Unpopular Opinions about LEGO

[MAB]

14 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

I didn't say anything about not getting new parts only that too many specialized parts are not good. And I don't agree with the "boys club" argument about 90s Lego. The female friends I had when I grew up did like Lego as much as us boys. On the street I grew up on we were two boys and four girls. We all played together a lot with Lego and no one had any problems with the minifigs. The classic smiley faces could be either male or female and the female faces from Town/Paradisa and Pirates could easily be put on a male minifig if one of the girls wanted a female minifig instead. But mostly we didn't care too much about that. I think too much focus on gender or race is bad for any product even if the intentions are good. 

Toys change though. When I was a kid in the 70s, we were perfectly happy with the buildable maxifigs of the time, yet they still introduced 'slabbie' minifigs. And then they changed them and made legs and arms that moved and even gave them faces. Then used stickers and eventually printed on the torsos to indicate what the characters are and made different types of hats and hair to customise them. Then increased the detail and range of character types. Then introduced some realistic fleshtones for licensed characters. Then increased detail in faces all the time increasing the range of character types available through body and also leg printing. Then introduced an even wider set of realistic skin tones for some sets.

If people want only classic smiley heads, plain torso and legs in maybe three colours, and the choice of one type of male hair, one female hair or a cap, then it is straightforward to restrict yourself to only those parts. If you want only printed torsos but not legs and the choice of a couple of helmets, then stop there. But I think kids these days want much more variation than was available in the 80s and 90s. Would kids of the 90s have been OK with the generation before saying we had maxifigs and we were fine with it, so you should be too. Just as would kids of the 70s have been OK with the kids of the decade before saying we only built vehicles and buildings with very basic bricks and didn't need figures so why are you focussing on maxifigs? 

[SpacePolice89]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

Toys change though. When I was a kid in the 70s, we were perfectly happy with the buildable maxifigs of the time, yet they still introduced 'slabbie' minifigs. And then they changed them and made legs and arms that moved and even gave them faces. Then used stickers and eventually printed on the torsos to indicate what the characters are and made different types of hats and hair to customise them. Then increased the detail and range of character types. Then introduced some realistic fleshtones for licensed characters. Then increased detail in faces all the time increasing the range of character types available through body and also leg printing. Then introduced an even wider set of realistic skin tones for some sets.

If people want only classic smiley heads, plain torso and legs in maybe three colours, and the choice of one type of male hair, one female hair or a cap, then it is straightforward to restrict yourself to only those parts. If you want only printed torsos but not legs and the choice of a couple of helmets, then stop there. But I think kids these days want much more variation than was available in the 80s and 90s. Would kids of the 90s have been OK with the generation before saying we had maxifigs and we were fine with it, so you should be too. Just as would kids of the 70s have been OK with the kids of the decade before saying we only built vehicles and buildings with very basic bricks and didn't need figures so why are you focussing on maxifigs? 

Change isn't always for the better. Take Town/City for example. That theme was fantastic up until the mid 90s with only good change happening to the theme. Then they started junio rizing the sets and quality dropped tremendously. Then a slow recovery started and around 2010 the sets were amazing again but unfortunately after 2020 quality has started to go down again with some of the City sets. It was actually too much change and the wrong sort of change that led to the economic trouble Lego experienced in the late 90s and early 00s (too many pieces and colors, too many new product categories besides toys, juniori zation, Galidor, Znap etc).

[MAB]

And what if they hadn't changed and only continued to do the same as the mid 90s? What if they didn't do Bionicle and Star Wars, changes that saved the company when other changes didnt work? Standing still is often just as bad or worse than change.

If they weren't trying other ideas such as Galidor and Bionicle, or going for licensed products, I doubt they'd be here today. Other companies would have done similar licensed products while LEGO produced the same thing again and again, never moving forward. Not every idea has to be successful, but they need to find success with something.  It is OK to try something and fail so long as some are successful. 

Just like introducing product ranges for adults, with increased part count and prices, highly detailed sets using a wide range of parts and colours to get excellent detail. This has been very successful, the proof is in the sales and the number of people buying LEGO these days. Some people don't like having the option of big sets that appeal to adults, but others clearly do.

[Toastie]

12 hours ago, Murdoch17 said:

This revisionist rose-tinted glasses thing about the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s being better, with less colors and less themes is total fantasy. (sorry, but it's true!)

Truth - whoa, big word!

