Lego: C/D, S&D

nerd market

I kind of like the idea of the plodding, boring, barely rewarding labour of putting together a Frank Lloyd Wright Lego. It seems like it would be relaxing and kind of keep me busy for a while. I could have the TV on in the background... Put a pot of coffee on... I wonder how much it costs and how long it would take me to build?

whilst the story's real, that picture is a rendering, probably box art. the real version wouldn't have those lines between the cream bricks (which spoils it for me)

http://www.yatzer.com/1710_frank_lloyd_wright%27s_lego_architecture_sets

http://architecture.lego.com/en-US/Products/architect/Default.aspx

(there's a landmark series too - space needle, empire state...)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2522/3690179500_b7894ef1bd.jpg

I don't understand why the batman kits are all, like, 3 times more expensive than any other kits of equivalent size.

yeah the same to be said about the star wars stuff, ridiculously priced.

Seriously, "3 times more expensive" was a huge understatement:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-City-7235-Police-Motorcycle/dp/B0007LXVOO/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=toys&qid=1258706307&sr=8-12

VS

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-Batman-Mini-Figure-The-Joker/dp/B000U8452Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=toys&qid=1258706285&sr=8-1

Just insane!

I've been on a lego kick lately, and some of the custom builds are pretty fun:

http://www.classic-pirates.com/contests/ptvii/parrots-perch-pub-black-rabbit.html

http://www.classic-pirates.com/wordpress/images/2009/11/PTVII-Black-Rabbit1.jpg

that's not really a valid comparison though. like comparing eggs with faberge eggs (ok, not like that at all). the batman stuff's a lot rarer.

i have a lot of the star wars lego and it was never that much more than similar sized sets. but then it was available everywhere.

It's fake rarity though, right? That stuff's all still in production, they just don't produce much of it. S'just frustrating when you've got a lego-loving, batman-loving four year old.

> they just don't produce much of it.

if this is true then they are idiots - all that extra markup is going into middlemen's pockets, not theirs. but it's Lego that people are getting pissed off at.

Em refused to let me buy the new mini Lego Millennium Falcon in Tesco last week, even though it was only, like, £15 or something. Cow.

Buy it for her as a present.

Lego is (the best toy ever BUT) kind of disappointing in that new sub-£20 Lego kits seem to be like 4 standard bricks and a giant clip-on all-in-one bit of plastic for the overall shape, and I just want to pretend I am 7 and in front of a giant bucket of a lifetime's accumulated Lego again with daydreams of infinite possibilities.

Was this always the way? I like to imagine that in the 80s you could buy e.g. space kits with hundreds of parts without needing to remortgage, but maybe parents had to haemorrage money to get me and my friends the vast Lego selections we all had.

I think there was definitely more middle ground between a cheap 4-piece set and giant top-of-range space station/galleon Christmas lust object, whatever the prices, though, and less resorting to "here is the all-in-one piece which resembles the picture on the box; now you may open the bag of two tiny headlights, one plain grey brick and one antenna to clip on".

(tempted to buy Mr Spacecadet that mini Falcon for Christmas but he is a cynical bugger re cash-ins and not particularly nostalgic for Star Wars despite 80s childhood, so I guess not ;_; )

by hundreds of parts I probably mean 30, which IS hundreds when you are 7, as proven by all the times I told my mother "whoa there are hundreds of ___!" and she would say "well why don't you count them" - she is a maths teacher, after all - and the answer was always about 30

this means I am nearly hundreds of years old and still talking about Lego

http://www.brickset.com/search/?subtheme=Classic&theme=Town

yeah most of the smaller sets are now just a few pieces of lego with a couple of specially made parts. The link above is a site with all the old cool stuff.

i've been into the technic stuff again lately, luckily that hasn't changed too much.

Great link! I was all set to go through and go "oh, I had that one and that one and..." but instead I am going "oh, huh, is that where that one brick with the stripes came from? could be, who knows...", since everything was dismantled after a day or two and thrown into the giant collection. I just feel sorry for the kids today, whose collections will be smaller and full of pretty useless half-a-triceratops mouldings

the mid-range star wars models were ok. not too many custom pieces (which is the price you pay for wanting it to look like an x-wing and not just generic, blocky spaceship, say*) and would take a good hour or two to put together. but then they all went Episode 1 and i lost interest.

i think it's always been expensive, because it's well made. plus it's essentially petrochemical and this was the 70s.

* case in point, a police car
http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/images/0644-1.jpg
must be a volvo...

There's a couple of other sites with all the old catalogues, going as far back as the 60's too. i'll dig it out tonight, last time i checked though it was down - it always seems to suffer bad bandwidth anyway.

http://www.peeron.com/scans/?tid=12

^has instruction scans and catalogue scans, as well as pieces lists for products

http://www.bricklink.com/browse.asp

apparently where most of the lego faithful do their trading. Much better pricing than ebay scams.

