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 sets feel like display models than something you can play with. The Mindstorms/NXT line had huge potential but then just sort of fizzled out. And the push towards smartphone-dependent toys feels weird. Who actually wants their kids staring at a phone to play Lego?
It's so sad, because the core product is basically perfect.
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.
Lego is branding, curation and quality bar, though. They're the Apple of bricks (weird sentence).
There's tons of lego-knockoffs and of not even such lesser quality that the difference can be perceived by casual inspection. The set-to-set quality bar is really where it is, especially among their set lines not targeted at children or low-end of market.
But none of those sets have any kind of staying power. There's Expert/Creator/Modular sets from 20 years ago that sell for $500-1000 _opened and pre-built/re-disassembled_. That's all brand power.
So they're less about $/brick (though i know people scrutinize it) and more about price point and brand. Phrased differently, having your brick company race to the bottom sounds like a losing strategy.
Yeah I don't know what this person is on about. Lego is obviously premium and ... charges premium prices because ... they're a business. People (consumers) who want premium products ... pay the premium.
I would be much more frustrated if they became cheaper and reduced the quality of the product.
There is a prevalent view of economy that insists businesses sell their products at the minimum price they can still make a profit at (but not lower or you are dumping.) A Marxist view of economy, if I must.
Whenever I meet one of these people, I ask if they are willing to negotiate a wage reduction with his HR. My logic is simple. If you think it is wrong for a business to sell a product at the maximum price they can demonstrably get away with like Lego does, then why is it right for you, a professional worker selling your labor, to sell your labor at a price higher than what is necessary for subsistence?
> There is a prevalent view of economy that insists businesses sell their products at the minimum price they can still make a profit at [...] A Marxist view of economy, if I must.
That's actually how competition is supposed to work in capitalism. If you sell your products at much higher than the minimum price, someone else can make a profit by selling slightly cheaper and taking over your market share.
That's contingent on the competition offering a similar experience and quality, at a smaller price point. As a parent comment pointed out, no LEGO knockoff has been able to provide the same experience as LEGO.
I think what the commenter is getting at is that it's not even about competition. People get mad when companies charge more than is necessary to make what they deem a reasonable profit.
Of course, as you mention, in capitalism, a competitor is free to go in and undercut the leading brand, but they have to be able to sell why they're better AND cheaper.
Interestingly that's one of the Marxist critiques. The market simply is not efficient enough to work fully. The effort to get Lego2 off the ground is simply too high and Lego gets an effective monopoly in their market segment (premium blocks).
If Lego was nationalized then the excess earnings that go into the owners' pockets as dividends or asset value would be realized by the people. But that of course leads to different inefficiencies (investors don't invest, etc...).
imo it's not just that other brands are of similar quality but often of way higher quality than lego. you get so much more for less money from other brands, while lego sets are becoming kind of a joke. using stickers everywhere and randomly colored bricks on the internal sides of the set
Prices are constrained by demand moreso than by cost of production. Lego pieces are expensive because they can be, they still sell, and this is largely due to the quality. As long as the quality moat persists, they can charge as much as people will pay, and--good for them!
That you personally would prefer lower prices does not mean they "should" be lower. Those lower costs of production, to Lego company, "should" mean higher profits, not lower prices, and again--good for them!
The risk Lego faces is that they don't actually have a quality moat any longer. You can get non-lego sets with no stickers, plenty of prints, LED lighting, at a cheaper price, and with the exact same piece quality. I purchased this set: https://www.lumibricks.com/collections/steampunk-world/produ... over Christmas, and I paid $105 because it was on sale. The pieces were indistinguishable from Lego in quality, and the lights and lack of stickers was a quality increase from what Lego offers.
What moat Lego has is: brand recognition and licenses. Which aren't nothing, but don't offer much protection.
Not disagreeing with you, but at least when I hear "lego knockoff" I think of the shitty ones, because I've never seen a Lego knockoff that wasn't shitty.
Lumibricks seems like a promising brand, but I've never heard of them, possibly because they don't spend as much on marketing as lego. And if they did spend more in order to compete with Lego, they might need to increase price!
> but I've never heard of them, possibly because they don't spend as much on marketing as lego
It’s a newer brand—they changed their name to it some time last year. But they seemed to spend a lot on advertising last Christmas—at least on YouTube, it seemed like tons of reviewers were talking about their sets. That’s how I found out about them, at any rate. And I’ll say—the one I got came together nicely, and looks great. The tons of lights are just, really neat.
> when I hear "lego knockoff" I think of the shitty ones, because I've never seen a Lego knockoff that wasn't shitty.
The cheap-o ones you get like at the dollar store, absolutely. But Chinese manufacturers have been making good quality knockoffs for a while. A decade at least? I bought my first knock-off technic set around 10 years ago, and it was 90% the quality of Lego at 25% the price. But the quality has only gotten better since, and is now totally on par with Lego. Admittedly, the price has gone up, too.
Interesting. Gotta check those out! Not that my family needs more LEGO... The remains of our Millennium Falcon after my nieces came over glare at me everytime I look at a new LEGO set.
I don't want to sound like a shill, because I don't know them at all, and I still spend enough money on actual Lego. But I am really happy with it. Pieces were great, quality was great, I love the lights, I hate Lego's stickers. And the piece count was 2x or 2.5x what I'd get from Lego at the same price. And I love steampunk, and Lego doesn't have a steampunk line. I'll absolutely buy more from them, so (for me at least) their big Youtuber push last year worked.
No but I appreciate your recommendation. I find that product recommendation on HN tend to be higher quality and/or more relevant to me than generic lists (I added so many books and games to my backlog from HN comments because many HNers have really good taste).
Maybe I'm saying the quiet part out loud. I hope no one tries to advertise on HN after this.
A reputation moat is still a moat. It seems to me that Lego prices will drop as soon as they are forced to by competition, and not before, and this is fine.
It is, absolutely, but it’s a lot more shallow a moat than having a product quality moat.
> Lego prices will drop as soon as they are forced to by competition, and not before, and this is fine.
I agree, they’ll survive quite well. But the large profit margin they’ve grown accustomed to might disappear, and that probably doesn’t bode well for their management.
And heck, maybe they’ll stop shipping stickers on expensive sets, too. That would be nice.
I've seen enough reviews of recent Lego sets to doubt this. Sets with a brick or two where the color is off, sets where the final model falls apart if you look at it wrong, and when there's fan designed alternatives which are more solid and better looking it's clear it wasn't a physical limitation.
Not to mention sets that indeed just feel like a ripoff, like the pyramid of giza which costs $130 and is actually just half of a pyramid, but the backside of the model has slots that let you connect it with another half if you buy two of them. And they even admit in the marketing it's an incomplete product with "Complete the pyramid - This model comes with clear instructions and can be connected to a second model (sold separately) to create a full pyramid", of course only visible after scrolling or looking at more product pictures.
They are. I should have added that Lego’s designers are a bit better still. You can get botanical sets from a lot of manufacturers, but the Lego ones are just nicer.
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.
For most people anything that has only kept up with inflation over the last 50 years is more expense today than it was 50 years ago because wages have stagnated while prices have soared.
For instance, the median household income in the United States in 1976 was $12,686. That's $72,857.55 today based on inflation (Google/Census Bureau Data + online inflation calculator).
However, Google's AI overview says "As of early 2026, the median household income in the United States is estimated to be approximately $84,000."
So the the median household income in the US today is about $11,000 ahead of inflation since 1976. People in the US are richer now that they were then.
I remember reading in a personal finance book, it's not about what you earn, it's about what you keep. I think the concept applies here too, even if the context is slightly different.
Ok, but, what about median household size? Shouldn't we calculate the "richness" based not on how much each household makes but how much each member of a household gets from it? My guess is that households are smaller these days, but don't know.
I'd be curious to know if in '76, most households were dual income or single. My intuition is that many families could afford to have a parent stay at home with the kids back then.
Additionally, let's not ignore the fact that housing appears to have gotten more expensive disproportionately to income rising. And if two parents are working they often have to pay $1000+ for daycare
Most replies don't like my comment because it hurts the narrative that people want to believe even after I quoted hard data. Especially since the 70s in the US were rife with economic and social issues. Very interesting how the mind works.
I wouldn't say people didn't like your comment. You don't seem to have been downvoted as far as I can tell. You did cite hard data but multiple other commenters explained why the data you provided doesn't tell the whole story. Just because people disagree with you doesn't mean they don't like your comment. They're just trying to understand more.
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.
For a while the complaint was that Lego was making too many big, specialized pieces, so I'm amused that the current complaint seems to be that they're using too many small generic ones.
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.
I always charitably assumed that they designed models to utilize surplus pieces for the internal structures, pieces that might be hard to use elsewhere.
They may do that (designers have a "part budget" they can spend in various ways) but the real reason for weird colors inside models is to make it easier to build; especially since many of the models consist entirely of various shades of grey and black.
Various piece size also makes it easier to see if you got the wrong piece.
Definitely agree on the reduced usefulness for creative play. My kids got a lot of Lego sets as gifts when they were younger. Which is great, I love them playing with Legos. But once they're done with the instructions that's just kinda it. A Star Wars or Frozen or Minecraft themed kit ends up being all weird one-off specialty pieces. They are necessary to make an extremely detailed replica of the Millenium Falcon. But they have no place if you just want to grab a handful of bricks and start building whatever your imagination comes up with. We have a tub full of thousands of pieces and it never gets used. I think it's a bummer that they've pivoted to pushing these intricate $120 kits to adults rather than designs featuring more reusable components. You need to go out of your way to buy tranches of generic bricks if you want to have free play.
The Creator 3-in-1 sets are basically what you're looking for, they just don't get advertised much. A lot of them are more generified and rebuildable, sometimes even more refined versions of more expensive sets or parts of more expensive sets. Maybe the most obvious are the 3-in-1 dragon and dinosaur sets, which to me feel obviously like more generic reworks of D&D and Jurassic Park builds respectively, and have a lot more in the way of generic tiles and bricks than the licensed sets they're derived from.
A 50% increase in dimensions doesn't directly transform in a 50% increase in volume.
>The newer ones have more details, look slicker, but have a lot less "meat"
I presume that the 2022 model has as target audience nostalgic adults, but otherwise I agree, the new sets seem far more fragile then the ones released a decade ago. I think this is due to a recent focus towards adults from LEGO.
It's the other way around - because pieces cost roughly based on their size (amount of material) modern Lego sets are "denser" and heavier on average than similar sized sets of the past, because as piece count (and detail) goes up, piece size has been going down.
The discussion is about price, not cost. Lego is keeping the price per piece somewhat stable because they know people look at that, but as pieces get smaller (and thus cost less to make), their margins go up, and sets get smaller for the same price.
I have the re-release secondhand unopened and I think I paid about that much, so even in a collector's market, not terrible at all. An expensive toy to be sure but a deeply satisfying experience if you like that kind of thing.
Buying buckets of used bricks is pretty cheap, too. I bought an adult's old lifetime collection for $30 CAD. My 2 year old son and I are still sorting them.
Sorting Lego is such a pain in the ass. I have like a huge stash from when I was a kid. Back then we just had it all in a few tubs and dug to find a part. But somehow now I feel I must sort them… but the “right way” is ill defined and kind of sucks the joy out of playing (especially disassembling)
And there is no “right way” that I’ve even found. Sort by color and now the little pieces fall to the bottom and are hard to dig for. The best I can see is part type and size… maybe… even then it sucks out the fun. I want to build cool shit with my daughter not spend every moment of Lego time sorting. There is no joy in sorting…
Maybe I just revert back to the “big tub” approach.
I dunno. Thanks for listening to my TED talk I guess.
Yeah go for it! I'll add a comment though, now we are working on automated shifting bins with stacks of different size grids to filter the littles to the bottom and still easily pick up the top bigs to see them. There was been a discussion (by my children) about something involving a Lego vacuum they saw online.
Why sort by color if human eyes (unless colorblind) are great at recognizing different colors? Back when I was a kid, I used the big tub approach (with the Spyrius base octant as my shovel).
Build with what pieces you can find, rather than plan the perfect structure ahead. Improvising keeps the creativity going! Wheres fun if sorting legos sucks all the Joy from it
> Build with what pieces you can find, rather than plan the perfect structure ahead. Improvising keeps the creativity going!
That's a valid perspective. It can be a lot of fun to dig through the bricks and build freely, letting things take shape.
But it's also valid to have a design phase, where designs are crafted (perhaps even very precisely) and to enjoy that part -- perhaps even using some manner of LEGO-oriented CAD. (Or SolidWorks; I won't judge.)
And then: It's OK to find pleasure in following a plan to build a tangible thing in reality. This concept is strongly reinforced by the fact that LEGO sets come with instructions that are organized into simple steps.
One of the joys of LEGO is that it's very inclusively all fine.
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 do consistently deliver a Lego-quality experience without the Lego price?
I guess it depends on what a "Lego-quality experience" means to you.
I grew up with the mid 80s to mid 90s kits, mostly castles and pirate ships, a few space sets. I think it's a very different experience compared to the nightmares I read about building the Mould King Eclipse-class Star Destroyer ( https://www.reddit.com/r/lepin/comments/1pdfx5y/mould_king_e... ). The concept of "bad luck with construction" is foreign to me, because most of the kits I remember building as a child were comparatively simple.
I'm working on this house with my 5yo daughter now: ( https://ja.aliexpress.com/item/1005006068361257.html ). Costs ~$20, we work on it about 30-45 minutes several times a week, so it takes months to finish. If she tears it apart 6 months from now to build something from her imagination, mission accomplished.
I hear people rave about this Cyberpunk-style kit, maybe this is closer to what you expect? https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_a_a4b2bvISsP6pyjkSxLw (Chinese language review) I plan to buy it at some point....for myself, not for my kids!
If you want to spend some time looking at critiques from someone with experience, I find JANG's Youtube reviews of both LEGO and non-LEGO brick toys to be well-balanced. We have differing opinions, but he has decent rationales for most of his opinions.
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!
Lego is some kind of cultural icon now, and many people want to participate. That's why they have tons of sets aimed at adults over many themes, like plastic flowers, formula 1 helmets, old video game consoles.
Many of them are a really bad and expensive purchase if you only care about the theme itself, like the latest Death Star (or almost any Lego Star Wars set). You can usually buy a similar and cheaper non-lego model. Or the Titanic set too.
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.
I don’t know enough about plastics, and if it’s ABS it’s ABS, but how is it dyed? Point is I don’t know, so I buy from a company that has a reputation and would be held accountable, and would never buy kids toys from a fly by night business with no reason to care how carcinogenic their product ends up being
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.
The existence of specialty sets doesn’t subtract from creating building.
My kids get some of the specialty sets, build them, then hours later they’re either taken apart or heavily modified.
The specialty sets can provide some interesting unique pieces too. My kids have a photographic memory of each of those special pieces and which set they came from. They’ll remember them and search until they find that exact piece.
> Sets become collectible, perishable, trends can form, secondary markets exists, etc. It's simply about the baseline, not the principle. Sorry.
I don’t know what this is supposed to mean, but you can completely ignore secondary markets and collector sets if you want.
There are more sets and pieces than ever. You don’t have to collect anything.
> My kids have a photographic memory of each of those special pieces and which set they came from. They’ll remember them and search until they find that exact piece
I had the same skill (still do). Imagine following the instructions the first time. A part you're encountering for the first time stimulates the memory. I knew my collection like a dragon's hoard. For instance, I owned twelve white 1x2 tiles, all from Coast Guard Station, so that was the limiting piece when building tiny space-fighters...
> My kids have a photographic memory of each of those special pieces and which set they came from.
Read the whole sentence- this is clearly an informal use of 'photographic memory' to indicate that his kids are really into Lego and keep track of details in the way only kids can.
I didn't see him making any generalized claim. I recall the things I'm really into better than I do things I'm not, which is all I think he was saying about his kids. (My four year old remembers facts about volcanos - including the name of the scientist who made the claim - waaay better than he does where he left his shoes, so it tracks for me!)
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.
I really don't get this sentiment. The only sets that I think didn't contribute like this were the bionicle stuff. Getting a few more unique parts with a set gives you more options, not less.
I think you have the same feeling I have with most modern sets (and especially technic ones): not blocky enough and too much smooth curved surfaces. But you can still make blocky stuffs if you want to, while being able to learn modern lego building methods and integrate those curved designs in your builds.
I don’t think this is true at all. What do you mean by “general bricks”? If anything there is more brick-built stuff nowadays.
For example the Creator 3-in-1 Castle (which I got for my son for Christmas) is pretty similar to castle sets I had as a child but basically way better and with brick built horses rather than large mould ones
The 3-in-1 sets (where the set numbers actually begin with 31) should really be the first thing you look at when choosing a set for a child, and they deserve more praise. There are a lot of cool 3-in-1 sets out there. That castle (31168) is really good (and those horses are too!), and the haunted mansion (31167) is just cool with minifigs which are a hit with any kid.
For a small and cheap present that hamster (31376) is just too cute to pass up too.
It feels like those sets are where the Lego designers get to do their thing and do it right, without the weight of licenced IP (of which there is so much) and the trite offerings of the City range.
Other ones that to me felt like completely fair value and better than anything I had as a child were the Creator Bunny, Space Telescope, and Space Robot. Something like £18/£25/£25 the second two having light bricks included.
JK Brickworks has an alt build for the bunny that doesn’t require a massive amount of different pieces and makes it lay mini eggs.
Lego sets aimed at children are still good! They work as standalone toys, and can also be reassembled, modified and combined. Very few toys are like this.
Adults collect them, true, but there are whole lines dedicated to them.
The "Creator" sets in particular I feel harken the most to the company's roots. They usually have a few different builds per set and include all sorts of unique pieces for making your own creations. They also usually have very fun designs.