Now, with regard to revision (I take the freedom of interpreting your phrase "revisionist rose-tinted glasses" in terms of "historical revisionism" ) - and I go with Wikipedia in that regard:

"The process of historical revision is a common, necessary, and usually uncontroversial process which develops and refines the historical record to make it more complete and accurate." 

Just making fun here - looked at that LEGO book ... TLG is also sometimes leaning toward historical revisionism, but again: All is fine with me. 

Skål fra Danmark

Best,
Thorsten

[Murdoch17]

15 minutes ago, Toastie said:

Truth - whoa, big word!

Now, with regard to revision (I take the freedom of interpreting your phrase "revisionist rose-tinted glasses" in terms of "historical revisionism" ) - and I go with Wikipedia in that regard:

"The process of historical revision is a common, necessary, and usually uncontroversial process which develops and refines the historical record to make it more complete and accurate." 

Just making fun here - looked at that LEGO book ... TLG is also sometimes leaning toward historical revisionism, but again: All is fine with me. 

Skål fra Danmark

Best,
Thorsten

I see you've taken my whole post and looked at one sentence only.  What I said about the LEGO colors / themes still stands... no matter what possibly misused words I used top convey the concept.

[Yoggington]

On 1/15/2025 at 2:19 PM, SpacePolice89 said:

When I was a kid playing with sets from the late 80s and 90s I never felt I had enough pieces in the same color for MOCs I wanted to build and back then the color options were very limited. Imagine today with all the colors how it must be for a kid owning 10-50 sets, very few of those pieces will be in the same color. Only when I discovered Bricklink in 2001 I could realize all my projects I had dreamt of for many years. Today as an AFOL with money to spend on Lego it is still expensive to have a large inventory of pieces for MOCs and sets restauration and it also takes a lot of space. Therefore I would prefer fewer colors and I only stock the colors I mentioned above for myself. I don't mind that because I also prefer the look of Lego sets from the 80s and 90s over todays sets.

I mean, I kinda see where you're coming from but if Lego went too strictly your direction the problems would be just as bad if not worse. Say I want to build a forest scene, but now I'm restricted to the exact same green on every bit of foliage.

I'd much rather be curtailed by too much choice compared to too little.

[Peppermint_M]

When I was a child and I wanted to build something very big, I did have to settle for it being more than one colour, and having to use printed parts that might not match the theme, and using LEGO that had been manufactured in the 70s and had taken a little bit of sun damage. It didn't discourage me from building the thing and sometimes we got inventive to make the build work (say, a castle with different coloured towers etc). Truly, I only learned that is was something to be upset or ashamed over when I joined the online community (which at the time was mostly ten years or so older than me and Male, with a percentage of those my age. Who were also Male mostly building Bionicle, Halo tributes and amassing Clone/Storm Trooper minifigures). By that time, I could go to a PaB wall and get a lot of parts and I had the money to do it too, so it wasn't a big deal and I still cheerfully shared old photos of childhood builds. 

I found when displaying alone at a comic con (the only LEGO presence in place) where I brought along a big bin of clone parts, the children didn't care too much about matching colours either. But that is just anecdotal. 

[SpacePolice89]

1 hour ago, Peppermint_M said:

When I was a child and I wanted to build something very big, I did have to settle for it being more than one colour, and having to use printed parts that might not match the theme, and using LEGO that had been manufactured in the 70s and had taken a little bit of sun damage. It didn't discourage me from building the thing and sometimes we got inventive to make the build work (say, a castle with different coloured towers etc). Truly, I only learned that is was something to be upset or ashamed over when I joined the online community (which at the time was mostly ten years or so older than me and Male, with a percentage of those my age. Who were also Male mostly building Bionicle, Halo tributes and amassing Clone/Storm Trooper minifigures). By that time, I could go to a PaB wall and get a lot of parts and I had the money to do it too, so it wasn't a big deal and I still cheerfully shared old photos of childhood builds. 

I found when displaying alone at a comic con (the only LEGO presence in place) where I brought along a big bin of clone parts, the children didn't care too much about matching colours either. But that is just anecdotal. 

For me as a kid it was a necessary evil to use bricks in many different colors. I remember wanting to build huge spaceships and bases in certain colors but not having enough pieces in those colors and that forced me to use other available colors. I remember not liking that but I still had lots of fun building those things. 

[icm]

9 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

Change isn't always for the better. Take Town/City for example. That theme was fantastic up until the mid 90s with only good change happening to the theme. Then they started junio rizing the sets and quality dropped tremendously. Then a slow recovery started and around 2010 the sets were amazing again but unfortunately after 2020 quality has started to go down again with some of the City sets. It was actually too much change and the wrong sort of change that led to the economic trouble Lego experienced in the late 90s and early 00s (too many pieces and colors, too many new product categories besides toys, juniori zation, Galidor, Znap etc).

