Ruined seems like very strong phrasing when nothing important has been ruined.
They sell new Lego sets in stores every day. They might seem expensive for a few bags of plastic bits and some instructions, but then: They've never been cheap.
A kid can still grow up playing with Lego today, just as they've always been able to.
I still remember building my first new Lego widget. Set 918. It was just a small basic spaceship and no real accessories but a little Lego space dude. I'd already scattered the pieces around and stuck them together in strange ways when I noticed that there was an instruction book so I could assemble it the "right" way. That may have been the first instruction book I'd ever followed; I remember the sense of wonderment as I learned the value of it. That model didn't last long before I tore it apart and went back to sticking the pieces together in strange ways. :)
Anyway, it seems like it would have been about $6.50 back then, or about $31 in today's money.
That's not so different from today's prices -- in fact, it looks things may have actually gotten a bit less expensive since then for a given amount of complexity.
That's not ruination; it's the opposite of it. The kids are fine. Lego is fine.
---
I do see that someone on eBay that someone hopes to get over $2,000 for a new, sealed copy of set 918. That's a about sixteen more fuckton more than $31.
And I can't justify spending that kind of money on some Lego.
But I don't have to spend that kind of money. If I have a Lego itch that I want to scratch, then I'm a grown-ass adult. I can just go to the store or some online seller or whatever, and buy a new set that I like, and put it together.
I don't need to spend $2k to pretend relive a part of my childhood. I already experienced it once, and I remember that part very fondly.
Ruined as in - Lego sets are glorified EZ-mode puzzles and not creative toys anymore. Too many limited sets means it's trending toward "collector items" and not kids toys.
I see both kinds of sets for sale. I do not see ruination. Both kinds present an empire of creativity when they're disassembled and mixed up together in a box, as tends to happen with Lego. It's fine.
Or, alternatively, it may be possible for a person to be such a profoundly grown-up adult to be unable to see it that way. If that's the case, then I guess you're right: These adults are incapable of being creative with Lego, and therefore adults have ruined Lego. For themselves.
But if that's the case, then it was ruined for the old coots from the very beginning. :P
It's interesting to me that Lego can't be easily made at home in 2026. That whatever they do with plastic, dye and injection molding cannot be easily replicated.
When I was ten, my mum questioned whether my sister and myself were 'too old for LEGO'. In Woolworths we had to reassure her that Set 376-2 Town House with Garden was what we wanted as it came with lots of lovely red bricks that we 'needed'. To be honest, at the time, I thought my mum was right, and that we were getting too old for LEGO, but we had sunk costs...
For us, LEGO was all about ingenuity, improvisation and imagination. We would build a set once, with the alternate back-of-the-box design, without the instructions. Then the real fun would begin, as the new set went in with the bricks we had.
At secondary school (age 11 in UK), the LEGO was cast aside as a mere child's toy. We had moved on and the idea of 'still playing with LEGO' would have been a social faux pas.
Nowadays kids have a ridiculous abundance of LEGO but where is the ingenuity and imagination? Or even the play time? With tablets, phones, video games and so much else, it seems that the set gets built as per the instructions and that is it, job done. The play hasn't even really started.
My parents hosted dinner parties, as was the custom at the time, when restaurants were rare. They quite liked to have our current creations on show, in a low-key way. That is how adults should do LEGO, proud of their kids' creations.
None of our LEGO had a market value, however, every brick had utility and colour value within our LEGO world. We had other things for collecting, even stamps, and they notionally had value.
Hence I am not sure what is going on with people having $200k LEGO collections. That level of abundance just isn't about play, and certainly not for kids. I have no sympathy for the guy, and although the loss is painful, at least he has a chance to grow up a bit!
P.S. Corporate LEGO also ruined it by promoting the whole AFOL thing, but the success of the company has been astounding, considering the product is plastic waste.
You played with legos as a kid. Congratulations, so did lots of other kids at the time, and so do kids right now. Nothing has actually changed. Legos are still sold in a box with instructions, just like they were 20 years ago and 40 years ago and so on and so forth.
The idea that adults can't play with or enjoy legos is, well, genuinely sad, as in, it invokes the emotion of sadness. Adults are allowed to have fun and play games, whether that be building race cars out of metal or out of lego or any other activity they find joy in.
> At secondary school (age 11 in UK), the LEGO was cast aside as a mere child's toy. We had moved on and the idea of 'still playing with LEGO' would have been a social faux pas.
I genuinely wish you had a better childhood. Maybe you would have grown up into a person who can feel empathy for others.
The toy market is under continual change and every child is borne into the context and culture of their era.
There is also opportunity cost. Had I listened to my mother on that fateful day in Woolworths, we could have moved ten foot one way to have bought ourselves sports gear. Since neither my sister or myself can catch a ball, maybe we should have got into badminton, table tennis or football. But we denied ourselves that opportunity because we bought yet more LEGO.
Things were different in period in the USA, particularly for middle class kids, where the abundance of toys was entirely different. My American counterparts of the period had 10x the toys we had. Not jealous, just saying.
