Ok lego kids how did you build your lego sets?

The Game Room
82

I think you’re misunderstanding what I mean by specialization. I’ve used “rare” and other words to refer to the frequency of appearance, but that’s not quite the same thing. Specialization refers to function. A straight beam is more generic, and has more functions, than an angled one. And a beam with two angles is even less generic, and so on until you reach those weird fairing shapes that don’t have many functions at all.

Taking a step in the other direction, the original 4x2 block is probably the most generic piece of them all. You can make an immense number of things with just those. It’s probably the single greatest invention in the history of toys. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for saying that anything past the original block is too specialized for their taste (it’s just not for me, since I like machines).

Now, since this a spectrum, it’s not the case that the mere appearance of a more specialized piece is a bad thing. They’re sometimes needed. The Test Car has a few in the suspension linkages and such. My initial intuition about the right-angle studless beam was wrong, and I accept Chronos’ first-hand experience here when it comes to engineering applications. Nevertheless, it is still a modestly more specialized piece than a straight beam. That would be the case even if it appeared in exactly the same number of sets.

Sure, and that’s part of the problem with LEGO as models. I built the 10221 Super Star Destroyer and a couple other big Star Wars sets (a friend who is into this stuff had a few LEGO parties a while back). Yeah, they wouldn’t work any other way. I don’t consider a construction technique elegant just because you have no other choice due to the nature of the model. I mean, these are literally covered with greebles. And they are fragile as hell. He was constantly reattaching pieces until he suspended them from the ceiling.

Put another way, you get more elegant design when form follows function, not the converse.

Not at all! That is the genius of LEGO. Because of the quantization, the parts are largely all interoperable. And you only need a very modest number of parts for a wide set of applications. That is exactly what makes the parts so generic. It does impose some design constraints, but those constraints are extremely modest compared to the benefits of that standardization.

I have a box of miscellaneous wood pieces in my garage. They have all sorts of dimensions. And they are all utterly useless for just about any purpose unless I cut them down to the size I need. LEGO never has this problem. If a piece is roughly the right size, then it is exactly the right size, because there is no such thing as a 5.2 beam. However, the more variations you have, the less true this becomes. The end state is a model with 1000 pins, 500 distinct left-handed parts, and 500 right-handed parts. Not what I want in my parts bin.

83

It has one function - to be a beam.

And it can’t do the function of the angled beam by itself.

So neither is more specialized than the other.

I wouldn’t begrudge them, I’d just consider anyone that extreme a raving loony.

And the people who posted before that (and cited their own first-hand experience) were just so much chopped liver, I suppose…

I don’t consider “And now you have many more options for models” as a problem.

You’d have a case if the old methods no longer worked because of design changes. But they still do. So you’re just decrying people embracing more variety.

And the spacing and angles on the 90°and 53° beams are part of that.

84

It would be nice to have actual data here. I never claimed that the generic sets don’t exist. But again, just search for “lego technic car” on Google and see what you get. Just about all of them are branded models.

When you do the same on Amazon, it’s even worse. You have to go through a few pages before you get any kind of generic car, and I still see very little that emphasizes the engineering.

I’m sure the models sell better. They look better on the box, and have names that parents are likely to know and are more likely to buy. But I feel bad for the prospective engineers who are getting shortchanged.

85

Good luck getting actual sales data out of LEGO.

But anecdotally, in the last year, I’ve purchased: 3 Harry Potter sets, 2 Friends sets, 5 advent calendars (HP, Star Wars, 2xCity, Friends), 2 Star Wars sets and 3 Classic boxes. And some Dotz. And stuff from Pick-a-Brick and Bricklink.

Zero Technic, but then I’m not a gearhead, I mainly purchased the old Technics sets I do have to get the conveyer belt tracks.

86

The prospective engineers are all doing Mindstorms, SPIKE and LEGO FIRST now. I know, I parent one.

Technic is just no longer the only place where the LEGO engineering lives.

87

This is getting to be a little more abstract, but I do actually consider it a problem. Flashy stuff tends to drive out non-flashy. If you have a lot of stuff available, even if the manufacturer makes it a point to preserve the non-flashy stuff, it will still get diluted with flashy stuff. It becomes hard to find, especially for someone that might not even know what they’re looking for.

It’s clear that you really like the models, and maybe Star Wars in particular. More power to you if that’s your interest. But it doesn’t say much about the engineering applications. The Porsche looks to be using a bunch of those L-pieces pinned together on the rear diffuser. Not that interesting to me, since it’s just for show. But using an L-piece to transmit a linear force through a 90-degree angle is interesting, and might be hard to pull off otherwise.

