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Comment by Tloewald | Hacker News Reader

I don't have a problem with the price of lego, having — as a child in the 70s — saved my own pocket money to buy lego. The real criticism of lego is that it's gone from being a collection of parts that can make the thing on the cover of the box but also many interesting variations, to something that isn't very malleable.

First, lego no longer has a consistent color scheme, so only pieces from one genre go with other pieces of that genre.

Next, there's the proliferation of zany specialized parts. I remember getting a lego cargo ship as a kid (the hull was four specialized pieces — bow, stern, and two mid sections and thinking this was awful. Lego doesn't do ship sections any more but many similar things.

It's not a get off my lawn thing. I still love lego. But it does seem to have exchanged its DIY charm in the pursuit of merchandising.

That said, you can build much better looking models now — just not out of any reasonable selection of pieces.

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My beef is that Lego have become so highly branded. I would rather my kid play with generic space and castle and pirate blocks, than with Star Wars and Harry Potter and Pirates of the Carribbean blocks. As a product of the 80's I can say I spent a lot of time playing with highly branded and marketed toys, so it's not necessarily a bad thing; but there's something special about Lego that makes me feel like they should be above film tie-ins and in a special airy realm of pure imagination.

> My beef is that Lego have become so highly branded.

The problem was no one bought general Lego blocks. This is still the trend today.

I guess not many people remember, but Lego was in deep financial trouble during the 90s and early 2000's. Until they started creating licensed packages and video games based on 3rd party franchises like Star Wars, Lego wasn't selling anything.

As a seven years old, all I wanted (and saved up for) was the biggest, most generic set I could possibly have. I still remember running like crazy to see my mom coming back from the city, carrying LEGO 733 Universal Building Set.

Highly branded sets probably push children more into playing roles and sticking to, probably still imaginative enough, scenarios rather than into creative process of building.

I don't disagree. My point still stands though: kids don't urge their parents to buy generic sets.

Totally agree. I hope Lego will move back to the more generic themes by the time my kid(s) get old enough. (Currently my 1.5 year old loves Duplo blocks; apparently there are even licensed Duplo sets though he doesn't have any of them.)

You can get all the generic Lego blocks you would ever want. The "problem" is kids want all the fancy sets.

For instance: http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Bricks-More-Builders-Tomorrow/dp/...

There's a difference between generic blocks and the non-licensed theme sets. I've got a couple Lego stores nearby, I know that the generic blocks are available, and that's definitely great. I was talking about, e.g., a fancy castle set, but just with a generic "knights" theme, rather than something from the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies or whatever.

However, I realize it's working out for Lego, and if the licensing is what's necessary to keep them going, then I'm not faulting them too much.

This generic knights theme?

http://kingdoms.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx?icmp=COUSFR33Kin...

And this fancy castle?

http://kingdoms.lego.com/en-us/Products/Default.aspx#7946

Thank you for pointing this out. I've been looking for a set like this for quite some time, just a variety of normal, colorful pieces. Ordered on impulse :)

Now, a way to organize these...

The kids want what we make them want, on tv and elsewhere. There is a general trend toward collectibles away from diy, confirmed by someone working in retail. That's very sad and probably harmful in long term for all the society: collecting things is borderline psychiatric while diy I'd the root of progress.

Well yeah. What's advertised? What's in stores? I haven't seen a 'plain' lego set in stores in years, outside of lego-brand stores.

If they don't know it exists, they're less likely to want it.

1. They still have the generic sets.

2. You can go to places like bricklink.com to buy almost any block or set that you want.

3. Branded sets usually mean more specialized pieces which only increase the source material you have to draw from when building things.

4. Lego also puts out stuff like this: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=67132. Highly specialized pieces that aren't tied to a brand.

When I was a kid I would have been in heaven if they had all of the sets out there today. Buying a Harry Potter set wouldn't have meant that I can only play Harry Potter[1]. It would have meant that I had more legos to combine in other ways with the rest of my parts (all sets ended up broken down and stored in a huge bin of Legos). I realize that ultra-specialized pieces like 3-CPO or R2D2 minifigs can't really be reused elsewhere, but most specialized pieces tend to be pretty generic (e.g. Harry Potter wands don't have to only be used with Harry Potter).

[1]: Example, I recently saw a Harry Potter set that used a combination of a translucent 1x1 brick and brown stud to create 'potion bottles.' It's a pretty generic idea that translates elsewhere.

When I was a kid, one of the things on which I spent a fair amount of time was trying to figure out how to make a Lego vehicle with independent front suspension (and steering). Nowadays, they have specialized pieces that have effectively solved that problem.

