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.
mmustapic 2 hours ago [-]
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.
potatototoo99 7 minutes ago [-]
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.
dclowd9901 58 minutes ago [-]
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.
Xerox9213 25 minutes ago [-]
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.
tylerflick 21 minutes ago [-]
Not to mention you can 3D print Duplo compatible bricks.
onlypassingthru 1 hours ago [-]
Wow, childhood memory unlocked. I had set 497. And, yes, it was a very expensive toy in its day.
brazzy 1 hours ago [-]
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.
StilesCrisis 1 hours ago [-]
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.
ijk 17 minutes ago [-]
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.
nkrisc 23 minutes ago [-]
I always charitably assumed that they designed models to utilize surplus pieces for the internal structures, pieces that might be hard to use elsewhere.
bombcar 13 minutes ago [-]
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.
bombcar 16 minutes ago [-]
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.
etrvic 59 minutes ago [-]
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.
mmustapic 1 hours ago [-]
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.
seqastian 58 minutes ago [-]
There are so many better alternatives these days it’s mostly fanboys and people who don’t care who are still buying original Lego.
mmustapic 52 minutes ago [-]
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.
radpanda 44 minutes ago [-]
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?
dsr_ 25 minutes ago [-]
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.
alexriddle 35 minutes ago [-]
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!
CapricornNoble 18 minutes ago [-]
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!
esafak 52 minutes ago [-]
Like what?
CapricornNoble 39 minutes ago [-]
The value proposition of the Chinese knockoffs is off the charts IMO.
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.
utopiah 2 hours ago [-]
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.
Aurornis 51 minutes ago [-]
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.
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.
mmustapic 2 hours ago [-]
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.
These aren't being bought by kids and if the entire market becomes nostalgic adults, eventually they all die.
dclowd9901 56 minutes ago [-]
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.
jonhohle 2 hours ago [-]
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.
mmustapic 2 hours ago [-]
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.
wincy 9 minutes ago [-]
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)
bpev 2 hours ago [-]
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.
bigstrat2003 2 hours ago [-]
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.
maxglute 7 minutes ago [-]
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.
qingcharles 2 hours ago [-]
These collectible (read: branded) sets are what saved them from bankruptcy, though.
WillAdams 2 hours ago [-]
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
bazoom42 56 minutes ago [-]
You can still buy “generic” lego sets if you want. Look for “Lego Classic” sets.
bluescrn 30 minutes ago [-]
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.
bombcar 45 seconds ago [-]
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
thinkingtoilet 2 hours ago [-]
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.
Latitude7973 2 hours ago [-]
*Lego
bdunks 2 hours ago [-]
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.
eru 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
alexjplant 2 hours ago [-]
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...
Aurornis 48 minutes ago [-]
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.
bluescrn 25 minutes ago [-]
> 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...
eru 34 minutes ago [-]
You can also buy (used) sets or assorted blocks from when you were a kid.
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.
mmustapic 2 hours ago [-]
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.
SlinkyOnStairs 56 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
georgefrowny 6 minutes ago [-]
In terms of creativity of model options, the Chinese compatibles are stomping them.
You can even get a model of post-explosion Chernobyl.
Plus Technics-ish sets that aren't 75% special body panels that only fit that specific model.
awkward 2 hours ago [-]
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.
amelius 10 minutes ago [-]
^ This
rkangel 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
hibikir 29 minutes ago [-]
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
ibizaman 24 minutes ago [-]
You weren’t kidding. I just took a look and the models are gorgeous!
foobarian 1 hours ago [-]
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.
ryukoposting 1 hours 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.
FinnKuhn 1 hours ago [-]
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.
bigstrat2003 37 minutes ago [-]
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.
closewith 1 hours ago [-]
But you can only remove them once, and then never recreate the original set. Not great.
jacquesm 2 hours ago [-]
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.
throw310822 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
flatline 2 hours ago [-]
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.
StilesCrisis 1 hours ago [-]
How many plastic things from the 70s still work perfectly with no cracking or warping?
throw310822 42 minutes ago [-]
Not sure, but is this about the backwards compatibility or the chosen type of plastic?
Aurornis 45 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
Paratoner 48 minutes ago [-]
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.
hypercube33 41 minutes ago [-]
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.
bluescrn 34 minutes ago [-]
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.
Aurornis 55 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
dec0dedab0de 2 hours ago [-]
The expensive sets ARE display models. They still have the older style generic sets for significantly cheaper.
2 hours ago [-]
xattt 2 hours ago [-]
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.
bluGill 2 hours ago [-]
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.
wongarsu 1 hours ago [-]
> 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
bluGill 1 hours ago [-]
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.
iso1631 1 hours ago [-]
Nostalgia 'aint what it used to be
wongarsu 1 hours ago [-]
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
KellyCriterion 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
kevinsync 1 hours ago [-]
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]
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.
jiehong 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe one last thing that sucks is that it’s all plastic.
embedding-shape 1 hours ago [-]
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.
antonyh 2 hours ago [-]
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.
em-bee 1 hours ago [-]
lego compatible bricks made from wood do exist. they probably don't last as long though.
antonyh 48 minutes ago [-]
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.
reacharavindh 2 hours ago [-]
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.
sammy2255 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe if something is too expensive don't buy it?
vidarh 3 hours ago [-]
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
normie3000 44 minutes ago [-]
> Light grey pins have always been...
