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Lego Ideas Typewriter
- samizdis 5y agoThat's a lovely piece of kit, and I am sorely tempted to put in an order, but LEGO's promotional video and associated text descriptions seem to be a little deceptive. As far as I can tell, the model - which has a "LEGO first" - Black and red ink spool ribbon is a new fabric element. - and each key has a letter, and the carriage moves, etc ... doesn't actually type.
- jan_Inkepa 5y agoOh yeah good catch; they should probably add a disclaimer that it's not functional.
- mattashii 5y agoIt has one (singular) typing element that moves and hits the 'tape', which you might consider as typing. But, it indeed is not functional for the whole alphabet, nor does it have functional shift keys to shift cases.
- scoopertrooper 5y agoThis may shock you, but none of those lego ships are sea worthy either.
- bmitc 5y agoSome of them are. I had one as a kid. The base allowed the boat to float in water.
- seattle_spring 5y agoWHAT. this changes everything, as I was planning on taking the summer off to take my Saturn V into orbit.
- spoonjim 5y agoThe Lego Pop-up book does pop up though.
- MiscIdeaMaker99 5y agoI think you'd have to be a little gullible to think it's a real typewriter, especially if you've ever used a real one.
- ElijahLynn 5y agoSame. The video shows a typed letter in the machine too, leading me to believe it actually worked. But further digging reveals this is not the case. A ton of people are going to actually buy this thinking it works, and it won't and they will be pissed.
- spoonjim 5y agoThe same thing happened with the piano. I assume it’s people who are interested in the subject matter (pianos, typewriters) and not that familiar with what functionality to expect from a LEGO set.
- grammarprofess 5y agoDang that's wild
- nindalf 5y agoI wonder if the moderator of HN gets a ping every time his name is mentioned like this. “Why did someone summon me on a Lego thread? Oh ok, just an exclamation.”
- robg 5y agoI’m struck by the post-modern, non-working reflection that costs significantly more than the functional object that’s still readily available. LEGO has truly crossed into the art world. Like a painting of a soup can.
- nindalf 5y agoWhen wasn’t Lego art? I display my Lego dinosaurs next to my TV. I think they look cool. They weren’t meant to be functional dinosaurs.
- robg 5y agoSeems different in kind, not degree. A 3 year old plays with Duplo to make planes and rockets. Yes, art in the sense that drawing on paper is a form of art. But a close to realistic rendering of a soup can that now sells for $millions is / was reflecting back a reductive sense of nostalgia for a premium. Kudos to LEGO for capitalizing for a premium, just a different product for a different consumer that could buy and appreciate an actual typewriter. This consumer centric version of art forms is perhaps the same reflection by which Warhol was dismissed by some early critics. Just not the version of LEGO that reflects the endless design iterations in any one box.
- bluetomcat 5y agoThe "conventional" Lego builds are meant to be a non-functional miniature of a real-world or a fictional object, with some playing features. This creation crosses this boundary because it tries to replicate a real-world object in its original scale, with its inner mechanisms, and yet it doesn't achieve the purpose of the original object. Seems somewhat wasteful, cynical and purposeless.
- nindalf 5y agoOnly as wasteful, cynical and purposeless as my dinosaurs. I look at them and feel happy. That’s pretty much it. If I assembled this typewriter, I’d look at it and feel happy.
- 5y ago
- Tomte 5y agoAt least the keys are printed. Those would have been a nightmare to center. Only two stickers in the set. (You can't take that for granted, even the 700 Euro set #75252 comes with a sticker)
- wongarsu 5y agoAll printed keys, and a new fabric element. I couldn't believe today's Lego would splurge like this, until I got to the "Includes Note from Chairman Thomas Kristiansen, based on the typewriter of founder Ole Kristiansen". I guess the executive still gets nice models without stickers.
- bombcar 5y agoPrinting LEGO is one of the modern improvements that they’ve implemented - it is substantially easier and cheaper to print an element than it was twenty years ago.
- wongarsu 5y agoI should probably clarify that I meant "splurge" as in "spending where they normally don't", not as in "spend beyond a reasonable amount"
- bombcar 5y agoYeah - just pointing out that in general LEGO has been printing prices that would have been stickers 20 years ago. Part of is also that they did a study and realized that stickers piss kids off because they’re hard to apply correctly.
- aidenn0 5y agoAs a kid, stickers were the bane of my existence for everything; Legos, Transformers, etc. I had to decide between doing it myself and having it look like crap, or getting my parents to do it and feeling embarrassed that I didn't do it myself.
- thrower123 5y agoI'm somewhat depressed by how explicitly Lego is marketing towards 30-something man-children who build things to put them on the shelf. The worst part is that this model-kit design style is spilling over and infecting their actual toy themes. It's harder for kids to repurpose a set that's built 40% out of small tiles and cheese wedges and little greebly bits.
- Tomte 5y agoBuy Lego Minecraft. Lots and lots of 2x2, 2x4 and 2x8 bricks in sensible colors.
- thrower123 5y agoMight have to look at this. The Classic boxes don't actually have the classic colors in much sufficiency, and are likewise full of tiny 1x1 and 1x2s to bulk up the part count e.g. https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/creative-building-bricks-11016 https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/creative-building-bricks-... It's a less than useful selection of pastel colors to really do anything with.
- lawn 5y agoPlenty of Lego sets for the kids as well. Just avoid these sets if it's something you worry about.
- estaseuropano 5y agoThe kids spilled over their Lego box a few days ago - so many unusable and pointless 1x1 round pieces, special weird shapes, etc. Its all the sets which are fun to build but seem more like a puzzle than a Lego set which you can really reuse, rebuild, etc. I'm not normally nostalgic, but my box as a child used to be all real blocks and I could build great stuff. Now its more marketing to sell more and more branded sets. Worst is the Lego city stuff though.