88

LEGO actively pushes the LEGO First leagues at schools and science centres, even in our benighted 3rd World country. “Hard to find” is so off base it’s in not-even-wrong territory.

89

I’m glad they’re doing a good job of pushing it in schools. One of my great disappointments from elementary school was having a 5th grade teacher with a LEGO/Logo kit (predecessor to Mindstorms) that left it collecting dust in the corner because she was too lazy to learn how to use it and too proud to let the kids figure it out on their own.

Still–I don’t see Mindstorms on the main Lego page. It’s all Super Mario 64™, Fender Stratocaster™, Harry Potter™, Mandalorian™, and so on. It’s there if you look for it, but it’s buried.

90

This is getting increasingly silly.

Looking at the US homepage, I see a prominent (as in - full-screen section of the page, not the 1/4 page theme bits you’re complaining about) link to this page:

Which is all about this years LEGO First MOVE IT challenge. Disguised as a page about the hauler, but the wording of the actual link section is quite emphatically about the challenge. itself

Like I said, LEGO actively pushes this side of things, not just on their site, but in other fora.

Nothing is “buried”. To continue insisting it is, in the face of facts, starts to look more than a little disingenuous.

91

Yeah, it’s a good collection of parts. Although I just checked my set and it has a few of those damnable double-135 beams. It uses them for “fingers” on a claw. I think they could have done better.

I never did much with the kit, unfortunately–I got it in trade for an air conditioner in the early 2000’s, but was working more hours then and didn’t have time. Kinda lost track, but it’s still there in my closet. I’d try it again, but the software comes on a CD, and it attaches via serial port. Maybe someone has ported it to something modern.

92

That’s cool and all, but it’s a blurb about their school outreach, not a product you can buy (it’s also not Mindstorms, which is what I mentioned).

If you scroll waaaay down on the MOVE IT page, they show their featured Technic sets: the Cat Bulldozer, the F-150 Raptor, the BATMOBILE, and the Bugatti Chiron (and som more to the right). The bulldozer admittedly looks pretty cool (do they have an Israeli Defense Force model?). But it’s yet more branded stuff.

Out of curiosity, how’s the gender bias in FIRST? My manager led one of those and said that while at the start there was a good mix of girls, over time they drifted away. Seemed unfortunate.

93

… because the extra click to get through to their list of STEM sets is soooo hard to do :roll_eyes:

And there are 3 non-branded sets in that side-scroller, the catamaran, crawler crane and off-roader.

I’ve been mentioning Mindstorms AND LEGO First AND SPIKE as companion themes every time I talk about this stuff, so if you’re responding to me (and you were), I’m going to be talking about them all as a whole - especially since the challenges do use Mindstorms tech.

In the local group I know of, it’s about 60/40, which is not bad.

94

@Dr.Strangelove Just so we’re clear here, since you’ve been opaque in the thread already - is your specific claim that non-branded Technic sets, specifically, are hard to find (trivial to disprove)? Or that it’s hard for budding engineers to get exposed to engineering-focused LEGO (already shown to not be true)?

Or just that they don’t make the Test Car anymore?

95

My claim is that the majority of their products now are now licensed products in one form or another, and that this is a reversal from their past. Instead of producing a sensible collection of pieces and letting the constructions flow from that, they have started with the end product (which is fixed, since it’s now a Star Destroyer™ or an F-150 Raptor™, and produced pieces which allow building these models. I think LEGO is a worse product because of this. Partly because I kinda hate over-branded bullshit, but mostly because of the aforementioned reversal.

You like Harry Potter and Star Wars. Great, I like Star Wars too but I’m not in love with it being a huge fraction of LEGO’s product line.

You can repeat until you’re blue in the face that their engineering stuff still exists, but it’s undeniable that when you do a generic search on Google or Amazon or even just glance at the LEGO page itself, the branded stuff is way more prominent and completely dominates as a fraction of the total.

Their focus puts me in a dilemma. I have a couple of nephews that I buy gifts for–often LEGOs. Now, I want to get them toys they enjoy. But I also want to get them something that possibly instills a spark of the engineering spirit. If it’s not there, so be it; not my position to force the issue. But ultimately I have to make a choice between a “cool” branded set, whether Star Wars or otherwise, and a less-cool but possibly more educational set more focused on building. There’s a good chance that if I get them the latter, it’ll be ignored in favor of something shinier, and that kinda sucks.

Granted, it’s kinda academic since iPads have come to dominate their attention, and for all my complaints about new LEGO, at least it’s still physical… but oh well.

