How Lego builds a new Lego set
theverge.com
theverge.com
Duplo come from the latin word "duplus", which means double.
Duplo bricks are double the size of lego bricks. This make the sets compatible.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fg...
https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/6m4wsm/mind_blown_30_...
Also Wikipedia mentions duplex and not duplus, but whatever
45003: Soft Starter Set https://www.rapidonline.com/45003-lego-soft-starter-set-70-1...
I had loads of fun playing with these in the lego centre (forget the kids!)
Stepping barefoot onto a Lego brick hurts, but stepping barefoot onto a Duplo brick is much worse. Those things look innocent enough, but in the dark they turn into veritable caltrops!
I've seen people use Duplo and Quatro for space-filling when they needed a large amount of structural brick somewhere that won't be seen in the final model. Think having a LEGO city setup that has an underground level.
ETA: looks like it was unfortunately discontinued: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Baby . This Lego was great for my kid to learn motor skills like orientation, insertion, and removal (along with things like wooden veggies that connected with velcro).
This isn't entirely true. Plenty of LEGO Ideas designs get to the 10k threshold, then LEGO vetoes them for one reason or another. The decision process is completely opaque; more often than not, they basically just say "the design didn't pass internal review." Never mind that most Ideas sets get a significant design overhaul before reaching production anyway.
A speech, a monologue, can be convincing.
"Anyone who can convince the Lego Group", that could be said of any product/company!
It's like saying "anyone who can convince Netflix can launch a new TV Show".
No sense reviewing proposals for sets that can’t even get 10,000 people interested.
Bricklink is perhaps secretly (or perhaps not) owned by LEGO itself so they can have their hand in the pocket of the used / resale market. People will upload full MOCs (My Own Creation) there and you can purchase the sets piece-wise. Usually even more expensive than if you wait and buy a set through LEGO but for stuff like this it's worth it.
So if it's a set they currently have IP rights for, but have not announced sets for, they'll generally turn it down. But they can't say it's because they've recently acquired the IP rights to Sonic the Hedgehog.
They also have a loose "no contemporary war toys" policy. I say loose because the Indiana Jones line kind of pushes on that a bit. But that's right around the cutoff for them. But you definitely won't see an F16 fighter jet anytime soon.
Not too long ago, they yanked a V-22 Osprey set because of their "no military vehicles" policy.
Bummer.
The mass of the LEGO would be on the order of 113 tons assuming you build the surface out of 8x16 base plates. This is comfortably within range of a single Starship payload. It is much tougher to say how long LEGO would take to manufacture them, but I think it is safe to say that they could spin up additional manufacturing capacity for such an important national project.
It should pay for itself - you'd have a very long line of LEGO nerds buying tickets to help assemble it.
I see on my bookmarks I got a https://ideas.lego.com/projects/a056ebf2-163e-4aa0-b005-02b0.... I remember finding out who that C3Brix is and contacted him, but never got a response.
People will have better chance coming up with their own generic design than an IP-owned.
> But you definitely won't see an F16 fighter jet anytime soon.
Considering some Lego AI* that will be 'smart' enough when fed the full library of Lego bricks dimensions, it should be able to build ANY 3D design or using 'many' 2D (photos/drawings) of a 'thing' and generate the 'shopping list' and the manual.
I don't know how happy would Lego be then (as Lego bricks must be somehow their IP), but it would be GREAT if someone built that.. I would happily pay $100 to generate stuff some some Star Trek iconic designs (Dyson sphere, all the Enterprises, the Voyager, etc.)
