4 ms·

It's actually worse, quality has gone down with many things.

amelius 4y ago
It's kind of odd that a small microcontroller IC costs less than a LEGO brick. As if injection molding is a more expensive process than semiconductor fabbing.
- rvba 4y ago
  The new bricks made from ecological materials seem to last shorter than the old ones made from ABS. Feels like planned obsolescense marketed under the guise of ecology.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    The current Lego site says they are made from ABS still.
- contingencies 4y ago
  Reasons include automation cycle time and base process parallelism, warehousing cost, shipping cost, distribution cost, manner of use. Basically a LEGO brick is expensive because when being fabbed it is part of a relatively small volume (single color) injection run with limited parallelism, has to be 'manually' handled to be retrieved and packed, and then is effectively a large block of air requiring inefficient shipping, storage and retail presentation around the world. Changing the injection machine out to a new material means down time. Changing the mould takes even more time. Every SKU needs new retail packaging design, documentation and assets. Direct to consumer retail leaves scope for fat margins. Primary USP is "unique IP". Whereas an MCU is tiny, can be fabbed in hugely parallel process, is designed to be packaged and distributed in a space efficient tape which remains trivial to consume en-masse owing to its automation-friendliness. Industrial sales leave little scope for fat margins. Primary USP is "functionality and reliability as supply chain component at competitive price point".
  - MagicMoonlight 4y ago
    Bullshit. It’s expensive because they want to exploit whales. I can buy chinese made lego sets that cost £15. An official set would be hundreds or thousands. It’s the same pieces.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
      Are there any knock off bricks with the same fit tolerances? I haven't seen any. Although you might ask, should be accept a slightly lower tolerance to drive down the cost?
      - detaro 4y ago
        A bunch of manufacturers are nowadays equal to Lego quality (and beat them in other qualities, e.g. recently Lego really seems to struggle with color consistency). Not always easy to find out what a certain set manufacturer uses (they often buy the bricks from someone else), but e. g. Gobricks (afaik used by Panlos) and whatever Bluebricks Pro uses are really good.
      - KptMarchewa 4y ago
        Maybe the one part in thousand inconsistency isn't worth 10-100x the price.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        My kids got a few MEGA Bloks sets when they were younger, and 1/1000 is an incredibly generous description of their tolerances. Things just... didn't stick together consistently. They'd just fall apart.
  - lnsru 4y ago
    No. Lego is expensive, because it’s luxury toy brand. There many many guys analyzing this topic, here is one of them: https://bricknerd.com/home/greed-or-inflation-an-economic-analysis-of-lego-price-increases-7-26-22 https://bricknerd.com/home/greed-or-inflation-an-economic-an... Long story short: each year new sets contain less parts AND cost more.

It's kind of odd that a small microcontroller IC costs less than a LEGO brick. As if injection molding is a more expensive process than semiconductor fabbing.

rvba 4y ago
The new bricks made from ecological materials seem to last shorter than the old ones made from ABS. Feels like planned obsolescense marketed under the guise of ecology.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  The current Lego site says they are made from ABS still.
contingencies 4y ago
Reasons include automation cycle time and base process parallelism, warehousing cost, shipping cost, distribution cost, manner of use. Basically a LEGO brick is expensive because when being fabbed it is part of a relatively small volume (single color) injection run with limited parallelism, has to be 'manually' handled to be retrieved and packed, and then is effectively a large block of air requiring inefficient shipping, storage and retail presentation around the world. Changing the injection machine out to a new material means down time. Changing the mould takes even more time. Every SKU needs new retail packaging design, documentation and assets. Direct to consumer retail leaves scope for fat margins. Primary USP is "unique IP". Whereas an MCU is tiny, can be fabbed in hugely parallel process, is designed to be packaged and distributed in a space efficient tape which remains trivial to consume en-masse owing to its automation-friendliness. Industrial sales leave little scope for fat margins. Primary USP is "functionality and reliability as supply chain component at competitive price point".
- MagicMoonlight 4y ago
  Bullshit. It’s expensive because they want to exploit whales. I can buy chinese made lego sets that cost £15. An official set would be hundreds or thousands. It’s the same pieces.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    Are there any knock off bricks with the same fit tolerances? I haven't seen any. Although you might ask, should be accept a slightly lower tolerance to drive down the cost?
    - detaro 4y ago
      A bunch of manufacturers are nowadays equal to Lego quality (and beat them in other qualities, e.g. recently Lego really seems to struggle with color consistency). Not always easy to find out what a certain set manufacturer uses (they often buy the bricks from someone else), but e. g. Gobricks (afaik used by Panlos) and whatever Bluebricks Pro uses are really good.
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Maybe the one part in thousand inconsistency isn't worth 10-100x the price.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        My kids got a few MEGA Bloks sets when they were younger, and 1/1000 is an incredibly generous description of their tolerances. Things just... didn't stick together consistently. They'd just fall apart.
- lnsru 4y ago
  No. Lego is expensive, because it’s luxury toy brand. There many many guys analyzing this topic, here is one of them: https://bricknerd.com/home/greed-or-inflation-an-economic-analysis-of-lego-price-increases-7-26-22 https://bricknerd.com/home/greed-or-inflation-an-economic-an... Long story short: each year new sets contain less parts AND cost more.