I recently built the NES and Game Boy sets and thought both of those were really great. The NES is probably not priced for most people (we try to stay under 10¢ a brick), but the level of detail, whimsy, and mechanics are all really well done. There are hidden scenes and Easter eggs built into the system that are revealed as you build rather than highlighted as features on the box. I was genuinely surprised and had a lot of fun sharing that with my family as we realized what was coming together.
The Game Boy was much more affordable. Less whimsical, but brought back memories of taking apart electronics and marveling at what these circuit boards and components could possibly be doing.
The Game Boy is apparently one of the best sets of 2025, cleverly built and a nice display item. Still, it is for adults, kids have tons of other sets to choose from.
I often look at these and think they’d be fun for me to display, then think I’d prefer an actual Game Boy disassembled as a piece of wall art [0]. This sort of stuff is just so cool in my opinion.
Edit: now that I look on EBay building my own display like that would probably cost maybe $60 vs $189? Broken Game Boys are $40 on eBay, so maybe a project I could do for fun!
My kids got a Minecraft set and just use the Warden as a toy and build with all the other bricks and a mat to put the poor lego characters in bad situations where they’ve woken the Warden up (he’s a strong enemy in Minecraft)
It was kinda funny to see the Lego Movie, which puts a bunch of emphasis on breaking the rules and mixing and matching everything, and then seeing them release the sets for the movie. I mean, it makes perfect sense. But it was still kinda lowkey humorous. But imo they're still a great toy; very fun to go to conventions and the like, where people just have giant piles of loose pieces you can buy by weight.
Lego is still amazing and you don't have to buy expensive sets for your kids to enjoy them. My son loves Legos and if he gets a set for his birthday it doesn't last long before he takes it apart and starts building other stuff with it.
This is one of those instances where it feels like people are terminally online. Or like the meme of the guy standing in the corner while everyone else is having fun at the party. You can find Legos being given away in a local buy-nothing group. It's still just as magical for kids as it ever was. These complaints are only from an adult who doesn't play with Legos. Who cares if sets become collectibles? Get other sets and have fun with Legos. These are toys that are meant to be played with. Play with them.
They still sell the sets of generic bricks. At that point it is up to the individual customer to buy them if he prefers that. I could see your point if they stopped selling the more free form product, but they haven't.
How can you go bankrupt with Lego? That's almost like going bankrupt with Coca Cola. It's probably one of the most if not the most recognizable toy brand there is. I'll have to read up on this, sounds like a fantastic voyage of mismanagement, if true.
It was in one of those Netflix documentaries - I didn't realise it at the time but there was an 18 month period from 2003 to 2004 during which no new Harry Potter or Star Wars movies came out so sales of the licensed IP sets was down.
Is it episode 7 of "The Toys That Made Us" (May 2018)?
If so that'd make a lot of sense, same thing for Google where founders hated advertising but when it was either going under or getting rich by doing the 1 thing they didn't to go, they chose wealth.
There's nothing stopping you from buying the basic sets and only the basic sets. They didn't stop making basic sets, unless you're objecting to the new colors that go beyond blue red yellow and black?
Some of the classic 80s themes, like Space and Castle, primarily used regular bricks of reasonable sizes in a very limited palette of colours, with a few special parts unique to the theme. They were much more suited to taking apart and building your own creations.
These days, there's just too many specialised and small parts, and too many colours. Even if you buy a big grey Star Wars set, you'll find that the internal structure is often brightly coloured to make the instructions clearer - but this isn't ideal if you want to take it apart and build something else.
If you like City, Lego has you covered, even now (cue the old jokes about Lego City having 500 police stations, 400 fire stations, 20 gas stations, and no shops and no houses).
The other themes of old have been replaced by movie tie-ins, and it's hard to build a pirate world out of Pirates of the Caribbean sets
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. No eye strain from screens. Just pure creativity and imagination.
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.
And that is the thing about raising a kid these days. Those damn machines have replaced so much… because yeah Minecraft is like a souped up version of Lego where in creative mode you have every part you need. And you don’t have to dig for it or anything. And it has survival mode and a whole huge thing on top of that.
It’s so difficult to know the boundaries. People from older generations giving advice about screen time and stuff simply don’t understand… “screen time” for me growing up was broadcast tv and a limited set of video games. If you didnt like what was on tv, too bad. Do something else. If you were bored of whatever Nintendo game you had… too bad, do something else. But now… you can get literally anything. Plus the iPad gets used to make videos of playing with the cat, or she will have tea parties with her stuffies and make them tea using some weird cooking game. Etc.
No previous generation had to face this. It’s an order of magnitude or more shifted from when they raised us. Tablets basically can replace almost every single toy from growing up besides ones that require being physical (rc cars, bricks, digging in the yard)… but books, cameras, light brights, etc… all replaced.
It’s completely uncharted water us parents are facing. Anybody that claims to “know the right rules” for tablets and technology is lying to you. They don’t. Nobody does. All we can do is use our best judgement and try to give ourselves credit for doing the best we can.
Good thing with analogue toys like legos is you know your kid is playing with legos that is wiring X brain cells for Y skills, even if Y skills are deprecated in digital world. It's hard to say with current gen, there's screen time to try to shape behavior, there are occasional kids who are tech literate maestros which every generation has, but plenty of kids who rely on LLMs, can only finger type because they grew up with touch screens. We're in tech timeline where passive users, i.e. most kids are impressed by millennials who can write cursive and touch type, other kids build stuff that previously required teams of 100s of engineers.
Without a tangible feedback you won't get any digital skills for spatial memory and coordination, peiod.
And the kids you mention can barely understand files, filesystems and don't even mention them about O(n) notation. If any, these kids doing the jobs of 1000s of engineers are proportionally worse than the average secretary skills in the 80's.
Plenty of tangible feedback on screen, just not tactile. I'm bucketing 2 types, the maestros who have deep understanding and the ones who don't bother. The former are the otherwise top 1% talent who are better off playing with with LLMs/comptuers where ceiling is high vs lego. The latter are being distracted that yeah their personal skills worse than past, but fake floor is also raised so much that functionally they can fake junior work, they just lack critical skills to get past.
It's a little out of date, but the conclusions are still relevant.
Main things of note: Brickheads are pretty economical as a "parts pack." No significant correlation between per-piece pricing and IP licensing (except for Star Wars). Star Wars and City sets are overpriced.
As a kid I loved the giant boat hull piece because it was sealed and actually floated. This in combination with some larger pylon-type pieces from the Star Wars set meant you could build floating cities and vehicles and such and mess with them in the kitchen sink.
Lego suffers from a fandom problem among adults: They have strong nostalgia for how it was when they were kids and they think everything since then is against the natural order of Lego.
The best way to enjoy Lego is to give it to some kids and watch them get creative with it. Unlike all of the Internet complaints, kids have no problem having fun with Lego and being creative in their own ways.
The decline of technic sets is such a shame. There's so little support for anything but representative models of specific cars, despite the platform being able to support a ton of mechanical creativity.
The disappearance of real metal Meccano is really crazy. I know metal is expensive, but also bulk processing of it has never been cheaper or faster.
It's also a shame because it's really good for mechanical rapid prototyping and you can bend and cut it in a pinch and it stays put. But buying vintage Meccano to abuse like that is expensive and feels like a war crime.
My son inherited (well, we're co-owning it I guess) my Lego, and that includes two sets of Technic aimed at educational use (1030 and 1032) which come with a stack of instructions for fairly simple mechanical models to build — each demonstrating basic mechanical principles like gear reduction and pulleys. Those sets used the 4.5V motors which have all broken down, but we also have the 1990 Technic Control Centre fully working and use those instead. That Control Centre is a simple controller used with 9V motors. It is brilliant for explaining the basic principles of computerised automation.
No app. No Bluetooth. Just wires and a simple controller built to be used and understood by children.
Historically Lego was a construction toy. This is what it was in my youth. These days Lego sell model construction kits - most are constructed once and then the owner plays with the model. This represents a radical and fundamental change. I’m not sure when it happened or how suddenly it happened as there is a large (decades) gap in time since I played with Lego as a kid and my current exposure to Lego via my own kids. Our home is full of Lego models but I don’t recall seeing my kid using his vast amount (compared to the shoe box I used to store my Lego as a kid) of Lego to actually construct something. The “studless” change - with its inside-out building technique makes it virtually impossible to alter a model once built - unlike the old bottom-up approach where it’s trivial to alter. It makes me sad because I remember with nostalgia the hours I spent building all sorts of fanciful constructions with my box of generic Lego pieces but I also acknowledge that model building — which I do with my kids - is also fun. But it’s just not the same play/toy as it was years ago.
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 Mindstorms was a head-scratcher to me. Hell, there was an entire international tournament built around Mindstorms. I know FLL still exists, but why kill that darling specifically?
NXT still kicks ass by the way. I have a backup of the NXT programming environment somewhere, it can be coaxed into running on Windows 11.
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 think that's fair, though I'm sure we would disagree on plenty of edge cases in the definition of a "display-oriented" set.
It just feels to me like AFOLs poopoo on any set for having stickers, without considering the advantages stickers have from the POV from the POV of a child with few LEGOs and fewer dollars.
In my case I think we can agree that the Lego Icons series is mostly display sets I think. At least those are what I was thinking of and that is how Lego markets them as well.
stickers
> just looks cheap due to different surfaces and colors
They are cheap!
To print on a piece you must run the inkjet assembly line, do QC on it.. With early Collectable Minifig series, I heard they outsourced that. I imagine inkjet lines that run all day for one piece type (maybe having changeable jigs.)
It's cheap to print a whole sheet of stickers!
Another approach that isn't so cheap is: in-mold transfer printing sheets. I learned about this at plastics shows around 2000; Apple used it on the all-in-one spotted iMac in 2001-ish.
Now since Lego ships perpetually ships 1x4s and 1x2s with black smileys or such, I guess carbon black in-mold transfer must be cost-effective. (That's a guess)
I know we're gonna be arguing taste in stickers forever.
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.
Another detail: National Instruments declined to update the Mindstorms software. Just wasn't a profitable business case. (The LabView vi libraries, I dunno if they worked past 2015.. I stopped upgrading.)
I finally had the time to get back into FRC mentoring last year, for just one season. I changed jobs and had to move across the country before this season started. I miss it dearly.
> the push towards smartphone-dependent toys feels weird
I haven't seen this push? The new Lego Smart stuff is explicitly "screen free play". There is an app but it's just for firmware update and configuration and you can't even connect it unless the brick is on the charger.
Which Mario ones are you thinking of? Because for the only ones I know of with electronic character, you just place them over special tiles they can read to select how they will react.
I hate app obsolescence, and licenses that expire on your old hardware (Microsoft Word..) I exhibit 1980s video games. The hardware just continues to work. It's a disgrace what happens to mobile games, they just disappear. (Whattaya do, save all your old phones? I'm hating on you, Atari Classics app on iPad 2; revoked my paid license to use it.)
But to be fair, Lego has gone to great lengths to keep their companion software alive. Still, the nature of mobile: apps require constant updates to stay listed for new OS versions.
For one, Lego Commander existed uselessly on my phone long after it ceased to work... until one iOS it wouldn't install anymore.
Lego giving you a CD with software and instruction was a comfort (challenge: find a CD drive!) but only Mindstorms really.
For desktop apps in the 2010s, Lego relied on Silverlight to get Mac and PC compatibility. So what happens when you rely on a Microsoft framework... still as late as 2015 I was still able to download Mindstorms 2.0 (introduced 2002??) from Lego.
With instructions pdfs, Lego has been ok to let hobbyists reproduce the downloads (last I saw.)
Another thing Lego did was to provide SDKs for Mindstorms (a while after the community reverse-engineered a lot of it...). Opening it up that way was encouraging. (Lego even started distributing HiTechnic's 3rd party sensors, the folks that reverse-engineered the Mindstorms 1.0 RCX.)
I was part of the fan movement from 1998-2001 that hammered on the message for Lego to open things up. What happened is that they hired several of us :)
Oddly enough I found the Duplo line much more fun to play with as our kid went through the blocks years. You could build something substantial with fewer block clicks, there were fewer different types of blocks, they were less fiddly and prone to vanishing into rugs/carpets, etc. Also the proper Legos tended to be sets which makes it very stressful to mix them into a misc bag.
If you want advancements in engineering and plastics for much better prices, see the wonders that Bandai has made with modern Gundam models. A Gundam Aerial HG is under $20, and you end up with a large multicolor model that assembles easily, has minimal mold lines, and needs no glue. And that's one of the intro models
I think this comes from higher tonnage (clamp force) molding machines. Injected plastic exerts force at the mold seam. Pressing the mold open by even a teeny tiny amount is unpalatable. Mold lines also can result where a mold has insertable parts, like sliding rods to form inner holes.
They suck because instead of buying the rights to the bricks they outright stole the design, the packaging and the marketing materials from the original inventor.
And then they sued the pants of everybody that tried to do the same thing to them.
Yes, it was a shame. After Lego lost in court (to Hilary Page's heirs I think by then) I believe they finally atoned for that.
Still, Lego didn't just sell the Kiddicraft brick unmodified. Lego patented the tubes inside, which gave it superior clutch power. (I have a lot of 2x4 bricks with "Pat Pend" molded on them!)
As I've heard it, Ole Kirk Christiansen had seen Hilary Page's brick as a sample from a molding machine vendor. Lego previously made wooden toys (until his son Godtfred allegedly set the factory on fire) and was casting about for what production to invest in for the future.
The Kiddicraft brick was a little rectangular box, no tubes inside. A lot of brick toys came out in the 60s that were little shells with varying clutch power.
I think it's more the consistency of product design than the manufacturing process. Everything around me, especially in the software world, seems to change for no good reason on a frequent basis. Companies change products all the time for reasons other than utility/functionality. A consistent specification over 50+ years is an outlier.
Did you even read the article? No, even just the Title? Nothing is ever impressive I guess. Certainly not a 60 years running manufacturing process where your childhood pieces can be passed down and combined seamlessly with a set you just bought for your kid. So trivial and easy to do guys.
The precision in tolerance over the years is truly breathtaking.
It speaks to Ole Kirk Christiansen's impossible standards: "Even the best is not good enough" (Det Bedste Er Ikke For Godt.) (usually translated "Only the best is good enough.")
Much more strenuous in Danish than the usual quoted translation! but I know some Danish, and most of all that's how Kjeld Kirk Christiansen explained it to an American audience at Brickfest 2003 (IIRC the year).
As I commented elsewhere, it's not 60 years. Sure, the outer dimensions have not changed and are very strict metric Lego Units. [1] But there have been continual improvement that render old and new less than wonderful to use together. You don't really want to mix 70s-early 80s bricks.
Conversely, if you're reselling those old sets, you need to find vintage pieces (though also Lego would use up older pieces and begin to use newer ones in that set)
But bricks from the mature design of the 80s even didn't age so well (clutch too hard, walls can warp), and there have been many improvements to the interior of a brick. All for sound engineering reasons. Thinner walls and internal voids to prevent warp, subtle changes to fine-tune clutch power.
It's a story of continual improvement, but it makes the old bricks seem less wonderful.
Weird thing Lego started to advertise in the 2000s: Lego bricks reach the proper clutch power after 7 insertions! I guess you have to stress-work the new plastic...
[1] I've used a micrometer on pieces of various age and can't get a difference from the outside. Doesn't help that they compress under measuring.
I feel the same... I remember as a kid, being able to get kits of hundreds of just random blocks and variations and just being able to build/play... all the sets today are all custom blocks that just constrain you and often aren't significantly reusable while I'm not sure that I've even seen basic block kits anywhere in decades now.
edit: I know you can get thousands piece brick sets from third parties or random bulk set sales on Amazon... the issue is the random bits are from the current sets mostly with little reuse value, and the bricks sets are from third parties of questionable tolerance compared to real lego. I just want to be able to get a classic 1000-3000 piece set of classic bricks/pieces from Lego proper, even if it's $100-200 total, still way more than 3rd party but maybe not the same margins for Lego as the bespoke sets.
edit2: there are some "Lego Classic" sets that are closer to what I would like to see, this is probably the closest.
But even then, maybe need that many more bricks that are just bricks... again, there are third party sets that are all block variants that are much bigger/cheaper... would just be nice to be able to get more of those without paying an arm and a leg.
Having the same experience. My kids enjoy getting new sets, but most of them are quickly customized or just destroyed to build something completely new. Terrible take in the parent.
I heard your same rant in the 1980s - only small details have changed (not mindstorms then ...) But kids who want to build have always been able to, and most sets mix and match for those kids.
The two options would be that either the perception is unsubstantiated but persists, or there has been a continuous decline for the last 40 years. I'm strongly leaning towards the latter. I also having the same issues in the 00s looking at old sets from the 80s, and looking back now the 00s look much better than what we have today. Obviously not in every way, and not all recent sets were bad. But overall I have the feeling that there's been a steady trend that the bricks got better but the sets got worse
Lego was always very expensive. They have long made weird custom pieces and those sets have sold well - despite not having the long staying ability that the more basic sets have.
Maybe my perception of 00s models is colored by nostalgia, hard to know. But I haven't been alive in the 80s, so my perception of them during the 00s should be pretty uncolored
My recall was that the 90s was pretty awesome, and the 00s fell into BURPS and large pieces and tie-in sets.
But I think most people either agree there was a dark ages where they went almost bankrupt and did some really questionable themes, or the best time was when they were a kid.
The 90s catalogs rocked in a way that no website ever can, though.
Things are different, people want different things today then they did in the 80s. The top lego sets of the 80s were bought by rich parents for their kids. Adults didn't buy lego for themselves.
