Lego Thinks Beyond the Brick

Checkout the "Lego Batman" category.

I'm not sure exactly what happened with this, but as far as I can tell, Lego released the awesome "Lego Batman" video game, and then were unable to extend their license deal on the actual lego batman sets, so had to stop selling them (Like a month after releasing the game!)

Whoever is responsible for allowing that to happen should hang their head in shame.

They now go for seriously crazy prices, since everyone has the video game, but cannot buy the lego sets.

I don’t know if the story is that easy. Sure, as time progressed there were more custom parts. I played with Lego from 1992 (4) to 1999 (10) and remember that trend quite vividly. But it didn’t really get all that bad until I stopped playing Lego (no causal link there, by the way). Starting 2000 things really got out of hand. But when looking at current Lego sets I think we are back to 1999 or so levels of custom things. It has gotten better. Bionicle is a somewhat strange last remnant of that time. All the rest is pretty much normal again.

I would argue that there is nothing bad about current levels of custom things in Lego sets. In the 90s they simply became part of the brand. Lego sets are mostly standard blocks, but for good measure they will throw in a few custom things. I always liked that. I don’t think I would have enjoyed playing Lego so much with only standard blocks. The only thing I truly hate are stickers which glue together big parts of a set. I want custom printed blocks for that.