The quality of the bricks is generally high, but set design is something they capitalise on. Instead of selling themed playsets with minifigures and encouraging kids to build new adventure worlds, nowadays they sell mostly pop-culture-referenced plastic display models with tiny finicky 1x1 pieces that are of not much use for general building. These models employ complex building techniques, but are not easy to turn into something else. They create an incentive for people to collect all the models rather than unlock creative potential.