I never understood Lego kits... The whole point of a construction set is to be able to build many different things, possibly unimagined to the producer. But the Legos are usually limited to one or two predefined models.
Lego has more sets today that are just bricks or bricks with multiple models than they've had for like 35+ years. Not to mention dozens of books they put out with other ideas.
And I'm not talking about instructions for how to build a different set, I mean "Here's a way you can combine these pieces that you might not have though of - figure out what to do with that" or "You like animals? Here's how to make a tail. Go make some animals."
My daughter gets plenty of small sets, and then typically just wants to dive into all of the extra pieces and build something completely different. Sometimes these are inspired by Lego suggestions. Sometimes they are crazy things she comes up with on her own.
There is nothing that Lego sells that legitimately limits people in what they can build.
We have ~20 kits at home (gifts, impulsive purchases, etc), it looks like pile of assorted, useless, weird blocks, non-matching wheels. My son started play Lego after I bit the bullet and just sorted out that crap, leaving only 5-10 standard blocks.
I also wonder what some people consider standard blocks. If you're just talking about 2x4s, they're actually not that much fun. If I sorted all of my sets, the majority of pieces would be 1x2 or longer bricks or various flat pieces which are significantly better for building.
There are plenty of odd pieces out there, but when you get into the expert level sets and see them use croissants and robot fists to do remarkable detail on buildings... well I certainly realized that very few pieces are useless.
I'd get it not just because I'm a space travel buff but because of the scale- it's a meter tall! Great job bringing out the immense size of the Saturn V, in Lego form.
There are a few sites around where LEGO fans post alternate builds of models. Here's an example search showing 100+ alternate models built from a single 67 piece kit:
https://rebrickable.com/search/?search_type=mocs&parent_set=...
You can do this with licensed themes as well. Here's five alternate models that I built from a tiny X-Wing:
https://rebrickable.com/users/jncraton/mocs/?parent_set=7512...
Seeing what a set designer has put together is always a fun way to learn new techniques and design concepts, but there's nothing stopping anyone from building whatever they want out of a LEGO set.
Eh, you can always just take it apart and build what you want or just build what you want form the get and throw the instructions out. I did this for years as a child and have done it for years as an adult.
Think of it as buying a set of pieces you can use build anything you want with (including combining with other sets to build bigger/other stuff), but it comes with instructions to build something very cool using just those pieces.
On a side note, LEGO does sell boxes of basic pieces with multiple instructions sets included that only utilize a small portion of the whole box.
Plus, nothing's stopping you from buying lots of loose pieces. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but you used to be able to just buy whole boxes of bricks of different colors or shapes from lego.
The collection seems small, but it looks like you can buy general brick sets for maximum creativity.
My concern is that, due to the much greater number of unique pieces, the increased difficulty of organizing a collection, or finding the piece you need in an unorganized pile, or even just being able to visualize what it is you want to build will tend to discourage kids from making their own creations. Hopefully I'm wrong about that.
Ahh, I see. That makes sense, but also I fail to see how that's a bad thing. The new pieces are built to be backwards compatible with your Legos from 30 years ago, so wouldn't that just make them MORE attractive?
Don't under estimate kids' ability to change and invent.
Just because you can't think of anything to build other than what is shown in the book in front of you, doesn't mean that applies to everyone.
The packaging used to be better about this, even including alternate instructions using the pieces in the set.
They still do that with some sets.
Lego Classic 10709 - a small cheap set (less than $5) - has one page with suggestions if you combine it with other similar sets, and another page with instructions about modifying this set.
Pages 14 and 24.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/classic/activities/booklets/10709...