Unfortunately Lego kind of went backwards, evolution-wise, in the last 20 years or so. I had quite some Lego blocks in my youth and the best part was free assembly rather than those overpriced build-xyz-mega-sets one sees today now. I get it that they cater to another market, e. g. also collecters, but the creativity part really went down. And that was a deliberate decision made by Lego.
My kids will build a set according to the instructions and then a day or two later it's disassembled for parts so they can build something else.
The reason they sell sets is because the people who buy these are parents, uncles, grandmas, and other people. The sets make it easy for them to identify something that seems like kids would love it and possibly intersects with some brand the kids like, such as the Marvel crossover sets.
Once the bricks get in the kids' hands, they can do whatever they want with them.
Unless they’ve changed drastically, the sets are always just the beginning of what you want to do. If it’s an object you build the object and add it to another landscape that you may have built.
If it’s a castle you build the castle and then add a whole bunch of custom features to it.
Technic used to do these cool books of instructions only - they were 14 dollars around 1992 - which if you owned Technic set X and Technic set Y you could build Z.
You could build the ALIENS PNEUMATIC LOADER in Lego Technic. Coolest thing ever.
Anyway yes creativity is great but also official instructions are great too.
I think the main complaint is that the percentage of the kits dedicated to specialty parts limits their usefulness for free-form play. Sets of the 80's had fewer block types, which forced Lego to be more creative in how the sets were put together, which subsequently allowed more freedom in using the blocks for other designs. The sets my kids are playing with look much more "realistic" to what the set is trying to model, but very difficult to build something entirely different, such as building a house from a car kit.
> I think the main complaint is that the percentage of the kits dedicated to specialty parts limits their usefulness for free-form play.
I understand the complain, but from observing my kids play with LEGO I don't agree with it at all.
The specialty parts from every kit inspire a lot of new builds with their growing part collection.
> The sets my kids are playing with look much more "realistic" to what the set is trying to model, but very difficult to build something entirely different, such as building a house from a car kit.
I guess I just don't see this with my kids at all. Every small set we buy or that someone gifts them grows the range of things they can build. They remember every single different part and will go searching for it in the bins because they want to put it to use.
Yeah, I was concerned about the creativity thing early one, but both of my kids build random stuff from a sea of parts. Occasionally my older kid would decide to build a set again and be frustrated when they couldn't find the part they needed.
As a family, we have a couple of the ninjago city sets, those are largely intact, but the kids play with them.
The minifigures can be a little bit of a problem, they seem to trigger an instinct to collect unique items. My kid will ask for a set so they can get one (or more) of the minifigures in it.
Well, true. But it is true in same sense that Microsoft require newer hardware, and online accounts only to provide greater security, latest innovations to largest number of customers in shortest possible time.
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)
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.
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.
My personal gripe is that they did away with the studded beams in Technic and everything is smooth beams now with axles and pins.
While it might look marginally better, everything is 3x the parts and the building time, and you can just sit down and slap stuff together any more, in fact with the rise of things like Arduino, and 3D printing, I think it's easier to just do electronics + CAD (even with kids) than to work with this stuff.
Which is a shame, because older sets used to be cheaper and contain much less parts for the same amount of functionality, and something like a crane truck set that could do all the tilting and motor stuff was categorized as suitable for kids 2-3 years younger.
Yea as somebody who played extensively with Lego as a kid, almost exclusively just the "base components", I never really got the appeal of those set with all sorts of custom, single-use items
> And that was a deliberate decision made by Lego.
A prime example of this are the flower sets they sell. You'll get, like, 90 purple flippers. What are you supposed to do with that besides make flowers? It's an excessively overengineered and wasteful jigsaw puzzle.
Even their line of Technic stuff is super watered-down. It's really hard to get useful components, and they have changed the design of their motors and controllers several times (no cross compatibility, obviously). People are moving to buying bootleg components.
Someone I know who is about 65 years old has been getting the space shuttles and super car ones the past couple years and it's unlocked a creative side of them they haven't had in years. Nothing wrong with those mega sets. There's nothing really stopping people from just buying bulk legos or even breaking down sets and reusing their pieces elsewhere.