Space Fights are good, but Space Trips are better!!! (https://xkcd.com/1563/)
*ACTUALLY, now that I'm thinking about it I will try with Bard and ChatGPT and see what comes out
EDIT: I saw others had the same idea in other comments.. I'll add a reminder on my Calendar in 6 months from now to see what's been going on for this topic
EDIT2: I just asked Bard and it came up with 5 suggestions, listed below:
1. Mecabricks Mecabricks is a web-based software that allows you to create LEGO models from scratch or import photos and dimensions. It has a large library of LEGO bricks and pieces, and it can generate step-by-step instructions for your models. Image of Mecabricks website Opens in a new window www.stonewars.de Mecabricks website
2. Rebrickable Rebrickable is another web-based software that can help you create LEGO models from photos. It has a similar interface to Mecabricks, but it also has a feature that allows you to search for existing LEGO models that match your photo. Image of Rebrickable website Opens in a new window www.reddit.com Rebrickable website
3. Brick-A-Pic Brick-A-Pic is a web app that converts photos into LEGO mosaics. It can be used to create custom LEGO artwork or to recreate logos, portraits, and other images. Image of BrickAPic website Opens in a new window wired.jp BrickAPic website
4. Art4Bricks Art4Bricks is a company that specializes in creating custom LEGO mosaics. You can upload a photo to their website and they will create a custom design for you. They will also sell you the LEGO bricks and instructions you need to build the mosaic.
5. LEGO Mosaic Maker The LEGO Mosaic Maker is an official LEGO product that allows you to create LEGO mosaics from photos. It comes with a set of 4,702 LEGO bricks in 5 colors, and it includes instructions for creating 15 different mosaic designs.
I will start checking them out later today..
So the bottom line is that Lego cannot keep you from publishing plans and parts lists for your own Lego sets. Heck, you could even, if you were sufficiently funded, manufacture the set yourself. You just couldn’t use the Lego brandname at all.
Lego may sell a hundred different sets at the same time, but if they run out of one they aren’t going to get more tomorrow. It’s on a manufacturing schedule. They may have all of the yellow 1x6 bricks you could ever need, but they still have to fire up the part picker, the bag sealers, and order new boxes and booklets from the printers. Plus there’s that weird part that is only in three current sets, they have to make more of them, and the first gap in the schedule is next Thursday.
You've answered your own question -- selection criteria extend beyond physical design.
Often it's an improvement, but lots of people are disappointed that the new Orient Express[0] is nothing like the original Ideas design[1].
[0] https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/the-orient-express-train-...
[1] https://ideas.lego.com/projects/568ee861-3b62-413a-9432-ce1d...
This, the colourful internals, are what defines lego for me nowadays. I wonder: had they kept the system of gray and black axels, one for even length unit one for odd, and the standardized blue and black pins while keeping every other part the default black, would they have more frames available for "custom" parts?
In my mind having two blue bricks where there should only be one is unacceptable for the price that lego is inevitably going to charge.
Since those already exist, they probably don't count as new frames. It seems like you "spend" frames on new pieces you want to introduce, but there's a large stock of evergreen pieces you can pick from.
> Want a part in a different color? That costs designers a frame. A new piece? Spend some frames. Bring back an old out-of-print piece? That’s a frame, too.
This makes sense, since a new color requires dedicated storage space (which frames are intended to control).
LEGO has a large part catalog -- a lot of different molds that define the shapes. They also have each part available in some selection of colors. If you need an existing part in a new color, it's not terribly expensive to spin up a production line for it because the molds are ready. There may need to be adjustments to the color chemistry for the specific part (some colors are more brittle/fragile, others may require different processes -- transparent parts for example.)
If you need to spin up a new mold, that's where it gets complicated and expensive.
As for the internals, they largely come from the existing part:existing color matrix. Over the years LEGO has created a lot of colors, but in reality not every part is available in every color, and if you buy enough LEGO sets you notice that a lot of the internals tend to actually use similar color schemes. Technic axles and pins are now even largely standardized to specific colors. High friction 2x pins are always black, low friction 2x pins are beige..etc.
> In my mind having two blue bricks where there should only be one is unacceptable for the price that lego is inevitably going to charge.