In my opinion, City has been great the last few years, at least if you like vehicles. We're getting a wide variety of vehicles that are very common sights in the city, built to very high standards of building techniques, playability, realism, and coordinated use of color. I also think the exploration and space themes with City on the box have been very good builds of very interesting topics.

[Toastie]

9 hours ago, Murdoch17 said:

What I said about the LEGO colors / themes still stands

Of course it does! It is your very personal opinion, that may rightfully stand forever! Maybe it does even so universally, who knows. I don't. And it does not in my world - all is good.

I am simply getting nervous when "truth" (as a globally voiced thing) comes into play. As if it were proven. That is always the case - in my university, at home, with friends, with not friends. There is no universal truth, there is speculation, guessing, projection, extrapolation, calculation, of one individual, but truth - quantum mechanics bashed that word out of my mind.

But in your personal world? Of course there is truth. And right or wrong. For me, it is absolutely the same! Everything I am writing in public is my personal opinion, projection, speculation ...

Just my very personal take. As all other comments are in this forum: Personal views.

Best,
Thorsten

 

Edited January 16 by Toastie

[Black Falcon]

11 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

Change isn't always for the better. Take Town/City for example. That theme was fantastic up until the mid 90s with only good change happening to the theme. Then they started junio rizing the sets and quality dropped tremendously. Then a slow recovery started and around 2010 the sets were amazing again but unfortunately after 2020 quality has started to go down again with some of the City sets. It was actually too much change and the wrong sort of change that led to the economic trouble Lego experienced in the late 90s and early 00s (too many pieces and colors, too many new product categories besides toys, juniori zation, Galidor, Znap etc).

It is pretty much up to your own taste whether it is better or worse though. What you see as a downgrade might be a improvement to someone else. And personally I especially couldn´t agree that recent Set quality went down, we got great Safari Sets and last/this years Space wave was great too - the construction Sets were really well made and the Lego Truck is very nice too - now of course that is my personal opinion about them, but overall I would actually say that the last years were some of the best for the theme. 

[JesseNight]

23 hours ago, Murdoch17 said:

Dark Blue has been around in bricks since 1961, Medium Blue since 1949, and Maersk Blue from 1954 up to 2011, as well as the VERY rare Light blue starting in 1949 and running up until 2007, which is also when regular blue came out (1949). So new colors - such as the forementioned blues - are not a new, modern thing.

I'm rather curious to learn what all these tints of blue had been used for in their early days?
All I know is they weren't mainstream in my childhood days ('80-'90), I didn't even know they existed so unless they were on a hiatus it must have been some limited unique pieces? (but correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just curious)

 

23 hours ago, Murdoch17 said:

This revisionist rose-tinted glasses thing about the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s being better, with less colors and less themes is total fantasy.

I'm not saying it's better... I'm saying it's easier to manage and more challenging and rewarding (and therefore more fun to me) to succeed at building stuff.
More colors allows for a lot more variety, but like Danth says, results in needing a lot more parts to cover availability in all possible colors. And why would we need that? Because if we are limited by the brand, we can still do the best we can even if it doesn't look perfect. But if we're limited by our own collection, a result might be a lot less satisfying knowing we could have done much better if we had the budget to keep expanding on all the colors.
This was already a problem with 6 colors as a kid, because my budget for toys was limited and Lego wasn't the only thing I played with. Now I have more budget, but I am left with a feeling I have to invest into much more storage space and spend more money on expanding my collection to move forward into making new designs.

As for expanding... I stopped doing that and kinda gave up on physical MOCs. I am glad we have Stud.io now to experiment before buying bricks, but when a 1000+ bricks MOC ends up costing me well over 500 Eur on BL orders, I honestly think twice before doing that. Some people complain about original Lego being expensive but I keep ending up a lot worse on parts orders.

 

3 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

For me as a kid it was a necessary evil to use bricks in many different colors. I remember wanting to build huge spaceships and bases in certain colors but not having enough pieces in those colors and that forced me to use other available colors. I remember not liking that but I still had lots of fun building those things. 

