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Comment by thr0waway001 | Hacker News Reader

These days Legos are more akin to model kits. Except they dumb down everything that not even a monkey can screw up assembling whatever is being built.

There’s no creativity in it.

To wit, I’ve bought some kits for my nephew cause his mom asked for them for Christmas, he assembles them while we are still unwrapping gifts, then never or hardly ever goes back and touches them again. They just stay built and untouched on a shelf. Like a model kit.

I remember 20-30 years ago when you’d just get a bucket containing an assortment of pieces and if you were inclined to build a house then you’d have to get creative with the pieces that you had.

The fun part was playing with a friend, agreeing to build a house but having too wildly different designs. Then learning from the experience and tearing it down and building it again but bigger and better.

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I do think that the "model" form of something recognizable (thinking mostly about the Star Wars kits here) does lend itself to kits that sit on the shelf, but no one is forcing you to keep it assembled.

With that said, one thing I remember seeing in older kits is instructions for more than one build, which could serve as a kicking off point for someone to reapproach a bundle of bricks in multiple ways.

My own guideline is that once something is built, after a little while it has to be either modified/evolved, or disassembled and put into the bucket-o-bricks for reuse (well if I'm honest, it's several very well sorted craft/hardware bins)

>I remember 20-30 years ago when you’d just get a bucket containing an assortment of pieces and if you were inclined to build a house then you’d have to get creative with the pieces that you had.

You are remembering wrong. The kits about building specific models existed back then, and the kits that are just a bucket of blocks are still sold today.

Lego has been selling specific "build a house" sets for like 50 years.

Whether you only build models and display them or tear everything down and make what you want has always been a choice, and most people do both some amount.

There's even the entire world of designing your own "Models". When I was a kid I would build models that represented real things like planes even though I didn't always have the right parts, but nowadays you can digitally design such a model and bulk order the pieces and instructions yourself!

Which current kits are ”just a bucket of blocks” in the same sense as in the 90s? I’ve just started shopping Lego for my three year old, and my impression is they even the big boxes mostly contain the smallest and most useless blocks rather than the standard boring 2x2 and 2x4 blocks.

https://www.lego.com/en-ca/product/lego-large-creative-brick...

I think it's a bit judgemental to declare what "the fun part" is. As a kid, I loved both -- I'd build sets as defined and keep them as-is forever. I'd play with them, too, but I liked the model aspect.

I also had tons of extra bricks that I'd use for free-form play. I loved both aspects.

As an adult, I don't really have the time or interest in "playing space explorers" or "driving" little cars and trains through lego "city" towns. But I still love building the prettier models and having them on a shelf.

So because your nephew chooses not to reconfigure the kits he receives, there's no creativity in lego any more? Come on.

Lego still sells buckets in various sizes (10696, 10698, etc). If you want to encourage that kind of play, perhaps these would make a better gift.

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