LEGO used to do a lot more custom one-off pieces for sets in the 90's and early 2000's, and it was one of the factors in them nearly being bankrupted. Reducing their part catalog and going to using more small pieces to build up assemblies instead of just molding them as a single piece helped them get out of that predicament. And as an AFOL, I prefer that they use more pieces to 'brick build' things -- not only do you see some really cool building techniques, but there's also so much more that you could possibly use them for. There's also a large spectrum of complexity in the sets. Smaller sets for younger children will use larger simpler parts and less complicated building techniques. The sets that really go all out on details with tiny pieces are usually designed for adults (and a few very lucky kids.)
> This, the colourful internals, are what defines lego for me nowadays
The internals used to be much more monochrome, but one of the things LEGO tries to improve is the build experience. It's much easier to tell which pieces is supposed to go exactly where when they're all different sizes and colors. Heck, it's still a problem sometimes with sets that heavily use a single color, like some of the batman ones in recent years. There are places in the instructions manual where it's almost impossible to tell the placement of pieces because it's just one big nearly-black mass of bricks both on the table in front of you, and in the pictures in the instructions.
it was hard to collect and build through that period, especially as so many specialty parts just kept appearing with every set. the intervening years, except for the constant changes of motors and electrification, seemed to put this into check and make for some fun and interesting builds.
unfortunately, from the perspective of someone who puts together 10-12 sets/year, it appears that we are heading back into that specialized time again; maybe not as bad with intricate specialty parts, but the number of new (2023) parts in the last two sets that I've put together has been quite high. those sets were the bat cave shadow box and the orient express.
I understand the appeal of SNOT, but the sheer number of new SNOT elements is craziness.
> The internals used to be much more monochrome, but one of the things LEGO tries to improve is the build experience. It's much easier to tell which pieces is supposed to go exactly where when they're all different sizes and colors.
they've also improved the printing of the instructions over the years, as well as better differentiation through outlines of what is new. that was very obvious when my father and I put together 7 holiday sets I had collected over 20 years last holiday season. each newer set was a good improvement.
They have, but they still have problems with sets that have large chunks of the same color, especially when it comes to stuff like tiling or greebling, like the UCS Batman Tumbler. And certain colors still seem problematic. The old UCS Sandcrawler set is the one that stands out in my mind, that reddish-brown color made a lot of the instructions very difficult to read; That was like 10 years ago now, but even the more recent Bonsai tree also had that problem.
the batcave shadow box definitely suffered with it a bit, but at least it was an interesting and challenging build. unlike the new orient express train, which was ... not what I'd expect from lego.
Incidentally, this is how I've felt about a lot of the bigger sets from LEGO recently. A decade or so ago, I used to basically buy every >$100 set LEGO put out every year, sans a few themes -- I've got a few large storage bins filled with just the instructions from these sets. But some of the massive sets LEGO has been putting out recently, like the Coliseum or the new Eiffel Tower set just don't seem like particularly fun builds. I think the first time I noticed this was putting together the 10253 Big Ben set. It just didn't feel like fun stacking those tiny pieces together, repeated like 30-40x for each little subassembly. But since then, there has definitely been a creep of the builds for larger sets being a little less fun and more tedious. It can be a good way to relax if you just want to kind of zone out for a while and do stuff with your hands, but that's not my style.
Of course, then they put out something like the Concorde which looks like a very fun build, so at least some of the LEGO designers got their heads on straight.
I plan on taking some time one of these weekends to build a large outdoor track layout to run on, but am waiting on some more after-market track to arrive.
as for after-market track: https://trixbrix.eu and https://www.bricktracks.com/products (they have very little in stock right now). quality seems good on both.
On the other hand, these models are a marvel. Particular the Eiffel Tower. Everytime I look at it im just awed at how beautifully intricate it looks.
I think there's sets and sets, the lion knights castle was incredibly fun to build and had so many secrets and mechanisms.
So all in all, I'm really happy with these big Lego sets. I really like the Eiffel Tower. Once you see it in person you see how impressive it is. Also, I don't particularly mind the repetition... It took me a few days to assemble the tower, I watched tv, listened to podcasts, etc.