- lucideer 5y agoIf you think a 1x1 round piece is unusable/pointless, you are truly lacking in imagination. Even the varied array of "one-off" weirdly specific pieces always find an unexpected application in a pinch somewhere. I've been recently quite entertained by the creative work of a Dublin lego-er making pubs (with many many small 1x1 round pieces, and a selection of weird one-offs for signage/etc.) https://snapwidget.com/embed/927292 https://snapwidget.com/embed/927292
- leemailll 5y agoInteresting. Just watched this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs5TEuZPQl8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs5TEuZPQl8)
- g105b 5y agoOoh, how long until someone inserts a Teensy microchip and a USB cable to make this a functional computer keyboard? Either way I really want one!
- colejohnson66 5y agoRetro Recipies / Perifractic did that with a C64, sortove: https://youtu.be/1Fb0Kn2bVtM https://youtu.be/1Fb0Kn2bVtM
- lnyng 5y agoOpening this link with my Firefox iOS 34 crashes the browser reliably. Anyone else seeing this issue?
- colejohnson66 5y agoThat’s odd as I posted it using Firefox on iOS (version 34) as well). Clicking it works for me. I don’t develop for iOS, so I’m speculating here, but could it be a URL handler for YouTube URLs exists and you don’t have the app it’s set to? (As in, iOS says YouTube urls get opened in the app, but you don’t have the app?)
- adolph 5y agoOr just take those keycaps for a lego-compatible switches: https://hackaday.com/2017/12/12/connecting-cherry-mx-key-switches-to-lego-just-got-easier/ https://hackaday.com/2017/12/12/connecting-cherry-mx-key-swi...
- ecesena 5y agoOmg now I wish they’d do an enigma machine!
- jalk 5y agoDoes anybody know if the creator of a "Lego Idea" gets royalties if their kit ends up in stores?
- dacur 5y agoper wikipedia, 1% royalties
- sharkweek 5y agoA lot of people in this thread are forgetting that it’s not necessarily about the actual completed object but more the process of putting it together that often brings the most joy with LEGO. I don’t think I’m more at peace than the few times a year I sit down with a new LEGO kit and build it. It’s a delightfully enjoyable break from just about everything else that keeps my mind busy and is such a calming activity.
- criddell 5y agoI believe a lot of people who buy one are mostly thinking of how hot this is going to be on eBay.
- organsnyder 5y agoMy wife gave me the LEGO grand piano this past Christmas. It was an absolute joy putting it together, seeing how the designer made everything work.
- gpspake 5y agoThat Piano was awesome. Everyone's amazed when they see it. There have been so many great "Ideas" kits.
- cainxinth 5y agoThis is my problem. I very badly want to build some of these (particularly the Saturn V and some of those huge Technic supercar models), but I really don't need another tchotchke collecting dust on a shelf.
- slowmovintarget 5y agoHave children. Then you get to buy as many Lego sets as you want, but they're really for them... honest. The Saturn V set is excellent, BTW.
- Tomte 5y ago
- abruzzi 5y agoThis is really the opposite of what I always loved about Legos as a kid. All these complex kits seem more like jigsaw puzzles--only one way to go together. What I loved about Legos as a kid was making my own creations.
- jacquesm 5y agoNothing stops you from doing that today. Your best bet for buying bricks is ebay, $9 / Kg or so is pretty good pricing for heirlooms ;)
- riffraff 5y agoI see your point but even when I was a kid 30 years ago Lego had specialized kits (castle with horses, space modules, car races) and even today they sell "just bricks" boxes. There's certainly been a shift in marketing (e.g. Ninjago) but if you want the raw build your own experience it's still there, the offer has just expanded.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoJust fyi, there was a time when lego kits and minifigs did not exist... just lego blocks. More than 30 years ago, so before your time.
- handrous 5y agoMost (not all!) new kits, even the ones that are marketed at kids (not the obviously-intended-for-adults ones) try hard to minimize exposed nubs, and use tons of itty bitty bricks in ways that feel like they fell out of some kind of automated CAD process. The result is smallish, expensive, huge-brick-count sets that're cramped (hard even for kid-hands to play in), hard to non-destructively add on to (you have to rip bricks off to find nubs to attach to, sometimes doing a lot of damage before you've got much useful nub-area exposed), and really hard to repair without the manual and a ton of time if part of it gets smashed. Some of my older castle sets have a brick count similar to modern structures (again, ones aimed at kids, not architectural models or whatever) but are over twice the size and came with like a dozen minifies and horses. The per-piece price may not be much different on modern sets, but there's been some serious size deflation. The new ones look better (I'm guessing they sell better, too, for that reason, especially to adults making the buying decisions). The old ones were much better LEGO.
- jccc 5y agoUm, if I click "Continue" am I agreeing to their cookie policy? Is this popup a GDPR notice? For anyone who doesn't see it: There's a giant blue box on the left that just says continue to lego.com, and then a giant yellow box on the right for going to their "Play Zone" for kids I guess. Then in microscopic text underneath they only describe their cookie policy but say nothing about what you're agreeing to. [EDIT] Okay, it seems there is a cookie-control thing underneath after you click. Only discovered it by meddling with the Inspector. But that whole first thing just really looks like a dark pattern.
- karmakaze 5y agoIt took me a long while to see the LEGO-ness in it. It's so well finished that you can't tell it's LEGO. Certainly you know because you assembled it. But then again the pieces are so specialized that you lose a lot of the creativity that LEGO inspires.