This is not a new trend, it extends back to at least the late 70s. As a child of the 80s my 'bag of legos' is full of specialized pieces like castle flags, pira

This is not a new trend, it extends back to at least the late 70s. As a child of the 80s my 'bag of legos' is full of specialized pieces like castle flags, pirates, and spaceship hoods. I still fondly remember building futuristic space pirate ships with medieval horses on the deck - the diversity really helped my creativity. That said, if you want large sets of generic pieces look into a creator bucket. They come out to something like 5-10 cents a piece and sound like what you are talking about. They're fairly new so I haven't used/bought them, but I think they're basically the same thing as the 'basic' buckets I had as a child.