> My personal gripe is just the explosion of special purpose pieces that Lego vends today. Less is more Lego. Lego has significantly reduced the number of spec

> My personal gripe is just the explosion of special purpose pieces that Lego vends today. Less is more Lego. Lego has significantly reduced the number of special purpose pieces it uses since the 90's. Back then, the number of specialized one-off pieces Lego was using helped nearly sink the company. That's partially responsible for the increase in the number of small parts they use now -- it allows them to recreate some of the intricacy you could have with an equivalent larger piece. A lot of the weird/specialized pieces Lego puts out these days are minifigure-related in some way.