My son has ... SO MANY LEGO sets; he is twelve and has been collecting regular LEGO since he was four or 5. Yes, the sets get built, but soon after they get broken down into their constituent parts, and we have massive build sessions where we sit in the middle of all his LEGO and just build stuff. It's some of the most fun I have with him.
That is where the money is. Grown adults in their 20s-30s with expendable income looking to collect Lego sets. It helps that Lego is a big part of people's childhood, combine that with pop culture references and you are golden.
Ngl, I enjoy my fair share of Lego sets from my favorite fandoms.
I agree - technics sets used to be really awesome function wise, then came mindstorms and it kept getting better, then all of that seemingly vanished for new sets and cosmetic sets instead.
These days Legos are more akin to model kits. Except they dumb down everything that not even a monkey can screw up assembling whatever is being built.
There’s no creativity in it.
To wit, I’ve bought some kits for my nephew cause his mom asked for them for Christmas, he assembles them while we are still unwrapping gifts, then never or hardly ever goes back and touches them again. They just stay built and untouched on a shelf. Like a model kit.
I remember 20-30 years ago when you’d just get a bucket containing an assortment of pieces and if you were inclined to build a house then you’d have to get creative with the pieces that you had.
The fun part was playing with a friend, agreeing to build a house but having too wildly different designs. Then learning from the experience and tearing it down and building it again but bigger and better.
I do think that the "model" form of something recognizable (thinking mostly about the Star Wars kits here) does lend itself to kits that sit on the shelf, but no one is forcing you to keep it assembled.
With that said, one thing I remember seeing in older kits is instructions for more than one build, which could serve as a kicking off point for someone to reapproach a bundle of bricks in multiple ways.
My own guideline is that once something is built, after a little while it has to be either modified/evolved, or disassembled and put into the bucket-o-bricks for reuse (well if I'm honest, it's several very well sorted craft/hardware bins)
>I remember 20-30 years ago when you’d just get a bucket containing an assortment of pieces and if you were inclined to build a house then you’d have to get creative with the pieces that you had.
You are remembering wrong. The kits about building specific models existed back then, and the kits that are just a bucket of blocks are still sold today.
Lego has been selling specific "build a house" sets for like 50 years.
Whether you only build models and display them or tear everything down and make what you want has always been a choice, and most people do both some amount.
There's even the entire world of designing your own "Models". When I was a kid I would build models that represented real things like planes even though I didn't always have the right parts, but nowadays you can digitally design such a model and bulk order the pieces and instructions yourself!
Which current kits are ”just a bucket of blocks” in the same sense as in the 90s? I’ve just started shopping Lego for my three year old, and my impression is they even the big boxes mostly contain the smallest and most useless blocks rather than the standard boring 2x2 and 2x4 blocks.
I think it's a bit judgemental to declare what "the fun part" is. As a kid, I loved both -- I'd build sets as defined and keep them as-is forever. I'd play with them, too, but I liked the model aspect.
I also had tons of extra bricks that I'd use for free-form play. I loved both aspects.
As an adult, I don't really have the time or interest in "playing space explorers" or "driving" little cars and trains through lego "city" towns. But I still love building the prettier models and having them on a shelf.
The huge amount of specialized parts that are pretty useless for basic building. They're basically adornments.
Prices are insane. I.e. quantity and often quality (as in: how good is the set play-/ construction time wise) is just shite.
I usually buy competitors. Here in Germany Blue e.g. bricks have opened some stores so that's where I take my nephew.
Their sets are much more like the Lego I grew up with. Using more basic parts that exist in creative ways so the specialized/adornment meaning is derived from context, not the part itself/its shape.
Which also requires more imagination from the kids playing with this.
I feel like the special parts have eased off, it was pretty bad with the bionicle stuff (which ironically are apparently what saved lego from financial difficulties), but I'd say all of the recent sets I've got (I get one a year for Christmas) going back at least 5 years have been made up of relatively generic parts, with the odd little special bit for flair.
My son has a enormous bin full of lego that he just free builds with.
Every time we go by Lego Land when we're on a road trip we make a stop and gets to pick out a bunch of stuff from the "random brick wall" and he just adds a bunch of stuff to his pile.
He got a Minecraft set for christmas a couple years ago. I was the one that built it but he just uses the blocks and minifigs for whatever he wants now.