Today they're bought by rich adults for themselves, who want different things
Meanwhile kids aren't as bored. In the early 90s as a 10 year old I used to watch soap operas with my parents, because there wasn't much more to do at 8pm on a wet december evening. That was evidenced by Coronation street getting 17 million viewers, well over 1 in 4 people in the country.
Today the same program gets 2 million viewers, nearer to 1 in 40.
That's not because it's materially worse, but because there's more things to do.
Lego has the same issue. In the 80s as a kid there was little to do at home, so things like lego, meccano, spirograph took up the time. Today there's a lot more to do.
There's a reason 80s lego sets aren't as popular as they were in the 80s - the actual sets - and it's clearly not the quality (as a lego 80s set is the same today as it was 40 years ago).
In terms of creativity of model options, the Chinese compatibles are stomping them.
You can even get a model of post-explosion Chernobyl. Not to mention all the sci-fi tie in from Star Trek to Warhammer that real Lego hasn't signed contracts for. But if you want an 60cm Gloriana class, there it is.
Plus Technics-ish sets and bulk boxes that aren't 75% special body panels that only fit that specific model, since Technics itself mostly seems to have been downgraded to the automotive brands advertising department.
When you build a knock off set, though, you can tell that the Lego versions have so much more thought put into the actual build process and the stability and functionality of the finished product.
I got my first Lego set in the early 70’s through a Velveeta cheese mail in promotion.
The company almost went out of business in the early 90’s before they discovered movie tie-ins. I believe the quality of play was lost in this transition because the sets became more literal and less open ended. My first big set was a fire station which certainly literal but somehow seems more open ended then the movie tie/in sets.
I'm not a Lego nerd, but I recently saw a really sweet Lego DeLorean in Walmart priced at almost $200. Now that I have disposable income, I would have impulse-purchased that thing so hard if it would have been closer to $100. But I can't quite bring myself to part with a pair of benji's for a plastic toy, no matter how thoroughly it triggers my nostalgia.
> 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.
Yes they are aggressively targeting "grown ups" with many sets, but they also have very playable sets. I don't see any problem with having different offerings.
There are enough sets for everyone to find something interesting if they are into Lego.
Basic Lego is actually decently affordable. It's the collector's sets that adults would buy whose prices are jacked sky high, based on demand it seems.
I've bought a decent amount of Duplo and Lego kits for my son (currently 3 years old) and it's great value.
If you're not interested in the new sets, the core product is readily available. Moreover, enjoy the fact that you can get that bucket of bricks for cheap partly because the expensive shiny high-margin SKUs provide a subsidy.
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 Mindstorms, though.
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.
The difference in the instructions between classic and modern sets is interesting too, instructions for both the main and alternate build in just 38 pages. Compared to the modern instructions, which often add just a couple of parts per page.
Set prices are a lot more reasonable if you stay away from the branded options, Disney and Star Wars sets, especially have a intense premium associated with them.
At least LEGO is probably the toy that gets "passed down" the most, my own LEGO parts who I got from an older cousin, is now on its 4th generation (first my sisters children, then some family-friend to theirs), and I'm sure the pile(s) will get further passed down as time goes on.
True, but at least it's not single use. Is there a viable alternative? A non-petrochemical plastic that has the same qualities? It's not like they can whittle them out of wood or cast them with metal so it'll always be some form of polymer, and I'm sure they would jump at a more ecologically sound option.
I'm sure they don't unless made from a stable hardwood or coated somehow to resist expansion/contraction which would defeat the whole point of using a sustainable material. Lovely idea though, I really like wooden objects.
> a lot what the company does today just sucks. Set prices are outrageou
This was all done planned and implemented by this one consulting guy (MCK?), who became CEO after delivering his report from his consulting company, Lego was near bankrupt back then - he started with all this subbranding shitty stuff and the "colorful" bricks and introduced all these many many "single-use-case-bricks" for more and more sets.
I was just about to reply about their financial woes over the years too [0][1][2]
Being a collector of stuff ever since I was a kid (toys, comics, cards, physical media, printed collateral, etc), and being in my 40's (target market / demographic for expensive nostalgia) living in 2026 (the world is a casino! everything's a collector's item!), it is a little annoying to see LEGO appear to turn into something that it wasn't .. but objectively that doesn't eradicate the fundamentals of LEGO, and I'd rather see them be a healthy company with longevity (via current product strategy) than wither and die on the vine out of stubbornness.
That said, aside from leaning on the AAA IP that drives prices through the roof in some lines, I do wish they'd stop with the tech gimmicks (Hidden Side, Smart Bricks), renew one of their focuses on real tech/engineering-adjacent platforms (Mindstorms / NXT / a modern version of these), and acknowledge that wealthy adults aren't the only customers. It really prices out young, fertile minds who a lot of their product and ethos should be directed towards.
Of course, that's a huge problem right now with anything that can command aftermarket prices as collectibles! [3]
I mean it is a business after all, trying to make money..
I must say, the new smart bricks with all sorts of sensors(color, gyro, distance etc) triggers the inner child in me. I can’t wait to get them for my kiddo and teach him how that magic actually works beneath.
The regular LEGO at this points feels “just plastic” and I won’t feel bad offloading that purchase to AliExpress.
If you're complaining about the prices, remember how capitalism works. The price is set by buyers, not sellers. That's the invisible hand, the seller will set the price to what buyers show they will pay. If you're unhappy about $500 for a Millennium Falcon or whatever, your beef is not with the company for accepting that when people choose to pay it, it's with those other buyers for paying that much.
As the other replies are saying, it's mostly brand power. If your complaint is that $500 for a Falcon is monopolistic because there's no competition because nobody else can legally sell Falcons, the monopoly is really with Star Wars not Lego, they're just delegating it to Lego. You're always free to find your cheapest source of bricks perhaps from other manufacturers and build your own equivalent.
As for stickers and apps and the other stuff... yeah that's the enshittification that also always accompanies capitalism. It's lamentable but it only changes if enough customers vote no with their wallets.
Isn't that just capitalism? The rule is for companies to keep pushing for higher margins and profit, so given enough time any company will default to shady tactics and product enshitification.
More 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 lines on the black one, and it's enough to produce significantly more friction, and that difference is utilised in designs.
And apprently there's now a new version of the black one, and people notice these things, and measure them - this article gives an idea of just how these tiny changes, well below tolerances for some of the "knockoffs", can produce a different effect:
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 or low friction
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.
> it's one of the areas where LEGO is generally superior to the similar types of bricks
Imho, this is, objectively, not true (anymore).
Pantasy with GoBricks are superior in coloring and fit; Cobi are excellent for things that should not be taken apart anymore (like tank models); Lumibricks are excellent in fit and have amazing illumination solutions that are lightyears (haha) ahead of lego.
I got the Pantasy Neo Geo set a while ago, and was pretty blown away compared to the better known imitators that have been available at retail. The mechanics are not as robust as I’d expect from Lego, but it was about a quarter of the price and externally looks as good with some really fun and well thought out details.
Interesting - never come across Pantasy/GoBricks, or Lumibricks but then it's a few years since my son decided he was too old for LEGO, and I see Pantasy is just a few years old, and Funwhole/Lumibricks just a few more. Great if there are more options of similar quality.
But "should not be taken apart anymore" fits into an entirely different category for me. If you don't need to be able to take them apart any more, it fundamentally changes requirements.
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.
Lego from my youth, which was a hand-me down at the time, doesn't fit well with new lego. So it might be 40 years old, (which seems like a long time until you actually reach that age!)
I think it's more likely do to plastic aging than the original tolerances though.
To add even more - I was handed down Lego that belonged to my mom in the 60s, played with them through the 80s and 90s, and now my kids have them today. I wouldn’t be able to tell you which were hers and which were mine.
They’ve been around over 90 years and have been making plastic bricks since the 1950s and are arguably the most successful children’s building toy product in history. They have amazing brand recognition, and beyond the toys, they have successful video games and movies.
According to my local news outlet, they’re up 12% in revenue growth in the last year (which outpaces the rest of the toy industry) and up 1,200% since 2004.
Ha, I noticed this too! And even my 3 y/o picked up on this.
We have a set (something with Spiderman IIRC) that attached wheels with yellow pins that allow for better rolling of wheels. The black pins are too tight for this indeed.
For me, the beauty of Lego was just a huge bin of interconnectable parts that I used to make whatever my imagination came up with. For my kids, Lego is pre-built model airplane set that they build one time and then display. I liked my Lego better :)
From experience there's a motivation, almost a compulsion, to follow the instructions to build the cool thing. Then... they sit there, those bricks never taken apart.
That compulsion doesn't seem present in freeform building, and there's been zero interest in it in our household. I know that's not true for all, but it seems like a lost art. Maybe it's because the IP sets show how but not the why it's constructed in a certain way, so given a bag of Lego most wouldn't know the process of creating something they can see in their minds eye within the constraints of the available bricks.
When I was a kid and I got a new set, I would build it according to the instructions, play with it, and then disassemble it and sort it into my brick collection. Occasionally I would get the instructions back out and re-build it, and other times I would kitbash and make random cool stuff.
My parents still have all my Legos from the 90s, including the instructions, and I've been able to rebuild a bunch of the space ships with translucent neon accents. It's pretty sweet and my kids love it.
Lego used to encourage building new things by putting alternate builds on the back of the box, but intentionally not giving you the instructions. Now they do 3-in-1 for certain sets instead, which misses the point of that.
Not really. Even LEGO Classic has way too many different colors (and only a few bricks of each), and too many weird shapes. Even if you buy a lot of it, it's hard to make your own designs that actually look nice (as in, not having that one incorrectly-colored brick in that one place, and so on).
I for the love of God can't comprehend why LEGO Classic has 4 shades of blue. It makes everything worse.
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.
After 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 sets do not have this requirement.
I think Lego has a huge incentive to promote this idea that they are high quality to justify the enormous price of decades old technology.
The reason this is impressive has less to do with the tolerances themselves and more to do with backward compatibility across decades at scale. That's the genuinely hard part.
The history here is deeper than most people realize. The United States spent fifty years (roughly 1800 to 1853) at the Springfield and Harper's Ferry armories trying to achieve what LEGO now does routinely: parts manufactured to tight enough tolerances that they are truly interchangeable without fitting. In 1853, a visiting British inspector randomly selected ten muskets made in ten different years, disassembled them, mixed the parts, and reassembled ten functional muskets using only a screwdriver. Tolerances of a thousandth of an inch. It was considered impossible by most of the engineering establishment of the time.
The way they got there was by building machines, then using the parts those machines made to build better machines, then using those improved parts to build even better machines. A virtuous circle of transferring skill from human hands to tooling. This is the actual origin story of what historians call the American System of Manufacture, and it's the foundation the entire modern automotive supply chain sits on.
So yes, any competent injection molder holds tight tolerances today. But that's precisely the point: the reason it seems unremarkable now is that two centuries of compounding precision made it so
After working both in automotive and at LEGO, I think LEGO is more impressive tolerance wise when it comes to molds, molding and tolerance quality control.
Also to correct you, LEGO has been making most of the parts for decades, some have had changes due to new materials (which you can read upon online) but besides the ones that remained the same (not really), many new system elements got released in the last decades and new I.P tied elements get released on a yearly basis.
Agreed. Same or greater injection molding challenges for bottle caps, small plastic containers, things that also are in the hundreds of millions of parts annually. More challenging as they are often using polypropylene which is harder to mold due to its high anisotropy (shrinks in different rates depending on if it's flow or cross-flow direction).
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.
We use a Lego phantom[0] to control for geometric distortions in a few of our MRI studies. The tolerances are so tight that it works really well. Especially important in multi-site studies.
> 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 difficult to stack onto a new brick, or didn't have any friction left.
There were some bricks from the very early days that were not made from ABS, nor did they have the current box and pin style. Those are often loose (or broken).
Was this written using AI? It does contain some interesting information, but the same information is repeated (with small variations) over and over again in a mind-numbing way that made me stop reading after about half of the article...
"Precision, for LEGO, isn't an engineering choice, it's a brand promise." - The classic "It's not just x, it's y", just minus the "just".
"One philosophy optimizes for cost, the other for perfection." - Again we see the x/y structure; AI writing often features these forms, eg comparisons (x vs y), conversions (x into y), negated emphasis (not x, but y), etc.
"When you have multiple parts in an assembly, use statistical analysis for tolerance stack-up rather than worst-case math. Traceability matters. Track your defects so feedback turns precision into reliability." - More x/y followed by a short stinger ("Z matters"), and the closing sentence again follows the "x/y" pattern.
For funsies I tossed the whole thing into a purported AI detector and it said 90+% confidence of AI. I don't trust those types of things very much and suspect they have high false positive rates, but I have read that AI writing generally has measurably lower entropy, so maybe it's plausible, and in this case it aligns with my existing beliefs, so it obviously must be true.
Lego's original moat was their patent. This expired in the 80s, and so their new moat became their manufacturing tolerances. None of their competitors could match the quality of their product. This lasted until about the 2010s when clone brands in China finally caught up, and coincidentally, Lego's own quality started slipping. Thus, they needed a new moat, and the choice was obvious: licensing.
I wish Lego would find a digital equivalent as universal as the bricks for programming. I think it could be another moat for them. But it seems they keep changing it and it does not seems as simple or as universal as it could be. I am thinking more programming with blocks than using a tablet etc. to program the blocks. IMO it is a wasted opportunity.
I've ordered 2 sets off of AliExpress (the Stargate BC303 and BC304 MOCs) and was quite impressed. No box, digital instructions, and a few minor color swapped pieces; but complete and everything went together very well.
> They're cut from hardened steel using wire EDM, a process that erodes metal with controlled electrical sparks, achieving tolerances within a few microns.
They're made by sinker EDM, not wire. The physics are similar but it's a radically different process.
> But in an assembly system like LEGO's, small errors accumulate. Stack ten bricks end-to-end and the cumulative tolerance is ten times larger.
That's not how these tolerances work. The super tight tolerance is the interference fit on the stud. This is a diameter. You don't stack diameters together. Each connection is independent. Where you can get tolerance stackup is brick height and stud spacing. Although even here random errors tend to cancel out as you mix lots.
>LEGO's system reveals timeless truths about manufacturing. Process control beats precision machining. A stable, repeatable process produces better results than chasing the tightest possible mold tolerances. Invest in monitoring rather than just tighter specs.
The whole article says the opposite. Lego relies on precision machining and tight tolerances. Process control is necessary in addition to these.
>The frequently cited "0.002mm tolerance" is misleading without context. LEGO's actual mold precision is 10 microns, but different features have different critical tolerances.
The article never mentions what piece has a 0.002mm tolerance. Is there any such piece? If there's no such piece, then "0.002mm tolerance" is not just "misleading without context", it's straight up false.
This is an LLM-written article. It also doesn't say anything. I get it that it's a cue for us to reminisce about childhood and say that LEGO isn't what it used to be, but we're being played for clicks. Open the article and look for a single statement that actually tells us something meaningful. It's just a sequence of impressively-sounding factoids like this:
> A 2x2 brick can withstand over 4,000 Newtons of force, which lets children build tall structures.
> But in an assembly system like LEGO's, small errors accumulate. Stack ten bricks end-to-end and the cumulative tolerance is ten times larger. This is why LEGO models larger than 1 meter become difficult to build
> The lesson isn't that everyone should match LEGO's tolerances. It's to understand what your product actually requires, then build your manufacturing system to deliver that at the scale and cost your business model demands.
> The 66-year-old brick will have the exact same interference fit, the same clutch power, the same 4.8mm stud diameter.
Pretty sure this is false. Old bricks had way higher clutch power, so high that it was deemed too difficult to separate. Sometime in the 90's the grip strength was reduced.
This false claim is underpins the entire article :(
I concur. I had "inherited" the sets of my 10 years older brother, and they where a pain to play with. It was sometimes impossible to separate the pieces, especially if it were plates with no leverage and nothing to grip.
>A 2x4 LEGO brick manufactured in 1958 will snap perfectly onto a brick molded this morning..
This is just manifestly NOT TRUE. The outward appearance may be the same. There were intentional improvements to the walls and tubes that make fit less than perfect. Generally, today's brick requires less force to snap and un-snap, because the compression is focused onto fewer points. (I guess this lowers the "hoop strength".)
Older bricks can be either: completely loose, or clutch so hard to each other they are the devil to take apart.
I have many bricks from 1962 onwards. The oldest 2x4s and 2x2s were made of cellulose acetate (CA) (in North America, intermediated by Samsonite.) CA were softer, and either had less clutch power to begin with, or lost it over time. When I got them in the 70s, they fit but wouldn't reliably stick to each other, nor later 70s-80s bricks (all ABS plastic by then.) (CA bricks were mostly red, and they have a pale orange tint.)
70s-80s bricks did not always age well. Aged 1x4 or 1x8 bricks can have the outer wall bowed inward slightly. This is a mold engineering problem anyway. Later, 80s bricks were improved by slightly thinner walls and some reinforcing tabs. The older, aged bricks can stick brutally to each other and to newer bricks.
The 10x10 baseplates didn't age well (these were once box-tops! Tog'l Toys also had the baseplate as a box-lid.) Possibly made of polycarbonate (PC). Other large plates in ABS-- for instance 6x16 (Auto Chassis, red) -- have warped. They were also more brittle to begin with.
So inside Brick geometry has changed over the decades. 60s-70s bricks are closer to plain boxes with tubes inside - as the Kiddicraft prototype of the 50s. In the 80s, the outer walls got thinner and had tiny studs where the studs contacted the wall. And the tubes changed from cylinders to just slightly clover-leaf inside, so that a tube over a single stud now formed 4 points of contact, and came apart with lower shear force. (I believe this also made it easier to pry a plate off of a larger plate.)
