But you're literally admitting that legos aren't what they used to be. My exposure to legos was very similar to yours. Yes, there are more variety of pieces now

But you're literally admitting that legos aren't what they used to be. My exposure to legos was very similar to yours. Yes, there are more variety of pieces now, and it can be both a blessing and a curse, depending on what angle you squint at it from. In my experience, old legos had a far more rigid feeling: idiomatically, sets relied heavily on the verticality of system (i.e. usage of the traditional tall or short bricks). Nowadays, sets come with a huge variety of 1x1 and 1x2 pieces with sideways elements, and a good portion of pieces are of the beam variety (i.e. pieces that require connectors to be put together[0], commonly found in mindstorm sets) So with a modern mindstorms set, you can build some really elaborate things with high degrees of motion, in a way that is intended by Lego, but conversely, the traditional blocks look dull in comparison. I was building some random robots w/ my kids a while back, and the way we approached the bricks was fairly different. They largely build following the system as intended. My childhood techniques, by contrast, are distinctly "illegal" (according to what Lego considers valid/stable brick arrangements in official sets). For example, this[1] is a technique to achieve a movable joint that I used to chain together to create things like arms, animal tails, etc. The entertainment environment for kids has also changed, through no fault of Lego itself. Despite the availability of high range of motion components, there are so many other ways for kids to entertain themselves nowadays that it would just never occur to them to exploit Legos in unintended ways the way I did. [0] https://img.brickowl.com/files/image_cache/larger/lego-dark-stone-gray-beam-15-32278-64871-32-852929-50.jpg https://img.brickowl.com/files/image_cache/larger/lego-dark-... [1] http://www.publishyourdesign.com/design/102080 http://www.publishyourdesign.com/design/102080