I don't know whether I ever came up with a decent solution back then, but I do know that trying to come up with one was an excellent exercise, one that I probably would never have embarked on if I'd had the pieces they make today.

edit: grammar fix

So your endeavour is replaced by others. Your logic could easily be used to rail against using calculators rather than slide rules or to rail against all Lego in favor of Erector sets, etc.

As others have stated, Lego was in trouble before adopting the franchise sets. Would it be better if Lego was 'pure,' but out of business? It's not like they removed the ability to do what you're talking about, they just added new things. You could easily limit yourself, or your children, from using the new things.

Honestly, I doubt a kid will play much differently with a PotC themed Lego ship vs a non-branded one.

They basically look the same; http://www.brickset.com/brickLists/?5954

Also, pirates was a dead theme until PotC came around.

The reason why Lego makes sets that are branded is because other companies make good-enough lego-compatible blocks that are cheaper than legos. If lego stuck with the "generic sets only", they'd be history by now. Who would bother buying a pack of lego-branded red bricks when you could get the megablocks-branded one that is 90% as good for half the price?

Only the dorky neighbor kid whom everyone hated to play with thought megablocks were an acceptable substitute for Lego.

Yeah, poor people are losers.

The megablocks stuff we have bought either has nobbly extra molding bits still stuck to the bricks meaning they just don't work OR the bricks are not of a uniform enough size so they don't stick together for any length of time.

I would estimate at 40% as good as logo. Which puts it down in the play with it a bit and then ignore 'while the cat (or hoover) eats it' camp.

Even if they do someday stop using third party brands for sets, it will only be to replace them with their own brands. Take a look at the new Lego sets like Ninjago and Chima. These are as branded as the Star Wars ones, the brands simply happen to belong to lego. They also have toys and TV shows and games attached to them, as well as a whole backstory. This is arguably what they should have done in the first place to not find themselves in a position where they needed someone else's brands. The reality is that it is very difficult to sell an unbranded toy nowadays. Imagine making the same request of other toy companies "I wish they made a generic knight toy", I know these exist because you can find them in non huge toy stores, but it's hard to compete with something that has a comic book, TV show, and movie attached to it. I don't know if its necessarily a bad thing, there are pros and cons.

Their in house brands are really well developed product lines. They come with story lines that advance from year to year as the set goes along, and have associated comic books that are sent free to children that request a subscription. Does a great job creating brand loyalty. They also have mini theme parks and play centers set up in many major cities.

When I was a kid they had sort of started the branding effort. At that time LEGO was primarily doing creative in-house theme lines, but some branding as well.

Kid-me deduced that the more generic sets had more pieces, so in an early attempt at cost optimization I leaned generic the few times I had money. Though, it was also cool to get some sets with interesting pieces that let me branch out. Vanilla bricks can be limiting at times.

It's all rather subjective and I can't say you're wrong. But I have a 9 year old son who loves lego. When he gets a set he builds what is on the box, that usually lasts a couple hours (maybe longer if it is a bigger/more difficult set) and then it gets torn down and put into the bin. Then all kinds of different stuff comes out. He and his friends have a great time with that bin. I do too. I don't think there are many one-off pieces. In fact he gets rather creative repurposing a lot of what might be thought of as specialized pieces. So my experience at this point is that he can do a lot more and be a lot more creative than I could when I was a kid.

I agree, and this is my experience with my own kids. Some sets stick around longer than others (the Quinjet comes to mind), but they are happily building new things with the more specialized pieces from other sets.

The trend you describe is old news. Lego realised that the vast proliferation of pieces was undermining their profitability, by bogging down their supply chain. Over the last eight years, they have massively simplified their inventory, cutting out huge numbers of single-purpose pieces. The number of colors in use has been halved.

The Lego you remember is still available under the Bricks & More line - big boxes and buckets of simple, primary-colored pieces.

One of the graphs shows that LEGO have increased the number of different sets they're producing a lot, but I frequently still see boxes of "just bricks" for sale, so it just seems as if they're offering the consumer more choice.

This opinion is about 10 years out of date. Lego now forces their designers to mostly use simple pieces and colors; if they want a specialized piece they have to gain support from many other designers and only the most popular pieces are created. Otherwise, the designers have to make do with pieces that mostly would have looked familiar 40 years ago. It's a really refreshing change and I'm happy that it's helped Lego to return to profitability and domination of their market.

I'm 42. I tend to agree with you that I dislike over-specialised pieces. But then people are creative (which is the point of Lego, after all) and they use the thing for something else entirely.

I would like there to be a few good base sets. Luckily, there are, you just have to search to find them,

I'd really like to be able to buy blocks by the kg - 200 g of 2x1, 300 g of 2x4; etc.