If some regular person just had their first and only trip on the Orient Express, or has always dreamed about making that trip: this is the target market. You cannot in general expect these people to have build a single Lego set, yet, so they are huge, sprawling, expensive, but totally uninteresting if you've ever built more than "put this 2 by 4 brick on that 2 by 4 brick".
So Lego re-tooled to reduce the overall number of bricks in inventory. Instead of building bricks in many colors and patterns, they now build bricks in a fewer colors and even fewer patterns.
A big part of what they do to plan for the year is figure out what bricks/colors/patterns will be used. The designers are then told "design sets using these color bricks". If you pay attention, you'll notice that the colors of the Modular City sets change yearly, mainly to keep up with the colors being chosen for the other new Lego sets.
This is why there are so many stickers in the newers sets. Lego can't afford to make every part in a printed pattern -- it's a lot cheaper for them to keep sheets of stickers on the shelf than full bins of printed bricks.
This is where the idea of "frames" comes from -- it's their internal credit system that lets the designers budget for what bricks/colors they really need, and at what expense to the other sets they're making.
The designers likely spend big on special parts for the new Star Wars or Marvel set. As I said before, this comes at the price that the other sets have to be designed using the bricks that are on hand.
The teams can swap and barter frames if they convince another team it would be useful. There was a good description of it in https://unbound.com/books/lego - the Secret Life of Lego Bricks.
It is the closest thing to a return to form I have seen in recent years with focus on play features and story telling without media tie in.
https://ramblingbrick.com/2023/12/03/there-is-space-for-ever...
Last week I rebuilt two of my most cherished childhood sets[1] and oh my goodness how did I ever do this as an 8-year-old? Every step in the booklet is a minigame of "figure out what changed" and then an eye exam of determining precisely where each piece went.
Do you have the lego number of those sets? Or the name?
Ps: I’m now taking a picture of every lego box I buy for my kids. That way I have an archive with all the numbers. That way we can always download the booklets years later, or catalogue the collection with rebrickable
And: https://www.toysperiod.com/lego-set-reference/space/space-po...
https://www.core77.com/posts/126450/People-Easily-Fooled-by-...
Sounds like an excellent way to validate demand then?
After building a stadium I figured out it's basically just a low resolution 3d model of the stadium that you sort of 3d print layer by layer.
https://www.foco.com/collections/brxlz
Not nearly as nice as lego, but the final product is pretty cool.
I guess I'm out $90 Jan 1st, lol. This set is amazing.
The problem is that Lego somehow had to survive and they had some pretty tough times, this was their solution. On the one hand I'm disappointed, just like you. On the other I see my kids make the most fantastic stuff with regular bricks so I'll forgive them.
On the whole it's a disappointing downward trajectory.
I disagree with this premise. Play comes in countless forms, and I think this statement places roleplay above other forms of youthful creativity. For some kids, the roleplay of Lego action figures was a huge draw. Other kids play in different ways.
Some kids (like me) enjoyed Bionicle at first, but got bored of action figures by age ~8. Bionicle's lack of compatibility with most other Lego products meant that I was left with a bunch of parts I never really played with much (except for the ripcord disk-launcher things. I still get a kick out of those!) For me, the next chapter was Technic, because I liked making things that move. Fast forward a bit, and Technic led to Mindstorms, Mindstorms led to FIRST Robotics and Arduino, and now I'm a firmware engineer.
Does Technic have less creative value than Bionicle? I think that's an impossible question to answer. It depends on the kid. Any given object has as much creative power as a child's mind projects into it.
> On the whole it's a disappointing downward trajectory.
Yes and no.
On one hand, today's Lego action figures are pathetic compared to the Bionicle/Hero Factory heyday. It's also easy to mock cheap, commercialized dust collectors like the Brickheadz series. Part of me is sad to see Mindstorms dying off, but I also recognize that, even at its peak (NXT), it was totally inaccessible to most kids.