Honestly as a kid trying to make a big MOC, I sometimes wished I were color blind

Edited January 16 by JesseNight

[SpacePolice89]

8 hours ago, Black Falcon said:

It is pretty much up to your own taste whether it is better or worse though. What you see as a downgrade might be a improvement to someone else. And personally I especially couldn´t agree that recent Set quality went down, we got great Safari Sets and last/this years Space wave was great too - the construction Sets were really well made and the Lego Truck is very nice too - now of course that is my personal opinion about them, but overall I would actually say that the last years were some of the best for the theme. 

I agree that some of the new City sets are very good and that's why I wrote

 

19 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

after 2020 quality has started to go down again with some of the City sets.

I believe some of the current sets (about 50%) are inferior to earlier versions but that is my personal opinion. I think the current drop in quality is not comparable to what happened in the late 90s but still alarming.

Edited January 17 by SpacePolice89

[MAB]

10 hours ago, Black Falcon said:

It is pretty much up to your own taste whether it is better or worse though. What you see as a downgrade might be a improvement to someone else. And personally I especially couldn´t agree that recent Set quality went down, we got great Safari Sets and last/this years Space wave was great too - the construction Sets were really well made and the Lego Truck is very nice too - now of course that is my personal opinion about them, but overall I would actually say that the last years were some of the best for the theme. 

Time is again important too. It seems that LEGO tries to keep prices at the bottom reasonably low, and this will naturally mean that an entry level set of 10 or 20 years ago will be different to an entry level set today if the price is similar. This is often done by similar part counts but smaller parts, so overall the final result feels smaller and worse than something that came before.

[Aanchir]

20 hours ago, icm said:

In my opinion, City has been great the last few years, at least if you like vehicles. We're getting a wide variety of vehicles that are very common sights in the city, built to very high standards of building techniques, playability, realism, and coordinated use of color. I also think the exploration and space themes with City on the box have been very good builds of very interesting topics.

Yeah, even in terms of subject matter I think the City theme has really been making some great strides. A lot has been said about the how much better the Friends theme tends to do than the City theme when it comes to "everyday" subject matter, but the past few years of City sets have definitely started to make slight progress in that area, introducing an impressive variety of residential buildings, eateries, food trucks, parks/recreational facilities, and even the first ever school, grocery store, and barbershop in either City, World City, or even Classic Town. Which I think is pretty satisfying in a theme category that's always had a rather disproportionate emphasis on stuff like construction and emergency services.

And even just in terms of build quality and complexity, I think that the City theme's been really strong lately. Like, compare https://brickset.com/sets/60451-1/Emergency-Ambulance to https://brickset.com/sets/4431-1/Ambulance, or https://brickset.com/sets/60418-1/Police-Mobile-Crime-Lab-Truck to https://brickset.com/sets/7288-1/Mobile-Police-Unit. The newer counterparts have much more detailed bodywork and cab construction, less reliance on large panel or roof pieces, and in the police truck's case, even a much more detailed interior.

[Autumn]

On 1/16/2025 at 12:34 AM, Murdoch17 said:

Prepare yourself for a massively unpopular opinion about LEGO colors:

Dark Blue has been around in bricks since 1961, Medium Blue since 1949, and Maersk Blue from 1954 up to 2011, as well as the VERY rare Light blue starting in 1949 and running up until 2007, which is also when regular blue came out (1949). So new colors - such as the forementioned blues - are not a new, modern thing. LEGO experiments with new colors and parts to keep fresh, as they always have done and will continue to do. If they didn't do this, or do away with licensed themes, they would have been bought by Mattel long ago, like they almost were in 2001 /  2002. This revisionist rose-tinted glasses thing about the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s being better, with less colors and less themes is total fantasy. (sorry, but it's true!) For some theme examples: LEGO was working on Vikings in 1978 but decided to go with Castle instead. Western would have come out in the 1980s, but Pirates performed slightly better in focus groups, and they only had production capacity for one new theme - and Pirates was pushed back like three years anyway for the lack of factory space / money to expand. (All this is written in the book 'The secret life of LEGO minifigures', among many other tidbits that will blow your mind.)

You are reading those lists wrong. It is a list of parts that have been released in that colour, ordered by the date those parts were first released. It doesn't mean they appeared in that colour in that year. Dark blue, for example, first appears in 1961 as a few non-System cars and again in the 1990s as some textile clothing for Scala figures, but doesn't appear as a System element until 2001 for Xalax Racer Pip.

This list helps visualise it better: https://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?pg=1&colorInSet=63&sortBy=Y&sortAsc=A&catType=S

Same goes for other colours like medium blue: a few old bricks with no anti-studs and windows in 1949 and 1950 and next appears as some street sweeper brushes in the 1980s.