I have Fabuland sets from early 80s, whose plain bricks are so stiff, they are positively brutal to snap onto each other or 90s bricks.
The brick geometry of today is much improved. And the ABS is more "plastic", perhaps more "B" (butadiene rubber) or less "S" (styrene): I can drill it more cleanly.
Mid 80s and 90s bricks will interoperate just fine with today's. But bricks from before that period didn't age so well (and their corners, I believe, used to be harder.)
The tolerance for interference fit ("clutch power" in Lego terminology) is important, but that's fairly simple. It's the cumulative tolerance when you assemble large structures that's important. Knockoff bricks can be fine for the first few you assemble, and then as the structure gets larger things don't quite fit together.
Also interesting is that in very large models, there is decoupling between sections. Lego has design rules for how large a well connected chunk of Lego can be, which are driven by the tolerances. Above that you are then loosely coupling those large "chunks".
This is the most interesting point in the thread to me. Tolerance stack-up is the reason tight per-part tolerances matter at all. A single brick being precise is table stakes for injection molding. The hard problem is what happens when you compose hundreds of them.
The decoupling strategy you're describing is really similar to how you handle error accumulation in any large composed system. You can't make individual components perfect enough to avoid drift at scale, so you introduce boundaries where the accumulated error gets absorbed rather than propagated. In Lego's case that means designing joints between sections that are forgiving enough to accommodate the stack-up from each chunk independently.
It's also why knockoff bricks can feel fine for small builds and then fall apart (sometimes literally) on larger ones. If your per-part tolerance is 3x worse, it doesn't matter much for a 20-piece build, but for a 2000-piece build your cumulative error budget is blown long before you're done. The failure mode isn't that any individual brick is bad, it's that the composition doesn't hold.
I'd be curious whether Lego publishes or talks about those chunk size design rules anywhere. That seems like the actually interesting engineering story, more so than the per-part tolerance numbers that get repeated in every article about them.
That's actually not too difficult. So long as your process variance is centered around nominal, the stackup will tend to cancel out. You might run into trouble if your kit involves hundreds of identical pieces from the same batch being assembled together, but that's rare. For large builds from multiple kits, it's very unlikely they have the same errors.
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.
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 had to previous special sets was a town thing that my brother and sister had before me (they were 10 years older), which was a bunch of large floor tiles with roads and grassy areas with studs, some flowers pieces (single stud) and a handful of special buildings. But they were designed to be relatively generic, and the fun was using those building blocks to make a new city each time, not trying to recreate exactly someone's model. Apart from the flowers and the men, basically everything was a standard part, except perhaps a different colour.
When I was a teenager, the trend had become sets with lots of specialised parts for one specific model, such that they didn't really make sense as generic pieces. I enjoyed the technics kits because the early ones were just generic building blocks (apart from the wheels and rack and pinion, but again they could be re-used in lots of subsequent designs), but more and more the kits in the shops were for specialised models with unique pieces that were never designed to fit aesthetically with anything other than the model they came with. I'm sure _some_ people built other things with them, but equally I'd bet than probably 90% of those kits were built exactly once following the instructions and then never disassembled again.
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?
Star Wars sets started coming out in 1998. They weren't the first licensed sets, but the first fictional license.
Prior to Star Wars, they had Shell, Exxon, and Esso branded sets. I think sometimes they licensed the Ferrari brand as well.
And yes, Lego has had a Space theme since the late 70s. But it was a general "Space" theme. They would later make Space Police, Blacktron, Magnetron, etc.
But actual Star Wars was 1998. I have some of those sets. It was a big deal to get an actual lightsaber hilt and blade.
Very interesting. Googling shows some generic space themed things from the 80s like you say, but no Star Wars. I guess my old age is finally catching up on me and my memories have all blurred into one. I did find a Millennium Falcon from 1983, but it's definitely not Lego.
Having grown up playing with LEGOs, I can still distinctly remember the feeling of sore fingers pulling tiny pieces apart after a long session. It wasn't until a few years ago I learned there's an official brick separator tool [1]. Would've changed my life as a kid.
Actually they do have a draft. The bricks are designed so you don't notice it, both by the draft angle being quite small, and the parting line is moved up slightly so by the time you get to the bottom of the brick you're back to the original width.
I was annoyed at this one time so I took two legos and put them under the microscope. I couldn’t see it. Which is just to say how fucking tiny the scales are here.
For production parts we’re looking at drafts around 3 degrees. Which is… not what they have even considering the tuck back in!
3 degrees is the generic "I don't care and don't want to worry about it" draft angle. In many cases 0.5 degrees of draft angle is a non-issue.
3 degrees on a lego brick would be a difference of .3mm over its height. For comparison an amoeba is about .5mm. If you're zoomed out enough that you can see the length, you're not going to be able to discern the angle. The only way you'd see it is to check for the gap between the wall and a precision square.
For me, Legos shouldn't ever include instructions, or anything other than generic parts. The whole idea is to dream up something, then reify it. It's so fetch!
When I started seeing the non-generic "build one thing" sets, with appropriately high sticker prices, Lego lost it's luster. The additional downside of ending up with special purpose pieces, just made it worse.
The precision with which the blocks are made is comparable to Ford's use of Gage blocks to make perfectly interchangeable parts across the globe. It's fascinating just how many of something can be made in this manner, and how the costs just keep slowly going down as the quantity scales up.
I would like to better understand the reasoning behind what the author says here:
A balanced 16-cavity mold costs 3-4x more than a single-cavity mold but only produces 16x the parts, which is why they only make economic sense above 500,000 units.
I guess if a single cavity mold costs $30,000 and a 16 cavity mold costs $110,000 you have an additional expense of ~$80,000, divided over half million parts is 16 cents. So lets say somewhere from 5-10cents per part to go 16x faster. My numbers might be off a bit but seems in the ballpark. I also don't know much a lego brick costs to make in terms of materials/opex.
In this context, a cavity produces one part. A cavity can only produce, lets say, 200k parts. If you produce 400k parts, you only need a single mold, but you've only used 25k wear on each cavity, but you paid more for the mold instead of only 2 of the cheaper single-cavity molds.
I wish one of their competitors would take up this dimension standard --- it would be a lot more useful for making structures which interact across dimensions/rotations.
I've never regretted buying Legos for my kids. Yeah, the kits can be expensive, but they last forever. We've thrown out or donated lots of old toys, but the Legos will never be given away.
In terms of toys which my son got from my childhood, Duplo and Lego stick out. We kept everything; booklets and parts. We built the classic town square (set 1592) recently, and we've got all the parts, including the statue bits! Only the printed lettering on the sign's 1×8 white brick had faded.
Sure, some puzzles and books survived, but the Lego stands out. If he ever has children they are in for a treat…
To make a bunch of plastic toy bricks a multi billion company you have to produce very special ones. LEGO is a marvel of human entrepreneurship, mechanical, designing and marketing. Diverse and totally different professions should cooperate together with a lot of innovation. To make one characteristic is doable, all of them is very difficult.
Lego is still the best toy, but man, I really miss the old style Technic sets where most of the pieces were very generic vs today's sets which are less versatile. 8480 and 8250 as examples (my two favorite sets growing up, though I didn't manage to get my hands on 8480 until I got my first job)
I collect Hot Wheels but have always found Lego to be annoying.
It's a pain in the ass to put together, pain in the ass to move, pain in the ass to collection. The costs are out of this world and most collectors don't even build their sets, they keep it in the box from 20 years ago. At least with Hot Wheels you can see the car inside even when still packaged.
Yeah that's a completely different approach, I buy lego to have access to more pieces so that when I dump them all on the floor and build whatever comes to mind I have more to play with.
If you buy any knock off legos, you are guaranteed 3 things, 1. Crappy instructions 2. Noticing the snap pressure is inconsistent and often too tight our bouncy. 3. Swearing at that manufacturer after every page.
not true at all for most alternative brands (they are not knock offs, the patents are expired so they are legal, and comparable in quality), same for cloned sets (shady companies cloning lego sets using alternative bricks (the bricks are legal, the cloned sets aren't). the quality of alternative bricks is good. the quality of the instructions as well.
For me it is 1. Terrible quality of all rubbery/soft elements. 2. If it is original model (instead of ripping of existing set), it often contains huge, shell like elements, that can't be easily be in custom designs. 3. I guess the previous point doesn't really matter, when bricks are designed to be assembled once and are impossible to pull apart without hurting your fingers.
The 2. is very annoying. Especially when big sets fall apart due to this issue.
Let me add this:
4. no spare parts available. So when I break weird Chinese invention the whole set becomes useless without that very special part. It happened few times and I got back to used Lego sets.
Worth mentioning that tolerance is that low for multi-stud pieces. For an individual stud it’s closer to 0.02mm but as you add more studs tolerance spec goes up.
Not in terms of people printing lego bricks. But at least as an adult, designing things in Fusion and printing them scratches a similar itch as building lego. And 3d printing is now pretty accessible to the 14+ age group. I doubt this will completely replace legos, or that it's even their biggest threat, but I'd be surprised if it had no impact
The trick is to redesign the bricks for worse tolerances. With 3D printers you can print very nuanced springy elements that are impossible to achieve with injection molding. I got some reasonable bricks years ago on cheap printers with PETG, should work even better now with modern printers and ABS.
I'm sure they will if they can't already, but the price of the tech & the materials could be the limiting factor. How much would a hobbyist be willing to spend on consistent 10-micron 3D printing?
Upvoted, and the English prose is pretty good in spelling and grammar, but the metric units in the writing need improvement.
> 10 microns
"Micron(s)" is a deprecated word since 1967 and "micrometre(s)" must be used instead. The reason is that it is a non-standard word; if "micron" is accepted, then we should also accept the nonsensical words "millin", "nanon", "kilon", etc. The metric system is supposed to be easy to learn with consistent rules and as few special cases as possible.
> 4.8mm ... 0.01mm ... "0.002mm tolerance"
These numbers are correct, but it's harder to quickly skim the text and make comparisons because the number of decimal places vary. It would be better to write 4.800 mm, 0.010 mm, 0.002 mm to make the reader's job easier. Or convert everything to whole micrometres, like 4800 μm, 10 μm, 2 μm.
> withstand over 4,000 Newtons
Almost correct, but the unit must be decapitalized to "newtons". This is similar to how other name-based units are decapitalized - like "100-watt light bulb", "12 amps", "3 gigahertz".
> 2-3 Newton insertion force
It must be written as "2–3 newtons". When the unit name is written out in full, it follows normal English pluralization rules (e.g. metres, seconds, volts, pascals, kelvins, ohms, teslas). The only exceptions are hertz and siemens, because they already end with -s or -z.
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 sets feel like display models than something you can play with. The Mindstorms/NXT line had huge potential but then just sort of fizzled out. And the push towards smartphone-dependent toys feels weird. Who actually wants their kids staring at a phone to play Lego?
It's so sad, because the core product is basically perfect.
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.
Lego is branding, curation and quality bar, though. They're the Apple of bricks (weird sentence).
There's tons of lego-knockoffs and of not even such lesser quality that the difference can be perceived by casual inspection. The set-to-set quality bar is really where it is, especially among their set lines not targeted at children or low-end of market.
But none of those sets have any kind of staying power. There's Expert/Creator/Modular sets from 20 years ago that sell for $500-1000 _opened and pre-built/re-disassembled_. That's all brand power.
So they're less about $/brick (though i know people scrutinize it) and more about price point and brand. Phrased differently, having your brick company race to the bottom sounds like a losing strategy.
Yeah I don't know what this person is on about. Lego is obviously premium and ... charges premium prices because ... they're a business. People (consumers) who want premium products ... pay the premium.
I would be much more frustrated if they became cheaper and reduced the quality of the product.
There is a prevalent view of economy that insists businesses sell their products at the minimum price they can still make a profit at (but not lower or you are dumping.) A Marxist view of economy, if I must.
Whenever I meet one of these people, I ask if they are willing to negotiate a wage reduction with his HR. My logic is simple. If you think it is wrong for a business to sell a product at the maximum price they can demonstrably get away with like Lego does, then why is it right for you, a professional worker selling your labor, to sell your labor at a price higher than what is necessary for subsistence?
> There is a prevalent view of economy that insists businesses sell their products at the minimum price they can still make a profit at [...] A Marxist view of economy, if I must.
That's actually how competition is supposed to work in capitalism. If you sell your products at much higher than the minimum price, someone else can make a profit by selling slightly cheaper and taking over your market share.
That's contingent on the competition offering a similar experience and quality, at a smaller price point. As a parent comment pointed out, no LEGO knockoff has been able to provide the same experience as LEGO.
I think what the commenter is getting at is that it's not even about competition. People get mad when companies charge more than is necessary to make what they deem a reasonable profit.
Of course, as you mention, in capitalism, a competitor is free to go in and undercut the leading brand, but they have to be able to sell why they're better AND cheaper.
Interestingly that's one of the Marxist critiques. The market simply is not efficient enough to work fully. The effort to get Lego2 off the ground is simply too high and Lego gets an effective monopoly in their market segment (premium blocks).
If Lego was nationalized then the excess earnings that go into the owners' pockets as dividends or asset value would be realized by the people. But that of course leads to different inefficiencies (investors don't invest, etc...).
imo it's not just that other brands are of similar quality but often of way higher quality than lego. you get so much more for less money from other brands, while lego sets are becoming kind of a joke. using stickers everywhere and randomly colored bricks on the internal sides of the set
Prices are constrained by demand moreso than by cost of production. Lego pieces are expensive because they can be, they still sell, and this is largely due to the quality. As long as the quality moat persists, they can charge as much as people will pay, and--good for them!
That you personally would prefer lower prices does not mean they "should" be lower. Those lower costs of production, to Lego company, "should" mean higher profits, not lower prices, and again--good for them!
> As long as the quality moat persists
The risk Lego faces is that they don't actually have a quality moat any longer. You can get non-lego sets with no stickers, plenty of prints, LED lighting, at a cheaper price, and with the exact same piece quality. I purchased this set: https://www.lumibricks.com/collections/steampunk-world/produ... over Christmas, and I paid $105 because it was on sale. The pieces were indistinguishable from Lego in quality, and the lights and lack of stickers was a quality increase from what Lego offers.
What moat Lego has is: brand recognition and licenses. Which aren't nothing, but don't offer much protection.
Not disagreeing with you, but at least when I hear "lego knockoff" I think of the shitty ones, because I've never seen a Lego knockoff that wasn't shitty.
Lumibricks seems like a promising brand, but I've never heard of them, possibly because they don't spend as much on marketing as lego. And if they did spend more in order to compete with Lego, they might need to increase price!
> but I've never heard of them, possibly because they don't spend as much on marketing as lego
It’s a newer brand—they changed their name to it some time last year. But they seemed to spend a lot on advertising last Christmas—at least on YouTube, it seemed like tons of reviewers were talking about their sets. That’s how I found out about them, at any rate. And I’ll say—the one I got came together nicely, and looks great. The tons of lights are just, really neat.
> when I hear "lego knockoff" I think of the shitty ones, because I've never seen a Lego knockoff that wasn't shitty.
The cheap-o ones you get like at the dollar store, absolutely. But Chinese manufacturers have been making good quality knockoffs for a while. A decade at least? I bought my first knock-off technic set around 10 years ago, and it was 90% the quality of Lego at 25% the price. But the quality has only gotten better since, and is now totally on par with Lego. Admittedly, the price has gone up, too.
Interesting. Gotta check those out! Not that my family needs more LEGO... The remains of our Millennium Falcon after my nieces came over glare at me everytime I look at a new LEGO set.
I don't want to sound like a shill, because I don't know them at all, and I still spend enough money on actual Lego. But I am really happy with it. Pieces were great, quality was great, I love the lights, I hate Lego's stickers. And the piece count was 2x or 2.5x what I'd get from Lego at the same price. And I love steampunk, and Lego doesn't have a steampunk line. I'll absolutely buy more from them, so (for me at least) their big Youtuber push last year worked.
Exactly what a shill would say ;)
No but I appreciate your recommendation. I find that product recommendation on HN tend to be higher quality and/or more relevant to me than generic lists (I added so many books and games to my backlog from HN comments because many HNers have really good taste).
Maybe I'm saying the quiet part out loud. I hope no one tries to advertise on HN after this.
I’m guessing people do advertise and astroturf here, but I’m guessing it’s for LLMs and stuff :-)
A reputation moat is still a moat. It seems to me that Lego prices will drop as soon as they are forced to by competition, and not before, and this is fine.
> A reputation moat is still a moat.
It is, absolutely, but it’s a lot more shallow a moat than having a product quality moat.
> Lego prices will drop as soon as they are forced to by competition, and not before, and this is fine.
I agree, they’ll survive quite well. But the large profit margin they’ve grown accustomed to might disappear, and that probably doesn’t bode well for their management.
And heck, maybe they’ll stop shipping stickers on expensive sets, too. That would be nice.
What you mention is true, but Lego sets are (almost always) very well designed, specially the ones for kids.
I've seen enough reviews of recent Lego sets to doubt this. Sets with a brick or two where the color is off, sets where the final model falls apart if you look at it wrong, and when there's fan designed alternatives which are more solid and better looking it's clear it wasn't a physical limitation.
Not to mention sets that indeed just feel like a ripoff, like the pyramid of giza which costs $130 and is actually just half of a pyramid, but the backside of the model has slots that let you connect it with another half if you buy two of them. And they even admit in the marketing it's an incomplete product with "Complete the pyramid - This model comes with clear instructions and can be connected to a second model (sold separately) to create a full pyramid", of course only visible after scrolling or looking at more product pictures.
They are. I should have added that Lego’s designers are a bit better still. You can get botanical sets from a lot of manufacturers, but the Lego ones are just nicer.