Does this mean that my son's Spike Prime set (with Scratch/Python programming and motors) is now obsolete, like Mindstorms EV3, Mindstorms NXT, PowerFunctions, WeDo, Coding Express, StoryStarter, BuildToExpress, and Lego Education Spike Legacy that came before it?
I'm sure we'll keep playing with the Spike - the Scratch and Python environments are great - but it's a shame to see all this continued fragmentation in the Lego ecosystem.
Not at all. These seem to add light and sound effects to models but there's no mention of motors, reprogrammability, or communication with Spike whatsoever.
A BLE mesh network of wireless sensors would be great for Spike but it doesn't seem like that's what they're building.
and all of the motor standards that keep coming and going. I have 4 different power and motor systems from lego, but still wasn't able to power my new lego Christmas train this year because the latest "Powered Up" seem to be discontinued (or at least have been "temporarily out of stock" for a year now.
not to mention that if you visit lego's site in safari desktop, it defaults to the mobile version, and checkouts are broken!
It spent a bunch of time showing the very classic, simple lego blocks being used to make imaginative things kids make like dinosaurs and trains and planes. It was heartfelt and got me thinking warmly about how Lego has always been this tool for your imagination to become tangible. I spent countless hours with my brother on the basement carpet floor playing Lego. And I've been doing the same with my kids and it's been an enormous facilitator of joy for us.
And then they revealed a brick that shits all over that fundamental concept. A brick that significantly narrows the imagination space by focusing on pre-defined motion behaviours that trigger pre-recorded sound effects from all your favourite intellectual properties.
Does a child exist who thinks, "damn... I wish I didn't have to make all these sounds myself"?!
They're trying to compete with your imagination because your imagination is a factory from which free, unmerchandizable, non-franchise creations emerge.
You're being dramatic. This block doesn't replace building with Lego. Nobody is going to buy the block as a replacement for making blocky dinosaurs and racecars. We know this because Lego already shipped Technic and Mindstorm products that never broke the core value proposition.
Having grown up with Duplo, Lego and Mindstorm, I think this brick is awesome. I can't wait to see what Minecraft Redstone engineers build in real-life.
If they're going to call it the "most significant evolution’ in 50 years" I'll be just as dramatic about how much this feels like a gimmick and a brand withdrawl, not a deposit.
I understand the grandparents viewpoint. Why add constraints to an open ended toy? On the other hand, you could argue that the instructions and included pieces are constraints. Should Lego just sell random grab bags of pieces?
They do just sell random grab bags. I think there’s room for many options. But there was definitely an era where Lego sets had so many custom pieces that you couldn’t really do much else with the sets other than build the one design. And that's what I see happening a bit more these days.
My kids, being the only grandkids, have gotten a ridiculous amount of Lego. They build and immediately abandon the highly specified sets to a shelf (ie. Disney, Star Wars, Dreamz). The Lego City, 3 in 1, and some other lines will get built by instruction maybe once (often they abandon the instructions half way through) and then pretty quickly become what we affectionately call Frankensets. I wish I had a better photo of the space ship from two weeks ago. But this is also their "mind control tower" https://ibb.co/tw11C6Lm (yeah... it got a wee bit communist by the top there)
The problem with the highly specific sets and creativity is that they use a lot of these custom pieces that don't really fit well anywhere and it feels like you can't just riff on half a design and it's not worth taking Wall-E or X-Wing apart to make something else.
It seems like it will be mildly fun for a few minutes, but not all that revolutionary. Does it leverage what makes Lego great and why people buy it for their kids and themselves? I don’t think so. Triggering your imagination and seeing limitless possibilities in what you can build or pretend is one of the keystones of Lego, in my opinion. Creating a brick that offers a few presets for specific types of models and play seems limiting.
But who knows, I’m almost 40, and I’ve been out of the target demographic for a long long time. My favorite sets were from the Space Police era.
It uses NFC, where the NFC tag carries a payload to tell the brick what to do. So in theory they can develop new skills for the brick and release new "trigger" blocks for it.
But to your point of: "seeing limitless possibilities in what you can build or pretend is one of the keystones of Lego", the first comment I saw on the instagram post about this was "but I like to make the pew pew noised myself".
