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> You can be just as creative and have just as much fun with new sets. You absolutely cannot. Don't get me wrong, I love Lego to this day but late 90's Technic

> You can be just as creative and have just as much fun with new sets. You absolutely cannot. Don't get me wrong, I love Lego to this day but late 90's Technic is unmatched in it's versatility by a looooong shot.

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
Current Technic is honestly pretty good, IMO.
- errantspark 7y ago
  Yeah, it's pretty good. I love Lego, it's still undoubtedly the best toy. But it's also way worse than late 90's Technic, which really felt focused on piece versatility above all else.
  - rhn_mk1 7y ago
    What kind of things could be done with those that can't be done now?
    - lacker 7y ago
      I still have my 90’s Technic car with multiple gears and a working stickshift. Nowadays, the sets tend to have some set-specific pieces. Back then, no individual piece was anything nonstandard.
      - hrydgard 7y ago
        Actually, they mostly stopped doing that a while ago. There's a new piece or two every year but it's 99.9% standard pieces with the occasional new colorization.
        PhasmaFelis 7y ago
        Dunno about this specific case, but I find that a lot of the people who say "Lego sucks now" mean "I glanced at the toy aisle at Wal-Mart and didn't see exactly what I was looking for." It's most notable with the people who insist they don't sell big buckets of generic bricks anymore, when they absolutely do. They might be on the bottom shelf under the Star Wars kits, and smaller displays at supermarkets and such might not have any, but they're still easily available if you look or go online.
    - Lutzb 7y ago
      Most Lego Technic pieces nowadays are missing the studs, this means construction is way more complex and less organic, explorative.
goto11 7y ago
Did you perchance happen to be a kid in the late 90's?
- errantspark 7y ago
  Yeah and I can afford way more Legos now, I still prefer the old school kind. Compare 42054 to 8480. They're both great sets for sure, but the shuttle pieces are more versatile in other builds.
  - roel_v 7y ago
    "I still prefer the old school kind" Of course you do, because it's an emotional experience. Just like how those tomatoes you ate at nanna's summer cottage in Italy tasted incredible, yet if you'd eat those exact same tomatoes in your drabby work canteen on a rainy tuesday morning, they'd be nothing special. My children don't particularly like my old legos, yet I somehow see them as "obviously" superior over the ones they have themselves. I'm sure they'll feel the same about those same sets 25 years from now when their children play with whatever is new then.
    - shantly 7y ago
      I dunno. I've gotten my kids a lot of LEGO and the new sets are really high-part-count but it's tons and tons of fiddly little short bricks, mostly, to build relatively small sets. All I can figure is they went overboard with CAD and/or started letting too many "pro" types who care more about the finish of the final result than the building experience run the show. I pull out old sets of mine with similar part counts and they're huge by comparison, and building them's more satisfying because you can almost always tell what you're building and why it's put together that way. Much nicer. The good thing is they've started shipping brick tools in the bigger sets—they may have to given how many fiddly little bits they include now—and extras of some of the smallest or most breakable pieces, which is nice. But otherwise they're not half as fun to build as sets. And the parts are less useful in general building (for young kids, anyway, maybe useful for the "pro" sorts) because they're mostly tiny pieces. Kit-bashing with them kinda sucks (again, at "amateur" levels of skill, I know there are real brick artists out there who work magic), better to just get generic brick buckets or use parts from older sets. And I'm talking about 6-12 year old targeted lines here, not any of the fancier sets aimed at older kids and adults. Elves and normal town sets and stuff like that. [EDIT] examples: 6086, Black Knight's Castle, 569 pieces, 12 minifigs 41188, Breakout from the Goblin King's Fortress, 696 pieces, 4 minifigs And the former is ~2.5x the size of the latter. I can tell you from experience that the latter is too tiny and intricate for even little-kid hands to play with it very well. It's a nightmare of itty bitty pieces to put together something that looks slick on box art but sucks IRL. "Oh, but that castle's like ~$150-170 inflation-adjusted while the Goblin King's Fortress is only ~$70" Well, that's not my point, but OK. 6075, Wolfpack Tower, 232 pieces, 4 minifigs About the same size as the Goblin King fortress when assembled, only ~30% the part count, same number of minifigs, originally $30 so at or under the price of 41188 inflation-adjusted. Definitely does look worse on box art, granted, but holds up to play better, is far easier to put back together if it gets damaged without doing a tear-down and re-build from scratch, and has spaces sized right to support play. It's a better set to play with.
primitivesuave 7y ago
Completely agree - there were also far more interesting components in sets. Take for example the Lego technic backhoe 8455 (from 2003), which had pneumatic cylinders that could be repurposed to all kinds of interesting builds, as compared to the current Technic backhoe 8069 which uses plastic axles and simpler mechanics.
- bathtub365 7y ago
  The Technic AROCS (42043) has a full pneumatic system that’s pressurised by an electrically-powered pump and has valves for directing air around to different components. It also has a full gearbox for directing power from the electrical motor to the different electrically-powered components in the model. I think Technic is still creating interesting new, reusable mechanical components.

