more complicated than a set full of 4x2 and 2x2 bricks, but
there's very few pieces besides maybe some minifig accessories that are
genuinely unique to one or even a few sets.

------
css
Is it just me or do all of the set links 404? I guess after 6 years some link
rot is to be expected.

~~~
DanBC
They 404 for me too. I think Bricklink recently got taken over. It's a shame
all the URLs died, because there's a huge amount of work by a dedicated fan
community that's lost now.

~~~
bcraven
Bricklink did get taken over, yes, but these are Brickset links.

------
dowakin
I'd say Lego is the best deal on market for fun/price ratio. Just try go to
any toy-shop and notice how bad everything else is.

Even if you going to buy RC car for kid - better buy Lego, it will be slightly
more expensive but much better in quality.

Like programming - buy Lego Boost. 120$ for programming robot. Seems cheap for
me.

Maybe for girls it's different, but my son do not want any other toys expect
Lego.

~~~
timbit42
I prefer Meccano. I'd rate Lego second.

------
paulgerhardt
[2013]

I was checking out some of the Lego factories in China around this time and
they were definitely making more than the “signature series” (what one thinks
of as variations on the classic 2x8 bricks with no movie tie-ins).

Lego absolutely is world class but they are not “best in the world”. For
plastic things made an Scale one can get better quality with Swatch and more
quantity with McDonalds (the largest toy producer in the world.) At this same
factory I saw a line where they were making kinder egg toys with not one, not
two, but six different overmold shots of different plastic colors. Injection
molding tools typically cost about $5,000 - that one cost about $2,000,000. It
saved Kinder about $5,000,000 in labor that would have gone to paint and
stickers.

What I did like about the Lego line was they were all using Arburg injection
molding machines and DuPont ABS. Most factories won’t pay the premium for
foreign plastics within China.

~~~
em-bee
how did you find those factories?

------
licebmi__at__
So the price has remained constant, even if just reduced a little. That
actually surprises me more than any other change; Hasn't the manufacture
process changed? How the royalties on sets based on 3rd party Intellectual
Property play into the costs? How the logistics costs impact the price? Has
there been any impact on the Chinese knockoffs?

I recently bought some knockoff sets that are no longer made by lego. Not only
they were cheaper than the second hand market which we can agree is crazy, but
also they were cheaper than the retail price when lego sold them. I certainly
don't notice anything wrong with the set quality, so I would expect the
difference in price to be by not paying IP.

~~~
cortesoft
Yeah, I remember reading that Lego goes heavy with the IP licensing because
that is the only thing they can do to differentiate; they can't patent or
copyright the brick design, so knockoffs can copy any plain brick design.

They do a lot of license agreements for IP so they can have unique offerings.
I bet that is a big part of the price.

~~~
yardie
The designs are copyrighted and the manufacturing is a trade secret. This is
the only thing preventing makers like Lepin from selling in the US/EU market.
They’d rather rip off a popular LEGO design rather than invest the time,
money, and marketing to come up with their own.

~~~
geomark
I have a bunch of different knock-off brands and, although the quality is
pretty good, none approach the quality of Legos. You would think that by now
someone would have reverse engineered their manufacturing trade secrets to get
the same quality. Or could it be that to achieve that level of quality the
recurring cost is really much higher?

~~~
yardie
In addition to keeping the ABS chemical composition a trade secret they also
replace their molds frequently. This keeps the tolerances high and the quality
of the bricks consistent. But it’s costly. If you’re a competitor you’d
probably use your molds 2x-3x longer to save money. In the short term you can
pass the savings to consumers as a cheaper alternative. But since QC isn’t
high you get the reputation as not being as good as LEGO.

~~~
geomark
That makes sense that competitors who can only compete on price can't keep up
the quality due to mold wear even if they do know the recipe for the plastic.

------
adamredwoods
Tangent note: I _really_ enjoy the Lego Ideas sets. Love to see innovative
ideas and the sets are great quality.
[https://ideas.lego.com/](https://ideas.lego.com/)

~~~
carapace
Those are so amazing!