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.
For most people anything that has only kept up with inflation over the last 50 years is more expense today than it was 50 years ago because wages have stagnated while prices have soared.
No, that's not the case.
For instance, the median household income in the United States in 1976 was $12,686. That's $72,857.55 today based on inflation (Google/Census Bureau Data + online inflation calculator).
However, Google's AI overview says "As of early 2026, the median household income in the United States is estimated to be approximately $84,000."
So the the median household income in the US today is about $11,000 ahead of inflation since 1976. People in the US are richer now that they were then.
> in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today. (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...)
The key terms in this discussion are disposable income and discretionary income.
Housing share if income has outpaced inflation, as have many other categories.
You can simultaneously make more and have less if your income doubles but rent goes from 25% to 50%
I remember reading in a personal finance book, it's not about what you earn, it's about what you keep. I think the concept applies here too, even if the context is slightly different.
Ok, but, what about median household size? Shouldn't we calculate the "richness" based not on how much each household makes but how much each member of a household gets from it? My guess is that households are smaller these days, but don't know.
Well if today's households are smaller that makes them even richer (more money split over fewer people).
Now what about the change in the number of earners per household? Houses don't earn wages, people do.
I'd be curious to know if in '76, most households were dual income or single. My intuition is that many families could afford to have a parent stay at home with the kids back then.
Additionally, let's not ignore the fact that housing appears to have gotten more expensive disproportionately to income rising. And if two parents are working they often have to pay $1000+ for daycare
Most replies don't like my comment because it hurts the narrative that people want to believe even after I quoted hard data. Especially since the 70s in the US were rife with economic and social issues. Very interesting how the mind works.
I wouldn't say people didn't like your comment. You don't seem to have been downvoted as far as I can tell. You did cite hard data but multiple other commenters explained why the data you provided doesn't tell the whole story. Just because people disagree with you doesn't mean they don't like your comment. They're just trying to understand more.
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.
For a while the complaint was that Lego was making too many big, specialized pieces, so I'm amused that the current complaint seems to be that they're using too many small generic ones.
They're not saying that they should be using big specialized pieces, they're saying that they should be using bigger boring standard pieces.
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.
That's the one I was building too!
Are they the pieces that are colored like Pixar characters? https://jaysbrickblog.com/reviews/review-lego-21357-disney-p...
It was this: https://jaysbrickblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/21357-D...
The symbolism was entirely lost on me. It's too subtle as a reference, and annoying to build when you can obviously see it's just a big square.
Alright. Now I feel extremely dumb amd embarrassed for not picking up on ANY of this!
I always charitably assumed that they designed models to utilize surplus pieces for the internal structures, pieces that might be hard to use elsewhere.
They may do that (designers have a "part budget" they can spend in various ways) but the real reason for weird colors inside models is to make it easier to build; especially since many of the models consist entirely of various shades of grey and black.
Various piece size also makes it easier to see if you got the wrong piece.
Definitely agree on the reduced usefulness for creative play. My kids got a lot of Lego sets as gifts when they were younger. Which is great, I love them playing with Legos. But once they're done with the instructions that's just kinda it. A Star Wars or Frozen or Minecraft themed kit ends up being all weird one-off specialty pieces. They are necessary to make an extremely detailed replica of the Millenium Falcon. But they have no place if you just want to grab a handful of bricks and start building whatever your imagination comes up with. We have a tub full of thousands of pieces and it never gets used. I think it's a bummer that they've pivoted to pushing these intricate $120 kits to adults rather than designs featuring more reusable components. You need to go out of your way to buy tranches of generic bricks if you want to have free play.
The Creator 3-in-1 sets are basically what you're looking for, they just don't get advertised much. A lot of them are more generified and rebuildable, sometimes even more refined versions of more expensive sets or parts of more expensive sets. Maybe the most obvious are the 3-in-1 dragon and dinosaur sets, which to me feel obviously like more generic reworks of D&D and Jurassic Park builds respectively, and have a lot more in the way of generic tiles and bricks than the licensed sets they're derived from.
A 50% increase in dimensions doesn't directly transform in a 50% increase in volume.
>The newer ones have more details, look slicker, but have a lot less "meat"
I presume that the 2022 model has as target audience nostalgic adults, but otherwise I agree, the new sets seem far more fragile then the ones released a decade ago. I think this is due to a recent focus towards adults from LEGO.
It's the other way around - because pieces cost roughly based on their size (amount of material) modern Lego sets are "denser" and heavier on average than similar sized sets of the past, because as piece count (and detail) goes up, piece size has been going down.
The discussion is about price, not cost. Lego is keeping the price per piece somewhat stable because they know people look at that, but as pieces get smaller (and thus cost less to make), their margins go up, and sets get smaller for the same price.
The set that started this subthread is very much an outlier in that regard. Usually it looks like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/legostarwars/comments/1lpuz4d/lego_...
It is a set for nostalgic adults. In fact, it is 50% larger so a grown up can hold it in their hands and feel it massive, like kids did in the 80s.
I have the re-release secondhand unopened and I think I paid about that much, so even in a collector's market, not terrible at all. An expensive toy to be sure but a deeply satisfying experience if you like that kind of thing.
Buying buckets of used bricks is pretty cheap, too. I bought an adult's old lifetime collection for $30 CAD. My 2 year old son and I are still sorting them.
Sorting Lego is such a pain in the ass. I have like a huge stash from when I was a kid. Back then we just had it all in a few tubs and dug to find a part. But somehow now I feel I must sort them… but the “right way” is ill defined and kind of sucks the joy out of playing (especially disassembling)
And there is no “right way” that I’ve even found. Sort by color and now the little pieces fall to the bottom and are hard to dig for. The best I can see is part type and size… maybe… even then it sucks out the fun. I want to build cool shit with my daughter not spend every moment of Lego time sorting. There is no joy in sorting…
Maybe I just revert back to the “big tub” approach.
I dunno. Thanks for listening to my TED talk I guess.
The evolution of lego sorting [2001]
https://news.lugnet.com/storage/?n=707
(Bah Might as well submit that as a top level story, others may enjoy it)
Yeah go for it! I'll add a comment though, now we are working on automated shifting bins with stacks of different size grids to filter the littles to the bottom and still easily pick up the top bigs to see them. There was been a discussion (by my children) about something involving a Lego vacuum they saw online.
Why sort by color if human eyes (unless colorblind) are great at recognizing different colors? Back when I was a kid, I used the big tub approach (with the Spyrius base octant as my shovel).
Build with what pieces you can find, rather than plan the perfect structure ahead. Improvising keeps the creativity going! Wheres fun if sorting legos sucks all the Joy from it
> Build with what pieces you can find, rather than plan the perfect structure ahead. Improvising keeps the creativity going!
That's a valid perspective. It can be a lot of fun to dig through the bricks and build freely, letting things take shape.
But it's also valid to have a design phase, where designs are crafted (perhaps even very precisely) and to enjoy that part -- perhaps even using some manner of LEGO-oriented CAD. (Or SolidWorks; I won't judge.)
And then: It's OK to find pleasure in following a plan to build a tangible thing in reality. This concept is strongly reinforced by the fact that LEGO sets come with instructions that are organized into simple steps.
One of the joys of LEGO is that it's very inclusively all fine.
Not to mention you can 3D print Duplo compatible bricks.
Wow, childhood memory unlocked. I had set 497. And, yes, it was a very expensive toy in its day.
I still got it. Has been in storage for a long time.
My child did build it some years ago, now it's in his room.
I remember the Lego 404 set being $40 in 1980. I actually can’t believe my Mom bought it for me.
Yes! We were never bougie enough to get Lego, I played with Sears bricks growing up.
Thanks for this reminder about the cost variable.
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 do consistently deliver a Lego-quality experience without the Lego price?
I guess it depends on what a "Lego-quality experience" means to you.
I grew up with the mid 80s to mid 90s kits, mostly castles and pirate ships, a few space sets. I think it's a very different experience compared to the nightmares I read about building the Mould King Eclipse-class Star Destroyer ( https://www.reddit.com/r/lepin/comments/1pdfx5y/mould_king_e... ). The concept of "bad luck with construction" is foreign to me, because most of the kits I remember building as a child were comparatively simple.
I'm working on this house with my 5yo daughter now: ( https://ja.aliexpress.com/item/1005006068361257.html ). Costs ~$20, we work on it about 30-45 minutes several times a week, so it takes months to finish. If she tears it apart 6 months from now to build something from her imagination, mission accomplished.
I hear people rave about this Cyberpunk-style kit, maybe this is closer to what you expect? https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_a_a4b2bvISsP6pyjkSxLw (Chinese language review) I plan to buy it at some point....for myself, not for my kids!
No, you'll always give up something.
If you want to spend some time looking at critiques from someone with experience, I find JANG's Youtube reviews of both LEGO and non-LEGO brick toys to be well-balanced. We have differing opinions, but he has decent rationales for most of his opinions.
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!
Lego is some kind of cultural icon now, and many people want to participate. That's why they have tons of sets aimed at adults over many themes, like plastic flowers, formula 1 helmets, old video game consoles.
Many of them are a really bad and expensive purchase if you only care about the theme itself, like the latest Death Star (or almost any Lego Star Wars set). You can usually buy a similar and cheaper non-lego model. Or the Titanic set too.
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.
You trust the Chinese knockoffs not to leach out poison?
Yes. What "poison" do you think they are leaching? Has anyone ever done any instrumented/lab testing that has shown ABS plastic toys to pose a threat?
I don’t know enough about plastics, and if it’s ABS it’s ABS, but how is it dyed? Point is I don’t know, so I buy from a company that has a reputation and would be held accountable, and would never buy kids toys from a fly by night business with no reason to care how carcinogenic their product ends up being
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.
The existence of specialty sets doesn’t subtract from creating building.
My kids get some of the specialty sets, build them, then hours later they’re either taken apart or heavily modified.
The specialty sets can provide some interesting unique pieces too. My kids have a photographic memory of each of those special pieces and which set they came from. They’ll remember them and search until they find that exact piece.
> Sets become collectible, perishable, trends can form, secondary markets exists, etc. It's simply about the baseline, not the principle. Sorry.
I don’t know what this is supposed to mean, but you can completely ignore secondary markets and collector sets if you want.
There are more sets and pieces than ever. You don’t have to collect anything.
> My kids have a photographic memory of each of those special pieces and which set they came from. They’ll remember them and search until they find that exact piece
I had the same skill (still do). Imagine following the instructions the first time. A part you're encountering for the first time stimulates the memory. I knew my collection like a dragon's hoard. For instance, I owned twelve white 1x2 tiles, all from Coast Guard Station, so that was the limiting piece when building tiny space-fighters...
Off-topic, but:
> My kids have a photographic memory
How do you know it is photographic memory? More than one of your kids have it? Do you know why or what may have contributed to its development?
> My kids have a photographic memory of each of those special pieces and which set they came from.
Read the whole sentence- this is clearly an informal use of 'photographic memory' to indicate that his kids are really into Lego and keep track of details in the way only kids can.
That is what I was thought, but I thought I was wrong.
> Of each of these special pieces
I didn't see him making any generalized claim. I recall the things I'm really into better than I do things I'm not, which is all I think he was saying about his kids. (My four year old remembers facts about volcanos - including the name of the scientist who made the claim - waaay better than he does where he left his shoes, so it tracks for me!)
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.
I really don't get this sentiment. The only sets that I think didn't contribute like this were the bionicle stuff. Getting a few more unique parts with a set gives you more options, not less.
I think you have the same feeling I have with most modern sets (and especially technic ones): not blocky enough and too much smooth curved surfaces. But you can still make blocky stuffs if you want to, while being able to learn modern lego building methods and integrate those curved designs in your builds.
I don’t think this is true at all. What do you mean by “general bricks”? If anything there is more brick-built stuff nowadays.
For example the Creator 3-in-1 Castle (which I got for my son for Christmas) is pretty similar to castle sets I had as a child but basically way better and with brick built horses rather than large mould ones
The 3-in-1 sets (where the set numbers actually begin with 31) should really be the first thing you look at when choosing a set for a child, and they deserve more praise. There are a lot of cool 3-in-1 sets out there. That castle (31168) is really good (and those horses are too!), and the haunted mansion (31167) is just cool with minifigs which are a hit with any kid.
For a small and cheap present that hamster (31376) is just too cute to pass up too.
It feels like those sets are where the Lego designers get to do their thing and do it right, without the weight of licenced IP (of which there is so much) and the trite offerings of the City range.
Other ones that to me felt like completely fair value and better than anything I had as a child were the Creator Bunny, Space Telescope, and Space Robot. Something like £18/£25/£25 the second two having light bricks included.
JK Brickworks has an alt build for the bunny that doesn’t require a massive amount of different pieces and makes it lay mini eggs.
Lego sets aimed at children are still good! They work as standalone toys, and can also be reassembled, modified and combined. Very few toys are like this.
Adults collect them, true, but there are whole lines dedicated to them.
The "Creator" sets in particular I feel harken the most to the company's roots. They usually have a few different builds per set and include all sorts of unique pieces for making your own creations. They also usually have very fun designs.
I recently built the NES and Game Boy sets and thought both of those were really great. The NES is probably not priced for most people (we try to stay under 10¢ a brick), but the level of detail, whimsy, and mechanics are all really well done. There are hidden scenes and Easter eggs built into the system that are revealed as you build rather than highlighted as features on the box. I was genuinely surprised and had a lot of fun sharing that with my family as we realized what was coming together.
The Game Boy was much more affordable. Less whimsical, but brought back memories of taking apart electronics and marveling at what these circuit boards and components could possibly be doing.
The Game Boy is apparently one of the best sets of 2025, cleverly built and a nice display item. Still, it is for adults, kids have tons of other sets to choose from.
I often look at these and think they’d be fun for me to display, then think I’d prefer an actual Game Boy disassembled as a piece of wall art [0]. This sort of stuff is just so cool in my opinion.
Edit: now that I look on EBay building my own display like that would probably cost maybe $60 vs $189? Broken Game Boys are $40 on eBay, so maybe a project I could do for fun!
[0] https://xreart.com/products/xreart-game-boy-pocket
Part of the problem is a solid 1/3 or more of Walmart's LEGO aisle is now various flowers - https://www.walmart.com/brand/lego/botanicals/10056123
These aren't being bought by kids and if the entire market becomes nostalgic adults, eventually they all die.
Its a kit for adults, ofc they are not being bought by kids.
My kids got a Minecraft set and just use the Warden as a toy and build with all the other bricks and a mat to put the poor lego characters in bad situations where they’ve woken the Warden up (he’s a strong enemy in Minecraft)
It was kinda funny to see the Lego Movie, which puts a bunch of emphasis on breaking the rules and mixing and matching everything, and then seeing them release the sets for the movie. I mean, it makes perfect sense. But it was still kinda lowkey humorous. But imo they're still a great toy; very fun to go to conventions and the like, where people just have giant piles of loose pieces you can buy by weight.
Lego is still amazing and you don't have to buy expensive sets for your kids to enjoy them. My son loves Legos and if he gets a set for his birthday it doesn't last long before he takes it apart and starts building other stuff with it.
This is one of those instances where it feels like people are terminally online. Or like the meme of the guy standing in the corner while everyone else is having fun at the party. You can find Legos being given away in a local buy-nothing group. It's still just as magical for kids as it ever was. These complaints are only from an adult who doesn't play with Legos. Who cares if sets become collectibles? Get other sets and have fun with Legos. These are toys that are meant to be played with. Play with them.
*Lego
They still sell the sets of generic bricks. At that point it is up to the individual customer to buy them if he prefers that. I could see your point if they stopped selling the more free form product, but they haven't.
These collectible (read: branded) sets are what saved them from bankruptcy, though.
Harry Potter did. Lego didn't anticipate that they would ship ONE MILLION copies of the first large Hogwart's school-castle set.
How can you go bankrupt with Lego? That's almost like going bankrupt with Coca Cola. It's probably one of the most if not the most recognizable toy brand there is. I'll have to read up on this, sounds like a fantastic voyage of mismanagement, if true.
https://blog.firestartoys.com/how-the-lego-company-almost-we...
It happened in the early 2000's. They actually posted a loss one year.
It was in one of those Netflix documentaries - I didn't realise it at the time but there was an 18 month period from 2003 to 2004 during which no new Harry Potter or Star Wars movies came out so sales of the licensed IP sets was down.
Is it episode 7 of "The Toys That Made Us" (May 2018)?
If so that'd make a lot of sense, same thing for Google where founders hated advertising but when it was either going under or getting rich by doing the 1 thing they didn't to go, they chose wealth.
Yes that would've been it.
Look at it from the corporation's viewpoint:
- they have a finite production capacity
- they have a finite warehousing capacity
- there is a certain number of sets which will be bought
- crates of bricks without an established design have a limited appeal and while a consistent SKU, don't have the baked in demand a new set will have
There's nothing stopping you from buying the basic sets and only the basic sets. They didn't stop making basic sets, unless you're objecting to the new colors that go beyond blue red yellow and black?
Co-branding is the death of good products, and in the case of toys, the death of fun
You can still buy “generic” lego sets if you want. Look for “Lego Classic” sets.
They're a bit too simplistic though.
Some of the classic 80s themes, like Space and Castle, primarily used regular bricks of reasonable sizes in a very limited palette of colours, with a few special parts unique to the theme. They were much more suited to taking apart and building your own creations.
These days, there's just too many specialised and small parts, and too many colours. Even if you buy a big grey Star Wars set, you'll find that the internal structure is often brightly coloured to make the instructions clearer - but this isn't ideal if you want to take it apart and build something else.
If you like City, Lego has you covered, even now (cue the old jokes about Lego City having 500 police stations, 400 fire stations, 20 gas stations, and no shops and no houses).
