The worst part is that this model-kit design style is spilling over and infecting their actual toy themes. It's harder for kids to repurpose a set that's built 40% out of small tiles and cheese wedges and little greebly bits.
- spring actuated forklift loaders
- boat hulls that actually float in water
- airplane/helicopter rotors (incompatible with technics because they predate it)
There was a period in the late 90s/early aughts when Lego really went adrift with the single function pieces. I got my kids a Lego airplane set from that era that consists basically of plane parts. No matter what you do with those pieces they look like they're parts of an airplane. It's pretty sad.
Fortunately, Lego corrected course. They still make specialized pieces, particularly the minifigs. When you're working at that scale, nearly all the minifig tools are going to consist of a single piece. But most of the sets now consist of largely of pieces that are flexible enough to be assembled into anything. Sets from the Creator line come with a booklet to assemble whatever is on the box (eg. a robot or a dinosaur), but none of the pieces are so specialized that they can only be used for one thing.
There was a terrible period in the late 90s/early 2000s when they did make a bunch of really chunky large pieces that were impossible to do much with. Now the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and designs are littered with a ridiculous number of miniscule pieces, which do little but bulk up the part count and add baroque detailing.
A terrible example of this style of design is the most recent X-Wing (https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/luke-skywalker-s-x-wing-f...). Clearly a model marketed at children. But the whole thing is incredibly fragile, made up of fiddly bits, with a couple spring-loaded shooter thingies tacked on to give it a modicum of play features. The entire segment aft of the cockpit is a complicated mass of technic beams and pins with a facade over the top, to make the wings fold open, except that the wings don't actually lock open. It looks really pretty, but as a Lego set, it's a big failure.
– https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/bricks-bricks-bricks-1071...
e.g. https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/creative-building-bricks-...
It's a less than useful selection of pastel colors to really do anything with.
I like living in a society where playtime isn't just for kids!
Even the varied array of "one-off" weirdly specific pieces always find an unexpected application in a pinch somewhere. I've been recently quite entertained by the creative work of a Dublin lego-er making pubs (with many many small 1x1 round pieces, and a selection of weird one-offs for signage/etc.) https://snapwidget.com/embed/927292
I think you're underestimating the percentage of bricks in modern sets that can be described like this. They're very hard to mash up (e.g. "I'm going to use these two castle sets to build a totally different GIANT castle!" or "Now this pirate base is an oceanographic research center!"), to add on to, and to repair if damaged. Plus they're just damn tiny for the part count.
They do sell the buckets still, which is always the retort to complaints about modern sets, but it makes me sad that the entire way I played with LEGO sets when I was growing up is nearly impossible with (most) modern sets (the ones intended for kids, I mean—I don't care if the ones plainly marketed to adults aren't good for those things, of course).