LEGO

[Jassassino]

We all know what LEGO is, whether we collected, built and played with sets as children or if we've come to appreciate it later on with the more "mature"() sets, it's one of those cultural touchstones everyone is familiar with.

A lot of discussion is coming up online lately (maybe the past year or two) about how LEGO is becoming increasingly exclusionary of its original target demographic of children. I actually received one of the LEGO Botanical sets for my birthday as an unexpected but charming gift for my birthday recently and built it yesterday and love how it looks on our new shelf I put up in the living room, and it was a really relaxing way to spend 25-30 minutes of my time whilst watching TV. But would I have bought it myself? I'm unsure. As a creative idle hobby, you'll be spending between £30 - £190 for some of these sets aimed at adults, and it's also one-and-done. Some sets will also exclude minifigures you would expect from them too, only for them to be included in other parallel sets for an extra £30. 

I do have a real, real soft spot for LEGO, but looking at sets makes me feel awful - they're so expensive and although they've always been on the pricey side, there was always a kind of "bang for your buck" cheaper set with a few figures, vehicle builds or scenic pieces which let me as a child enjoy it back in the day.

Anyway, saw these videos today and suddenly really itching to look in charity shops and boot fairs now for a tonne of LEGO to build this kind of shi.

[Dirty Duck]

Very weird to log on and see this when I was just talking to my girlfriend about how LEGO feels as if it's become very "slopified" for the very reasons you've said. Over reliance on sets licensed from IPs LEGO doesn't own and the eye watering price means I've hardly really hazarded a glance at any LEGO sets in a long long time.

Much like yourself I very much enjoyed building a set I was bought for a birthday (Piranha Plant) but I would never fork out the amount of cash it would have cost. Has it actually got more expensive or was I just bankrupting my family as a child?

Also: bring back Bionicle. The true star of LEGO themes.

[Jassassino]

Yeah over reliance on external IPs is a big one. I remember how hype looking the medieval LEGO sets and castle/fortress builds looked. Generic, classic high fantasy in LEGO? I loved it!

And yeah we weren't bankrupting our parents dw. The financial crash did that for us. 😪