In response to a question over at Bricklink, I put together a chart showing the number of decorated bricks produced by LEGO each year, and whether they were printed or stickered. This is an area chart, with the uppermost line showing the total number of decorated bricks, the blue area indicates the number of printed pieces and the red area the number of stickered pieces. This only charts the Brick, Decorated category, and only includes parts for which Bricklink has data for years of appearance.

Click the chart to go to an interactive version.

Edited December 6, 201410 yr by 62Bricks

That's very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to make it.

Finally someone brings down the myth of the "good old days od printed bricks"... unless by them they mean going way back to 1972 (aprox), before even minifigs existed!!!!

Interesting result, although not surprising. I think stickers count as "play features" since most kids LOVE them. My daughter asks for stickers all of the time. I don't get it.

As far as durability, it seems the newer stickers are better than the old 80s/90s from my youth. Most of those have peeled. Only time will tell what happens.

So for the 50s/60s there were exactly the same amount of printed vs stickers? (as there were clearly many stickers back then too, not only printed bricks)

Edited December 6, 201410 yr by antp

love the chart. I HATE stickered parts tbh. I'd rather have printed parts that'll actually last instead of the stickered stuff that's famous for chipping/peeling over time. and at the price legos are at, they should be printed parts all the time! Mega bloks may have a sticker addiction but at the prices they are at, i don't have as much of a problem. the only exception to this is I would rather lego do stickers for the curved torsos that are only good for making females(or maybe a male figure in drag) so I could have plain torsos that have more use in my collection.

recently i went onto bricklink to start building a wanted list. NUMBER ONE thing on my list i was worried about were PRINTED parts and number 2 was plain torso assemblies, especially looking for yellow, for a project i want to do. For about every 10 or so parts i found that i liked a lot, only about one or 2 were printed! If i wanted stickered parts, i'd buy the bricks and the sticker sheets and go to town. And then there's stickered parts that make no sense at all! Lego uses police logos and licensed plates a ton in the city line so why are they choosing stickers over print? or wasn't there a LOTR set(or was it hobbit) that had something like 100 stickers included? is lego really trying to say that at least some of those parts couldn't be printed?

So for the 50s/60s there were exactly the same amount of printed vs stickers? (as there were clearly many stickers back then too, not only printed bricks)

No - there is no area for the stickered bricks (the chart still draws the line, though, even though the value is zero). There were no stickered parts until the early 70s. I believe the large spike in the 1950s was due to the release of those sets of 1x1s with printed letters and numbers.

There were no stickered parts until the early 70s. I believe the large spike in the 1950s was due to the release of those sets of 1x1s with printed letters and numbers.

Indeed, I do not know why I remembered stickers in 60s sets: the sets I had in mind were from the 70s.

But so on the graph the red line is actually showing stickers+printed (sum of both series).

Edited December 7, 201410 yr by antp

I have bricks and pieces from the mid 80's that I put stickers ( from Ideas Books) on and to this day they have not peeled away or anything, yet on a heap of my modern stuff ( the first Batman line in particular) stickers are peeling off left, right and centre.

Indeed, I do not know why I remembered stickers in 60s sets: the sets I had in mind were from the 70s.

But so on the graph the red line is actually showing stickers+printed (sum of both series).

That's right.

I have bricks and pieces from the mid 80's that I put stickers ( from Ideas Books) on and to this day they have not peeled away or anything, yet on a heap of my modern stuff ( the first Batman line in particular) stickers are peeling off left, right and centre.

I have some 1970s sticker parts that are still firmly attached, too. What's more, I am usually able to carefully remove them and re-apply them (to wash the part or reposition a poorly-placed one) and they will still stick firmly.

does this chart take into account printed bricks reused after the initial release year? reason I ask is that each set that gets stickers will be "New stickers" but there are many printed elements that are were used in dozens of sets, this would lead to the mentality that printed bricks were in a lot of sets, while at the same time the number of unique printed elements is still very low.

EDIT: I see that it doesn’t account for my above question, is it possible to find this data? I realize it would require checking each printed element for number of sets appeared in and then checking those sets for release year, but I would quite like to see those results as well.

Edited December 11, 201410 yr by GallardoLU