On the other hand, some things have gotten a lot better than they were 20 years ago. Lego's "Friends" theme is by far the best girl-targeted product line they've ever made. Belleville was the "girl" product line of my youth, and it was was cynical, condescending trash that was so thematically paper-thin that even my 6-year-old little sister saw straight through it.
If you find some keep it.
It’s weird, as a kid I wasn’t really into building stuff. Lego, wood blocks, etc. The only exception was “forts” in my woods. I could play with my Power Rangers toys for hours.
As an adult, though, I’m into it.
Newer sets look nice, but IMO are much less fun to play with. My kids still like building Lego sets, but our Duplos get played with more often.
What you can do, as you say, is to go get sets/buckets of classic bricks and use those, but the sets are getting annoying. As a kid I have pretty large number of various Lego sets and I mostly mixed and matched to build rough castles, space stations, house whatever, but you can do that with modern sets, to many tiny tiny bricks and very few blocks suitable for a five year old who just wants to build a house.
I get that Lego would have gone out of business if they had continued to produce the type of sets I played with in the 1980s, but it's barely a children's toy any more. Don't get me wrong, it's great that they can make things that brings joy to adults but I just feel that they've done it at the cost of the youngest children.
Also, the display pieces are often terribly unstable and a pain to keep clean. The Lego flowers are basically junk and you shouldn't buy them. They aren't nearly stable enough to have on display and they will certainly break when you try to clean them.
Bonus: every detail is printed, no stickers anywhere.
Just go on ebay or the local equivalent and search for 'pounds lego' or 'kilo lego' and you should be all set.
I think a lot of adults have overly fond memories of using the basic blocks to build relatively basic things. Also kids today can (and do) that in Minecraft now.
What exactly is the disappointment? That they also target adults?
Also, after being build as canned sets, the canned sets can become more distinct parts for creative building.
At least, that's what happens with my kids.
There's much more money to be made in $200 sets with the popular IP of the day or $500 collector sets for adults.
Well. You have to exist, which means you compete, which might mean you grow.
Why growth? At some point you would eventually hit perfect saturation anyway, the steady state where everyone already is buying your product to the extent anyone can buy it. I get that losing business is bad, and it's better to "overcorrect" to growth, but as long as you compete enough to keep approximately same market share against other competitors, selling inflation adjusted $30 buckets of bricks to each generation of kids with profit sounds like perfectly good business. Owner of the business would receive steady income selling the inflation adjusted $30 buckets.
I'd imagine you'd hit problems when the buckets of bricks you are selling are ~eternal and number of kids is no longer growing, so nobody needs new ones.
Plus image of Megablocks did Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc. They’d overtake Lego in a minute.
The themed playsets aimed at 5+ children are leaning towards detailed modeling with many tiny 1x1 pieces.
The one-off nostalgia-driven sets like the Lion King's Castle, the remake of Eldorado Fortress and the Galaxy Explorer are intentionally released as one-off sets with a time distance in the release date, and not as a part of a regular play theme.
But yeah, even like 90% of the ones that appear to be marketed to kids suck for kids to play with, now. They look nice on the box, and on a shelf, though, and I guess that’s what shifts units.
For example, they really like those tiny little inside thingies.
One of the more interesting experimentations was Lego Architecture Studio.
All white (well, some translucent for glass/windows), 1200+ pieces, no instructions, but a book discussing some general architecture and building principles particularly with respect to Lego:
https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Architecture-Studio-Building-Blo...
One of my favorite sets, though architecture in general is a particularly interest/hobby of mine.
That's exactly what was in buckets of Legos that I got as a kid in the 90s, so I don't think much has changed. It was almost entirely 4x2s and 2x2s of different colors back then, too.
I get why but it feels less timeless than it used to, perhaps with less emphasis on creativity-led play. But what do I know - I'm a grownup.