Even before this there was a similar system for the Apple //e where you could code in logo (Control Lab?) I think it was 6 or 9v and had to be tethered to work
This looks awesome and I can’t imagine just how many possibilities there are if they can pull it off by integrating with other larger components and some sort of software platform running a high level language.
I’d love to build a 3d LEGO Final Fantasy Tactics style strategy “board” game where lego figurines do battle with some touch screen interfaces to play out the battles with skill points. Have GMs run large games with players each bringing their LEGO sets to create a large environment. Spawn minster figurines and all that.
One can dream but if these NFCs tiles are cheap enough, it’d be possible to cover each playable square with them and have smart figurines that can comunicate where they are.
“They’re wirelessly charged, with a pad that can charge multiple bricks at a time.."
Did LEGO solve this problem and Apple didn’t? The Apple AirPower is what I’m referring to and it was a matter of physics that was the mighty hurdle Apple had to contend with. But they were also trying to pump out ~15w per device. These bricks will be measured in milliwatts per brick. But I’m curious if there is any additional information about this? How many bricks can be charged at a time? Can they be placed anywhere on the pad? (I hope so.) It would be great if specs were released. I would buy the pad alone just for charging other IoT devices.
Edit: It will not be usable by anything other than Lego Smart Bricks. It will use a proprietary or highly customized inductive standard designed specifically for the new Lego Smart Bricks.
Wireless charging for electronics has been a solved problem going back to my Palm Pixi. The problem is getting to the insane wattages and charging speeds people expect from their devices these days.
I'm sure these tiny, low wattage devices don't really pose a problem.
I would bet that the pad in question has LEGO studs on it that connect to a physical charging circuit to the bottom of the brick. They've had various motor bricks for a long time with similar connections.
One of the best things about Lego is that they are practically indestructible. Bricks from the 70s are still perfectly useable. I would be interested in seeing how many decades these smart bricks survive.
Cool, do they have good lighting options now though? Like Lumibricks, where the wires are hidden and the floors/multiple buildings are connected with special connector bricks?
This seems like a nice toy for kids; no programming required. But I wonder if it would be possible to make your own NFC tags to program it, or if it's proprietary?
I was already programming when I got into mindstorms (so very happy that my high school had an "Industrial Control Technologies" class), but the jump in complexity and the thrill of seeing my code power something physical was definitely a turning point
I wouldn’t call this enshittification. But the number of grown ups excitedly buying Lego sets to build things that gather dust makes me wonder if there are any adults in the room left.
I think it's kind of hard to understand what these are without more experience with them, but imagine lego bricks as a mesh network of smart devices... it's not just "brick plays a sound when you press it" but can almost start to be like a block programming language... if x block is near some minifig then y block makes a sound
if this catches on it can have a big unlocking effect for novel creation, kind of like redstone and switches did in minecraft
Unfortunately Lego kind of went backwards, evolution-wise, in the last 20 years or so. I had quite some Lego blocks in my youth and the best part was free assembly rather than those overpriced build-xyz-mega-sets one sees today now. I get it that they cater to another market, e. g. also collecters, but the creativity part really went down. And that was a deliberate decision made by Lego.
My kids will build a set according to the instructions and then a day or two later it's disassembled for parts so they can build something else.
The reason they sell sets is because the people who buy these are parents, uncles, grandmas, and other people. The sets make it easy for them to identify something that seems like kids would love it and possibly intersects with some brand the kids like, such as the Marvel crossover sets.
Once the bricks get in the kids' hands, they can do whatever they want with them.
Yeah, I don’t understand this criticism.
Unless they’ve changed drastically, the sets are always just the beginning of what you want to do. If it’s an object you build the object and add it to another landscape that you may have built.
If it’s a castle you build the castle and then add a whole bunch of custom features to it.
Technic used to do these cool books of instructions only - they were 14 dollars around 1992 - which if you owned Technic set X and Technic set Y you could build Z.
You could build the ALIENS PNEUMATIC LOADER in Lego Technic. Coolest thing ever.
Anyway yes creativity is great but also official instructions are great too.
Edit: https://oldinstructions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1991-... page 59 thanks Grok.
I think the main complaint is that the percentage of the kits dedicated to specialty parts limits their usefulness for free-form play. Sets of the 80's had fewer block types, which forced Lego to be more creative in how the sets were put together, which subsequently allowed more freedom in using the blocks for other designs. The sets my kids are playing with look much more "realistic" to what the set is trying to model, but very difficult to build something entirely different, such as building a house from a car kit.