The other themes of old have been replaced by movie tie-ins, and it's hard to build a pirate world out of Pirates of the Caribbean sets
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. No eye strain from screens. Just pure creativity and imagination.
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.
And that is the thing about raising a kid these days. Those damn machines have replaced so much… because yeah Minecraft is like a souped up version of Lego where in creative mode you have every part you need. And you don’t have to dig for it or anything. And it has survival mode and a whole huge thing on top of that.
It’s so difficult to know the boundaries. People from older generations giving advice about screen time and stuff simply don’t understand… “screen time” for me growing up was broadcast tv and a limited set of video games. If you didnt like what was on tv, too bad. Do something else. If you were bored of whatever Nintendo game you had… too bad, do something else. But now… you can get literally anything. Plus the iPad gets used to make videos of playing with the cat, or she will have tea parties with her stuffies and make them tea using some weird cooking game. Etc.
No previous generation had to face this. It’s an order of magnitude or more shifted from when they raised us. Tablets basically can replace almost every single toy from growing up besides ones that require being physical (rc cars, bricks, digging in the yard)… but books, cameras, light brights, etc… all replaced.
It’s completely uncharted water us parents are facing. Anybody that claims to “know the right rules” for tablets and technology is lying to you. They don’t. Nobody does. All we can do is use our best judgement and try to give ourselves credit for doing the best we can.
> completely uncharted water
Good thing with analogue toys like legos is you know your kid is playing with legos that is wiring X brain cells for Y skills, even if Y skills are deprecated in digital world. It's hard to say with current gen, there's screen time to try to shape behavior, there are occasional kids who are tech literate maestros which every generation has, but plenty of kids who rely on LLMs, can only finger type because they grew up with touch screens. We're in tech timeline where passive users, i.e. most kids are impressed by millennials who can write cursive and touch type, other kids build stuff that previously required teams of 100s of engineers.
Without a tangible feedback you won't get any digital skills for spatial memory and coordination, peiod.
And the kids you mention can barely understand files, filesystems and don't even mention them about O(n) notation. If any, these kids doing the jobs of 1000s of engineers are proportionally worse than the average secretary skills in the 80's.
Plenty of tangible feedback on screen, just not tactile. I'm bucketing 2 types, the maestros who have deep understanding and the ones who don't bother. The former are the otherwise top 1% talent who are better off playing with with LLMs/comptuers where ceiling is high vs lego. The latter are being distracted that yeah their personal skills worse than past, but fake floor is also raised so much that functionally they can fake junior work, they just lack critical skills to get past.
The ones with LLM's lack introspection, researching skills, analisys and who knows more. They are doomed and worse, they aren't even aware of it.
Agree. They seem to have a “price per piece” equation. Perhaps as a result, the 5+ sets are made of hundreds of small pieces.
Older sets had larger foundational and platform pieces which gave a good starting place for new creative builds.
Today, airplanes fuselages, wings, and car chassis are instead built up piece by piece.
It’s hard for my 6 year old to start creative builds that are stable when he hardly has any pieces larger than 2x6 across dozens of sets.
My wife found a huge mixed bin from the 80s and 90s at an estate sale. It really helped.
Several years ago I wrote this reddit post analyzing LEGO piece pricing: https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/1328f52/detailed_lego...
It's a little out of date, but the conclusions are still relevant.
Main things of note: Brickheads are pretty economical as a "parts pack." No significant correlation between per-piece pricing and IP licensing (except for Star Wars). Star Wars and City sets are overpriced.
> Today, airplanes fuselages, wings, and car chassis are instead built up piece by piece.
Well, people did complain about the whole 'special pieces' trend that you praise.
As a kid I loved the giant boat hull piece because it was sealed and actually floated. This in combination with some larger pylon-type pieces from the Star Wars set meant you could build floating cities and vehicles and such and mess with them in the kitchen sink.
I wish I had hobbies as cheap as LEGO now...
They still make "boats that really float" today: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/arctic-explorer-ship-6036...
Lego suffers from a fandom problem among adults: They have strong nostalgia for how it was when they were kids and they think everything since then is against the natural order of Lego.
The best way to enjoy Lego is to give it to some kids and watch them get creative with it. Unlike all of the Internet complaints, kids have no problem having fun with Lego and being creative in their own ways.
> The best way to enjoy Lego is to give it to some kids and watch them get creative with it.
But there's a very limited age range in which todays kids will appreciate physical toys, before they're introduced to screens...
I grew up with videogames. Still played lego pretty much till 7th grade.
You can also buy (used) sets or assorted blocks from when you were a kid.
5yo sets have smaller pieces but also use big foundational pieces. Also the builds are simpler and better explained. Sets for 8yo are more complex.
> Older sets had larger foundational and platform pieces which gave a good starting place for new creative builds.
They stopped doing the many unique parts because it was bankrupting them.
The decline of technic sets is such a shame. There's so little support for anything but representative models of specific cars, despite the platform being able to support a ton of mechanical creativity.
The disappearance of real metal Meccano is really crazy. I know metal is expensive, but also bulk processing of it has never been cheaper or faster.
It's also a shame because it's really good for mechanical rapid prototyping and you can bend and cut it in a pinch and it stays put. But buying vintage Meccano to abuse like that is expensive and feels like a war crime.
My son inherited (well, we're co-owning it I guess) my Lego, and that includes two sets of Technic aimed at educational use (1030 and 1032) which come with a stack of instructions for fairly simple mechanical models to build — each demonstrating basic mechanical principles like gear reduction and pulleys. Those sets used the 4.5V motors which have all broken down, but we also have the 1990 Technic Control Centre fully working and use those instead. That Control Centre is a simple controller used with 9V motors. It is brilliant for explaining the basic principles of computerised automation.
No app. No Bluetooth. Just wires and a simple controller built to be used and understood by children.
https://rebrickable.com/sets/8094-1/technic-control-centre
^ This
Historically Lego was a construction toy. This is what it was in my youth. These days Lego sell model construction kits - most are constructed once and then the owner plays with the model. This represents a radical and fundamental change. I’m not sure when it happened or how suddenly it happened as there is a large (decades) gap in time since I played with Lego as a kid and my current exposure to Lego via my own kids. Our home is full of Lego models but I don’t recall seeing my kid using his vast amount (compared to the shoe box I used to store my Lego as a kid) of Lego to actually construct something. The “studless” change - with its inside-out building technique makes it virtually impossible to alter a model once built - unlike the old bottom-up approach where it’s trivial to alter. It makes me sad because I remember with nostalgia the hours I spent building all sorts of fanciful constructions with my box of generic Lego pieces but I also acknowledge that model building — which I do with my kids - is also fun. But it’s just not the same play/toy as it was years ago.
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 Mindstorms was a head-scratcher to me. Hell, there was an entire international tournament built around Mindstorms. I know FLL still exists, but why kill that darling specifically?
NXT still kicks ass by the way. I have a backup of the NXT programming environment somewhere, it can be coaxed into running on Windows 11.
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 think that's fair, though I'm sure we would disagree on plenty of edge cases in the definition of a "display-oriented" set.
It just feels to me like AFOLs poopoo on any set for having stickers, without considering the advantages stickers have from the POV from the POV of a child with few LEGOs and fewer dollars.
In my case I think we can agree that the Lego Icons series is mostly display sets I think. At least those are what I was thinking of and that is how Lego markets them as well.
They do tend to use printed graphics on those, right?
My #21334 is technically Ideas, not Icons, but it's in that same aesthetic sphere and it uses printed bricks.
My #10266 is the most "display-ish" set that has stickers, but it's also well within the gray area between "plaything" and "display piece."
The one I have is definitely full of stickers.
#10298 Vespa 125
stickers > just looks cheap due to different surfaces and colors
They are cheap!
To print on a piece you must run the inkjet assembly line, do QC on it.. With early Collectable Minifig series, I heard they outsourced that. I imagine inkjet lines that run all day for one piece type (maybe having changeable jigs.)
It's cheap to print a whole sheet of stickers!
Another approach that isn't so cheap is: in-mold transfer printing sheets. I learned about this at plastics shows around 2000; Apple used it on the all-in-one spotted iMac in 2001-ish.
Now since Lego ships perpetually ships 1x4s and 1x2s with black smileys or such, I guess carbon black in-mold transfer must be cost-effective. (That's a guess)
I know we're gonna be arguing taste in stickers forever.
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.
I have one since a few years (it's a display set) and you can clearly see the stickers now as they haven't aged the same being subjected to sunlight.
I also have a set from another manufacturer that prints everything and there you don't have this problem.
But you can only remove them once, and then never recreate the original set. Not great.
Silverlight. 3.0 was built on Silverlight. And I guess other 3rd party proprietary stuff.
I coached FLL 9+ and Junior FLL 6-8. FLL moved on to Boost and Java programming. These days I only do high-school FIRST.
Another detail: National Instruments declined to update the Mindstorms software. Just wasn't a profitable business case. (The LabView vi libraries, I dunno if they worked past 2015.. I stopped upgrading.)
I finally had the time to get back into FRC mentoring last year, for just one season. I changed jobs and had to move across the country before this season started. I miss it dearly.
> the push towards smartphone-dependent toys feels weird
I haven't seen this push? The new Lego Smart stuff is explicitly "screen free play". There is an app but it's just for firmware update and configuration and you can't even connect it unless the brick is on the charger.
Lego has been testing modern sets without instructions and instead tell you to download an app for your phone.
The ones I know of are the Mario ones, but they apparently need a phone anyway to setup the little characters.
Which Mario ones are you thinking of? Because for the only ones I know of with electronic character, you just place them over special tiles they can read to select how they will react.
All normal sets still come with a booklet don't they? They offer the option sometimes though.
Plastic parts bags are getting replaced by paper ones, but the booklets aren't going anywhere.
Hmm, the comment I was replying to was deleted.
I hate app obsolescence, and licenses that expire on your old hardware (Microsoft Word..) I exhibit 1980s video games. The hardware just continues to work. It's a disgrace what happens to mobile games, they just disappear. (Whattaya do, save all your old phones? I'm hating on you, Atari Classics app on iPad 2; revoked my paid license to use it.)
But to be fair, Lego has gone to great lengths to keep their companion software alive. Still, the nature of mobile: apps require constant updates to stay listed for new OS versions.
For one, Lego Commander existed uselessly on my phone long after it ceased to work... until one iOS it wouldn't install anymore.
Lego giving you a CD with software and instruction was a comfort (challenge: find a CD drive!) but only Mindstorms really.
For desktop apps in the 2010s, Lego relied on Silverlight to get Mac and PC compatibility. So what happens when you rely on a Microsoft framework... still as late as 2015 I was still able to download Mindstorms 2.0 (introduced 2002??) from Lego.
With instructions pdfs, Lego has been ok to let hobbyists reproduce the downloads (last I saw.)
Another thing Lego did was to provide SDKs for Mindstorms (a while after the community reverse-engineered a lot of it...). Opening it up that way was encouraging. (Lego even started distributing HiTechnic's 3rd party sensors, the folks that reverse-engineered the Mindstorms 1.0 RCX.)
I was part of the fan movement from 1998-2001 that hammered on the message for Lego to open things up. What happened is that they hired several of us :)
Oddly enough I found the Duplo line much more fun to play with as our kid went through the blocks years. You could build something substantial with fewer block clicks, there were fewer different types of blocks, they were less fiddly and prone to vanishing into rugs/carpets, etc. Also the proper Legos tended to be sets which makes it very stressful to mix them into a misc bag.
Duplo is also compatible with regular Lego. We used Duplo for the big structure and Lego on top for details. Great way to build huge stuff quickly.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/LEGO-kom...
If you want advancements in engineering and plastics for much better prices, see the wonders that Bandai has made with modern Gundam models. A Gundam Aerial HG is under $20, and you end up with a large multicolor model that assembles easily, has minimal mold lines, and needs no glue. And that's one of the intro models
Yeah, that's some brilliant mold engineering!
>minimal mold lines
I think this comes from higher tonnage (clamp force) molding machines. Injected plastic exerts force at the mold seam. Pressing the mold open by even a teeny tiny amount is unpalatable. Mold lines also can result where a mold has insertable parts, like sliding rods to form inner holes.
Of the biggest difference is that model makes /only/ a Gundam. Legos don’t have that limitation.
But those models do look rad!
You weren’t kidding. I just took a look and the models are gorgeous!
They suck because instead of buying the rights to the bricks they outright stole the design, the packaging and the marketing materials from the original inventor.
And then they sued the pants of everybody that tried to do the same thing to them.
That's a simplification of the Kiddicraft story.
Yes, it was a shame. After Lego lost in court (to Hilary Page's heirs I think by then) I believe they finally atoned for that.
Still, Lego didn't just sell the Kiddicraft brick unmodified. Lego patented the tubes inside, which gave it superior clutch power. (I have a lot of 2x4 bricks with "Pat Pend" molded on them!)
As I've heard it, Ole Kirk Christiansen had seen Hilary Page's brick as a sample from a molding machine vendor. Lego previously made wooden toys (until his son Godtfred allegedly set the factory on fire) and was casting about for what production to invest in for the future.
The Kiddicraft brick was a little rectangular box, no tubes inside. A lot of brick toys came out in the 60s that were little shells with varying clutch power.
For a museum of the many brick toys, go to https://www.architoys.net
In particular, Betta Bilda, Block City, American Bricks.
He took them back to Denmark and copied them.
https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2024/02/l-is-for-legos-...
The tubes came (much) later. Even the boxes were direct copies.
> 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.
I think it's more the consistency of product design than the manufacturing process. Everything around me, especially in the software world, seems to change for no good reason on a frequent basis. Companies change products all the time for reasons other than utility/functionality. A consistent specification over 50+ years is an outlier.
> It's not like it's hard to keep producing the pieces to the same original specifications.
It’s extremely hard to build consistent products to the spec.
There are a lot of knock-off LEGO on the market now. We get them as gifts. Some of them stack okay, some are too tight, some are too loose.
It’s hard to manufacture at scale at these tolerances and keep it that way for decades.
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
Did you even read the article? No, even just the Title? Nothing is ever impressive I guess. Certainly not a 60 years running manufacturing process where your childhood pieces can be passed down and combined seamlessly with a set you just bought for your kid. So trivial and easy to do guys.
The precision in tolerance over the years is truly breathtaking.
It speaks to Ole Kirk Christiansen's impossible standards: "Even the best is not good enough" (Det Bedste Er Ikke For Godt.) (usually translated "Only the best is good enough.")
Much more strenuous in Danish than the usual quoted translation! but I know some Danish, and most of all that's how Kjeld Kirk Christiansen explained it to an American audience at Brickfest 2003 (IIRC the year).
As I commented elsewhere, it's not 60 years. Sure, the outer dimensions have not changed and are very strict metric Lego Units. [1] But there have been continual improvement that render old and new less than wonderful to use together. You don't really want to mix 70s-early 80s bricks.
Conversely, if you're reselling those old sets, you need to find vintage pieces (though also Lego would use up older pieces and begin to use newer ones in that set)
But bricks from the mature design of the 80s even didn't age so well (clutch too hard, walls can warp), and there have been many improvements to the interior of a brick. All for sound engineering reasons. Thinner walls and internal voids to prevent warp, subtle changes to fine-tune clutch power.
It's a story of continual improvement, but it makes the old bricks seem less wonderful.
Weird thing Lego started to advertise in the 2000s: Lego bricks reach the proper clutch power after 7 insertions! I guess you have to stress-work the new plastic...
[1] I've used a micrometer on pieces of various age and can't get a difference from the outside. Doesn't help that they compress under measuring.
I feel the same... I remember as a kid, being able to get kits of hundreds of just random blocks and variations and just being able to build/play... all the sets today are all custom blocks that just constrain you and often aren't significantly reusable while I'm not sure that I've even seen basic block kits anywhere in decades now.
edit: I know you can get thousands piece brick sets from third parties or random bulk set sales on Amazon... the issue is the random bits are from the current sets mostly with little reuse value, and the bricks sets are from third parties of questionable tolerance compared to real lego. I just want to be able to get a classic 1000-3000 piece set of classic bricks/pieces from Lego proper, even if it's $100-200 total, still way more than 3rd party but maybe not the same margins for Lego as the bespoke sets.
edit2: there are some "Lego Classic" sets that are closer to what I would like to see, this is probably the closest.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5FMF8BF/
But even then, maybe need that many more bricks that are just bricks... again, there are third party sets that are all block variants that are much bigger/cheaper... would just be nice to be able to get more of those without paying an arm and a leg.
> all the sets today are all custom blocks that just constrain you and often aren't significantly reusable
Given the crazy assembly that is happening in the adjacent room, my kid would vehemently disagree.
Having the same experience. My kids enjoy getting new sets, but most of them are quickly customized or just destroyed to build something completely new. Terrible take in the parent.
I believe the inflation adjusted price per piece has remained fairly consistent? https://flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/priceperp...
Perhaps sets of a given physical size have more pieces now compared to before? Not sure.
Quality is expensive.
Lego’s net profit margin is only about 19%.
They couldn’t lower prices much even if they wanted to.
I heard your same rant in the 1980s - only small details have changed (not mindstorms then ...) But kids who want to build have always been able to, and most sets mix and match for those kids.
> I heard your same rant in the 1980s
The two options would be that either the perception is unsubstantiated but persists, or there has been a continuous decline for the last 40 years. I'm strongly leaning towards the latter. I also having the same issues in the 00s looking at old sets from the 80s, and looking back now the 00s look much better than what we have today. Obviously not in every way, and not all recent sets were bad. But overall I have the feeling that there's been a steady trend that the bricks got better but the sets got worse
Lego was always very expensive. They have long made weird custom pieces and those sets have sold well - despite not having the long staying ability that the more basic sets have.