And their directions were always a ton better, for sets—though they used to be more like spot-the-difference puzzles than they are now, which I credit with my burying the needle on a spatial reasoning test in high school, so I’m kinda sad they lost that perhaps-accidental pedagogical value in the shift to the you-can-follow-them-in-your-sleep, modern style of directions.
But maybe the knockoff competitors aren’t as obviously-shit as they were in the earlier days?
I wanted to like the cheaper brands but none of them have the same Lego engineering quality. We dusted off some of my old lego and the bricks still fit perfectly with the new bricks 30+ years later!
"They're miners... in space! They mine green Energy Crystals!" That's all you need. There was a K'nex mining set about the same time. Good stuff.
Then I realized that most of the catalog was like, Lego Harry Potter. Yeah, I really am complaining about what everyone else buys. I was up to my nose in Harry Potter merch already, I owned all 7 books. I wanted more Rock Raiders and Insectoids.
Heck, my kindergarten daughter likes that formula. I'm pretty sure there is a marketable business somewhere in there, but maybe not at sufficient scale
"Kids should be learning how to paint with oil paints or watercolours, not snapping together these pre-painted jigsaw puzzles!"
I think the real difference here is that we've transitioned from more of a mixed/manual labour economy to a mental/emotional labour economy. People get off work and they just want to come home and do something relaxing and not mentally taxing. Putting together a Lego set is like that. It takes more thought than watching TV, but not much. Coming up with something interesting and creative from a bucket of random Legos is different, and most people lose interest.
There's some zen to the act, like model or puzzle building. But you can also observe and learn techniques to add to your own builds.
Knowing all the ways Bionicles are put together can help you turn a Porsche into a full transforming Autobot Jazz.
I do also feel there is this sort of "cult" of self-improvement going around. Like if you're not spending every waking minute of your life learning some new skill or marketing yourself or trying to get a promotion, then you're wasting your time. It's very toxic.
Doing things that you find relaxing should be accepted, even if they don't teach you anything or improve you in any way.
All of that is ok. Plus, majority of lego kits go to kids.
Like seriously go to any store that sells Lego and you'll see that a good 80% of it is bulk or play sets. There are a lot of things to be critical of lego for...the pricing, the over-reliance on licensed sets, too many god-damned stickers, etc. But this really isn't one of them at all.
As a child, the joy of building was in part the satisfaction of following granular directions to see something awesome emerging step by step, and in part the joy of playing with the sets. I was immersed!
Now, I think of them in part as essentially 3D puzzles and, in part, just curios… I like looking at them. Perhaps I’m subconsciously craving that unbound creativity I had as a child?
Thing is, in my work, I get to materialize physical, mechanical things with machining and 3D printing and welding etc. I thought I would, but haven’t found myself designing and building new creations with Lego. Perfectly content following the instructions and putting it up on the shelf to admire!
I suspect part of the answer is similar to Facebook's "pivot to video" - some unscrupulous company has gaslit news executives into thinking that "interactive content" is the future of journalism, and are selling frameworks / consulting services / etc. (Though part of the problem with The Verge is Nilay Patel himself. Nilay seems like a good egg, but he has been obstinate and arrogant about The Verge's UI changes. Can't argue with taste...)
...but when the animations turn into horizontal scrolling while I'm moving my fingers vertically on my trackpad, I hate it. It breaks my brain and makes me angry at the designer.
Or are you referring to something else? Lego is plastic. Houses need wood or concrete and all kinds of isolation etc.
Huh?
I think the original commenter above has simply never used a 3D printer for anything practical.
I don't know what you think the "promise of 3D-printers" was but if you think it hasn't played out then probably you had unreasonable expectations.
> Why aren't we building "products" from lego rather than seeing them as toys?
Would you buy such a product? They would be much larger than the same thing not made out of lego. They would shatter in your bag during transportation. They would be more awkward to use because of the rectangular shape of the bricks. They would collect dirt in all the crevices/studs.
