30 years ago I never saw raw brick sets in the stores and certainly never had any. The sets were filled with space pieces like satellite dishes, city pieces li

30 years ago I never saw raw brick sets in the stores and certainly never had any. The sets were filled with space pieces like satellite dishes, city pieces like garage doors, medieval castle pieces, and so forth. Once you built the set you got bored of it within a few days and its pieces went in the pile that you built new things out of. That was your raw brick set. The garage door became the ceiling of a spacecraft. I don't see why it would be different with the sets now. They're just as themed as they were 30 years ago, the only difference is that they've gone from generic themes like "space" to branded themes like "Star Wars". And if there are a few more custom pieces per set, I don't think that prevents their reuse in other ways. If anything has changed, it's just that kids have a lot more options now. If kids play less with Legos, that's not because the sets have changed.