5 ms·

A more interesting comparison would be to put the core themes of the 1990s (Castle, Pirates, Space, Town) against the modern popular themes (Ninjago, Creator, S

A more interesting comparison would be to put the core themes of the 1990s (Castle, Pirates, Space, Town) against the modern popular themes (Ninjago, Creator, Star Wars, City). The old sets had less specialised parts and less colour variety, which allowed kids to combine sets from the same theme easily. The buildings (castles, fortresses, harbours) almost always had a big baseplate (flat or 3D). Minifigs were themed and textured, but weren't cartoonish with facial expressions. Nowadays, most of the sets are some imaginary vehicles with Creator-style builds. You can probably build a new vehicle out of the same set, but combining different sets from the same theme is much less enjoyable. The few sets with buildings rarely have baseplates and feel very airy and unharmonic.

where-group-by 5y ago
The number of specialised parts is one thing I dislike about modern Lego sets. They do look great and have really smart building techniques, but I just want to build a brick house with my kids. There is always Lego classic sets, and smaller creator houses do have a lot of regular bricks too. But it is a bit annoying once you amass a few sets from other lines. Still, I'm glad they are in business. I will take whatever they do now Vs them going bust, which was a risk a decade or so ago (or maybe longer, I can't remember the details).
- mcv 5y ago
  My brother and I got the first two grey castles in the 1980s (the first castle yellow; grey was a fairly new colour back then). Those castles mainly relied on fairly large castle wall pieces. At first, even as a kid, I felt that was cheating; we should have gotten bricks to assemble all those walls. Later I discovered what a boon they were, because they allowed me to rapidly design new and different castles. Sure, I couldn't build a spaceship out of them, but just exploring the space of all the possible castles you could build was amazing. Some of these specialised pieces inspire creativity. Especially with spaceships. But I do agree that many modern sets just invite you to build this one thing out of them. We did actually turn out Millennium Falcon into an X-Wing and a TIE-fighter once, but we did eventually turn them back into the Falcon. It feels more wrong than it used to to build something else.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    If you still have the flag for that yellow castle hang on to it, that's a collectors item.
    - mcv 5y ago
      I don't think we ever had the yellow castle, although I do remember that flag. And we definitely had a set with a horse in the style of the yellow castle. So either we did have the yellow castle but lost the instructions, or I knew someone who had it, or that flag also appears in another set. But I really have no idea. It was a long time ago.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        The reason those flags are so rare is because the grip of the 1x1 round brick at the bottom is much stronger than the strength of the flagpole so if you would remove it by pulling on the flag you'd break it. So these commend ridiculous prices for small pieces of plastic (about 8 euros or so last I checked).
        mcv 5y ago
        8 euros isn't that much. Certainly not an expensive collector's item. For an item that hasn't been made in almost 40 years.
        jacquesm 5y ago
        It translates into 5000 euros / kg or so, which is pretty impressive. Of course if you had a kilo of them the price would crater :)
  - googlerx 5y ago
    I did use those castle walls for a space ship. It was massive, maybe 3ft long, vaguely resembling Spaceball One.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >The number of specialised parts is one thing I dislike about modern Lego sets. Lego started pulling back from that a long time ago because they were too expensive. They had a leadership change in 2004, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp came in and one of the first things he did was halve the number of different parts.
tokai 5y ago
If you look at Lego Space during the 90s it is a long list of new versions (almost yearly) each with their own specialized parts. Personally I don't feel like this narrative about a substantial shift in Lego sets fits with reality. To me it feel like people conflates it with the rise of licensed sets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Space
- bluetomcat 5y ago
  Let's take a look at this particular small set from the old Pirates theme: 6259: Broadside's Brig [https://brickset.com/sets/6259-1/Broadside-s-Brig https://brickset.com/sets/6259-1/Broadside-s-Brig] For what was a very small and cheap set at the time, you are getting 3 minifigs and a small building on a baseplate. The bulk of the parts are yellow- and white-coloured bricks for walls and architectural elements. There is a specialised yellow-coloured edge panel with a red brick texture, but it plays very nicely with the rest of the parts architecturally. You can easily combine this set with the bigger forts and harbours. The colours are compatible, the parts are compatible. This is not certainly the case with modern Lego sets.
  - tokai 5y ago
    Then lets look at this one, from the same period: https://brickset.com/sets/6834-1/Celestial-Sled https://brickset.com/sets/6834-1/Celestial-Sled Weird ski bricks, seethrou chain saw, antenna, big arrowshaped structural piece, etc. I'm not surprised the one you linked is from 91. Noone is disputing that the complexity rose from the 80s. But the complexity we are seeing now is not a new thing. It started in the 90s.
    - Xylakant 5y ago
      The ski bricks are standard technic skis. The chain saw and is found in the entire series of kits. The arrow shape plate is a very common piece in all space kits back to the 1980, though the usually were grey or black. Often used for wings with hinged plates. I have literally dozens of those in my childhood lego collection. Antennas were on each an every space piece, though the thin and slender ones only started showing in the early 90ies. They’re still around.
acdha 5y ago
> Nowadays, most of the sets are some imaginary vehicles with Creator-style builds. You can probably build a new vehicle out of the same set, but combining different sets from the same theme is much less enjoyable. The few sets with buildings rarely have baseplates and feel very airy and unharmonic. “Most” doesn’t feel right to me - my son’s mostly had City sets and they’re all repurposable, buildings use large flat pieces with configurable roads so it’s not quite as big but also allows more combinations than “large square”, etc. There are definitely specialty pieces but I’m skeptical that they’re that much more common given all of the pieces I had as a kid which were pretty specialized, too.