As an outsider looking in on American culture in general, there is too much infantilisation going on for my liking. Adults going to Disneyland with no kids in tow, adults watching MARVEL movies with no kids in tow, adults eating McDonalds, adults eating cereal with cartoon characters on the box, adults drinking Coca Cola and so on. Even the car culture is somewhat infantile.
Why has American gone the wrong way, to retreat into a nine-year-old 'inner America'?
Going back a bit, the finest literature came out of the USA, not yet more infantile cruft. Something is amiss.
We have been here before. After WW2, plenty of men returned to retreat into their inner nine year old selves, which kept model trains going for a while after the kids lost interest. But the adults changed the hobby from playing trains to this micro-realistic world with running trains becoming a rarity, rather than what it was all about. This was their coping mechanism, and I understand that.
The only place in Taiwan to get good hot wings is Hooters, so I was there the other day with some folks, and we noticed this dude alone at a table for a bit. His beer arrives, and he pulls out an unopened Lego box set for some car. For the next hour he slowly drinks his beer while building the entire set. Finishes the beer and set simultaneously, puts the car in his bag, pays his bill, and walks out.
There's few strangers I've encountered that I've respected more and the rest are all firemen.
The pokemon company intentionally limits the supply to drive up demand. Cardboard is in no way a limited resource, they could print as many cards as there is demand for if they wanted. The problem is not the scalpers but the corporation who values the artificial scalped demand more than gameplay. That no one in the so called community can correctly place blame is an indictment of their intelligence.
Star Wars LEGO seems to be the worst. I went to the Bellevue, WA store a few years ago before Christmas. I have no interest in SW or SW LEGO (I'm much more into the Architecture series).
I was walking around though, and an associate came up to me and pointed out that the Death Star (IIRC) was about to stop being sold so if I wanted one I should grab it... "... and that we have several of it, so if you want allll of them."
I assume they were talking about 75159 right before it retired.
I think that was when Lego speculation was just becoming a bigger thing.
Now, I don't think something like that could retire with stock being on the shelf.
I grabbed Betrayal at Cloud City (75222) from my local Lego Store after it retired because they still had one in stock. I don't think I'll get that lucky again.
Especially with the push for exclusive Gift With Purchase (GWP) sets. It's become slightly ridiculous.
But I'm not a speculator, I'm just a dude who likes assembling plastic bricks.
Ruined seems like very strong phrasing when nothing important has been ruined.
They sell new Lego sets in stores every day. They might seem expensive for a few bags of plastic bits and some instructions, but then: They've never been cheap.
A kid can still grow up playing with Lego today, just as they've always been able to.
I still remember building my first new Lego widget. Set 918. It was just a small basic spaceship and no real accessories but a little Lego space dude. I'd already scattered the pieces around and stuck them together in strange ways when I noticed that there was an instruction book so I could assemble it the "right" way. That may have been the first instruction book I'd ever followed; I remember the sense of wonderment as I learned the value of it. That model didn't last long before I tore it apart and went back to sticking the pieces together in strange ways. :)
Anyway, it seems like it would have been about $6.50 back then, or about $31 in today's money.
That's not so different from today's prices -- in fact, it looks things may have actually gotten a bit less expensive since then for a given amount of complexity.
That's not ruination; it's the opposite of it. The kids are fine. Lego is fine.
---
I do see that someone on eBay that someone hopes to get over $2,000 for a new, sealed copy of set 918. That's a about sixteen more fuckton more than $31.
And I can't justify spending that kind of money on some Lego.
But I don't have to spend that kind of money. If I have a Lego itch that I want to scratch, then I'm a grown-ass adult. I can just go to the store or some online seller or whatever, and buy a new set that I like, and put it together.
I don't need to spend $2k to pretend relive a part of my childhood. I already experienced it once, and I remember that part very fondly.
Nothing here is ruined.
Ruined as in - Lego sets are glorified EZ-mode puzzles and not creative toys anymore. Too many limited sets means it's trending toward "collector items" and not kids toys.
I see both kinds of sets for sale. I do not see ruination. Both kinds present an empire of creativity when they're disassembled and mixed up together in a box, as tends to happen with Lego. It's fine.
Or, alternatively, it may be possible for a person to be such a profoundly grown-up adult to be unable to see it that way. If that's the case, then I guess you're right: These adults are incapable of being creative with Lego, and therefore adults have ruined Lego. For themselves.
But if that's the case, then it was ruined for the old coots from the very beginning. :P
If you can't build a millenium falcon out of any set you're given, whose fault is that?
It's interesting to me that Lego can't be easily made at home in 2026. That whatever they do with plastic, dye and injection molding cannot be easily replicated.
When I was ten, my mum questioned whether my sister and myself were 'too old for LEGO'. In Woolworths we had to reassure her that Set 376-2 Town House with Garden was what we wanted as it came with lots of lovely red bricks that we 'needed'. To be honest, at the time, I thought my mum was right, and that we were getting too old for LEGO, but we had sunk costs...
