Completely agree - there were also far more interesting components in sets. Take for example the Lego technic backhoe 8455 (from 2003), which had pneumatic cylinders that could be repurposed to all kinds of interesting builds, as compared to the current Technic backhoe 8069 which uses plastic axles and simpler mechanics.
The Technic AROCS (42043) has a full pneumatic system that’s pressurised by an electrically-powered pump and has valves for directing air around to different components. It also has a full gearbox for directing power from the electrical motor to the different electrically-powered components in the model. I think Technic is still creating interesting new, reusable mechanical components.
Yeah, it's pretty good. I love Lego, it's still undoubtedly the best toy. But it's also way worse than late 90's Technic, which really felt focused on piece versatility above all else.
I still have my 90’s Technic car with multiple gears and a working stickshift. Nowadays, the sets tend to have some set-specific pieces. Back then, no individual piece was anything nonstandard.
Actually, they mostly stopped doing that a while ago. There's a new piece or two every year but it's 99.9% standard pieces with the occasional new colorization.
Dunno about this specific case, but I find that a lot of the people who say "Lego sucks now" mean "I glanced at the toy aisle at Wal-Mart and didn't see exactly what I was looking for." It's most notable with the people who insist they don't sell big buckets of generic bricks anymore, when they absolutely do. They might be on the bottom shelf under the Star Wars kits, and smaller displays at supermarkets and such might not have any, but they're still easily available if you look or go online.
Yeah and I can afford way more Legos now, I still prefer the old school kind. Compare 42054 to 8480. They're both great sets for sure, but the shuttle pieces are more versatile in other builds.
Of course you do, because it's an emotional experience. Just like how those tomatoes you ate at nanna's summer cottage in Italy tasted incredible, yet if you'd eat those exact same tomatoes in your drabby work canteen on a rainy tuesday morning, they'd be nothing special. My children don't particularly like my old legos, yet I somehow see them as "obviously" superior over the ones they have themselves. I'm sure they'll feel the same about those same sets 25 years from now when their children play with whatever is new then.
I dunno. I've gotten my kids a lot of LEGO and the new sets are really high-part-count but it's tons and tons of fiddly little short bricks, mostly, to build relatively small sets. All I can figure is they went overboard with CAD and/or started letting too many "pro" types who care more about the finish of the final result than the building experience run the show. I pull out old sets of mine with similar part counts and they're huge by comparison, and building them's more satisfying because you can almost always tell what you're building and why it's put together that way. Much nicer.
The good thing is they've started shipping brick tools in the bigger sets—they may have to given how many fiddly little bits they include now—and extras of some of the smallest or most breakable pieces, which is nice. But otherwise they're not half as fun to build as sets. And the parts are less useful in general building (for young kids, anyway, maybe useful for the "pro" sorts) because they're mostly tiny pieces. Kit-bashing with them kinda sucks (again, at "amateur" levels of skill, I know there are real brick artists out there who work magic), better to just get generic brick buckets or use parts from older sets.
And I'm talking about 6-12 year old targeted lines here, not any of the fancier sets aimed at older kids and adults. Elves and normal town sets and stuff like that.
[EDIT] examples:
6086, Black Knight's Castle, 569 pieces, 12 minifigs
41188, Breakout from the Goblin King's Fortress, 696 pieces, 4 minifigs
And the former is ~2.5x the size of the latter. I can tell you from experience that the latter is too tiny and intricate for even little-kid hands to play with it very well. It's a nightmare of itty bitty pieces to put together something that looks slick on box art but sucks IRL.
"Oh, but that castle's like ~$150-170 inflation-adjusted while the Goblin King's Fortress is only ~$70"
Well, that's not my point, but OK.
6075, Wolfpack Tower, 232 pieces, 4 minifigs
About the same size as the Goblin King fortress when assembled, only ~30% the part count, same number of minifigs, originally $30 so at or under the price of 41188 inflation-adjusted. Definitely does look worse on box art, granted, but holds up to play better, is far easier to put back together if it gets damaged without doing a tear-down and re-build from scratch, and has spaces sized right to support play. It's a better set to play with.
As an another anecdote, I recently built 70618 Destiny's Bounty with my 5 year old. It was great to build, fun to play and amazing to look at.
Compare this to my brother's 6274, Caribbean Clipper. The price, inflation adjusted, was in the same ballpark.
That set did look great 30 years ago, but the new one not only has more details, the hull is almost completely brick built instead of begin made of 3 big pieces. It is also bigger as far as I can remember.
I'm not trying to say there's no fun in the newer sets—that'd be dumb—but they're harder to build & maintain in play due to higher part-counts for the same (or smaller!) size, and tend to devote a lot of that part count to smoothing over surfaces or building up odd angles, which harms customizability. If a lot of what you liked about LEGO sets (versus brick buckets) was customizing, building atop, or re-theming them, the modern ones are a huge step back for that, though they definitely look way better.
The way higher part-count of mostly-tiny bricks also makes them miserable to pick out of a mixed set of bricks. Damn near impossible to re-construct if they get torn up and make it into a well-populated brick bin. I remember being able to mix the generic bricks and a dozen largish sets freely and never having much trouble picking them back out—phew man, these new ones are not like that.
My kids have lots of fun with LEGO but the sets are... not a big contributor to that, minifigs aside. Once they get busted up—and again, they're harder to restore post-customization or repair as they take a little damage here and there—that's it, probably never see them together again, and my kids are drowning in tiny pieces from those sets and starved for larger ones when they build their own stuff. Brick buckets and large plates purchased piecemeal are much better bang-for-the-buck, the way they use them. We're mostly sticking to those and much smaller sets, having been burned by the big ones.
The new ones definitely aren't as well suited to the same play-purposes as the old sets, though maybe they're better for some other play styles or uses than those were, I dunno. They absolutely, 100% look much better.
oh, I understand your complaint, but also consider than a few years ago people were complaining that newer sets were "dumbed down" or "too few parts per dollar" or "using large prebuilt parts" instead of using smaller parts. In the end you can't please everybody :).
Yeah, for sure. For all I know there's some major play-benefit to the newer sets that I don't know about and haven't happened to see with my kids, off-setting the use/play cases for which they're definitely less well-suited now.
shrug You're entitled to your opinion of course, but my point was that there is no objective measure for past sets being better, there's anecdotal evidence that (at least some) kids enjoy legos as much as I/we did 30 years ago, and there's plenty of scienfic evidence for 'rose colored glasses' wrt childhood memories, the subjective nature of 'enjoyment' and preferences being formed in childhood/adolescence.
I'm not going to argue set numbers and brick counts, I don't know anything about legos. All I can say is that I see children be just as creative with legos today as I and my friends ever were.
Yeah, my kids still love LEGO, but the sets don't seem to be well-designed for play (for younger kids in what used to be their primary target age-range) anymore compared to what they used to be. I bet the nicer-looking art tests better and moves units just fine, but once you actually put them together and watch kids assemble & play with them playability has clearly taken a backseat. I think assembled size vs. part count is a pretty good way to illustrate the difference.
LEGO itself is fine. Brick buckets are still great value. The sets just aren't as good for playing with as-is or for building/customizing on top of, anymore. With some exceptions I'm sure, but they used to just about all be designed, seemingly (in hindsight, now that we have modern ones to compare them to) play-first.
You absolutely cannot. Don't get me wrong, I love Lego to this day but late 90's Technic is unmatched in it's versatility by a looooong shot.