> I think the main complaint is that the percentage of the kits dedicated to specialty parts limits their usefulness for free-form play.
I understand the complain, but from observing my kids play with LEGO I don't agree with it at all.
The specialty parts from every kit inspire a lot of new builds with their growing part collection.
> The sets my kids are playing with look much more "realistic" to what the set is trying to model, but very difficult to build something entirely different, such as building a house from a car kit.
I guess I just don't see this with my kids at all. Every small set we buy or that someone gifts them grows the range of things they can build. They remember every single different part and will go searching for it in the bins because they want to put it to use.
Yeah, I was concerned about the creativity thing early one, but both of my kids build random stuff from a sea of parts. Occasionally my older kid would decide to build a set again and be frustrated when they couldn't find the part they needed.
As a family, we have a couple of the ninjago city sets, those are largely intact, but the kids play with them.
The minifigures can be a little bit of a problem, they seem to trigger an instinct to collect unique items. My kid will ask for a set so they can get one (or more) of the minifigures in it.
The problem with these hyperspecific sets is that your imagination can't keep up with what is a 90% replica of the original thing the set is based on.
this is the way, especially with Technic sets
Well, true. But it is true in same sense that Microsoft require newer hardware, and online accounts only to provide greater security, latest innovations to largest number of customers in shortest possible time.
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
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!
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
My personal gripe is that they did away with the studded beams in Technic and everything is smooth beams now with axles and pins.
While it might look marginally better, everything is 3x the parts and the building time, and you can just sit down and slap stuff together any more, in fact with the rise of things like Arduino, and 3D printing, I think it's easier to just do electronics + CAD (even with kids) than to work with this stuff.
Which is a shame, because older sets used to be cheaper and contain much less parts for the same amount of functionality, and something like a crane truck set that could do all the tilting and motor stuff was categorized as suitable for kids 2-3 years younger.
Yea as somebody who played extensively with Lego as a kid, almost exclusively just the "base components", I never really got the appeal of those set with all sorts of custom, single-use items
> And that was a deliberate decision made by Lego.
A prime example of this are the flower sets they sell. You'll get, like, 90 purple flippers. What are you supposed to do with that besides make flowers? It's an excessively overengineered and wasteful jigsaw puzzle.
Even their line of Technic stuff is super watered-down. It's really hard to get useful components, and they have changed the design of their motors and controllers several times (no cross compatibility, obviously). People are moving to buying bootleg components.
Someone I know who is about 65 years old has been getting the space shuttles and super car ones the past couple years and it's unlocked a creative side of them they haven't had in years. Nothing wrong with those mega sets. There's nothing really stopping people from just buying bulk legos or even breaking down sets and reusing their pieces elsewhere.
My son has ... SO MANY LEGO sets; he is twelve and has been collecting regular LEGO since he was four or 5. Yes, the sets get built, but soon after they get broken down into their constituent parts, and we have massive build sessions where we sit in the middle of all his LEGO and just build stuff. It's some of the most fun I have with him.
That is where the money is. Grown adults in their 20s-30s with expendable income looking to collect Lego sets. It helps that Lego is a big part of people's childhood, combine that with pop culture references and you are golden.
Ngl, I enjoy my fair share of Lego sets from my favorite fandoms.
I agree - technics sets used to be really awesome function wise, then came mindstorms and it kept getting better, then all of that seemingly vanished for new sets and cosmetic sets instead.
These days Legos are more akin to model kits. Except they dumb down everything that not even a monkey can screw up assembling whatever is being built.
There’s no creativity in it.
To wit, I’ve bought some kits for my nephew cause his mom asked for them for Christmas, he assembles them while we are still unwrapping gifts, then never or hardly ever goes back and touches them again. They just stay built and untouched on a shelf. Like a model kit.
I remember 20-30 years ago when you’d just get a bucket containing an assortment of pieces and if you were inclined to build a house then you’d have to get creative with the pieces that you had.
The fun part was playing with a friend, agreeing to build a house but having too wildly different designs. Then learning from the experience and tearing it down and building it again but bigger and better.