For us, LEGO was all about ingenuity, improvisation and imagination. We would build a set once, with the alternate back-of-the-box design, without the instructions. Then the real fun would begin, as the new set went in with the bricks we had.
At secondary school (age 11 in UK), the LEGO was cast aside as a mere child's toy. We had moved on and the idea of 'still playing with LEGO' would have been a social faux pas.
Nowadays kids have a ridiculous abundance of LEGO but where is the ingenuity and imagination? Or even the play time? With tablets, phones, video games and so much else, it seems that the set gets built as per the instructions and that is it, job done. The play hasn't even really started.
My parents hosted dinner parties, as was the custom at the time, when restaurants were rare. They quite liked to have our current creations on show, in a low-key way. That is how adults should do LEGO, proud of their kids' creations.
None of our LEGO had a market value, however, every brick had utility and colour value within our LEGO world. We had other things for collecting, even stamps, and they notionally had value.
Hence I am not sure what is going on with people having $200k LEGO collections. That level of abundance just isn't about play, and certainly not for kids. I have no sympathy for the guy, and although the loss is painful, at least he has a chance to grow up a bit!
P.S. Corporate LEGO also ruined it by promoting the whole AFOL thing, but the success of the company has been astounding, considering the product is plastic waste.
What a weirdly hypocritical post.
You played with legos as a kid. Congratulations, so did lots of other kids at the time, and so do kids right now. Nothing has actually changed. Legos are still sold in a box with instructions, just like they were 20 years ago and 40 years ago and so on and so forth.
The idea that adults can't play with or enjoy legos is, well, genuinely sad, as in, it invokes the emotion of sadness. Adults are allowed to have fun and play games, whether that be building race cars out of metal or out of lego or any other activity they find joy in.
> At secondary school (age 11 in UK), the LEGO was cast aside as a mere child's toy. We had moved on and the idea of 'still playing with LEGO' would have been a social faux pas.
I genuinely wish you had a better childhood. Maybe you would have grown up into a person who can feel empathy for others.
Nothing has actually changed?
The toy market is under continual change and every child is borne into the context and culture of their era.
There is also opportunity cost. Had I listened to my mother on that fateful day in Woolworths, we could have moved ten foot one way to have bought ourselves sports gear. Since neither my sister or myself can catch a ball, maybe we should have got into badminton, table tennis or football. But we denied ourselves that opportunity because we bought yet more LEGO.
Things were different in period in the USA, particularly for middle class kids, where the abundance of toys was entirely different. My American counterparts of the period had 10x the toys we had. Not jealous, just saying.
As an outsider looking in on American culture in general, there is too much infantilisation going on for my liking. Adults going to Disneyland with no kids in tow, adults watching MARVEL movies with no kids in tow, adults eating McDonalds, adults eating cereal with cartoon characters on the box, adults drinking Coca Cola and so on. Even the car culture is somewhat infantile.
Why has American gone the wrong way, to retreat into a nine-year-old 'inner America'?
Going back a bit, the finest literature came out of the USA, not yet more infantile cruft. Something is amiss.
We have been here before. After WW2, plenty of men returned to retreat into their inner nine year old selves, which kept model trains going for a while after the kids lost interest. But the adults changed the hobby from playing trains to this micro-realistic world with running trains becoming a rarity, rather than what it was all about. This was their coping mechanism, and I understand that.
The only place in Taiwan to get good hot wings is Hooters, so I was there the other day with some folks, and we noticed this dude alone at a table for a bit. His beer arrives, and he pulls out an unopened Lego box set for some car. For the next hour he slowly drinks his beer while building the entire set. Finishes the beer and set simultaneously, puts the car in his bag, pays his bill, and walks out.
There's few strangers I've encountered that I've respected more and the rest are all firemen.
and Disney
and My Little Pony.
They ruined Pokemon too, not that it was any good to begin with but these scalping chuds took it subterranean.
The pokemon company intentionally limits the supply to drive up demand. Cardboard is in no way a limited resource, they could print as many cards as there is demand for if they wanted. The problem is not the scalpers but the corporation who values the artificial scalped demand more than gameplay. That no one in the so called community can correctly place blame is an indictment of their intelligence.
Star Wars LEGO seems to be the worst. I went to the Bellevue, WA store a few years ago before Christmas. I have no interest in SW or SW LEGO (I'm much more into the Architecture series).
I was walking around though, and an associate came up to me and pointed out that the Death Star (IIRC) was about to stop being sold so if I wanted one I should grab it... "... and that we have several of it, so if you want allll of them."
I despise scalping, though, but perhaps I should.
I assume they were talking about 75159 right before it retired.
I think that was when Lego speculation was just becoming a bigger thing.
Now, I don't think something like that could retire with stock being on the shelf.
I grabbed Betrayal at Cloud City (75222) from my local Lego Store after it retired because they still had one in stock. I don't think I'll get that lucky again.
Especially with the push for exclusive Gift With Purchase (GWP) sets. It's become slightly ridiculous.
But I'm not a speculator, I'm just a dude who likes assembling plastic bricks.