It’s not just LEGOs, really. I’m a huge fan of Minecraft, and had some good times playing it online with the older nephew. Until he found some Pokemon mods for it. I don’t have a big problem with Pokemon either, but the combination of them kinda ruins Minecraft, since it takes away almost all the motivation for actually building stuff (which I think is both cool and character building). Other people have built stuff, but it’s all just… there. And it’s not that he didn’t like building in Minecraft–he really got excited for it–but Pokemon is there, and lots of his friends are into it, and he likes it outside of Minecraft. So that’s what captures his attention

In short, I think this flashiness damages the fundamentals, often just by existing. LEGO is a very different company than they were.

Not at all. I bring that one up only because I had it. But it wasn’t the apex of “classic” Technic. There’s the 8880 Super Car I mentioned earlier, which was superior to mine in every way, even after my mods. 4-wheel drive and steering! And a more complex body style but without resorting to curved pieces. But it came out when I was in high school, which was kinda the wrong time, so I didn’t have that one. And Mindstorms, which as far as I’m concerned is just a variation on Technic, was even more awesome.

Yeah, LEGO’s school outreach programs are great when they exist. I don’t know that my nephew’s schools have them, though I should ask (I’d consider participating, but I’m on the other side of the country).

96

But the licenced products include ones like the 'dozer or the excavator that more include the technical aspects you consider missing, like complex gears and visible pistons. So either you’re just decrying LEGO selling licenced sets at all (in which case you’re decades late, and arguing with the tide besides), or you’re falsely associating licencing with engineering non-complexity.

And it’s hardly a reversal. LEGO, the company, made licenced toys before the first bricks existed.

No, I buy Harry Potter and Star Wars - AND I buy Classic and Creator. And Friends and City and Dotz. They’re not all for me, mostly for kids but also AFOL friends. I spend thousands on LEGO every year. You have exactly zero standing to lecture me as to what LEGO is and should be.

It is deniable - I’m denying it right now. If you look at the LEGO USA site right now, the first 4 sets you encounter in a row are the Mario ? Block, Santa’s Visit, Fender guitar and Xmas Penguin. 2/4 is in no way “dominating”. This same comical exaggeration holds if you look at the page as a whole. There may be more branded sets than not on the homepage, but they’re not excessively emphasized over LEGO’s own stuff.

That is the very epitome of a “you problem”. I know my kids have no problem getting generic LEGO as well as branded stuff. Because they love LEGO.

You seem very hung up on superficialities - only going by what you can see on websites at a quick glance, and dismissing the current complex engineering sets just because they have logos on them.

The SPIKE and other STEM sets exist independent of any school-run programs.

97

Mostly true, and this was indeed a very good design decision, but it’s still possible to have an almost-match, with the help of a little trigonometry.

On Mindstorms, it might be that what you’re seeing is that it’s marketed more towards schools than to individuals. Which is probably a good thing: It puts them in reach of families who can’t personally afford the kits, it puts the kids in contact with teachers who (hopefully) know more about engineering than they do, and it lets multiple children build models in parallel that they can compare and possibly compete with.

There’s also a more direct link from “I took a class on Lego and ended up going to college for engineering” than from “I played with Lego at home and ended up going to college for engineering”.

98

I need to do some research, but I suspect this is not true. LEGO are quite strict on creating brand new pieces. Their designers can’t just create new pieces for a model, it has to be shown that a new piece has a use beyond the model being designed. I will have a look for info on what sets first used those Technic fairing/wing pieces.

99

Dang, dude. I’ve repeatedly stated that you’re welcome to your own opinion on these matters. You’ve constantly pressed me to defend a position which is, in the end, just my own personal opinion. And now you get all offended when I elaborate on said opinion, acting as if it’s somehow a personal affront to your own views.

There’s really not much more to say on the topic; I’ve said my piece, and then some.

100

That’s very possibly true. As I mentioned earlier, my own personal experience in this regard was not very positive, but it was also over 30 years ago, and clearly they’ve made a lot of progress since then. So yeah, I’m very glad these programs exist and it may well be that kids are getting more exposure overall than I got.

We did have some non-LEGO programs, such as Science Olympiad, and it seems LEGO may have taken that and others as a model.

101

I’d genuinely like to see numbers here. I.e., new unique pieces over time. I suspect that BrickLink actually has all the required data–it knows which pieces are associated with which sets, and which year each set first appeared. So it should be possible to plot the growth rate of new pieces over time. I wonder if I can download their database somewhere.

I posit that it’s been close to exponential growth, maybe with a bit of recent tapering off due to some of the major applications getting fully fleshed out, but I’d be happy to be proved wrong.