$850 Millennium Falcons and $680 Titanics: Grown-Ups Are Now a Gold Mine | Hacker News Reader

$850 Millennium Falcons and $680 Titanics: Grown-Ups Are Now a Gold Mine

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25 pointsSirLJ19 comments

The biggest gripe I have with Lego's creation of the 18+ tag is that the age suggestion now has more to do with who lego thinks will enjoy a set, rather than who is capable of building the set. Fans know what they can build, so the age suggestion in my mind was for parents who knew what properties their children enjoyed, but didnt know what their kids were capable of building. I still think that is the case for the other age ranges, but for 18+, I guess lego now thinks adults need to be told what is ok for them to buy. This is most apparent with the BTS set (https://www.lego.com/en-us/search?q=Bts), an 18+ set with simple building techniques targeting a brand mostly enjoyed by teenagers. Compare this to the Airbus heli (https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/airbus-h175-rescue-helico...) which is more aptly labelled at 11+ while having twice as many pieces and being a technic build.

What do you mean, "can build"? It comes with a step by step manual....

My post is mostly referring to children, who even with step by step instructions, may have some difficulty. Look at the stickers on this space shuttle: https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/set/assets/blt6d09e0ada535ae04/1... , which require fairly precise alignment. Or the tiles on the roof of rivendell: https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/set/assets/blt0a0c82506f8bd960/1... , and then there's topic of endurance with regards to larger sets.

That being said, I actually revise my thesis. Looking back, Lego used to have age ranges listed: https://images.brickset.com/sets/large/7893-1.jpg , however, it appears all sets now just list a single age with a plus sign. Thus it seems Lego has actually shifted more towards the age simply being capability, with the 18+ designation being the outlier.

> Looking back, Lego used to have age ranges listed: https://images.brickset.com/sets/large/7893-1.jpg

As an aside, that set (from 2006) is a good counterexample to the oft-heard complaint that "sets these days have too many custom parts"...

Have you ever done a LEGO build with a child?

> 18+ tag

> now has more to do with who lego thinks will enjoy a set

I suspect it has more to do with legal liability

Cheap imitation building blocks are stunningly high quality nowadays and many companies offer extremely interesting sets at a fraction of the cost of real LEGO blocks.

Any manufacturers in particular have highly compatible, inexpensive parts?

One we like is the unfortunately named “FunWhole” on Amazon.

Though to be honest I think these are increasing in price on Amazon lately :(

But there are tons of other sellers and many of the sets seem to get good reviews

the subreddit r/lepin (named after a knockoff brand) is all about lego-compatible brick sets and has a wiki with known good brands.

Gobricks are very high quality generics, mould king and cada have good technic sets and electronics

I used to be very pleased with the Polish "Cobi" range. They make a lot of military models, which were great for my dad, who has mobility issues that made traditional model-building difficult.

But then we bought one of their biggest sets-- a Maus tank-- and he complained it was missing parts and unmanageable. I suspect thousands of gray-on-gray parts might have exceeded some unknown challenge threshold.

1) these static built once and super glue in place are antithesis of the LEGO movie, I just find that amusing

2) these are barely LEGO constructs and much more click together models — there are so many custom pieces specific to this one design. It’s not like you start with 10k grey rectangular blocks and end with a millenium falcon — though I believe that was how old LEGO statues at the parks were built?

I don't think your second part is really true at least for the titanic. You can look up the brick list on the Internet[1] and the vast majority of pieces exist in other sets. Some of them may only exist in that colour in the titanic set but at least to me they're all still recognisably lego bricks. Unless your standard only includes the right angle pieces, but that applies as well to anything produced by lego in the last maybe 30 years. The titanic uses black lego minifigure hotdogs for the anchor, which if anything I think is a testament to the creative piece use at play in these.

[1] https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=10294-1

https://archive.is/fOlhW

> Grown-Ups Are Now a Gold Mine

They always were.

The full title is "$850 Millennium Falcons and $680 Titanics: Grown-Ups Are Now a Gold Mine /for Lego/" (emphasis added).

It's a notable shift for a company that has traditionally targeted children.

The adults ARE children.

If anything, it's surprising that it took them so long. They noticed fairly suddenly and recently. By contrast, let's say plastic scale model companies have had adult-oriented models for a long time. Adult oriented by their theme, complexity and display-orientation.

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