3 ms·

somebody outta make a cheaper affordable lego alternative its a god damn crime what lego is getting away with

hazelnut 5mo ago
BlueBrixx is becoming fairly popular in Germany right now. The sets look competitive to me: https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/bestsellers/ https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/bestsellers/
- zuzululu 5mo ago
  still look insanely overpriced
margalabargala 5mo ago
Adjusted for inflation, lego set prices have been consistent over the years: > 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... Inflation-adjusted price per piece has actually been declining over the years, dropping from ~$0.25 to a current $0.10 on average. This set is $0.06 per piece, so even less expensive than a median set by that metric.
- zuzululu 5mo ago
  but the people buying has not had their purchasing power keep up, demographic have shifted entirely over the years
  - margalabargala 5mo ago
    Someone should invent a metric for when prices inflate across the board, making the purchasing power of a currency unit go down. Then people could control for prices over time.
gniv 5mo ago
I just looked and of course there are: https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005010679835500.html https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005010679835500.html
AlotOfReading 5mo ago
Pantasy, Cobi, Funwhole, megabloks, etc. There's tons of alt bricks at nearly any reasonable price point. But you're still not going to find these sorts of multi-thousand piece sets for <$100 because it takes at least a few cents to produce a dimensionally accurate, quality controlled bit of plastic.
- zuzululu 5mo ago
  But thats because they limit production to control prices, producing mass volume accurate plastic was never the bottleneck.
  - AlotOfReading 5mo ago
    These are remarkably close to the raw cost of materials and tooling. The Sagrada Familia model is a 12k piece set for $800, ~$0.07/piece. Phantasy has an unlicensed Opera set (85019) [0] with 3.5k pieces for $190, $0.05/piece. That's straight up cheap. They're not limiting production to control prices. High quality injection molding (in multiple colors no less!) is hard. 2 cents over 12k pieces does add up to a nice bit of change for Lego though. [0] https://pantasy.com/products/pantasy-the-opera-85019 https://pantasy.com/products/pantasy-the-opera-85019
eigenspace 5mo ago
There are cheaper alternatives. People still generally prefer Lego. Also, is this one even that expensive? It's only 6 cents per piece.
httpz 5mo ago
If you can't afford to buy the lego, you definitely can't afford to have the space to display it.
Markoff 5mo ago
there are tons of them in China, you can buy them on AliExpress, though that are expensive there for 1/2-1/3rd of Lego but you wouldn't believe if I told you how much it cost in China, you can buy sets with hundreds of pieces for like 3-4 euros, I couldn't believe it when I saw the prices, Lego prices are highway robbery for piece of plastic and don't tell me about paying for their creativity, there are alternate builds made by fans for free which are better than the original sets

BlueBrixx is becoming fairly popular in Germany right now. The sets look competitive to me: https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/bestsellers/ https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/bestsellers/

zuzululu 5mo ago
still look insanely overpriced

margalabargala 5mo ago

Adjusted for inflation, lego set prices have been consistent over the years: > 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... Inflation-adjusted price per piece has actually been declining over the years, dropping from ~$0.25 to a current $0.10 on average. This set is $0.06 per piece, so even less expensive than a median set by that metric.

zuzululu 5mo ago
but the people buying has not had their purchasing power keep up, demographic have shifted entirely over the years
- margalabargala 5mo ago
  Someone should invent a metric for when prices inflate across the board, making the purchasing power of a currency unit go down. Then people could control for prices over time.

gniv 5mo ago

I just looked and of course there are: https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005010679835500.html https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005010679835500.html

AlotOfReading 5mo ago

Pantasy, Cobi, Funwhole, megabloks, etc. There's tons of alt bricks at nearly any reasonable price point. But you're still not going to find these sorts of multi-thousand piece sets for <$100 because it takes at least a few cents to produce a dimensionally accurate, quality controlled bit of plastic.

zuzululu 5mo ago
But thats because they limit production to control prices, producing mass volume accurate plastic was never the bottleneck.
- AlotOfReading 5mo ago
  These are remarkably close to the raw cost of materials and tooling. The Sagrada Familia model is a 12k piece set for $800, ~$0.07/piece. Phantasy has an unlicensed Opera set (85019) [0] with 3.5k pieces for $190, $0.05/piece. That's straight up cheap. They're not limiting production to control prices. High quality injection molding (in multiple colors no less!) is hard. 2 cents over 12k pieces does add up to a nice bit of change for Lego though. [0] https://pantasy.com/products/pantasy-the-opera-85019 https://pantasy.com/products/pantasy-the-opera-85019

eigenspace 5mo ago

There are cheaper alternatives. People still generally prefer Lego. Also, is this one even that expensive? It's only 6 cents per piece.

httpz 5mo ago

If you can't afford to buy the lego, you definitely can't afford to have the space to display it.

Markoff 5mo ago

there are tons of them in China, you can buy them on AliExpress, though that are expensive there for 1/2-1/3rd of Lego but you wouldn't believe if I told you how much it cost in China, you can buy sets with hundreds of pieces for like 3-4 euros, I couldn't believe it when I saw the prices, Lego prices are highway robbery for piece of plastic and don't tell me about paying for their creativity, there are alternate builds made by fans for free which are better than the original sets