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My sons and I had all "their" (our!) Lego in a few large plastic tubs and we "pawed" or sifted through these for hours. It's an OK solution, but the problems wi

My sons and I had all "their" (our!) Lego in a few large plastic tubs and we "pawed" or sifted through these for hours. It's an OK solution, but the problems with it come from the frustration of not finding pieces and also the damage to pieces over time. I don't know if Lego is getting weaker, or if they just have more elaborate shapes nowadays but when I was a kid back in the 80s I can't remember ever having a broken piece of Lego. Maybe from stepping on one, but not just by sifting through parts. With the tubs approach recently we've had a few twisted or even snapped parts. The 1x1 c-grips collapse, 1x1 "cheeses" snap in half, and that Lego wheel arch... just seeing one of these get flung around in the Lego-soup makes me nervous. I bought a few small drawers and a compartmentalized case, all designed for sewing parts, to keep the smaller and more fragile parts in and we separated stuff out as we assembled. It makes the whole thing a lot more fun having it even just a bit sorted like that, without going crazy into organization.

jacquesm 9y ago
> I don't know if Lego is getting weaker Yes, the new Lego is definitely more brittle than than the old, and also less capable of dealing with tensile stress. I have a couple of examples of very recent bricks that spontaneously broke along a side wall simply by being stacked on other bricks. The first formulation (Cellulose-Acetate) tends to deform and warp, the first generation ABS bricks are as good as indestructible unless you use main force. At the moment Lego produces both in Denmark and in various locations around the world and there is a real difference in quality between batches from different locations. You can also tell by holding up bricks to the light, the more transparent ones (relative to other bricks of the same density and color, best to test with yellow, white and red) are the weaker ones.
- CannisterFlux 9y ago
  Sheesh, is nothing sacred? Thanks for confirming my hunch.

jacquesm 9y ago

> I don't know if Lego is getting weaker Yes, the new Lego is definitely more brittle than than the old, and also less capable of dealing with tensile stress. I have a couple of examples of very recent bricks that spontaneously broke along a side wall simply by being stacked on other bricks. The first formulation (Cellulose-Acetate) tends to deform and warp, the first generation ABS bricks are as good as indestructible unless you use main force. At the moment Lego produces both in Denmark and in various locations around the world and there is a real difference in quality between batches from different locations. You can also tell by holding up bricks to the light, the more transparent ones (relative to other bricks of the same density and color, best to test with yellow, white and red) are the weaker ones.

CannisterFlux 9y ago
Sheesh, is nothing sacred? Thanks for confirming my hunch.