I do think that the "model" form of something recognizable (thinking mostly about the Star Wars kits here) does lend itself to kits that sit on the shelf, but no one is forcing you to keep it assembled.
With that said, one thing I remember seeing in older kits is instructions for more than one build, which could serve as a kicking off point for someone to reapproach a bundle of bricks in multiple ways.
My own guideline is that once something is built, after a little while it has to be either modified/evolved, or disassembled and put into the bucket-o-bricks for reuse (well if I'm honest, it's several very well sorted craft/hardware bins)
So because your nephew chooses not to reconfigure the kits he receives, there's no creativity in lego any more? Come on.
Lego still sells buckets in various sizes (10696, 10698, etc). If you want to encourage that kind of play, perhaps these would make a better gift.
>I remember 20-30 years ago when you’d just get a bucket containing an assortment of pieces and if you were inclined to build a house then you’d have to get creative with the pieces that you had.
You are remembering wrong. The kits about building specific models existed back then, and the kits that are just a bucket of blocks are still sold today.
Lego has been selling specific "build a house" sets for like 50 years.
Whether you only build models and display them or tear everything down and make what you want has always been a choice, and most people do both some amount.
There's even the entire world of designing your own "Models". When I was a kid I would build models that represented real things like planes even though I didn't always have the right parts, but nowadays you can digitally design such a model and bulk order the pieces and instructions yourself!
Which current kits are ”just a bucket of blocks” in the same sense as in the 90s? I’ve just started shopping Lego for my three year old, and my impression is they even the big boxes mostly contain the smallest and most useless blocks rather than the standard boring 2x2 and 2x4 blocks.
https://www.lego.com/en-ca/product/lego-large-creative-brick...
I think it's a bit judgemental to declare what "the fun part" is. As a kid, I loved both -- I'd build sets as defined and keep them as-is forever. I'd play with them, too, but I liked the model aspect.
I also had tons of extra bricks that I'd use for free-form play. I loved both aspects.
As an adult, I don't really have the time or interest in "playing space explorers" or "driving" little cars and trains through lego "city" towns. But I still love building the prettier models and having them on a shelf.
they're doing this because their market has shifted to adults and toy collectors spending large amount of money on them.
The two main issues with Lego sets I have are:
The huge amount of specialized parts that are pretty useless for basic building. They're basically adornments.
Prices are insane. I.e. quantity and often quality (as in: how good is the set play-/ construction time wise) is just shite.
I usually buy competitors. Here in Germany Blue e.g. bricks have opened some stores so that's where I take my nephew.
Their sets are much more like the Lego I grew up with. Using more basic parts that exist in creative ways so the specialized/adornment meaning is derived from context, not the part itself/its shape.
Which also requires more imagination from the kids playing with this.
I feel like the special parts have eased off, it was pretty bad with the bionicle stuff (which ironically are apparently what saved lego from financial difficulties), but I'd say all of the recent sets I've got (I get one a year for Christmas) going back at least 5 years have been made up of relatively generic parts, with the odd little special bit for flair.
I'm so curious why this was downvoted. Please tell me!
My son has a enormous bin full of lego that he just free builds with.
Every time we go by Lego Land when we're on a road trip we make a stop and gets to pick out a bunch of stuff from the "random brick wall" and he just adds a bunch of stuff to his pile.
He got a Minecraft set for christmas a couple years ago. I was the one that built it but he just uses the blocks and minifigs for whatever he wants now.
it was a deliberate choice that made them absolute mountains of cash
Does this mean that my son's Spike Prime set (with Scratch/Python programming and motors) is now obsolete, like Mindstorms EV3, Mindstorms NXT, PowerFunctions, WeDo, Coding Express, StoryStarter, BuildToExpress, and Lego Education Spike Legacy that came before it?
I'm sure we'll keep playing with the Spike - the Scratch and Python environments are great - but it's a shame to see all this continued fragmentation in the Lego ecosystem.
Not at all. These seem to add light and sound effects to models but there's no mention of motors, reprogrammability, or communication with Spike whatsoever.