I want this shirt.

http://images-3.redbubble.net/img/clothing/bodycolor:navy/product:tshirt/size:large/style:mens/view:preview/534765-12-space-lego.jpg

http://www.google.com/products?q=lego+space+tshirt

hell yes

Buyin' a classic red one.

Holy crap, I never knew this existed:

http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=10123-1

http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/images/10123-1.jpg

yeah most of the smaller sets are now just a few pieces of lego with a couple of specially made parts.

^^^yep, and this is superlame. I will not be be buying these for my daughter. she gets the old school generic shit

my nephews have all my old stuff from the late 70's plus all kinda newfangled things to paste on top, best of both worlds really. they recently went to a convention with lots of custom molded pieces, the younger boy bought 20 beautiful lego dogs.

For those of you who remember playing Tie Fighter back in the day, they're finally putting out a lego Tie Defender:

http://www.brickset.com/detail/?set=8087-1

http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/images/8087-1.jpg

304 pieces, 2 lego dudes, $50 american

Contrasted with:

http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/images/6754-1.jpg

No dudes, almost 1,000 pieces, about $50-60

Neat how you can pretty much game any video game ship you want, tho. Some of them even come as sets:

http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/images/5981-1.jpg

$13 american

MAKE any video game ship, i should say

e.g. Your Vic Viper:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3295/2966843423_770faee041.jpg

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/1103/JARE/Others/bicycle_in_antarctic.jpg

I know this is echoed many times above, but I went shopping for presents for my wife's nephews the other night and we were looking at Legos. Fuck they are expensive. And so g-d specialized, like you can make one thing and one thing only out the sets. The days of huge buckets full of generic pieces are pretty much gone, no?

Lego's been losing serious money over the past decade. methinks they will learn their lesson given this common complaint.

No, they're still there, just in blue/pink plastic tubs

This looks pretty much like the bucket of bricks I received for Christmas as a kid.

Lego still make the buckets, but they're rarely sold in stores any more.

http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Leaf.aspx?cn=306&d=362

^^^ some of this stuff is surprisingly old school.

http://creative.lego.com/en-us/products/portal.aspx

haha oops x-post

I was more referring to the buckets that build up in each house over time when all the sets get mixed together, was just bemoaning the loss of the relatively generic sets of the past.

but yeah this problem is more with retailers than with Lego per se. Stupid chain stores just stock the latest product tie-ins, probably because they're owned by the same company making the movies or whatever.

you'd be amazed at what fun things you can come up with using only a few pieces of lego, but i know what you mean. and really should come down in price for the smaller kits.

technic stuff is still great though, been buying some of the larger sets recently. tho on some they've resorted to these horrible fake pneumatics rather than the actual thing - meaning you need a motor.

i now have thousands of technic parts, and i'm itching to make a huge transformer..

I'll admit though, as a Star Wars geek I think some of those sets are pretty damn cool.

just wait until Lucas reissues the sets with extra crap that looks terrible and doesn't work

i want to rep for mega bloks a little. they feel terrible to work with, but they are lego-compatible and are half the price. perfect for making pencil holders, computer cases, anything that uses up lots of bricks. also they are weird and french-canadian.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/04/tiny-lego-guitars.html

http://craphound.com/images/4112046166_8c53e330a9_o.jpg

Also, an easy way to pick up a shitloada lego is thru Craigslist, thru deals or yard sales that have them offered.

that lego space tshirt is sickkkkkk

Lego superhero mega-crossovers:

http://ulisesfarinas.com/

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/8/2009/12/500x_4123618901_9be7ac66a5_b.jpg

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/8/2009/12/500x_4060453332_80613c7fca_b.jpg

My husband LOVES Lego. I'm more a Playmobil fan.

http://demandware.edgesuite.net/aabe_prd/on/demandware.static/Sites-BE-Site/Sites-Catalog/fr_BE/v1260260776170/imagesOnline/products/5301.jpg

DROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Bought my oldest kid a "marriage house". I wanted her to have some sort of house and that was available. SO that's what I got her. :-)

Ha, my sister had that house! Still has, actually.

I collected a bunch of the arctic expedition sets when I was young.

Millsner, what's her address? Must have been expensive! Crap, I'm off to check the prices. Very tempted. Of course Ophelia will only be able to look at mommy playing with it. hahaha

Pretty sure it's sitting in my parents' basement now, along with five or six other big Rubbermaid bins of Lego and Playmobil.

I'm actually itching to break out the stuff when I spend a month or two at home this winter.