------
milesvp
I think this article predates a drop in brick quality which happened in the
last 5 years. I bought a number of small sets a few years ago and every single
one of them had pieces that split up the side after very little use. This may
have been around the time they were trying to use plant based plastics, or
possibly having issues due to new factories, but I now have a perception that
they are not as durable as they used to be 30 years ago.

I’m curious if this is reflected on bricklink prices. You’d probably have to
be clever in how you do the analysis though.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Hmm, we've bought or received quite a few sets over the past five years, and
I've never experienced a single piece to break.

Sounds strange to me, even if the plastic was of poor quality, the sheer
smallness of a LEGO brick means it is mechanically very strong (square-cube-
law).

~~~
milesvp
Yeah, it was all 1x1 and 1x2 that split along the 1x wall. It’s the point with
the most strain. I have older lego that split similarly, but those had at
least ten times the play time, and a much lower percentage. I do hope they’ve
sorted out whatever problem is causing, since I’d like to continue to share
the pastime with my kids.

------
mcphage
It’s definitely one of the odder urban legends of the Hacker News set—that
newer Lego sets are all licensed models that can basically be built only one
way, but it’s good to see an article debunking it.

------
incanus77
When I was a kid in the early 80s, we couldn’t afford all the toys and games
that my brother and I wanted, but there was always room to squeeze in a LEGO
set or two for birthday or Christmas. The rationale was, and I took it to
heart, that I could build any _other_ toy that I might want. And I did. Knight
Rider, GI Joe, M.A.S.K., even Transformers. Later, spy gear, project
enclosures, rubber band guns, prosthetics, whatever.

I still have every LEGO I’ve ever received, going back to 1979 or so. As it
happens, my parents moved across country the summer after my freshman year of
college (which was fairly local to where I grew up) and they offloaded the
trunks and totes to me, originally intending to save them until I was “grown
up”, and I’ve hauled them around since, adding to the collection. Never even
considered selling them off.

I’m not crazy about all the cross-branding these days and still have a soft
spot for a bit of creativity in building real-life parts out of more standard
pieces. Last week I picked up an early 70s set (#730) at a vintage store for
$20. It’s amazing how basic the pieces are.

------
timonoko
"In 1958, the modern brick design was developed". Very strange, because I
definitively had Lego bricks pre 1960 in Finland. I even had some special
bricks with wheels and lamps. I tried to operate the Lego lamp from 220 volt
wall socket, but it destroyed the lamp and burned the wires.

------
martin_a
Needs a 2013 in the headline. Also: All links are dead.

------
TAForObvReasons
> New sets can sell for up to $500 retail

The current ceiling is $800 [https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/millennium-
falcon-75192](https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/millennium-falcon-75192)

------
ChrisCinelli
This is a very well researched article. Personally I liked when there were
less type of parts and you could combine them with your fantasy. These days
there is an overflow of types. Almost multiple special bricks for every set.

------
gattr
Me and my brother also played with Lego since late '80s (and we too didn't
have many sets). Once we moved from "Castle" to the simple "Technic" ones, I
kept dreaming about getting one day the Supercar set or one of the largest
ones with pneumatics... and then in, my later teens, I discovered programming
- which turned out to be the ultimate, highest form of DYI activity.

Nevertheless, it's interesting to watch people who kept working with Lego into
adulthood; e.g., I spent quite a few hours watching Sariel's YT videos.
Friction-operated automatic transmissions and whatnot...

------
AtlasBarfed
The Lego clones are good and cheap. I'd get those for younger kids to get used
to legos, because you won't care if they break or lose pieces if it costs 1/3
of the Legos.

And you can get more sets so the overspecialization of pieces and color suites
isn't as bad. The chinese knockoff of UCS Millenium Falcon is like $250.

That said, LEGO is higher quality and worth it once the kid, or adult kid, is
ready for it. Legos can kind of hold their worth if you keep track of the sets
for completeness, but the lego knockoff is completely worthless on the resale
market, and for good reason.

------
danans
The article mentions that change in perception of costs in childhood vs
adulthood, but there is another possible psychological (or sociological)
factor: desire for increasingly complex (== more blocks) Lego sets among
customers.

This is similar (obv. not identical) to the digital authoring tools available
to everyone today were only available to sophisticated content creators in the
past. Of course the digital tools I have seen a massive deflation in unit
costs.

What would confirm this hypothesis is a graph showing the distribution of sets
sold by # blocks per set, over a long period of time.

------
ChrisArchitect
(2013) old news

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692408](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692408)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9096253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9096253)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5181406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5181406)

------
mdorazio
I’m surprised the article doesn’t actually investigate inflation vs
perception. This is a common effect with pretty much anything that people last
experienced a decade or more prior to looking at prices again. You remember
the dollar amount of the price from a long time ago, then look at the dollar
amount today and think “wow that’s so much more expensive!”. In actuality,
inflation over that period was 20% or more, so of course it _seems_ more
expensive than you remember.