A BLE mesh network of wireless sensors would be great for Spike but it doesn't seem like that's what they're building.
and all of the motor standards that keep coming and going. I have 4 different power and motor systems from lego, but still wasn't able to power my new lego Christmas train this year because the latest "Powered Up" seem to be discontinued (or at least have been "temporarily out of stock" for a year now.
not to mention that if you visit lego's site in safari desktop, it defaults to the mobile version, and checkouts are broken!
I'm not sure I trust lego with technology.
The announcement video I saw was bizarre.
It spent a bunch of time showing the very classic, simple lego blocks being used to make imaginative things kids make like dinosaurs and trains and planes. It was heartfelt and got me thinking warmly about how Lego has always been this tool for your imagination to become tangible. I spent countless hours with my brother on the basement carpet floor playing Lego. And I've been doing the same with my kids and it's been an enormous facilitator of joy for us.
And then they revealed a brick that shits all over that fundamental concept. A brick that significantly narrows the imagination space by focusing on pre-defined motion behaviours that trigger pre-recorded sound effects from all your favourite intellectual properties.
Does a child exist who thinks, "damn... I wish I didn't have to make all these sounds myself"?!
They're trying to compete with your imagination because your imagination is a factory from which free, unmerchandizable, non-franchise creations emerge.
You're being dramatic. This block doesn't replace building with Lego. Nobody is going to buy the block as a replacement for making blocky dinosaurs and racecars. We know this because Lego already shipped Technic and Mindstorm products that never broke the core value proposition.
Having grown up with Duplo, Lego and Mindstorm, I think this brick is awesome. I can't wait to see what Minecraft Redstone engineers build in real-life.
If they're going to call it the "most significant evolution’ in 50 years" I'll be just as dramatic about how much this feels like a gimmick and a brand withdrawl, not a deposit.
I have no idea what website you think you're on, where anyone complains about hyperbolic "this is our best $PRODUCT yet" statements.
I understand the grandparents viewpoint. Why add constraints to an open ended toy? On the other hand, you could argue that the instructions and included pieces are constraints. Should Lego just sell random grab bags of pieces?
They do just sell random grab bags. I think there’s room for many options. But there was definitely an era where Lego sets had so many custom pieces that you couldn’t really do much else with the sets other than build the one design. And that's what I see happening a bit more these days.
My kids, being the only grandkids, have gotten a ridiculous amount of Lego. They build and immediately abandon the highly specified sets to a shelf (ie. Disney, Star Wars, Dreamz). The Lego City, 3 in 1, and some other lines will get built by instruction maybe once (often they abandon the instructions half way through) and then pretty quickly become what we affectionately call Frankensets. I wish I had a better photo of the space ship from two weeks ago. But this is also their "mind control tower" https://ibb.co/tw11C6Lm (yeah... it got a wee bit communist by the top there)
The problem with the highly specific sets and creativity is that they use a lot of these custom pieces that don't really fit well anywhere and it feels like you can't just riff on half a design and it's not worth taking Wall-E or X-Wing apart to make something else.
A predecessor that I had as a child: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms
I still have my mindstorms controller + sensors, I wonder how much effort it would be to get everything up and running again
RCX series? This is from 2020, but here’s a fairly comprehensive bit of resources on the old Mindstorms kit: https://www.johnholbrook.us/RCX_guide.html
https://archive.ph/wcArc
Lego unveils tech-filled Smart Bricks - to play experts' unease
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmlnmnwzk2o
It seems like it will be mildly fun for a few minutes, but not all that revolutionary. Does it leverage what makes Lego great and why people buy it for their kids and themselves? I don’t think so. Triggering your imagination and seeing limitless possibilities in what you can build or pretend is one of the keystones of Lego, in my opinion. Creating a brick that offers a few presets for specific types of models and play seems limiting.
But who knows, I’m almost 40, and I’ve been out of the target demographic for a long long time. My favorite sets were from the Space Police era.
It uses NFC, where the NFC tag carries a payload to tell the brick what to do. So in theory they can develop new skills for the brick and release new "trigger" blocks for it.
But to your point of: "seeing limitless possibilities in what you can build or pretend is one of the keystones of Lego", the first comment I saw on the instagram post about this was "but I like to make the pew pew noised myself".
I had the "LEGO Control Center" when I was a teenager - turns out that was released in 1990! And it was amazing:
http://www.technicopedia.com/8094.html
You could build a 2D pen plotter with it (and a few other great models) and program in a sequence of motor movements!