Nostalgia 'aint what it used to be
Maybe my perception of 00s models is colored by nostalgia, hard to know. But I haven't been alive in the 80s, so my perception of them during the 00s should be pretty uncolored
My recall was that the 90s was pretty awesome, and the 00s fell into BURPS and large pieces and tie-in sets.
But I think most people either agree there was a dark ages where they went almost bankrupt and did some really questionable themes, or the best time was when they were a kid.
The 90s catalogs rocked in a way that no website ever can, though.
People have complained about things getting worse literally for millennia
Either 2000 years ago life was great, or people saying "things were better" tend to be wrong
https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-a...
Things are different, people want different things today then they did in the 80s. The top lego sets of the 80s were bought by rich parents for their kids. Adults didn't buy lego for themselves.
Today they're bought by rich adults for themselves, who want different things
Meanwhile kids aren't as bored. In the early 90s as a 10 year old I used to watch soap operas with my parents, because there wasn't much more to do at 8pm on a wet december evening. That was evidenced by Coronation street getting 17 million viewers, well over 1 in 4 people in the country.
Today the same program gets 2 million viewers, nearer to 1 in 40.
That's not because it's materially worse, but because there's more things to do.
Lego has the same issue. In the 80s as a kid there was little to do at home, so things like lego, meccano, spirograph took up the time. Today there's a lot more to do.
There's a reason 80s lego sets aren't as popular as they were in the 80s - the actual sets - and it's clearly not the quality (as a lego 80s set is the same today as it was 40 years ago).
In terms of creativity of model options, the Chinese compatibles are stomping them.
You can even get a model of post-explosion Chernobyl. Not to mention all the sci-fi tie in from Star Trek to Warhammer that real Lego hasn't signed contracts for. But if you want an 60cm Gloriana class, there it is.
Plus Technics-ish sets and bulk boxes that aren't 75% special body panels that only fit that specific model, since Technics itself mostly seems to have been downgraded to the automotive brands advertising department.
When you build a knock off set, though, you can tell that the Lego versions have so much more thought put into the actual build process and the stability and functionality of the finished product.
I got my first Lego set in the early 70’s through a Velveeta cheese mail in promotion. The company almost went out of business in the early 90’s before they discovered movie tie-ins. I believe the quality of play was lost in this transition because the sets became more literal and less open ended. My first big set was a fire station which certainly literal but somehow seems more open ended then the movie tie/in sets.
The fire stations et al still exist, its just that they don't sell nearly as well as the tie-ins do, at least based on shelf space allocations.
This year's isn't huge: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/fire-station-with-fire-tr...
But the police station is pretty big: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/police-station-60316
(To me this looks more fun, but I'm a pirate guy: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/police-prison-island-6041... )
Here is the set I have. I think I still have most of the parts.
https://brickset.com/sets/570-1
I'm not a Lego nerd, but I recently saw a really sweet Lego DeLorean in Walmart priced at almost $200. Now that I have disposable income, I would have impulse-purchased that thing so hard if it would have been closer to $100. But I can't quite bring myself to part with a pair of benji's for a plastic toy, no matter how thoroughly it triggers my nostalgia.
Lego was always expensive.
> many sets feel like display models than something you can play with.
That's because they are. There probably never been this many adults building lego than today.
> The Mindstorms/NXT line had huge potential but then just sort of fizzled out.
That's a small niche in today's world, a child is too young for arduino/feather/cyberbrick/whatever.
> many sets feel like display models than something you can play with
That’s what I thought when comparing to my childhood sets, but it doesn’t stop my kids from loving them and playing with them.
My kids are learning a lot of cool building tricks from the advanced sets that I never thought of as a kid. Lots of angle pieces, hinges, and creative building.
That's probably the biggest change in the last few decades, they went from never doing anything out of the ordinary to SNOT (studs not on top) for "adult model" sets only (first in the trains I believe), to now where advanced techniques are used even it children's toys that aren't models.
The expensive sets ARE display models. They still have the older style generic sets for significantly cheaper.
Lego were always expensive toys.
Yes they are aggressively targeting "grown ups" with many sets, but they also have very playable sets. I don't see any problem with having different offerings.
There are enough sets for everyone to find something interesting if they are into Lego.
Basic Lego is actually decently affordable. It's the collector's sets that adults would buy whose prices are jacked sky high, based on demand it seems.
I've bought a decent amount of Duplo and Lego kits for my son (currently 3 years old) and it's great value.
The fact that "10$ a pound for used, 10¢ a piece for new" has remained true as a good rule of thumb for 20+ years tells you something.
They’ve basically adopted the Nintendo model. People have strong emotional connections for both, which can then be exploited for money.
It has momentum because they haven’t let quality and innovation slide. They know customers will be out with pitchforks if quality drops.
If you're not interested in the new sets, the core product is readily available. Moreover, enjoy the fact that you can get that bucket of bricks for cheap partly because the expensive shiny high-margin SKUs provide a subsidy.
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 Mindstorms, though.
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.
Probably this one: https://brickset.com/sets/8865-1/Test-Car
The difference in the instructions between classic and modern sets is interesting too, instructions for both the main and alternate build in just 38 pages. Compared to the modern instructions, which often add just a couple of parts per page.
Set prices are a lot more reasonable if you stay away from the branded options, Disney and Star Wars sets, especially have a intense premium associated with them.
Maybe one last thing that sucks is that it’s all plastic.
At least LEGO is probably the toy that gets "passed down" the most, my own LEGO parts who I got from an older cousin, is now on its 4th generation (first my sisters children, then some family-friend to theirs), and I'm sure the pile(s) will get further passed down as time goes on.
True, but at least it's not single use. Is there a viable alternative? A non-petrochemical plastic that has the same qualities? It's not like they can whittle them out of wood or cast them with metal so it'll always be some form of polymer, and I'm sure they would jump at a more ecologically sound option.
Lego has been testing making some pieces out of corn-based plastic or other natural plastics. https://www.lego.com/en-us/sustainability/sustainable-materi...
Some of the first forays resulted in notably lower-quality bricks.
lego compatible bricks made from wood do exist. they probably don't last as long though.
I'm sure they don't unless made from a stable hardwood or coated somehow to resist expansion/contraction which would defeat the whole point of using a sustainable material. Lovely idea though, I really like wooden objects.
The smartphone dependent is a line to not cross. Anytime we get the phone dependent sets they are returned and analog toys are chosen instead.
Other manufacturers give LEGO a run for their money nowadays. Look at the CaDA Mercedes-AMG One for example.
> a lot what the company does today just sucks. Set prices are outrageou
This was all done planned and implemented by this one consulting guy (MCK?), who became CEO after delivering his report from his consulting company, Lego was near bankrupt back then - he started with all this subbranding shitty stuff and the "colorful" bricks and introduced all these many many "single-use-case-bricks" for more and more sets.
I was just about to reply about their financial woes over the years too [0][1][2]
Being a collector of stuff ever since I was a kid (toys, comics, cards, physical media, printed collateral, etc), and being in my 40's (target market / demographic for expensive nostalgia) living in 2026 (the world is a casino! everything's a collector's item!), it is a little annoying to see LEGO appear to turn into something that it wasn't .. but objectively that doesn't eradicate the fundamentals of LEGO, and I'd rather see them be a healthy company with longevity (via current product strategy) than wither and die on the vine out of stubbornness.
That said, aside from leaning on the AAA IP that drives prices through the roof in some lines, I do wish they'd stop with the tech gimmicks (Hidden Side, Smart Bricks), renew one of their focuses on real tech/engineering-adjacent platforms (Mindstorms / NXT / a modern version of these), and acknowledge that wealthy adults aren't the only customers. It really prices out young, fertile minds who a lot of their product and ethos should be directed towards.
Of course, that's a huge problem right now with anything that can command aftermarket prices as collectibles! [3]
[0] - https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/innovation-almos...
[1] - https://blog.firestartoys.com/how-the-lego-company-almost-we...
[2] - https://www.toypro.com/us/news/710/learn-the-story-behind-le...
[3] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7FZWovUTmL0
I mean it is a business after all, trying to make money..
I must say, the new smart bricks with all sorts of sensors(color, gyro, distance etc) triggers the inner child in me. I can’t wait to get them for my kiddo and teach him how that magic actually works beneath.
The regular LEGO at this points feels “just plastic” and I won’t feel bad offloading that purchase to AliExpress.
Just buy from one of the many way cheaper way better competitors.
If you're complaining about the prices, remember how capitalism works. The price is set by buyers, not sellers. That's the invisible hand, the seller will set the price to what buyers show they will pay. If you're unhappy about $500 for a Millennium Falcon or whatever, your beef is not with the company for accepting that when people choose to pay it, it's with those other buyers for paying that much.
As the other replies are saying, it's mostly brand power. If your complaint is that $500 for a Falcon is monopolistic because there's no competition because nobody else can legally sell Falcons, the monopoly is really with Star Wars not Lego, they're just delegating it to Lego. You're always free to find your cheapest source of bricks perhaps from other manufacturers and build your own equivalent.
As for stickers and apps and the other stuff... yeah that's the enshittification that also always accompanies capitalism. It's lamentable but it only changes if enough customers vote no with their wallets.
>If you're complaining about the prices, remember how capitalism works.
Why get up at all, when gravity always just pulls me back down?
Isn't that just capitalism? The rule is for companies to keep pushing for higher margins and profit, so given enough time any company will default to shady tactics and product enshitification.
[dead]
Maybe if something is too expensive don't buy it?
More 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 lines on the black one, and it's enough to produce significantly more friction, and that difference is utilised in designs.
And apprently there's now a new version of the black one, and people notice these things, and measure them - this article gives an idea of just how these tiny changes, well below tolerances for some of the "knockoffs", can produce a different effect:
https://ramblingbrick.com/2021/01/27/what-if-they-introduced...
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 or low friction
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.
I think they were light grey as well. They were commonly used to make cranks out of the 4185 belt wheel or attach objects to the wheel.
> Light grey pins have always been...
I think the black ones were a later addition, likely late nineties.
Per the article I linked to, '93.
Which is presumably why I didn't notice until my son started playing with it, as I'd stopped playing with mine by then.
> it's one of the areas where LEGO is generally superior to the similar types of bricks
Imho, this is, objectively, not true (anymore).
Pantasy with GoBricks are superior in coloring and fit; Cobi are excellent for things that should not be taken apart anymore (like tank models); Lumibricks are excellent in fit and have amazing illumination solutions that are lightyears (haha) ahead of lego.
I got the Pantasy Neo Geo set a while ago, and was pretty blown away compared to the better known imitators that have been available at retail. The mechanics are not as robust as I’d expect from Lego, but it was about a quarter of the price and externally looks as good with some really fun and well thought out details.
Interesting - never come across Pantasy/GoBricks, or Lumibricks but then it's a few years since my son decided he was too old for LEGO, and I see Pantasy is just a few years old, and Funwhole/Lumibricks just a few more. Great if there are more options of similar quality.
But "should not be taken apart anymore" fits into an entirely different category for me. If you don't need to be able to take them apart any more, it fundamentally changes requirements.
True. But lego has stood the test of time. Thats way harder
Lot of time left, by my count
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.
More anecdata.
Lego from my youth, which was a hand-me down at the time, doesn't fit well with new lego. So it might be 40 years old, (which seems like a long time until you actually reach that age!)
I think it's more likely do to plastic aging than the original tolerances though.
To add even more - I was handed down Lego that belonged to my mom in the 60s, played with them through the 80s and 90s, and now my kids have them today. I wouldn’t be able to tell you which were hers and which were mine.
A plausible defence if anyone asks for it back!
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 :)
They’ve been around over 90 years and have been making plastic bricks since the 1950s and are arguably the most successful children’s building toy product in history. They have amazing brand recognition, and beyond the toys, they have successful video games and movies.
According to my local news outlet, they’re up 12% in revenue growth in the last year (which outpaces the rest of the toy industry) and up 1,200% since 2004.
Ha, I noticed this too! And even my 3 y/o picked up on this.
We have a set (something with Spiderman IIRC) that attached wheels with yellow pins that allow for better rolling of wheels. The black pins are too tight for this indeed.
IIRC there's also light yellow pins that are also light friction
For me, the beauty of Lego was just a huge bin of interconnectable parts that I used to make whatever my imagination came up with. For my kids, Lego is pre-built model airplane set that they build one time and then display. I liked my Lego better :)
You can still buy LEGO Classic which is just a bunch of bricks.
From experience there's a motivation, almost a compulsion, to follow the instructions to build the cool thing. Then... they sit there, those bricks never taken apart.
That compulsion doesn't seem present in freeform building, and there's been zero interest in it in our household. I know that's not true for all, but it seems like a lost art. Maybe it's because the IP sets show how but not the why it's constructed in a certain way, so given a bag of Lego most wouldn't know the process of creating something they can see in their minds eye within the constraints of the available bricks.
When I was a kid and I got a new set, I would build it according to the instructions, play with it, and then disassemble it and sort it into my brick collection. Occasionally I would get the instructions back out and re-build it, and other times I would kitbash and make random cool stuff.
My parents still have all my Legos from the 90s, including the instructions, and I've been able to rebuild a bunch of the space ships with translucent neon accents. It's pretty sweet and my kids love it.
Lego used to encourage building new things by putting alternate builds on the back of the box, but intentionally not giving you the instructions. Now they do 3-in-1 for certain sets instead, which misses the point of that.
Not really. Even LEGO Classic has way too many different colors (and only a few bricks of each), and too many weird shapes. Even if you buy a lot of it, it's hard to make your own designs that actually look nice (as in, not having that one incorrectly-colored brick in that one place, and so on).
I for the love of God can't comprehend why LEGO Classic has 4 shades of blue. It makes everything worse.
Makes me think there could be a big cognitive difference when playing with Lego as well, for example, divergent vs convergent thinking.
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.
https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=10698-1 is an example, doesn't include just bricks, but things like windows and wheels
After 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 sets do not have this requirement.
I think Lego has a huge incentive to promote this idea that they are high quality to justify the enormous price of decades old technology.
The reason this is impressive has less to do with the tolerances themselves and more to do with backward compatibility across decades at scale. That's the genuinely hard part.
The history here is deeper than most people realize. The United States spent fifty years (roughly 1800 to 1853) at the Springfield and Harper's Ferry armories trying to achieve what LEGO now does routinely: parts manufactured to tight enough tolerances that they are truly interchangeable without fitting. In 1853, a visiting British inspector randomly selected ten muskets made in ten different years, disassembled them, mixed the parts, and reassembled ten functional muskets using only a screwdriver. Tolerances of a thousandth of an inch. It was considered impossible by most of the engineering establishment of the time.
The way they got there was by building machines, then using the parts those machines made to build better machines, then using those improved parts to build even better machines. A virtuous circle of transferring skill from human hands to tooling. This is the actual origin story of what historians call the American System of Manufacture, and it's the foundation the entire modern automotive supply chain sits on.
So yes, any competent injection molder holds tight tolerances today. But that's precisely the point: the reason it seems unremarkable now is that two centuries of compounding precision made it so
After working both in automotive and at LEGO, I think LEGO is more impressive tolerance wise when it comes to molds, molding and tolerance quality control.
Also to correct you, LEGO has been making most of the parts for decades, some have had changes due to new materials (which you can read upon online) but besides the ones that remained the same (not really), many new system elements got released in the last decades and new I.P tied elements get released on a yearly basis.
Agreed. Same or greater injection molding challenges for bottle caps, small plastic containers, things that also are in the hundreds of millions of parts annually. More challenging as they are often using polypropylene which is harder to mold due to its high anisotropy (shrinks in different rates depending on if it's flow or cross-flow direction).
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.
We use a Lego phantom[0] to control for geometric distortions in a few of our MRI studies. The tolerances are so tight that it works really well. Especially important in multi-site studies.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_phantom
Really cool trivia, thanks for sharing :D
> 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 difficult to stack onto a new brick, or didn't have any friction left.
In my experience the bricks that didn’t snap well would have too many teeth marks
There were some bricks from the very early days that were not made from ABS, nor did they have the current box and pin style. Those are often loose (or broken).
Was this written using AI? It does contain some interesting information, but the same information is repeated (with small variations) over and over again in a mind-numbing way that made me stop reading after about half of the article...
It certainly feels that way. Some tells:
"Precision, for LEGO, isn't an engineering choice, it's a brand promise." - The classic "It's not just x, it's y", just minus the "just".
"One philosophy optimizes for cost, the other for perfection." - Again we see the x/y structure; AI writing often features these forms, eg comparisons (x vs y), conversions (x into y), negated emphasis (not x, but y), etc.
"When you have multiple parts in an assembly, use statistical analysis for tolerance stack-up rather than worst-case math. Traceability matters. Track your defects so feedback turns precision into reliability." - More x/y followed by a short stinger ("Z matters"), and the closing sentence again follows the "x/y" pattern.
For funsies I tossed the whole thing into a purported AI detector and it said 90+% confidence of AI. I don't trust those types of things very much and suspect they have high false positive rates, but I have read that AI writing generally has measurably lower entropy, so maybe it's plausible, and in this case it aligns with my existing beliefs, so it obviously must be true.
"That level of traceability makes quality assurance more like a forensic investigation than a random inspection."
This was the tell for me.
Lego's original moat was their patent. This expired in the 80s, and so their new moat became their manufacturing tolerances. None of their competitors could match the quality of their product. This lasted until about the 2010s when clone brands in China finally caught up, and coincidentally, Lego's own quality started slipping. Thus, they needed a new moat, and the choice was obvious: licensing.
