AI6YR BenKGET Bakersfield: 3 people under arrest after allegedly stealing $1M worth of Lego
Falx Cerebri
EllenIn Edmonton@falxcerebri @ai6yr Exactly! My grandkids drop 100s of dollars at a time for those things!
Nazo@EllenInEdmonton @falxcerebri @ai6yr I seriously can't understand it. They make these kits that are $100+ each (I guess getting up to 200 these days?) and they only make one single thing.
I hate to drop the "when I was young" line, but seriously, when I was a kid the expensive set was a big bucket full of standard Lego bricks and you made whatever the heck you wanted to. And it didn't cost anywhere near to that much. (I have no idea what it cost, but I do know my parents wouldn't even have thought about $100+)
I mean, a frigging bucket. How is anyone ok with getting a small box with quite a lot of them consisting of pieces you can't really do much else with?
I feel like somewhere along the way people forgot what was even the point of Legos. I don't even get the point of a kit
@nazokiyoubinbou @EllenInEdmonton @falxcerebri Yeah, the beauty of Legos is making your OWN THING, from random blocks. Kits are annoying to me, as well, even though my family likes them (probably, because you don't have to THINK about what you're going to build, you follow the instructions).
@ai6yr @EllenInEdmonton @falxcerebri I really don't get that though. Like why even have them if you're just making whatever the kit is for by instructions?
Besides, model kits are already a thing and a heck of a lot nicer... And apparently cheaper (as insane as that is — they're not cheap by any means at all, just Legos are really getting up there!)
J.L. 1285@nazokiyoubinbou Gen X here: I don’t think I would have even played with Lego back then if it only came in the kit-form we see nowadays.
catch@nazokiyoubinbou @EllenInEdmonton @falxcerebri @ai6yr I don't like it either, they've essentially made LEGO single use.
Did get one of two of the smaller kits to do with my daughter a while back but only because she already had plenty of generic bricks from the past 40 years already.
But also wonder if there's a bit of nostalgia going on here or maybe we're a few years apart. Mid '80s they were already selling space, castle, robin hood etc. themed kits with instructions (often multiple variations and easy to repurpose though). I had (and still do) the castle with the portcullis. But once built they'd get chucked in a big box with random other pieces and recombined over and over again. It's been a slow transition to the expensive monstrosities they do now but the seeds were there.
What really accelerated it was LEGO Friends - small kits but more inflexible parts. Then the licensing of the various IPs. Which partly explains the demand since people are buying a deathstar or whatever as much as they are LEGO in those cases. Like getting an adult colouring book instead of a sketchpad and pencils.
Edited to add: also, I think the demand for the sets is partly driven by the lack of equivalents of those '80s transitional sets, maybe the 3 in 1s are the closest. So you really do either have just some bricks or an intricate single use set and nothing much in-between.
@catch56 @EllenInEdmonton @falxcerebri @ai6yr I can't say how much is nostalgia, but I absolutely had a generic Lego bucket. As for where my parents got it or how much, I don't know. Perhaps they got it from a thrift store or yard sale or something and it was older. I can't remember if it was new or maybe even short on number of pieces. Just that there were a lot of very plain lego bricks in it.
@nazokiyoubinbou @EllenInEdmonton @falxcerebri @ai6yr I think I had some of that too, all primary colours iirc but pretty sure that was given to my parents by someone else with older kids rather than bought. They were definitely selling them at some point, just what has happened since is part of a long, though accelerating, trajectory.
@catch56 @EllenInEdmonton @falxcerebri @ai6yr Maybe mine were older then. They did buy from yard sales and thrift stores a lot back then.
It's kind of sad in a way. It's like kids have really lost something in this. Instead of generic legos they can make anything with, they get expensive kits, follow one set of instructions, get one thing, and forget about it. The entire "have fun figuring out how to make various things how you want them" aspect seems gone to me.
@nazokiyoubinbou @EllenInEdmonton @falxcerebri @ai6yr yeah the whole aspect of trial and error, dealing with issues of structural integrity and balance. Having to substitute or otherwise mask when you didn't have enough of a specific brick etc.
Not like it's impossible for kids to have this experience but you either have to have a large pre-existing collection (that is not kept pristine by set or anything) or actively work against the entire sales and marketing behemoth to reconstruct a product that would be incredibly easy to offer but considerably less lucrative.
@catch56 @EllenInEdmonton @falxcerebri @ai6yr Right. For me the biggest issue with people having any real freedom with them is the only realistic way is to buy multiple $100+ kits and then just... not use them as a kit.
I'm sure you can do a decent bit with a single kit just redoing it in ways you want, but it's going to be very limiting with not enough of the right sorts of parts since they're so specialized. Like not every single brick is a custom brick, but sure as heck a lot are... It just isn't realistic to do much of anything with one kit. I just can't see people doing much without a bunch.
I really doubt this is much of a thing at this point. It just isn't worth it...
I bet a lot of people doing the crazy stuff buy the old buckets or used kits or something.
cognitively accessible math@catch56 @nazokiyoubinbou @EllenInEdmonton @falxcerebri @ai6yr THe idea of expensive 3-D jigsaw puzzles is just different from those original legos.