It was the forerunner to LEGO Mindstorms.
Even before this there was a similar system for the Apple //e where you could code in logo (Control Lab?) I think it was 6 or 9v and had to be tethered to work
This looks awesome and I can’t imagine just how many possibilities there are if they can pull it off by integrating with other larger components and some sort of software platform running a high level language.
I’d love to build a 3d LEGO Final Fantasy Tactics style strategy “board” game where lego figurines do battle with some touch screen interfaces to play out the battles with skill points. Have GMs run large games with players each bringing their LEGO sets to create a large environment. Spawn minster figurines and all that.
One can dream but if these NFCs tiles are cheap enough, it’d be possible to cover each playable square with them and have smart figurines that can comunicate where they are.
>> the 'most significant evolution' in 50 years
this is an insult to Lego Mindstorms
Some analysis of the technical details from the patents here: https://www.heise.de/en/background/Lego-Smart-Play-Patent-ap...
They should bring back the Light & Sound bricks from the 1980s, those were great with their electric-circuit-enabled standard plates: https://bricksfanz.com/a-look-at-lego-light-sound/
“They’re wirelessly charged, with a pad that can charge multiple bricks at a time.."
Did LEGO solve this problem and Apple didn’t? The Apple AirPower is what I’m referring to and it was a matter of physics that was the mighty hurdle Apple had to contend with. But they were also trying to pump out ~15w per device. These bricks will be measured in milliwatts per brick. But I’m curious if there is any additional information about this? How many bricks can be charged at a time? Can they be placed anywhere on the pad? (I hope so.) It would be great if specs were released. I would buy the pad alone just for charging other IoT devices.
https://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/incoming/tech-news-apple-s-a...
Edit: It will not be usable by anything other than Lego Smart Bricks. It will use a proprietary or highly customized inductive standard designed specifically for the new Lego Smart Bricks.
Wireless charging for electronics has been a solved problem going back to my Palm Pixi. The problem is getting to the insane wattages and charging speeds people expect from their devices these days.
I'm sure these tiny, low wattage devices don't really pose a problem.
I don't know, but I wonder if the "pad" were not itself lego of some sort, so "anywhere on the pad" is vastly constrained? Totally spitballing here.
I would bet that the pad in question has LEGO studs on it that connect to a physical charging circuit to the bottom of the brick. They've had various motor bricks for a long time with similar connections.
it's an induction tray like any other wireless charger
https://www.theverge.com/tech/855520/i-played-with-the-lego-...
So... how long until the accompanying "Lego is spying on your children" article?
How we made the Lego SMART Play system
https://www.lego.com/en-us/smart-play/article/innovation
One of the best things about Lego is that they are practically indestructible. Bricks from the 70s are still perfectly useable. I would be interested in seeing how many decades these smart bricks survive.
Cool, do they have good lighting options now though? Like Lumibricks, where the wires are hidden and the floors/multiple buildings are connected with special connector bricks?
This seems like a nice toy for kids; no programming required. But I wonder if it would be possible to make your own NFC tags to program it, or if it's proprietary?
I still don’t understand why they got rid of Mindstorms.
Windstorms was 100% my entry into programming through 4H. Good times
I was already programming when I got into mindstorms (so very happy that my high school had an "Industrial Control Technologies" class), but the jump in complexity and the thrill of seeing my code power something physical was definitely a turning point
I wouldn’t call this enshittification. But the number of grown ups excitedly buying Lego sets to build things that gather dust makes me wonder if there are any adults in the room left.
As long as they like it, this isn't a valid argument. It's their money.
What happened to just making regular bricks? Not smart ones, electric ones, but just standard bricks.
> Smart Brick
Another Smart Brick in the wall. The problem with lego is that most of the bricks are rectangles. You can build only a "minecraft" world.
I think it's kind of hard to understand what these are without more experience with them, but imagine lego bricks as a mesh network of smart devices... it's not just "brick plays a sound when you press it" but can almost start to be like a block programming language... if x block is near some minifig then y block makes a sound
if this catches on it can have a big unlocking effect for novel creation, kind of like redstone and switches did in minecraft
See also discussion here and non-paywalled link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46503733
Thanks, I didn't see that, looks like the Verge is getting pay walls now.