Look around your home or recent purchase history, which products would be improved by making them out of lego?
And could you give some examples of where 3D printing isn't working for you?
It's hard for me to figure out what's motivating this suggestion without specific examples.
That said, I have made a couple of things as prototypes, mostly for archery:
- spine testing jig (had to use a bunch of washers on a bolt for the two-pound weight though)
- fletching jig
Also some small desk accessories --- a tablet stand w/ pen holder, a rack for a CD-player --- the two stacks of bricks holding up a wooden shelf are still on place though.
At one point they sold a set around building toddler-sized furniture that could be disassembled and repurposed as the kids grow up. Now it looks like the closest thing they offer is desk organizers (which is still cool).
Interesting, I hadn't heard of that before. This page has an illustration of how the locking system works:
I can vouch for the versatility, it kinda works for a headphone hanger, or a cup holder, small foldable desk racks etc. But then these components are too light and don't have enough strength to keep shape for months. Many of the parts bent over time, some broke under abuse.
Also for these kind of use pieces are big and finding a compact build is really a chalenge. I ended up using a ton of custom built third party pieces.
I'd definitely try with a 3d printing next, it will allow for smaller parts at least, and probably cost way less in materials (Lego are overpriced for that)
Lasting generations sounds like BS to me given the arguments against fossil fuel plastic production, banning forever plastics from the environment, and sea and environmental pollution caused by items like bricks or bags.
Why should Lego last generations? A PLA type plastic would be non toxic, break down easier and importantly for Lego, also encourage replacement purchases.
Lego that lasts 10-15 years, with a discount replacement programme, to my mind, is better than 100+ year old Lego killing animals that eat it, or taking up space in landfills.
Anecdotally, most kids don't want old Lego, (just look online at the moms selling old unwanted Lego cheap without instructions or boxes) they want the latest sets, so the justification isn't there either.
https://www.ft.com/content/6cad1883-f87a-471d-9688-c1a3c5a0b...
The footprint over the lifetime is higher. Seems like an entirely reasonable decision.
I wish “environmentalists” would keep their focus on things that will actually make a difference, as opposed to insisting on these performative sacrifices that make our world poorer, duller or less capable without meaningfully helping the environment.
I agree with this a great deal. Environmentalists tend to forget that lots of people just do not care about the environment, and if you want to make meaningful differences then you have to appeal to those people on other grounds. For example, LED bulbs are a success because they are just better than incandescents in almost every way. Conversely, paper straws suck ass at the basic job of being a straw, and so I actively avoid any restaurant I know which uses them.
Most people don't have anything against the environment. If you give them an environmentally friendly way to do something that's just as good as (or even better than) the old way, they're going to be fine with switching. But you have to put in the effort to make it an actual attractive solution, and not expect people to be happy with a bad substitute just because it's better for the environment.
> But Lego has now revealed that after more than two years of testing, it had found that using recycled PET didn't reduce carbon emissions.
> It said the reason for that was because extra steps were required in the production process, which meant it needed to use more energy.
The Lego sets I got as a kid in the 80s, have been built and has been (and is!) being played with by my ten year old daugher. Classics such as 6080 and 40567. Or lego space stuff such as 6980, 6940, 6783 or a variety of the others she's been playing with.
One of the big appeals of LEGO is that it's generational. It is that the plastics produced 30, 40, 50 years ago is just as good today in 2023, as it was in 1986. The utter baloney you're coughing up would ruin one of the main great points about LEGO. It would render it not generational toys but yet another bunch of bollocks that expires after a few years.
And shove your anecdotes. I doubt you've got kids.
15 years is not "bunch of bollocks that expires" - that's a pretty good lifetime for any modern plastic toy, and if the plastic is something like PLA, will just break down to sugars.
What you fail to understand is the ABS plastic is just adding to the pool of what will all become trash eventually, in 100 years we'll have a larger pile of this junk, whereas using a biodegradable plastic the total amount may remain the same or have declined.