~~~
hajile
A $100 LEGO set in 2000 would cost over $140 today.

The UCS sets are not "play" sets and are definitely aimed at people who want
to build them for display. They also mae up the bulk of sets over $150 which
puts the price for play sets about the same when accounting for inflation.

------
saluki
Our family hobby is lego. We all collect sets and spend time as a family lego
building. I did have some lego sets as a kid. But the sets now are amazing,
and yes pricey, but the quality and enjoyment is worth it. Lots of great MOCs
(My own creations) out there too that you can download the instructions for
and order the parts on bricklink. It's an amazing community of Lego fans,
young and old. We have a great lego city display and are getting in to
lighting up sets.

------
Finnucane
When I was a kid I didn’t know there were sets. I had a big box of LEGO bits,
and I made random things out of them. So I just assumed that’s what was
supposed to happen.

------
kodablah
My simple hypothesis for why Lego feels more expensive now: they are more
expensive relative to other toys which have become cheaper (in every sense of
the word).

------
danans
The OP mentions that change in perception of costs in childhood vs adulthood,
but there is another psychological (or sociological) factor: desire for
increasingly complex (== more blocks) Lego sets among customers.

This is similar (obv. not identical) to the digital authoring tools available
to everyone today were only available to sophisticated content creators in the
past. Of course the digital tools I have seen a massive deflation in costs.

------
thdrdt
I can't remember the exact interview (I think it was a docu about the LEGO
building designed by BIG on Netflix), where Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen told that
the last decade LEGO is having a lot of competition from other toys,
(game)computers and so on.

That's why they were forced to start selling themed series and to explore
other audiences.

Edit: Netflix: LEGO house - home of the brick.

------
thedance
I don’t know where they come from but my nearby used book store sells gallon-
sized ziploc bags filled with random legos. Most of them are old, which is
awesome. You get the old space logo. I buy them on my way home. My kids have
built almost a whole LEGO City out of these. Really wish LEGO brand sets these
days were less thematic.

------
DoubleGlazing
The secondhand market for Lego can be crazy.

A few years back The S*n would occasionally run promotions where they would
give away free mini-figs. There was nothing particularly rare about them, and
the packs were specially branded for the promotion.

A colleague of mine hoarded as many as he could and a year later was selling
them for €10.00 each.

------
Waterluvian
I just got out my 20-30 year old pile of about 100 Lego sets from my brothers
and my childhoods and got my three year old engaged.

I proceeded to have this exact rant at my wife when looking up what today's
equivalent of Ice Planet or Space Police would be. It's all just IP sets with
a ton of custom pieces.

~~~
mikepurvis
FWIW, I think it's actually a bit better now than it was in the 2000s. There
is still _some_ of it going on, but it's not like in the Bionicle decade where
some sets had you practically just snapping the arms on an action figure.

For example, my kid got #76113 (Spiderman Bike Rescue) for a birthday present
recently, and although there are little plastic webbing pieces there are
obviously specific to Spidey, on the whole, the bike is built honestly; it
uses standard pieces in clever ways to create the unexpected shapes and angles
that make it look good.

And it's not like they didn't used to do this at least a little bit even in
the good old days. Remember the LEGO castles with pre-fab wall and rock
formation pieces, like #6090 released in 1995? Or the numerous pirate ship
sets with big special hull and mast pieces, like #6268 and #6289, both also
released in the mid-nineties?

