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Comment by cout | Hacker News Reader

The kits I got in the 80s and early 90s often came with instructions for alternative builds. It was like they wanted you to know you could build things other than the picture on the box.

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The designs of those kits from the 80s and 90s were also very flimsy and would break easily if you started to play with them. So really, the original build falling apart and becoming spare parts was almost expected.

This really changed once they started including Technics pieces as structural parts of builds, rather than as a totally separate product line. Most things I've built in recent years are far more robust than what I built as a kid.

Can't comment on kits from after about '80 but this reminds me, when I was a kid my older brother would labor extensively to build the most elaborate and beautiful spaceships, while I would pack my bricks tight into a minimalist indestructible vessel. When the inevitable clash arrived, my ship almost always prevailed, though I usually had to run away after.

My brother and I used to build space fighters with a pilot inside who could see outside, with the goal of being able to throw them at the wall as hard as possible without them coming apart - our parents were not fans lol. It's perfectly doable if you build around the pilot using nothing but flat grey bricks, wings and horizontal boosters, and ensure almost every piece is reinforced by multiple overlapping pieces above and below.

They still do this. I have a 341-piece LEGO kit of a Space Shuttle on a transport truck from a couple of years ago. It also includes instructions for building two additional models that use nearly all of the pieces: a jeep with a camper trailer, and a flatbed truck with a helicopter landing pad with the helicopter. I don't think the set has any specialized pieces at all.

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