I wish Lego would find a digital equivalent as universal as the bricks for programming. I think it could be another moat for them. But it seems they keep changing it and it does not seems as simple or as universal as it could be. I am thinking more programming with blocks than using a tablet etc. to program the blocks. IMO it is a wasted opportunity.
What knock off brands come even close in quality? Everything I’ve tried that isn’t name brand LEGO is hot garbage.
I've ordered 2 sets off of AliExpress (the Stargate BC303 and BC304 MOCs) and was quite impressed. No box, digital instructions, and a few minor color swapped pieces; but complete and everything went together very well.
> They're cut from hardened steel using wire EDM, a process that erodes metal with controlled electrical sparks, achieving tolerances within a few microns.
They're made by sinker EDM, not wire. The physics are similar but it's a radically different process.
> But in an assembly system like LEGO's, small errors accumulate. Stack ten bricks end-to-end and the cumulative tolerance is ten times larger.
That's not how these tolerances work. The super tight tolerance is the interference fit on the stud. This is a diameter. You don't stack diameters together. Each connection is independent. Where you can get tolerance stackup is brick height and stud spacing. Although even here random errors tend to cancel out as you mix lots.
>LEGO's system reveals timeless truths about manufacturing. Process control beats precision machining. A stable, repeatable process produces better results than chasing the tightest possible mold tolerances. Invest in monitoring rather than just tighter specs.
The whole article says the opposite. Lego relies on precision machining and tight tolerances. Process control is necessary in addition to these.
I could be wrong but this article reads like AI. I don't understand why its getting upvotes.
The whole article makes me mad when they factually get so much wrong. Like I had to stop reading.
>The frequently cited "0.002mm tolerance" is misleading without context. LEGO's actual mold precision is 10 microns, but different features have different critical tolerances.
The article never mentions what piece has a 0.002mm tolerance. Is there any such piece? If there's no such piece, then "0.002mm tolerance" is not just "misleading without context", it's straight up false.
Is it a language mixup, ±0.001mm being called a 0.002mm tolerance? Otherwise I cant figure it out either lol.
0.001mm is 1 micron not 10.
"A minifigure head mold evolved from 8 cavities in 1978 to 128 cavities today."
Initially I thought this meant a lego minifig head has 128 internal cavities, but finally realised it means a single mould now makes 128 heads.
This is an LLM-written article. It also doesn't say anything. I get it that it's a cue for us to reminisce about childhood and say that LEGO isn't what it used to be, but we're being played for clicks. Open the article and look for a single statement that actually tells us something meaningful. It's just a sequence of impressively-sounding factoids like this:
> A 2x2 brick can withstand over 4,000 Newtons of force, which lets children build tall structures.
> But in an assembly system like LEGO's, small errors accumulate. Stack ten bricks end-to-end and the cumulative tolerance is ten times larger. This is why LEGO models larger than 1 meter become difficult to build
> The lesson isn't that everyone should match LEGO's tolerances. It's to understand what your product actually requires, then build your manufacturing system to deliver that at the scale and cost your business model demands.
I know I'm tilting at windmills, but come on.
I agree, it doesn't say a lot. It also very confidently specifies a series of tolerances with no citations.
Lego does indeed have very tight tolerance, but I don't know if the numbers are in the public domain.
I too hate it when my kids apply 4 kN of force to off-brand construction bricks and they turn to ABS paste. Only LEGO (R) for my spawn!
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> The 66-year-old brick will have the exact same interference fit, the same clutch power, the same 4.8mm stud diameter.
Pretty sure this is false. Old bricks had way higher clutch power, so high that it was deemed too difficult to separate. Sometime in the 90's the grip strength was reduced.
This false claim is underpins the entire article :(
I concur. I had "inherited" the sets of my 10 years older brother, and they where a pain to play with. It was sometimes impossible to separate the pieces, especially if it were plates with no leverage and nothing to grip.
>A 2x4 LEGO brick manufactured in 1958 will snap perfectly onto a brick molded this morning..
This is just manifestly NOT TRUE. The outward appearance may be the same. There were intentional improvements to the walls and tubes that make fit less than perfect. Generally, today's brick requires less force to snap and un-snap, because the compression is focused onto fewer points. (I guess this lowers the "hoop strength".)
Older bricks can be either: completely loose, or clutch so hard to each other they are the devil to take apart.
I have many bricks from 1962 onwards. The oldest 2x4s and 2x2s were made of cellulose acetate (CA) (in North America, intermediated by Samsonite.) CA were softer, and either had less clutch power to begin with, or lost it over time. When I got them in the 70s, they fit but wouldn't reliably stick to each other, nor later 70s-80s bricks (all ABS plastic by then.) (CA bricks were mostly red, and they have a pale orange tint.)
70s-80s bricks did not always age well. Aged 1x4 or 1x8 bricks can have the outer wall bowed inward slightly. This is a mold engineering problem anyway. Later, 80s bricks were improved by slightly thinner walls and some reinforcing tabs. The older, aged bricks can stick brutally to each other and to newer bricks.
The 10x10 baseplates didn't age well (these were once box-tops! Tog'l Toys also had the baseplate as a box-lid.) Possibly made of polycarbonate (PC). Other large plates in ABS-- for instance 6x16 (Auto Chassis, red) -- have warped. They were also more brittle to begin with.
So inside Brick geometry has changed over the decades. 60s-70s bricks are closer to plain boxes with tubes inside - as the Kiddicraft prototype of the 50s. In the 80s, the outer walls got thinner and had tiny studs where the studs contacted the wall. And the tubes changed from cylinders to just slightly clover-leaf inside, so that a tube over a single stud now formed 4 points of contact, and came apart with lower shear force. (I believe this also made it easier to pry a plate off of a larger plate.)
I have Fabuland sets from early 80s, whose plain bricks are so stiff, they are positively brutal to snap onto each other or 90s bricks.
The brick geometry of today is much improved. And the ABS is more "plastic", perhaps more "B" (butadiene rubber) or less "S" (styrene): I can drill it more cleanly.
Mid 80s and 90s bricks will interoperate just fine with today's. But bricks from before that period didn't age so well (and their corners, I believe, used to be harder.)
The tolerance for interference fit ("clutch power" in Lego terminology) is important, but that's fairly simple. It's the cumulative tolerance when you assemble large structures that's important. Knockoff bricks can be fine for the first few you assemble, and then as the structure gets larger things don't quite fit together.
Also interesting is that in very large models, there is decoupling between sections. Lego has design rules for how large a well connected chunk of Lego can be, which are driven by the tolerances. Above that you are then loosely coupling those large "chunks".
This is the most interesting point in the thread to me. Tolerance stack-up is the reason tight per-part tolerances matter at all. A single brick being precise is table stakes for injection molding. The hard problem is what happens when you compose hundreds of them. The decoupling strategy you're describing is really similar to how you handle error accumulation in any large composed system. You can't make individual components perfect enough to avoid drift at scale, so you introduce boundaries where the accumulated error gets absorbed rather than propagated. In Lego's case that means designing joints between sections that are forgiving enough to accommodate the stack-up from each chunk independently.
It's also why knockoff bricks can feel fine for small builds and then fall apart (sometimes literally) on larger ones. If your per-part tolerance is 3x worse, it doesn't matter much for a 20-piece build, but for a 2000-piece build your cumulative error budget is blown long before you're done. The failure mode isn't that any individual brick is bad, it's that the composition doesn't hold.
I'd be curious whether Lego publishes or talks about those chunk size design rules anywhere. That seems like the actually interesting engineering story, more so than the per-part tolerance numbers that get repeated in every article about them.
That's actually not too difficult. So long as your process variance is centered around nominal, the stackup will tend to cancel out. You might run into trouble if your kit involves hundreds of identical pieces from the same batch being assembled together, but that's rare. For large builds from multiple kits, it's very unlikely they have the same errors.
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.
"that familiar click is the sound of a carefully engineered interference fit designed to hold firm but still be easy for small hands to pull apart."
My recent experience calls bs on pulling them apart.
I always remember the small, weird pieces being hard to get apart.
What I don't remember was every kit being made up of so many small, weird pieces.
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 had to previous special sets was a town thing that my brother and sister had before me (they were 10 years older), which was a bunch of large floor tiles with roads and grassy areas with studs, some flowers pieces (single stud) and a handful of special buildings. But they were designed to be relatively generic, and the fun was using those building blocks to make a new city each time, not trying to recreate exactly someone's model. Apart from the flowers and the men, basically everything was a standard part, except perhaps a different colour.
When I was a teenager, the trend had become sets with lots of specialised parts for one specific model, such that they didn't really make sense as generic pieces. I enjoyed the technics kits because the early ones were just generic building blocks (apart from the wheels and rack and pinion, but again they could be re-used in lots of subsequent designs), but more and more the kits in the shops were for specialised models with unique pieces that were never designed to fit aesthetically with anything other than the model they came with. I'm sure _some_ people built other things with them, but equally I'd bet than probably 90% of those kits were built exactly once following the instructions and then never disassembled again.
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?
Star Wars sets started coming out in 1998. They weren't the first licensed sets, but the first fictional license.
Prior to Star Wars, they had Shell, Exxon, and Esso branded sets. I think sometimes they licensed the Ferrari brand as well.
And yes, Lego has had a Space theme since the late 70s. But it was a general "Space" theme. They would later make Space Police, Blacktron, Magnetron, etc.
But actual Star Wars was 1998. I have some of those sets. It was a big deal to get an actual lightsaber hilt and blade.
Very interesting. Googling shows some generic space themed things from the 80s like you say, but no Star Wars. I guess my old age is finally catching up on me and my memories have all blurred into one. I did find a Millennium Falcon from 1983, but it's definitely not Lego.
Having grown up playing with LEGOs, I can still distinctly remember the feeling of sore fingers pulling tiny pieces apart after a long session. It wasn't until a few years ago I learned there's an official brick separator tool [1]. Would've changed my life as a kid.
[1] https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/lego-...
> It wasn't until a few years ago I learned there's an official brick separator tool
You mean a little brother?
Okay this lit up my life for the day
There are multiple brick separators, with different strengths and weaknesses.
The tolerance is definitely more applicable to the getting them apart then putting them together.
Something that took me years of working with custom plastic injection part experience to notice still kind of shocks me…
Legos don’t have draft.
That means nothing to 99% of you, but someone else here must understand what the implications of that are for releasing from molds at a mass scale.
Actually they do have a draft. The bricks are designed so you don't notice it, both by the draft angle being quite small, and the parting line is moved up slightly so by the time you get to the bottom of the brick you're back to the original width.
https://medium.com/@bsather/breaking-down-the-perfect-design...
I was annoyed at this one time so I took two legos and put them under the microscope. I couldn’t see it. Which is just to say how fucking tiny the scales are here.
For production parts we’re looking at drafts around 3 degrees. Which is… not what they have even considering the tuck back in!
3 degrees is the generic "I don't care and don't want to worry about it" draft angle. In many cases 0.5 degrees of draft angle is a non-issue.
3 degrees on a lego brick would be a difference of .3mm over its height. For comparison an amoeba is about .5mm. If you're zoomed out enough that you can see the length, you're not going to be able to discern the angle. The only way you'd see it is to check for the gap between the wall and a precision square.
For me, Legos shouldn't ever include instructions, or anything other than generic parts. The whole idea is to dream up something, then reify it. It's so fetch!
When I started seeing the non-generic "build one thing" sets, with appropriately high sticker prices, Lego lost it's luster. The additional downside of ending up with special purpose pieces, just made it worse.
The precision with which the blocks are made is comparable to Ford's use of Gage blocks to make perfectly interchangeable parts across the globe. It's fascinating just how many of something can be made in this manner, and how the costs just keep slowly going down as the quantity scales up.
I would like to better understand the reasoning behind what the author says here:
A balanced 16-cavity mold costs 3-4x more than a single-cavity mold but only produces 16x the parts, which is why they only make economic sense above 500,000 units.
I guess if a single cavity mold costs $30,000 and a 16 cavity mold costs $110,000 you have an additional expense of ~$80,000, divided over half million parts is 16 cents. So lets say somewhere from 5-10cents per part to go 16x faster. My numbers might be off a bit but seems in the ballpark. I also don't know much a lego brick costs to make in terms of materials/opex.
In this context, a cavity produces one part. A cavity can only produce, lets say, 200k parts. If you produce 400k parts, you only need a single mold, but you've only used 25k wear on each cavity, but you paid more for the mold instead of only 2 of the cheaper single-cavity molds.
Curious how this might have played out over the long-term with their licensed/abandoned/revived/then bought to kill permanently "Modulex":
https://archinect.com/features/article/149974598/the-brief-a...
I wish one of their competitors would take up this dimension standard --- it would be a lot more useful for making structures which interact across dimensions/rotations.
I've never regretted buying Legos for my kids. Yeah, the kits can be expensive, but they last forever. We've thrown out or donated lots of old toys, but the Legos will never be given away.
In terms of toys which my son got from my childhood, Duplo and Lego stick out. We kept everything; booklets and parts. We built the classic town square (set 1592) recently, and we've got all the parts, including the statue bits! Only the printed lettering on the sign's 1×8 white brick had faded.
Sure, some puzzles and books survived, but the Lego stands out. If he ever has children they are in for a treat…
To make a bunch of plastic toy bricks a multi billion company you have to produce very special ones. LEGO is a marvel of human entrepreneurship, mechanical, designing and marketing. Diverse and totally different professions should cooperate together with a lot of innovation. To make one characteristic is doable, all of them is very difficult.
Lego is still the best toy, but man, I really miss the old style Technic sets where most of the pieces were very generic vs today's sets which are less versatile. 8480 and 8250 as examples (my two favorite sets growing up, though I didn't manage to get my hands on 8480 until I got my first job)
I collect Hot Wheels but have always found Lego to be annoying.
It's a pain in the ass to put together, pain in the ass to move, pain in the ass to collection. The costs are out of this world and most collectors don't even build their sets, they keep it in the box from 20 years ago. At least with Hot Wheels you can see the car inside even when still packaged.
Yeah that's a completely different approach, I buy lego to have access to more pieces so that when I dump them all on the floor and build whatever comes to mind I have more to play with.
Backwards compatibility is something lost today. Incredible they've kept it this long.
If you buy any knock off legos, you are guaranteed 3 things, 1. Crappy instructions 2. Noticing the snap pressure is inconsistent and often too tight our bouncy. 3. Swearing at that manufacturer after every page.
not true at all for most alternative brands (they are not knock offs, the patents are expired so they are legal, and comparable in quality), same for cloned sets (shady companies cloning lego sets using alternative bricks (the bricks are legal, the cloned sets aren't). the quality of alternative bricks is good. the quality of the instructions as well.
For me it is 1. Terrible quality of all rubbery/soft elements. 2. If it is original model (instead of ripping of existing set), it often contains huge, shell like elements, that can't be easily be in custom designs. 3. I guess the previous point doesn't really matter, when bricks are designed to be assembled once and are impossible to pull apart without hurting your fingers.
They are called "Lego" not "Legos".
I thought this forum was for intellectual discussion, full of intellectual people. You're a pseudo-intellectual at best.
The 2. is very annoying. Especially when big sets fall apart due to this issue.
Let me add this: 4. no spare parts available. So when I break weird Chinese invention the whole set becomes useless without that very special part. It happened few times and I got back to used Lego sets.
Worth mentioning that tolerance is that low for multi-stud pieces. For an individual stud it’s closer to 0.02mm but as you add more studs tolerance spec goes up.
This is why Lego has nothing to fear from 3D printing.
Not in terms of people printing lego bricks. But at least as an adult, designing things in Fusion and printing them scratches a similar itch as building lego. And 3d printing is now pretty accessible to the 14+ age group. I doubt this will completely replace legos, or that it's even their biggest threat, but I'd be surprised if it had no impact
Framed that way yes, but wouldn't it be cool to 3D print interlocking parts that can be reassembled in different ways?
The trick is to redesign the bricks for worse tolerances. With 3D printers you can print very nuanced springy elements that are impossible to achieve with injection molding. I got some reasonable bricks years ago on cheap printers with PETG, should work even better now with modern printers and ABS.
It would be interesting if 3D printers could reach this tolerance
I'm sure they will if they can't already, but the price of the tech & the materials could be the limiting factor. How much would a hobbyist be willing to spend on consistent 10-micron 3D printing?
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there is a solution for that, its called flip-flops. But it would be hilarious if LEGO would add a pair in one of their sets :)
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/brick-clog-5010203
Pricing is on-par for LEGO.
Make 'em sick, sell the cure
Upvoted, and the English prose is pretty good in spelling and grammar, but the metric units in the writing need improvement.
> 10 microns
"Micron(s)" is a deprecated word since 1967 and "micrometre(s)" must be used instead. The reason is that it is a non-standard word; if "micron" is accepted, then we should also accept the nonsensical words "millin", "nanon", "kilon", etc. The metric system is supposed to be easy to learn with consistent rules and as few special cases as possible.
> 4.8mm ... 0.01mm ... "0.002mm tolerance"
These numbers are correct, but it's harder to quickly skim the text and make comparisons because the number of decimal places vary. It would be better to write 4.800 mm, 0.010 mm, 0.002 mm to make the reader's job easier. Or convert everything to whole micrometres, like 4800 μm, 10 μm, 2 μm.
> withstand over 4,000 Newtons
Almost correct, but the unit must be decapitalized to "newtons". This is similar to how other name-based units are decapitalized - like "100-watt light bulb", "12 amps", "3 gigahertz".
> 2-3 Newton insertion force
It must be written as "2–3 newtons". When the unit name is written out in full, it follows normal English pluralization rules (e.g. metres, seconds, volts, pascals, kelvins, ohms, teslas). The only exceptions are hertz and siemens, because they already end with -s or -z.
This is why we measure things in baby elephants per football field.