I think the black ones were a later addition, likely late nineties.
fwip 40 minutes ago [-]
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.
rrr_oh_man 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
jonhohle 2 hours ago [-]
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.
samrus 2 hours ago [-]
True. But lego has stood the test of time. Thats way harder
dfedbeef 18 minutes ago [-]
Lot of time left, by my count
rrr_oh_man 2 hours ago [-]
What do you mean by that?
SteveNuts 2 hours ago [-]
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.
ambicapter 38 minutes ago [-]
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 :)
afandian 2 hours ago [-]
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.
jonhohle 2 hours ago [-]
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.
afandian 2 hours ago [-]
A plausible defence if anyone asks for it back!
mproud 2 hours ago [-]
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.
ragebol 28 minutes ago [-]
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.
butILoveLife 2 hours ago [-]
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.
hypercube33 42 minutes ago [-]
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.
thowawayko1 1 hours ago [-]
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.
double0jimb0 1 hours ago [-]
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).
wek 2 hours ago [-]
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 :)
Thlom 2 hours ago [-]
You can still buy LEGO Classic which is just a bunch of bricks.
antonyh 1 hours ago [-]
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.
brightbeige 2 hours ago [-]
Makes me think there could be a big cognitive difference when playing with Lego as well, for example, divergent vs convergent thinking.
MarsIronPI 1 hours ago [-]
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.
bigstrat2003 34 minutes ago [-]
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.
lqet 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
kspacewalk2 2 hours ago [-]
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.
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...
pubby 2 hours ago [-]
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.
mejutoco 2 hours ago [-]
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.
herpdyderp 2 hours ago [-]
What knock off brands come even close in quality? Everything I’ve tried that isn’t name brand LEGO is hot garbage.
operation_moose 1 hours ago [-]
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.
yubainu 13 minutes ago [-]
Rather than worrying about accuracy, please do something about the pain that will make you cry if you step on it!
yubainu 43 minutes ago [-]
I always thought it was amazing how Lego pieces fit together so perfectly that they wouldn't come off even if you lifted them, but if you wanted to remove them, they came off so easily, and I had no idea they were that precise.
rkangel 1 hours ago [-]
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".
nmeofthestate 1 hours ago [-]
"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.
twodave 43 minutes ago [-]
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.
Thorrez 2 hours ago [-]
>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.
ozlikethewizard 2 hours ago [-]
Is it a language mixup, ±0.001mm being called a 0.002mm tolerance? Otherwise I cant figure it out either lol.
Karliss 2 hours ago [-]
0.001mm is 1 micron not 10.
58 minutes ago [-]
lich_king 2 hours ago [-]
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.
rkangel 1 hours ago [-]
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.
isoprophlex 2 hours ago [-]
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!
aaron695 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
WillAdams 3 hours ago [-]
Curious how this might have played out over the long-term with their licensed/abandoned/revived/then bought to kill permanently "Modulex":
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.
exabrial 2 hours ago [-]
Backwards compatibility is something lost today. Incredible they've kept it this long.
jimmar 2 hours ago [-]
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.
antonyh 1 hours ago [-]
This is why Lego has nothing to fear from 3D printing.
wongarsu 1 hours ago [-]
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
antonyh 54 minutes ago [-]
Framed that way yes, but wouldn't it be cool to 3D print interlocking parts that can be reassembled in different ways?
tmaly 1 hours ago [-]
It would be interesting if 3D printers could reach this tolerance
antonyh 52 minutes ago [-]
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?
Normal_gaussian 3 hours ago [-]
"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.
doubled112 3 hours ago [-]
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.
ralferoo 2 hours ago [-]
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.
bena 2 hours ago [-]
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.
SoftTalker 38 minutes ago [-]
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?
bena 21 minutes ago [-]
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.
Zanfa 2 hours ago [-]
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.
The tolerance is definitely more applicable to the getting them apart then putting them together.
m3kw9 2 hours ago [-]
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.
em-bee 1 hours ago [-]
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.
lnsru 2 hours ago [-]
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.
zvqcMMV6Zcr 2 hours ago [-]
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.
2 hours ago [-]
Rendered at 16:22:26 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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.
Various piece size also makes it easier to see if you got the wrong piece.
>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.
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.
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.
Minifigs are terrible but I have hundreds of those spare anyway!
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!
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.
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.
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.
Adults collect them, true, but there are whole lines dedicated to them.
These aren't being bought by kids and if the entire market becomes nostalgic adults, eventually they all die.
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.
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
- 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
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.
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
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.
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.
Well, people did complain about the whole 'special pieces' trend that you praise.
I wish I had hobbies as cheap as LEGO now...
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.
But there's a very limited age range in which todays kids will appreciate physical toys, before they're introduced to screens...
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.
They stopped doing the many unique parts because it was bankrupting them.
You can even get a model of post-explosion Chernobyl.
Plus Technics-ish sets that aren't 75% special body panels that only fit that specific model.
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.
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.
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.
And then they sued the pants of everybody that tried to do the same thing to them.
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.
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.
Real shame that they discontinued Mindstorms, though.
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.
It has momentum because they haven’t let quality and innovation slide. They know customers will be out with pitchforks if quality drops.
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
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.
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've bought a decent amount of Duplo and Lego kits for my son (currently 3 years old) and it's great value.
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.
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...
EDIT: I think I also had some dark grey pins, but I don't remember if they were high or low friction
I think the black ones were a later addition, likely late nineties.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_phantom
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".
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.
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.
> 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.
Lego does indeed have very tight tolerance, but I don't know if the numbers are in the public domain.
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.
My recent experience calls bs on pulling them apart.
What I don't remember was every kit being made up of so many small, weird pieces.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/lego-...
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.