50 Lego Designs with 50 Pieces | Hacker News Reader

50 Lego Designs with 50 Pieces

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117 pointsjeanhsu20 comments

I rediscovered legos after more than 30 years, when my son got big enough to use them. Soon I was having more fun than he, creating vehicles (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilamont/4298420256/) and other objects.

Lego knows that their customer base includes adults. Besides expositions and clubs that get some support from the company, you sometimes see Lego sets with a photo on the front of the box featuring an adult male instead of little kids!

Another thing I've noticed about Legos since rediscovering them a few years back: They have a really sophisticated retail operation that's not unlike what Apple does with the Apple Store. They're well designed, have very knowledgeable staff, and feature lots of goodies that you won't see in mass market retail outlets, including high-end sets and even a 3D animation/"augmented reality" that is activated when you hold certain boxes in front of an in-store camera (see http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20003273-1.html)

Do you have some examples of Lego boxes that show adults on the box? I tried a quick search on Google images, but only found some jubilee sets (like http://www.flickr.com/photos/sackerman519/3687795718/) featuring an adult.

The one that I saw in the local Lego Store in Natick, Mass., was a midsized set (typically sell for $50-$80) that shows the finished set and a smiling, 40ish man with glasses looking at it at eye level. I don't remember what the set was (and it may no longer be produced, as the turnover seems to be very rapid), but Lego.com has more than 400 sets aimed at people over the age of 12 (the boxes aren't shown online). One of the latest things I've seen in the Lego Store are the stark architecture sets (http://architecture.lego.com/en-us/Products/Default.aspx), which seem more oriented toward adults than kids.

Some other resources to check out:

http://www.quora.com/LEGO/What-percentage-of-LEGO-fans-are-a...

http://gizmodo.com/5019797/everything-you-always-wanted-to-k...

"When we design sets, we take both children and adults into consideration. Children are our primary audience, especially as it relates to the core play theme sets; however, much of what appeals to children in today's Lego sets has strong appeal among adult fans as well. With Lego Star Wars, adults are equally considered. In designing any set, it's about the balance between the building experience and the play experience. We do also leverage our direct to consumer channels to provide ultimate collectors sets, special exclusives, sculptures and models that are designed with skilled builders and adult fans in mind. We sometimes even invite our adult fans to help us design new sets."

It was a few years ago so I forget the exact kit, but I too was at that store and pleasantly surprised to see an adult having fun with legos on the box. Especially since there were plenty of adults, myself included, having fun in the store.

Why are creative Lego sets a minority?

I think you can draw an analogy with wikipedia. Most people just read, and don't contribute. But what makes wikipedia what it is, is the ability of others to put their ideas into it. So we have the _potential_ to create and customize, and a minority of people taking full advantage of that, but the end result is interesting to many more people than contributors. Similarly, I'm guessing most Lego sets are bought _because_ of the appeal of Lego's pre-baked designs -- along with the potential to customize. Users want more power and potential than they actually use, and some power users make the community more involved, and aware of the potential.

Or at least that's my guess as to Lego marketing's thoughts. As a kid, I definitely preferred to make my own things. I'd be curious to know if that's the standard use case for most kids today or not (making their own vs just following the instructions).

I did both, myself. Following the instructions, you could build really cool things you couldn't design yourself with a 10 year old brain. Not following the instructions, you got to endeavor in trial and error, and critical thinking, etc. Both had their merits.

Same here. I had another Lego enthusiast friend as a kid. Every time one of us got a new set we would do it individually then either trade sets or just let the other borrow it to do the same. Then it got thrown into the GIANT bucket of old Legos we used for our creative projects which we would work on together.

A couple of our creative projects were even put on display at some local libraries. That was a really satisfying experience as an 8-12 year old.

>"Why are creative Lego sets a minority?"

They aren't. Lego kits are packaged to appeal to on the basis of an objective model building experience and with the subtext of collectability. These days Lego uses cross branding to leverage this packaging in order to appeal more directly to emotions which spark the impulse to buy.

But subjectively, everyone understands that the bulldozer kit is just a big box of parts - and part of the appeal of those well defined projects is the anticipation of the ways in which the unusual pieces the kit contains can be used to make other stuff.