Have you been to a lego store ?

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5215/5460874051_7fbf9e4bf3_z.j...

No, but that'd be great.

I've been to the lego stores in Germany and England and the "pick your own bricks" has been in all of them (although the smaller ones have fewer different types).

You can buy (or sell) any and all types of LEGO parts or sets at BrickLink ( https://www.bricklink.com/ ) . The site serves as a marketplace for thousands of sellers who maintain what appear to be fairly large inventories (tens or even hundreds of thousands of pieces).

You can find parts by condition (new or used), sort by price, filter by location (to minimize shipping costs and/or delivery time), and more. If you need more of a part that came in a particular set, you can find the set (by name or by number) and drill down to a parts list.

Lego Education does a spare parts catalog - but not sure if you can buy from it as a private individual. I used to use something similar when I was a kid - I couldn't afford (say) a complete new pneumatic set, so I just bought a pneumatics parts pack from a mail-order catalog and used those bits with my generic technic stuff.

(Another great resource is the ideas magazines they used to print - not sure if they still do - with loads of pictures of creations, but with minimal or no instructions).

They fulfilled my order for a pair of the Education Resource Sets ( http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/lego_mindstorms_educ... ), I'm sure they'll be happy to take your money.

This is not a new trend, it extends back to at least the late 70s. As a child of the 80s my 'bag of legos' is full of specialized pieces like castle flags, pirates, and spaceship hoods. I still fondly remember building futuristic space pirate ships with medieval horses on the deck - the diversity really helped my creativity.

That said, if you want large sets of generic pieces look into a creator bucket. They come out to something like 5-10 cents a piece and sound like what you are talking about. They're fairly new so I haven't used/bought them, but I think they're basically the same thing as the 'basic' buckets I had as a child.

Go look at bricklink.com sets from around the 1970's. They were ALL just a bunch of blocks. An airplane was basically a long rectangle. Then the 80's brought in some really nice "Legoland" sets. The lego airport from that era was the sweet spot. Not too many specialized pieces, but enough to build proper airplanes and a control tower.

> I remember getting a lego cargo ship as a kid (the hull was four specialized pieces — bow, stern, and two mid sections and thinking this was awful.

From an aesthetic point of view it was indeed awful, yet necessary: those ships were meant to float in real water, so they had to be sealed surfaces. I remember trying to build ships out of regular pieces; they were nice, but when put in the sea, the result was not funny at all.

Oh, even the weird pieces turn out to be more malleable than you might first imagine. I've even seen a game based on making LEGO robots by using surprising combinations of pieces (http://mobileframezero.com/mfz/). That's inspired me to take custom pieces from my kid's LEGO sets and put them to all kinds of new uses.

Agreed -- in fact, it's hard to find a book or other instruction manual that describes how to build something cool, without it requiring a bunch of "special" pieces.

Also, I'm not sure what's happened, but I've noticed color variations in the standard bricks: yellow bricks that look washed out compared to other yellow bricks. It's a real bummer when trying to create a consistently colored model.

While my son loves the Star Wars and City sets, I encourage him to use the standard bricks (I buy 'em in bulk) to build what he wants and to help him learn how to come up with creative solutions given the "constraints" of standard "generic" bricks.

Steve Yegge has a rant somewhere about how Lego used to make kits that could build special things, using entirely off-the-shelf parts, with maybe one or two exceptions for things that just couldn't work otherwise. And now (for older values of "now") it sells kits loaded up with special parts so that you can't really build as good a Batmobile without getting the Batmobile set.

He was comparing it to programming languages that cram in all sorts of edge-case special features, but it still reminded me my modern Lego seems less . . . pure, I guess.

shakes cane

Depends on how you look at it. Specialized sets with specialized pieces just increase the breadth of your Lego collection and the type of pieces available to your imagination.

My take on it is this:

In the 70s and 80s, Lego was low resolution. Block, 4 bit color.

Now its just higher resolution (smaller pieces with more non-right angles), and higher bit-depth.

Lego has just paralleled video game evolution.

Yes, when I was a child I played Star Wars using any brick compatible with the idea of a ship, transformers with some moveable pieces. The branding is bad because children think that to make a star wars ship you need a specific lego package instead of roughly creating something from the available tools (hacker mind)

Look at the Creator series from Lego. Every model has three very different variants on the front of the box, and they are built from pretty standard old-school Lego parts. It's pretty much exactly what you are asking for.

What? Using a great diversity of pieces is what’s fun! I never understood this view on Lego – plus specialized bricks are very much out these days.

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