Light blue also has some windows in 1950, but besides some Aquazone baseplates in the 1990s and more Scala fabric clothing, doesn't appear again as a System element until 2003.

Admittedly there are some like Maersk blue which appears surprisingly far back, but dark blue, for example, which is far more common, never appears in any Space, Legoland or Castle sets during the 1980s and 1990s.

It's a bit of a gray area but certain elements like fabric clothing for Scala figures or sweeper brushes don't count in my books, and when there's a decades long hiatus for System elements (at best you get one or two niche parts the first few appearances) then I don't see how your argument against "revisionists" works so well. I'd like you to show where there was a similar spectrum of colours in the 1980s compared to today that wasn't your typical gray, black, white, red, yellow, blue, green or brown, etc.

20 hours ago, JesseNight said:

I'm rather curious to learn what all these tints of blue had been used for in their early days?
All I know is they weren't mainstream in my childhood days ('80-'90), I didn't even know they existed so unless they were on a hiatus it must have been some limited unique pieces? (but correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just curious)

You can see my comment above for dark blue.

Edited January 17 by Autumn

[SpacePolice89]

2 hours ago, Aanchir said:

And even just in terms of build quality and complexity, I think that the City theme's been really strong lately. Like, compare https://brickset.com/sets/60451-1/Emergency-Ambulance to https://brickset.com/sets/4431-1/Ambulance, or https://brickset.com/sets/60418-1/Police-Mobile-Crime-Lab-Truck to https://brickset.com/sets/7288-1/Mobile-Police-Unit. The newer counterparts have much more detailed bodywork and cab construction, less reliance on large panel or roof pieces, and in the police truck's case, even a much more detailed interior.

Interesting. I see it completely the other way. I see the new versions as studless Playmobil like sets while the older ones looks more like construction toys and have more pleasant colors and design. I think there is no universal truth which tells us objectively which style is superior, in the end it is highly subjective and down to personal preferences.

[JesseNight]

3 hours ago, Autumn said:

It's a bit of a gray area but certain elements like fabric clothing for Scala figures or sweeper brushes don't count in my books, and when there's a decades long hiatus for System elements (at best you get one or two niche parts the first few appearances) then I don't see how your argument against "revisionists" works so well. I'd like you to show where there was a similar spectrum of colours in the 1980s compared to today that wasn't your typical gray, black, white, red, yellow, blue, green or brown, etc.

You can see my comment above for dark blue.

Thanks! Yeah that pretty much is the same reason I always say there were only 6 system colors in the 80s (white, yellow, red, blue, light gray, and black). Because other colors were for some exclusive parts only.
Green existed but only for trees, flower stems, and base plates. Brown was even more limited until Pirates came along with their guns, treasure chests, and tree stems. And dark gray I only remember as train rail sleepers. Might have been more parts but not the full assortment of standard building bricks. Even light gray was still on the rise in the early 80s, until Castle theme started making full use of it.

1 hour ago, SpacePolice89 said:

Interesting. I see it completely the other way. I see the new versions as studless Playmobil like sets while the older ones looks more like construction toys and have more pleasant colors and design. I think there is no universal truth which tells us objectively which style is superior, in the end it is highly subjective and down to personal preferences.

There is definitely no universal truth.
I feel those new sets have more details for sure, but when I look at the new ambulance vehicle it doesn't remind me as much of a real ambulance as the older one. Then again, maybe they've changed irl too bc it's been a while since I've seen one (not complaining though!).
Think the key of my previous reply remains that the older sets were more about the building experience than the amount of detail on the final result. And the building experience just felt better (to me). More creative, more about doing something that felt impossible at first with the limited bricks and colors we had. But for a part that's probably just nostalgia talking.

[Black Falcon]

11 hours ago, SpacePolice89 said:

Interesting. I see it completely the other way. I see the new versions as studless Playmobil like sets while the older ones looks more like construction toys and have more pleasant colors and design. I think there is no universal truth which tells us objectively which style is superior, in the end it is highly subjective and down to personal preferences.

Exactly this. And I couldn´t even say this time had better designs than that, since when I look at the models, there are some Sets from the past I like better compared to new ones and some newer ones that look better to me than older ones. 

Personally I don´t like the new colour sheme of the ambulance series and the one they used before looks much better to me - while the older model posted here has other issues in comparism, especially the angular front. But in the end the older colour sheme is the one I grew up with, so that might be part of the reason why I prefer that one - but it also is closer to real live ambulances here and overall to me Dark Turquoise is a strange choice for it anyways.

Edited January 18 by Black Falcon