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My dad complained about modern specialized lego bricks 30 years ago. I got some of his old bricks from the 50's. They got some weird shapes too. Nothing changed

by jbrnh 5y ago

My dad complained about modern specialized lego bricks 30 years ago. I got some of his old bricks from the 50's. They got some weird shapes too. Nothing changed.

jacquesm 5y ago
Fun fact: some of the oldest plastic Lego is H0 scale vehicles. I have a bunch of these they are ridiculously valuable today.
loudmax 5y ago
Totally agreed. I have several single function pieces from sets from the late 70s and early 80s: - spring actuated forklift loaders - boat hulls that actually float in water - airplane/helicopter rotors (incompatible with technics because they predate it) Not to mention all the doors, windows, trees, wheel axles and pulleys that can really only do one thing. There was a period in the late 90s/early aughts when Lego really went adrift with the single function pieces. I got my kids a Lego airplane set from that era that consists basically of plane parts. No matter what you do with those pieces they look like they're parts of an airplane. It's pretty sad. Fortunately, Lego corrected course. They still make specialized pieces, particularly the minifigs. When you're working at that scale, nearly all the minifig tools are going to consist of a single piece. But most of the sets now consist of largely of pieces that are flexible enough to be assembled into anything. Sets from the Creator line come with a booklet to assemble whatever is on the box (eg. a robot or a dinosaur), but none of the pieces are so specialized that they can only be used for one thing.
- jbrnh 5y ago
  Yes, and it almost killed the company. I read an article a while back how they had no accounting from the designers to production, and literately had 8 different chef minifigs (also, making star wars sets helped them out as well)
- thrower123 5y ago
  This argument is about a decade out of date, and I'm completely uncomprehending how someone could not come up with a way to repurpose doors and windows and wheel axles... There was a terrible period in the late 90s/early 2000s when they did make a bunch of really chunky large pieces that were impossible to do much with. Now the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and designs are littered with a ridiculous number of miniscule pieces, which do little but bulk up the part count and add baroque detailing. A terrible example of this style of design is the most recent X-Wing (https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/luke-skywalker-s-x-wing-fighter-75301 https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/luke-skywalker-s-x-wing-f...). Clearly a model marketed at children. But the whole thing is incredibly fragile, made up of fiddly bits, with a couple spring-loaded shooter thingies tacked on to give it a modicum of play features. The entire segment aft of the cockpit is a complicated mass of technic beams and pins with a facade over the top, to make the wings fold open, except that the wings don't actually lock open. It looks really pretty, but as a Lego set, it's a big failure.
seppel 5y ago
This is true, but what changed is that Lego is now filling the inside of their models with ugly colored bricks, which makes changing the models much harder than in the past.
handrous 5y ago
The trouble with the modern sets isn't specialized bricks, it's that 3/4 of the brick count is short 1x1s and tiny flat cladding pieces used to cover all the nubs. They're worse for play than the old ones with more large pieces (so, a chance of actually repairing the damn thing from memory if part broke) and exposed nubs to add on to. Older sets also had way more interior space or surface area for a similar brick count, for ones where that mattered (buildings, vehicles).

by jbrnh 5y ago

My dad complained about modern specialized lego bricks 30 years ago. I got some of his old bricks from the 50's. They got some weird shapes too. Nothing changed.

jacquesm 5y ago

Fun fact: some of the oldest plastic Lego is H0 scale vehicles. I have a bunch of these they are ridiculously valuable today.

loudmax 5y ago

Totally agreed. I have several single function pieces from sets from the late 70s and early 80s: - spring actuated forklift loaders - boat hulls that actually float in water - airplane/helicopter rotors (incompatible with technics because they predate it) Not to mention all the doors, windows, trees, wheel axles and pulleys that can really only do one thing. There was a period in the late 90s/early aughts when Lego really went adrift with the single function pieces. I got my kids a Lego airplane set from that era that consists basically of plane parts. No matter what you do with those pieces they look like they're parts of an airplane. It's pretty sad. Fortunately, Lego corrected course. They still make specialized pieces, particularly the minifigs. When you're working at that scale, nearly all the minifig tools are going to consist of a single piece. But most of the sets now consist of largely of pieces that are flexible enough to be assembled into anything. Sets from the Creator line come with a booklet to assemble whatever is on the box (eg. a robot or a dinosaur), but none of the pieces are so specialized that they can only be used for one thing.

jbrnh 5y ago
Yes, and it almost killed the company. I read an article a while back how they had no accounting from the designers to production, and literately had 8 different chef minifigs (also, making star wars sets helped them out as well)
thrower123 5y ago
This argument is about a decade out of date, and I'm completely uncomprehending how someone could not come up with a way to repurpose doors and windows and wheel axles... There was a terrible period in the late 90s/early 2000s when they did make a bunch of really chunky large pieces that were impossible to do much with. Now the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and designs are littered with a ridiculous number of miniscule pieces, which do little but bulk up the part count and add baroque detailing. A terrible example of this style of design is the most recent X-Wing (https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/luke-skywalker-s-x-wing-fighter-75301 https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/luke-skywalker-s-x-wing-f...). Clearly a model marketed at children. But the whole thing is incredibly fragile, made up of fiddly bits, with a couple spring-loaded shooter thingies tacked on to give it a modicum of play features. The entire segment aft of the cockpit is a complicated mass of technic beams and pins with a facade over the top, to make the wings fold open, except that the wings don't actually lock open. It looks really pretty, but as a Lego set, it's a big failure.

seppel 5y ago

This is true, but what changed is that Lego is now filling the inside of their models with ugly colored bricks, which makes changing the models much harder than in the past.

handrous 5y ago

The trouble with the modern sets isn't specialized bricks, it's that 3/4 of the brick count is short 1x1s and tiny flat cladding pieces used to cover all the nubs. They're worse for play than the old ones with more large pieces (so, a chance of actually repairing the damn thing from memory if part broke) and exposed nubs to add on to. Older sets also had way more interior space or surface area for a similar brick count, for ones where that mattered (buildings, vehicles).