~~~
Waterluvian
At risk of being entirely biased by nostalgia, my sense is that the rarity of
unique pieces is what made them so novel to me as a child. When many pieces
are unique, they lose their lustre.

When I bought a set some years ago it felt like they just made as many unique
pieces as they needed to get the look and feel of the design. I wonder if
that's because with original IPs you can modify the design a little to fit the
limitations of Lego.

I'm glad to hear it's improving.

------
m463
I saw a lego set at costco the other day.

It came in a rather large box and seemed to be large almost bulk quantities of
generic pieces.

I actually smiled since the assembly plans come from the kids' heads, not the
comic franchise or space franchise.

------
altitudinous
A super long article to identify the really obvious?

\- People who grew up with Lego over time are now adults and still a market.

\- Lego can serve this new market as well as the original market which still
exists.

------
stefanix
I was about to answer with right I know, how comes my kids have almost zero
interest in it. I used to play entire afternoons with it, especially the
Technic kind.

~~~
mml
neither of my kids have any interest in lego. not for lack of trying, they
have several 10's of thousands of bricks, and enjoy the movies. I think it
might be because they have zero interest in the licensed properties they
promote.

I started lego in the mid 70s with my brother's Apollo lunar lander kits (pre-
minifig), and enjoyed the heyday of the early 80's space ship kits.

the lego city line is very enjoyable to me as an adult, and has very few
"special" parts.

------
hrdwdmrbl
I'm still sad that they haven't released a generic space set in almost 2
decades. Only branded stuff like Avengers. I'm sad about that.

~~~
morelisp
Huh? Mars Mission, Power Miners, Alien Conquest, and Galaxy Squad were all
6-12 years ago; Atlantis is also nearly a "space set" in most of its design
elements.

One of the Master Builder lines was space themed. The Lego Movie lines are
admittedly halfway "branded", but also have a lot of space designs.

------
algo_trader
How much would it cost to 3d print a 100-piece lego-like set?

Everyone who i know with a 3d printer pretty much doesnt use it. It hasnt
caught on at all.

~~~
hrktb
There are a decent number of Lego alternatives, with perfect brick
compatibility for way cheaper prices.

I bought one of the Xiaomi sets when it was discounted, almost just to get
spare pieces.

~~~
gowld
The quality (tolerance / fit) decreases very quickly with price.

------
mortenjorck
(2013)

It’s a fascinating analysis all the same, and it would be just as interesting
to see if the patterns have held in the years since.

------
russellbeattie
If someone creates a Lego sorting machine similar to the coin redemption
machines at your local supermarket, they'd make a bazillion dollars.

I can see parents like myself lining up with buckets of Legos, walking out
with baggies of perfectly sorted Legos.

Better yet, dump in all your Legos, and choose the sets that they came from,
and have the machine resort them into their original numbered baggies.

This would legit kill the company, I hope it never happens.

~~~
schoen
Jacques Mattheij (who often comments on HN) succeeded in doing this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14226889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14226889)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14280569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14280569)

------
wging
previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692408](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9692408)

------
rolph
my lego...it was parked in the attic along with about a cubic yard of comics i
disenterred the lego when i discovered D&D the hindsight is killer if i took
the comics as well [small fortune]

but i didnt i took the lego and spraypainted it to look like stone

~~~
liveoneggs
for your D&D games? sounds cool to me

------
golemiprague
I was never a big lego user but as a child getting a new set of Lego was a
celebration and not something that happened casually. For my kids it is just
another toy they get here and there, sometimes on a whim while browsing for
other things in the local Target shop or whatever. So I guess relatively it
became cheap like all other commodities which are not a house. They usually
just follow instructions and build it once and then abandon it, minecraft and
sims replaced lego for doing more freestyle creative creations since it is
faster and unlimited.

