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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

As long as its rooted in blocks, I'm all for it. If it becomes rooted in precast IKEA specific shapes, its no better or worse than the Star Wars branded trash. If it becomes dominant, and removes the impetus for non-directed play in blocks, its net-negative.

Lego now is not what it used to be. Minifigs changed it. If you want what lego used to be, Meccano or roblox or some of the other undirected play spaces may be better.

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"Lego now is not what it used to be."

Of course not. If LEGO did not change they would be out of business right now.

Your comment is about nostalgia.

You can still buy the basic LEGO blocks. So why would you advice someone to use Meccano or Roblox? You can even buy LEGO Architecture Studio (set 21050) exactly for the reason you call 'non-directed play'. And all those blocks are still compatible with the 1970's blocks.

So in a way LEGO did not change at all.

>Your comment is about nostalgia.

Nostalgia is thrown out as some kind of accusation all too often, but (and this is a trivial observation) things can absolutely worsen with change/time too.

Just because LEGO "had to adapt" doesn't mean that (given some set of principles on might have about it) any adaptation is equally good or as good as what was before...

E.g. on such principle could be: "What is good is building stuff with blocks from imagination, not pre-made movie-based themes"

> Nostalgia is thrown out as some kind of accusation all too often,

Didn't read this as an accusation, simply a remark that the original comment was not necessarily about declining quality or compatibility (as proven by the comment you're responding to) but mostly that LEGO has changed its focus, making it different from what it used to be when we were younger, but not objectively better or worse.

I have always been fond of duplo blocks for this reason. They are totally undirected and up to the imagination. The resolution is too poor to really model what you want, so you have to dream instead. As a child my "tree house" was an 6x6 box on top of a 2x2 tower.

I wish this were true but the new stuff is just like Lego -- one-off shapes and special pieces, lots of decals and characters and animals.

It's still pretty great though!

Toolo is pretty good. Even if character personified, It is pretty good.

Kids are never going to be happy with just assembling the bricks into the Star Wars configuration outlined in the directions. Initially it's a challenge to put kits together according to the plans but once they're built any clever kid is going to mod them and eventually dismantle them and use the parts for something new entirely. That said, there are the Technics kits which have functional components that are largely useless outside of their intended configuration unless you have a massive amount of gears and spare pneumatic parts.

> That said, there are the Technics kits which have functional components that are largely useless outside of their intended configuration unless you have a massive amount of gears and spare pneumatic parts.

This series of books is a good antidote:

https://www.amazon.com/Klutz-Lego-Gadgets/dp/1338219634

What timeframe do you refer to as "what it used to be"?

I owned lego castles and spaceships sets even 30+ years ago.

I stopped playing with lego as a child around 1975. I've played with lego as a parent and inveterate fiddler ever since.

I freely admit by the time I stopped, Lego was well beyond blocks: fences, animals, plants, roofing elements, train elements, turntables, windows, car elements...

I think you're going too radical. I get that LEGO gradually shifted from pure blocks to more and more specific things for aesthetics (and sales), but even up to the 90s the main focus was functional blocks. It was still geometric in spirit and very free.

I had a spaceship in the late '80s which was full of custom pieces (like V shaped blue windows with yellow glass). Anecdotal I know, but still..

those were my gear (6685 :)

The weirdest and less reusable were hollow corners (for the V shaped windows) the oval feets. The rest was very generic.

I was a kid in the 90s so that's when I bought my Lego.

One specific example I can give is with the chassis for small cars. In the 90s they were fairly generic. They were obviously intended to make cars with but you could build any kind of car or boat or plane or spaceship using it as a base.

Now I'm buying Lego for my kid and the car chassis have integrated tyre pins and mudguards, so it's hard to put on e.g. monster truck wheels (won't fit) or build it into a boat/plane.

So while specialized pieces aren't new, they're so very single purpose now. Not every piece, but enough of them that it's problematic.

Got it, thanks for taking time to explain.

Lego sets intended for younger children tend to have more large, single purpose pieces. For example, [0] is a set intended for children as young as 4 and it has the single purpose car chassis pieces you mentioned. However, in the same City theme this set intended for 5+ year olds [1] has the same sort of generic chassis you remember. The city theme as a whole though does tend to have more single purpose pieces such as plane cockpits or boat hulls, but even then you can use the pieces to build new boats or planes. Furthermore, the Creator theme has no single purpose pieces for at all, those models are made completely out of generic pieces (not just bricks mind you, there are lots of slopes and other kinds of really useful pieces used). For example, [2] is a pirate ship made completely out of generic pieces that even has instructions to rebuild it into a Pirate inn or a skull island. If pirates aren't your fancy, how about a monster burger truck [3] or a twin rotor helicopter [4]? Again, no single purpose pieces in sight. Even the modern Star Wars sets tend to have mostly generic pieces and even the custom pieces made for the set tend to be things like windscreens that can be used for custom spaceships.

[0] https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/garage-center-60232

[1] https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/service-station-60257

[2] https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/pirate-ship-31109

[3] https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/monster-burger-truck-3110...

[4] https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/twin-rotor-helicopter-310...

Maybe that's what I've been experiencing. He's four and a half so mostly we've been buying slightly "younger" Lego I guess.

Those 3-in-1 sets really impressed me though! We've got two of them and as you say they come with instructions for several different ways of using the same pieces, and they're generic enough that you can build mostly anything.

We're definitely picking up more of those as both me, my dad, and my kid all like to just free-form build things most of the time. The creator pieces are actually really great because of the slopes and curved pieces that complement your ideas and help put the finishing touches on things.

I understand and agree with your sentiment, but just don't buy the uni-tasker type lego. They make plenty of sets where most if not all of the parts are general and can be used for undirected play.

You can repurpose a lot of the space and themed bits, and some of them are truly wonderful, the ones which functionally allow bump-to-bump placement.

And for lego fanatics you can buy specified unit-sizes in specified colours, so there is that.

We got a lot of themed play stuff, fences, trees, animals. I do recognize how much kids love themed play too.

Back in the 60s/70s I had the trainset, which included a "one noise forward two noise stop three noise backward" controller. There were two or more generations of the train motor: the one with rubber anti-slip on the wheels and the one without. depending on how much you enjoy crashes, either were useful...

IKEA press release [1] is clear

> The two brands have joined forces to create a playful storage solution called BYGGLEK

Finally useful box. I do not think it is possible to stack Lego Quatro on Lego Classic Box.

Lego is a tool. I've built a ton of brick characters like [2] for my 4 years old son, they are adorable. Minifigs stale clear emotions makes me uncomfortable, I try to think of it as theater, have not managed yet.

We have construction sets at home - Fischertechnik, Eitech Construction (like Meccano), Twickto, Tinkertoy. Lego vibrant colors and unique parts puts it in another category — design — together with Laq, Artec Blocks, play dough. And Lego Technic construction is an art [3].

[1] https://newsroom.inter.ikea.com/news/all/play--display-and-r...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yktNo0O60-8

[3] JK Brickworks https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUaiGrBfRCaC6pL7ZnZjWbg

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