where-group-by 5y ago

The number of specialised parts is one thing I dislike about modern Lego sets. They do look great and have really smart building techniques, but I just want to build a brick house with my kids. There is always Lego classic sets, and smaller creator houses do have a lot of regular bricks too. But it is a bit annoying once you amass a few sets from other lines. Still, I'm glad they are in business. I will take whatever they do now Vs them going bust, which was a risk a decade or so ago (or maybe longer, I can't remember the details).

mcv 5y ago
My brother and I got the first two grey castles in the 1980s (the first castle yellow; grey was a fairly new colour back then). Those castles mainly relied on fairly large castle wall pieces. At first, even as a kid, I felt that was cheating; we should have gotten bricks to assemble all those walls. Later I discovered what a boon they were, because they allowed me to rapidly design new and different castles. Sure, I couldn't build a spaceship out of them, but just exploring the space of all the possible castles you could build was amazing. Some of these specialised pieces inspire creativity. Especially with spaceships. But I do agree that many modern sets just invite you to build this one thing out of them. We did actually turn out Millennium Falcon into an X-Wing and a TIE-fighter once, but we did eventually turn them back into the Falcon. It feels more wrong than it used to to build something else.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  If you still have the flag for that yellow castle hang on to it, that's a collectors item.
  - mcv 5y ago
    I don't think we ever had the yellow castle, although I do remember that flag. And we definitely had a set with a horse in the style of the yellow castle. So either we did have the yellow castle but lost the instructions, or I knew someone who had it, or that flag also appears in another set. But I really have no idea. It was a long time ago.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      The reason those flags are so rare is because the grip of the 1x1 round brick at the bottom is much stronger than the strength of the flagpole so if you would remove it by pulling on the flag you'd break it. So these commend ridiculous prices for small pieces of plastic (about 8 euros or so last I checked).
      - mcv 5y ago
        8 euros isn't that much. Certainly not an expensive collector's item. For an item that hasn't been made in almost 40 years.
        jacquesm 5y ago
        It translates into 5000 euros / kg or so, which is pretty impressive. Of course if you had a kilo of them the price would crater :)
- googlerx 5y ago
  I did use those castle walls for a space ship. It was massive, maybe 3ft long, vaguely resembling Spaceball One.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>The number of specialised parts is one thing I dislike about modern Lego sets. Lego started pulling back from that a long time ago because they were too expensive. They had a leadership change in 2004, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp came in and one of the first things he did was halve the number of different parts.

tokai 5y ago

If you look at Lego Space during the 90s it is a long list of new versions (almost yearly) each with their own specialized parts. Personally I don't feel like this narrative about a substantial shift in Lego sets fits with reality. To me it feel like people conflates it with the rise of licensed sets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Space

bluetomcat 5y ago
Let's take a look at this particular small set from the old Pirates theme: 6259: Broadside's Brig [https://brickset.com/sets/6259-1/Broadside-s-Brig https://brickset.com/sets/6259-1/Broadside-s-Brig] For what was a very small and cheap set at the time, you are getting 3 minifigs and a small building on a baseplate. The bulk of the parts are yellow- and white-coloured bricks for walls and architectural elements. There is a specialised yellow-coloured edge panel with a red brick texture, but it plays very nicely with the rest of the parts architecturally. You can easily combine this set with the bigger forts and harbours. The colours are compatible, the parts are compatible. This is not certainly the case with modern Lego sets.
- tokai 5y ago
  Then lets look at this one, from the same period: https://brickset.com/sets/6834-1/Celestial-Sled https://brickset.com/sets/6834-1/Celestial-Sled Weird ski bricks, seethrou chain saw, antenna, big arrowshaped structural piece, etc. I'm not surprised the one you linked is from 91. Noone is disputing that the complexity rose from the 80s. But the complexity we are seeing now is not a new thing. It started in the 90s.
  - Xylakant 5y ago
    The ski bricks are standard technic skis. The chain saw and is found in the entire series of kits. The arrow shape plate is a very common piece in all space kits back to the 1980, though the usually were grey or black. Often used for wings with hinged plates. I have literally dozens of those in my childhood lego collection. Antennas were on each an every space piece, though the thin and slender ones only started showing in the early 90ies. They’re still around.

acdha 5y ago

> Nowadays, most of the sets are some imaginary vehicles with Creator-style builds. You can probably build a new vehicle out of the same set, but combining different sets from the same theme is much less enjoyable. The few sets with buildings rarely have baseplates and feel very airy and unharmonic. “Most” doesn’t feel right to me - my son’s mostly had City sets and they’re all repurposable, buildings use large flat pieces with configurable roads so it’s not quite as big but also allows more combinations than “large square”, etc. There are definitely specialty pieces but I’m skeptical that they’re that much more common given all of the pieces I had as a kid which were pretty specialized, too.