------
wolco
I never understood why one huge set couldn't build anything. These specialist
sets that do one thing goes against what I want out of a set which is true
utility and flexibility.

~~~
mcphage
> why one huge set couldn't build anything. These specialist sets that do one
> thing

Do you understand how Lego works?

Or, to put it another way: I’ve got some great news for you: what you’re
asking for exists _and_ it’s even the largest toy manufacturer in the world!

------
chiefalchemist
Lego is simply a reflection of culture(s) at large. Years ago (read: when I
was a kid), you played with Lego to take a pile of nothing and use your
imagination to make something. There were no wrong answers.

Today, Lego is high-priced branded 3D puzzles. Here are the pieces. They go
together in a certain way. There's only one right answer. Thank you for
overpaying.

Sure the shareholder are happy. But as a barometer of broader trends is a
sonewhat freightening trend.

~~~
mcphage
> Today, Lego is high-priced branded 3D puzzles. Here are the pieces. They go
> together in a certain way. There's only one right answer.

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

~~~
chiefalchemist
It's all kits. Build the death star. Or whatever. Etc.

That's not creativity. That's a puzzle.

~~~
detaro
The majority of kits pretty much always (certainly from since I'm old enough
to remember Lego catalogs) had "a model" to build, the "bucket of pieces"
packs always were just a small part of it, and you always could use the pieces
of the former to build anything (with some themes obviously having some less
universally useful pieces)

~~~
chiefalchemist
Not when I was a kid. The co-branding kits came later. And have changed the
nature of the product, as well as the minds of those who use it.

------
platz
So as long as you're dividing by the number of pieces, then that means the
sets cost less?

But actually the sets cost more, not less.

The article also seems to assume that the price increase is due to intrinsic
manufacturing costs of adding more pieces, and is not simply a marginal
increase in the wholesale price. In other words, there is no reason to assume
the piece count is causal in the price from a materials perspective. There
could just as well be a correlation that they know they can charge more when
the piece count is higher.

~~~
gameswithgo
I feel like you did not read the article. Price per set has not increased, per
the article see: [http://www.realityprose.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/reala...](http://www.realityprose.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/realaverageprice.gif)

------
andrepd
What happened is they realised that franchise licenses are _much_ more
profitable that LEGO Creator or LEGO City sets. Marketing and selling sets
based on media franchises turns out to be a goldmine, and more creative and
imaginative toys less so. That's why every blasted new set coming out seems
like it's Star Wars branded, or Harry Potter, or facking Avengers... Likewise,
it has shifted from an open-ended activity and mode of creative expression
(see older adverts for Lego: [https://s14-eu5.startpage.com/cgi-
bin/serveimage?url=https%3...](https://s14-eu5.startpage.com/cgi-
bin/serveimage?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-
preview.redd.it%2FeUA2PNEzGxrsmggl1ZKW3hMa79ppfSVaEzOgOwIFHIA.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D68d48b9b45f967647a86630010113a46490cbbab&sp=7a93717c25cfeba69f334dedbc77a74c&anticache=959446)
or [https://s14-eu5.startpage.com/cgi-
bin/serveimage?url=https%3...](https://s14-eu5.startpage.com/cgi-
bin/serveimage?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FEMaqUcPXsAYdxJJ.jpg&sp=e0575c4359b6da3b15367c9d940c882a&anticache=462179))
towards more of a "build once according to strict instructions then set
aside".

It's all quite sad. But then again, at the same time, the company was in dire
financial situation under the previous management. There is some chance that
without this pivot towards franchises LEGO would not even exist anymore
(though I doubt it honestly).

~~~
rrix2
They still make a large assortment of non-franchised kits. It's not like
they're only selling Marvel and Harry Potter kits, even in the big box stores.
I was suspect when I noticed this trend in 2007-10, but as I've grown up, the
bricks stayed mature. Heck, they still make the 800 piece motorised technic
dirt movers that I lusted over in LEGO magazine as a child.