The typical sequence of a "non-creative" Lego set starts with an adult seeing it in the store and thinking it is pretty cool and reasonably priced. My son got a LEGO® City Passenger Plane 7893 a few years ago well after they were out of production, when his grand parents picked it up for $25 at Costco as a Christmas present - they actually purchased three; one for each of the grandsons.

[http://www.amazon.com/Lego-City-Passenger-Plane-7893/dp/B000...]

Yes, Grandpa thought it was cool.

Next, the kid builds it per the directions with or without adult participation depending on age, complexity, and mutual interest. Then they display it.

At this point, everyone understands that it can be disassembled and repurposed. This creates a tension between the adult impulse toward collecting (to which the packaging was intended to appeal) and the joy of destruction - strongly encouraged by the fact that Lego models are designed for destruction -unlike a plastic or balsa model.

So the airplane sits at the suggestion of the adult (either a real adult or the child's own adult impulse), while the kid watches for the adult to lose interest and imagines all the amazing ways those four jet engines can be combined with the pieces from the long disassembled Ferrari F1 and various Starwars spacecraft.

And then one day it happens. There is a car with three jet engines on top; a space craft reminiscent of the Galileo shuttle craft; and a flying wing with an open cockpit in the center and sails from the pirate ship where turbines once sat..plus many more pieces added to the proverbial giant box of Legos.

The only real hint of the original out of the box design which remains is the instructions - which will only be saved at the insistence of the adult - and even then, they are likely to to wind up on the curb due to the friction of their irrelevance.

In other words, there are no uncreative Lego sets - and I have never seen a kid who would willingly be uncreative with the parts. And I've never seen an adult who was successful at enforcing the plastic model mentality over a prolonged period of time...which are very good things indeed.

This is why I get mad when I see all those super custom pieces in the new sets!

Couldn't agree more! A few years ago I saw a fairly new model of a Lego sportscar, and stuff like the doors were just single custom pieces. Lame... :-)

Crap. Now I need to go buy some legos and relive my childhood.

Kids are a great excuse! We are even going to Legoland in CA. Its for the kids, honey!

As someone who spend plenty of days in the original Legoland as a child, I still have fond memories.

That said, I hope they have cloned all the lego buildings and structures too.

I would love to find a book that has plans to buiid various things/designs using plain lego sets. Any suggestions?

My son loves to build complex sets, but I hate investing in the one time use, specialized sets, and the fancy specialized sets always gets him (and my wife) more excited than just opening a box of generic legos and building.

I recently got these books:

http://nostarch.com/technic_set.htm

Lego Technic Idea Book Set

My son (4 year old) and I have an absolute blast with these books, our box full of Technics parts, and a quiet afternoon in the sunshine .. we've built all kinds of crazy things that started off as a simple "lets build this thing from the book and see what it does" project and rapidly evolved into devices that threaten to consume all our joy! :)

I can't recommend these books highly enough - they are a joy to use, to have, and to apply to a box of parts. Note that there are no words in these books - just pictures of the different things you can build - and it really, really inspires creativity to do some of the most basic things. I absolutely love them and can't wait for more projects from the author, who also has a fascinating youtube channel here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ISOGAWAYoshihito

Have fun, let us know if you build anything monstrous!

LEGO used to make kits like this called Creator, but they got lamer over the years. Now they seem to be pushing more and more the sets that are just 30 pieces, playmobile style.

Lego still make creator sets, and I'd say they're better now than ever (although the price seems to be always increasing)

Here's some creator sets I've bought for my kids that I'd recommend

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/4993_Cool_Convertible

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/5763_Buggy

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/5892_Sonic_Boom

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/6753_Highway_Transport

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/6752_Fire_Rescue

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/5762_Mini_Plane (the orange/white kit the article is based on)

Just get a big box of generic Legos.

Then build what you want.

Lego Tehnics set for the win. See my other earlier post about the fantastic Lego Idea Books that you can use to turn any box of boring parts into amazing contraptions ..

That happened in the late 90s and early 2000s. It’s long over.

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