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago

Current Technic is honestly pretty good, IMO.

errantspark 7y ago
Yeah, it's pretty good. I love Lego, it's still undoubtedly the best toy. But it's also way worse than late 90's Technic, which really felt focused on piece versatility above all else.
- rhn_mk1 7y ago
  What kind of things could be done with those that can't be done now?
  - lacker 7y ago
    I still have my 90’s Technic car with multiple gears and a working stickshift. Nowadays, the sets tend to have some set-specific pieces. Back then, no individual piece was anything nonstandard.
    - hrydgard 7y ago
      Actually, they mostly stopped doing that a while ago. There's a new piece or two every year but it's 99.9% standard pieces with the occasional new colorization.
      - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
        Dunno about this specific case, but I find that a lot of the people who say "Lego sucks now" mean "I glanced at the toy aisle at Wal-Mart and didn't see exactly what I was looking for." It's most notable with the people who insist they don't sell big buckets of generic bricks anymore, when they absolutely do. They might be on the bottom shelf under the Star Wars kits, and smaller displays at supermarkets and such might not have any, but they're still easily available if you look or go online.
  - Lutzb 7y ago
    Most Lego Technic pieces nowadays are missing the studs, this means construction is way more complex and less organic, explorative.

goto11 7y ago

Did you perchance happen to be a kid in the late 90's?

errantspark 7y ago
Yeah and I can afford way more Legos now, I still prefer the old school kind. Compare 42054 to 8480. They're both great sets for sure, but the shuttle pieces are more versatile in other builds.
- roel_v 7y ago
  "I still prefer the old school kind" Of course you do, because it's an emotional experience. Just like how those tomatoes you ate at nanna's summer cottage in Italy tasted incredible, yet if you'd eat those exact same tomatoes in your drabby work canteen on a rainy tuesday morning, they'd be nothing special. My children don't particularly like my old legos, yet I somehow see them as "obviously" superior over the ones they have themselves. I'm sure they'll feel the same about those same sets 25 years from now when their children play with whatever is new then.
  - shantly 7y ago
    I dunno. I've gotten my kids a lot of LEGO and the new sets are really high-part-count but it's tons and tons of fiddly little short bricks, mostly, to build relatively small sets. All I can figure is they went overboard with CAD and/or started letting too many "pro" types who care more about the finish of the final result than the building experience run the show. I pull out old sets of mine with similar part counts and they're huge by comparison, and building them's more satisfying because you can almost always tell what you're building and why it's put together that way. Much nicer. The good thing is they've started shipping brick tools in the bigger sets—they may have to given how many fiddly little bits they include now—and extras of some of the smallest or most breakable pieces, which is nice. But otherwise they're not half as fun to build as sets. And the parts are less useful in general building (for young kids, anyway, maybe useful for the "pro" sorts) because they're mostly tiny pieces. Kit-bashing with them kinda sucks (again, at "amateur" levels of skill, I know there are real brick artists out there who work magic), better to just get generic brick buckets or use parts from older sets. And I'm talking about 6-12 year old targeted lines here, not any of the fancier sets aimed at older kids and adults. Elves and normal town sets and stuff like that. [EDIT] examples: 6086, Black Knight's Castle, 569 pieces, 12 minifigs 41188, Breakout from the Goblin King's Fortress, 696 pieces, 4 minifigs And the former is ~2.5x the size of the latter. I can tell you from experience that the latter is too tiny and intricate for even little-kid hands to play with it very well. It's a nightmare of itty bitty pieces to put together something that looks slick on box art but sucks IRL. "Oh, but that castle's like ~$150-170 inflation-adjusted while the Goblin King's Fortress is only ~$70" Well, that's not my point, but OK. 6075, Wolfpack Tower, 232 pieces, 4 minifigs About the same size as the Goblin King fortress when assembled, only ~30% the part count, same number of minifigs, originally $30 so at or under the price of 41188 inflation-adjusted. Definitely does look worse on box art, granted, but holds up to play better, is far easier to put back together if it gets damaged without doing a tear-down and re-build from scratch, and has spaces sized right to support play. It's a better set to play with.

primitivesuave 7y ago

Completely agree - there were also far more interesting components in sets. Take for example the Lego technic backhoe 8455 (from 2003), which had pneumatic cylinders that could be repurposed to all kinds of interesting builds, as compared to the current Technic backhoe 8069 which uses plastic axles and simpler mechanics.

bathtub365 7y ago
The Technic AROCS (42043) has a full pneumatic system that’s pressurised by an electrically-powered pump and has valves for directing air around to different components. It also has a full gearbox for directing power from the electrical motor to the different electrically-powered components in the model. I think Technic is still creating interesting new, reusable mechanical components.