Lego is a display-piece company now; like a plastic model but no glue required.
EDIT: the current two child comments are of parts in that diagram, great. No judgement, I just wonder what type my son is going to be :-)
And then you get amazing synergies when people who play differently combine their efforts.
Which is one of the reasons I'll admit I cried during the first Lego movie ending. They nailed that aspect.
Tip: Just kind of relax into the goofiness and have fun, but make sure you watch the entire movie if you start
I've turned into a Lego Shelf person. I like to buy the architecture kits. I put them on the shelf in my office, but every so often when I get frustrated and no one is watching I will take one and smash it to bits on the floor like a child. It's great because it lets me vent, and it gives my future self the gift of building a Lego set. Really, it's an act of self-care.
I've never sold a kit and I don't intend to ever do it.
We look at a pile of bricks and see whatever it's supposed to be.
An 8 year old looks at it and sees whatever pops into their head.
My friend and I wanted to start a Beer, Brats, and Bricks night, but right when that was gonna materialize, the plague struct. I should hit them back up. I still have buckets on buckets.
Sindoni Italian sausage is world-class. Aldi has a good selection of brats. And my family is from Western NY so we get Salen's hotdogs occasionally. I forget the name but there's a really good kielbasa at the grocery too.
Keeping it on topic… when is Lego releasing a Chicago dog? :)
Either sounds good.
He doesn't get to sample the beer, of course.
If you're in stores often you catch the 50 piece standard piece sets for $10 or whatever. Lego stuff lasts generations.
I'm not the greatest fan of the explosion in use of small tiles and cheese wedges in recent years. It's kind of like AAA videogames that have a billion vertices but are empty
My son is 5, and recently graduated from Duplos to classic Legos, he started with this set:
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-medium-creative-bric...
It's basically a box of hundreds of colorful plates and bricks. There are a few wheels and eyes, too, but it's mostly just bricks. We make bulldozers and airplanes and robots and houses and all manner of things! Yes, there are studs instead of smooth tiles on top of the engine compartment, and yes, there are about 7 shades of yellow, cream, and orange making up the dozer, and no, the tracks aren't functional, but it slides fine. Mom might need to ask to know that the pink 1x1 brick sticking out the top is the bulldozer's TURBO BOOSTER MODE BUTTON, or she might guess that because she knows our son.
He's received a few sets once we let family and friends know that he's using legos now. He got this Ninjago set:
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/tournament-of-elements-71...
which focuses the design on a bunch of stickers and printed parts and custom weapons made to look like a show he's never seen. He does love all the little Lego people, they have fun adventures, but he built it once, took it apart, and now most of the parts end up in the bottom of the brick box unused. Another typical one is this monster truck:
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/monster-truck-31101
https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/set/assets/bltd6f7b204e1e11893/3...
Kudos to Lego for the cool Technik functional rubber suspension design, my son loves that and has rebuilt it on other vehicles! And kudos for the 3-in-1 design that reuses a lot of the custom pieces for a truck, a dragster, and a small car. But look at all the rounded tiles and cheese wedges and smooth surfaces. It's possible to build things that aren't one of the intended three things, but it takes a lot more planning. Like the random horns and staffs from the Ninjago set, he doesn't use these studless tiles much either. You can't click anything into the bed of the truck; it's supposed to be a truck, what's up with that! There's almost nowhere to put a pink turbo booster mode button at all.
The truck looks like a plastic model. Anything built with the creative brick box has studs all over and looks like a pile of Legos begging to have something added to it or to be rebuilt into something else.