Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

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I have noticed that the self-directed part has been deemphasized in favor of selling to adults (with more money than they'd spend on plastic toys for kids), but you can still totally buy the "Classic brick sets" and "Creativity" toys, or just bulk bricks by the pound.

In those bulk sets, there are now way more colors than just the primary and secondary colors that original sets came in, way more flat tiles and wedges with stickers or screen-printed imagery from the branded product lines, but kids don't seem to mind.

My 9yo has a bunch of bulk bricks as well as planned sets - Minecraft in particular - and when he gets a new set, he builds it to the instructions, brings it out to the living room to show off his creation, and then before he's walked back to his room he's in the process of adding new stuff or taking it apart to integrate into the rest of the jumble of bricks. I think there are only two builds (both from this Christmas) that are currently intact, and they probably won't last long...

> I have noticed that the self-directed part has been deemphasized in favor of selling to adults (with more money than they'd spend on plastic toys for kids),

LEGO has over 500 sets available every year. It's a crazy number, coming from someone who grew up reading every LEGO catalog I could find.

You're probably only seeing those few flagship sets because they get advertised and shared on social media. There are literally hundreds of small sets out there now.

For the adults here, the number of LEGO sets available to us as kids was a fraction of what's available today. The number of sets out there is staggering.

On the plus side, there are so many sets that it's now easier to find sales. As a kid saving up money it felt like sales never happened. Now I grab small sets on sale for 30-40% off all the time to keep as easy gifts or for my own kids.

Not sure if they do this, but I'd actually really like if they included instructions for things you can make with just the brick sets - just to help you get started or to come back to later.

fx with a box of 1000 bricks, instructions for 2 or 3 things that can all be made from the bricks in the box (maybe not all at once)

Not an official site, but Rebrickable has a section for "alternate builds" you can use to repurpose an existing set: https://rebrickable.com/sets/alternates/

Rebrickable is awesome. One of my children loves building with instructions and will do relatively little free building with Lego, and Rebrickable makes it very easy to find alternative models (often with questionable stability, though) that can be built from the same set. It also features a search of alternative models you can build with all the sets (and bricks) you have.

This is really cool

I don't know if they still do, but historically LEGO boxes often include pictures of alternate builds with the same pieces, although including instructions for alternate builds is rare. There's a set of Creator 3-in-1 sets that do.

I am quite sure some technics sets from the 1990s had at least two builds with them. Fondly remember a similar thing you described to three in one, smaller set for a motorcycle that could be other things and my cousin having an absolutely huge crane truck set that could be something else.

edit nevermind I can't find anything on the second one, maybe my cousin combined two or more sets to build something custom but it speaks to other points about parts being more universal in the past.

They almost all had alternate builds. I believe for Technic it was near 100% of all sets.

Unfortunately ended this somewhere around 2014 it looks like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIQfL4hKuhE

Can confirm, they do. This set of 1500 pieces, for example, comes with two instruction books with many different small animals you can build with it.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/building-instructions/110...

Thanks, I have a pair of nephews this'd be the perfect gift for!

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