You do you though, continue to buy new plastic bags at the supermarket, favour plastic packaging, plastic cup straws, all because you can "re-use" them. Oh wait, they've banned them for a reason.
Since '86, I've noticed that I've lost a 3 gray 2x1 full size bricks for the Castle, two bricks for one of the spaceships. Every single other model has all their bricks.
I despise the "planned obsolesce" bollocks some folks are hell bent on pushing into everything. I cheer on lego not to subscribe to it. I, and lots and lots of other brickheads would probably abandon them in an instant if they did.
You're comparing Lego to things that are pretty much designed to be single-use, and that's part of why you're getting a lot of people arguing with you. As many have pointed out, Lego is not single use. First, kids can play with them for _years_. That's longer than a lot of stuff that kids play with. But also, because they're high quality and they do last a long time, they're great for actually passing down to younger generations. I'm in my 40's now and recently passed the legos I had as a child on to my niece and nephew. I'm sure they'll get passed on to another generation at some point. There's a _huge_ amount value in products that are so incredibly reusable.
LEGO is not one-use. The entire point of lego is to NOT be one-use. I'm starting to suspect you think the purpose of lego is to buy a lego model, build it, play a bit with the result, and then it's "done".
That's not how it works. Those bricks add to the pile of bricks you've got, to build creatively from. After a while, those 'piles' of bricks get changed to well sorted drawings, with different drawers for different bricks. ;) We use something like this:
https://www.plasticboxshop.co.uk/craft-storage-boxes-c4/comp...
for storing different sized legos, to easily find what you're looking for.
My son is way more excited by my old sets with pirates, astronauts and castles than he is by the latest franchised crap like marvel, Harry Potter and all.
Here, at least mine is a real anecdote.
Also, no my son is not lying to me.
I do think that it is indeed concerning when imitation is the only play a kid is able to perform. When a kid can only enjoy Spiderman lego sets that's because all they can play is basically an imitation of the movies they've seen.
Not necessarily; just because they only do imitative play with Lego doesn't mean they only do imitative play more generally.
> What part left you with a doubt?
HN rules suggest "assuming good intent." I tried my best with your comment but saw absolutely none, so figured I'd double check to see if i was missing something. Guess not.
Giving an opinion is bad intent?
Did I insult anyone or sid anything inflammatory? Maybe you got mixed up with the parent who called my kid a liar.
Good for him.
> Any kid who tells you they'd prefer old stuff to new is lying,
The issue isn't preferring old stuff to new as much as preferring what Lego used to make more of vs. what they currently make more of, but, no, neither of those preferences is nonexistent in individuals.
> otherwise Lego'd be selling that old stuff rather than the cross franchising they do today.
No, aggregate market demand, weighted by who has money to spend (and people who aren't even kids), doesn't indicate any kid with contrary stated preference is lying. Humans aren't mental carbon copy clones in slightly different fleshsuits.
This is entirely wrong.
Nearly all the toys from my own childhood wound up in the garbage or Goodwill at one point or another... except the Legos. Kids want to build gigantic castles and spaceports of their own -- 20x larger than any sets Lego sells -- and those gigantic environments require having a ton of random assorted pieces.
Legos seem to be the one toy that doesn't get dumped.
> just look online at the moms selling old unwanted Lego cheap
That actually shows the opposite of what you're trying to say. They're not tossing them in the garbage, they are selling them, because they're still perfectly desirable. (Because not everyone winds up with grandkids to give them to, or wants to hold onto them until then.)
Whatever logic brought you to the conclusion that reselling a thing means it’s no longer wanted is completely backwards. The fact you are seeing tons of Lego for sale online is because it’s so damn desired and valuable. Landfills are not filled with Lego. They’re filled with textiles from the fast-fashion industry and single-use plastics.
Some of our Lego is from the 1950s, and my daughter is the third generation playing with it. Surely 60+ years of use is a pretty good run for something made of plastic.