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Comment by jncraton | Hacker News Reader

You aren't wrong, but the two are tightly related. LEGO's competitors are also selling many licensed products, but LEGO's position as the best quality brand in the market has allowed them to secure contracts for the most popular IP (Star Wars, Marvel, Minecraft, etc). Their competitors are left with less popular or less family-friendly IP such as Halo or Star Trek.

Its also worth noting that some of LEGO's competitors don't worry too much about IP laws. You can buy a clone brand X-wing for 50% of the cost of the genuine set, but the quality is significantly lower in my experience.

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> You can buy a clone brand X-wing for 50% of the cost of the genuine set, but the quality is significantly lower in my experience.

Often the knockoff sets are around 25% of the Lego price—I bought a Lepin Porsche for >$80 instead of $300. And the quality was 85%-90% of Lego. So slightly lower, but at a quarter of the price—and price is a feature.

I grew up with Lego in the 1980s; back then they had zero or few tie-ins with branding other than Shell IIRC. There were also fewer specialized pieces, meaning greater emphasis on kids' using their imagination.

This is an often stated criticism of modern Lego designs, but I wonder if anyone has tried to test this empirically?

E.g. if you gave a group of kids a "classic" set and another a themed set, with no further instructions, would the first group produce more "creative" designs?

I think the critics of the branded sets undervalue the Piagetian concept of scaffolding, basically that having the Harry Potter superstructure allows kids to riff on a variety of concepts that actually may be more "creative" than the random geometric blocks.

E.g. "What if we built a jail around Voldermort instead of killing him" seems like an equally valuable expression of creativity as "I made a vaguely car-shaped thing, but it has six wheels instead of four and has those little lever bricks instead of a steering wheel."

Let's do a direct comparison of [1] "70412-1: Soldiers Fort" (2015) to [2] "6263-1: Imperial Outpost" (1995):

- Older set has a big baseplate which enables a child to start building a new structure easily

- Older set has well-pronounced architectural elements like arcs and slopes and feels like a solid structure, newer set feels airy and ad-hoc

- Older set has minifigs with a simple paint, newer set has cartoon-like characters

- Older set has a more realistic colour scheme, newer set again feels cartoonish

- Older set has a specially designed backside for playing and putting minifigs

[1] https://brickset.com/sets/70412-1/Soldiers-Fort

[2] https://brickset.com/sets/6263-1/Imperial-Outpost

They look like different tiers of sets the first one is like a 20$ set while the second is a 10$ one

Part of that is that LEGO has a policy against making any models including guns.

I read this, believed it, and repeated it to a friend in a Lego store. My friend then pointed out that there are tons of models with guns and many other weapons. I think the actual policy is that their original nonlicensed models don't feature modern day guns or military vehicles, but they are totally fine making models with guns and weapons of war so long as they are from the fantasy world or they are not modern.

pfft. Built any “City” theme sets lately? All the police minifigs pack pretty realistic-looking semi-autos.

Do you have a reference to an official Lego City set with semi-autos? I find that hard to believe.

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?q=gun

try this

I still don't see it. There are sci-fi guns like blasters, historical guns like flintlocks, and there are guns used in superhero sets, but nothing for Lego City or any other set that claims to represent real life.

https://warehouse19.se/images/normal/1-1981-.jpg

Admittedly a revolver and not a semi-auto, and I don't know if it's from a current or recently discontinued set. But it's definitely from a modern set.

edit: link to the specific piece: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=1356...

In the first picture, is that from an actual Lego City set, or has someone added the revolver to the police officer from another set?

The BrickLink page lists the revolver as part of a bunch of western and cavalry sets, that is, historical sets. Click "Item Appears In: 7 Sets" to the right.

I was very convinced I'd seen guns in the Lego City sets. Upon further consideration I might have to concede that was, in fact, wrong.

I don’t think that’s true at all. I looked at every police set Lego is selling currently and not a single one of them included even a suggestion of a gun.

Typical police equipment are handcuffs, megaphones, walkie-talkies, traffic paddles and coffee cups. The criminals might carry gold, banknotes, dynamite or crowbars and other tools.

The most gun-like thing in current sets is the huge net shooter (larger than a minifig and not portable at all) that really isn’t very gun-like at all.

Not even the minifig prints include suggestions of guns.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have Playmobil's police sets which include sub machine guns, rifles with sniper-scopes and attack dogs eg [0]

0. https://www.amazon.com/PLAYMOBIL%C2%AE-6872-Police-Command-C...

What do you need guns for anyway? When I was a kid, I armed my Lego The A-Team with small, narrow plates or antennas with ring clips. Worked perfectly.

It is modern military and weapons that are not made. Not weapons per se

This is the best Quora answer I've ever seen. It has illustrations!

https://www.quora.com/When-did-LEGO-set-start-containing-con...

The introduction of weapons was gradual, and except for Batman, they are either historical or futuristic.

From my observations as a foreigner in Denmark, historical or fantasy weapons like swords, spears, shields, clubs acceptable and common. A 6 year old might have a wooden one, and be seen anywhere in the city. A 16 year old might have a foam and fibreglass one, and be seen LARPing in the woods at the weekend. A gun that isn't clearly a water pistol is a rare sight.

If you want an overview of minifigure weapons Lego has used over the years you can get a pretty complete picture here: https://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?v=2&pg=1&catString...

Even though Lego sets do sometimes include weapons, even very gun-like weapons, to me there is still a pretty clear line Lego draws. Their City sets don’t include guns and guns are the exception, not the rule, otherwise.

Look at Lego’s competitors if you want to get an idea of what Lego could be doing. Obviously those are looking for their niche, so that’s to be expected. They have modern and 20th century military equipment sets and I could never imagine Lego releasing sets like that.

> Their City sets don’t include guns and guns are the exception, not the rule, otherwise.

That line got me thinking. I think you are right and I've never seen a police minifig with a weapon.

I happen to own Lego sets of pirates, which also happen to be my favorites. They have cutlass, pistols, muskets, barrels of rum, jugs of moonshine and other piratey/armada things.

The Lego Western theme from 1996 had masked minifigs, rifles, revolvers, fired dynamite, wads of cash and bank robberies.

http://brickarms.com fills this niche.

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