Yeah I don't know what this person is on about. Lego is obviously premium and ... charges premium prices because ... they're a business. People (consumers) who want premium products ... pay the premium.

I would be much more frustrated if they became cheaper and reduced the quality of the product.

> As long as the quality moat persists

The risk Lego faces is that they don't actually have a quality moat any longer. You can get non-lego sets with no stickers, plenty of prints, LED lighting, at a cheaper price, and with the exact same piece quality. I purchased this set: https://www.lumibricks.com/collections/steampunk-world/produ... over Christmas, and I paid $105 because it was on sale. The pieces were indistinguishable from Lego in quality, and the lights and lack of stickers was a quality increase from what Lego offers.

What moat Lego has is: brand recognition and licenses. Which aren't nothing, but don't offer much protection.

For most people anything that has only kept up with inflation over the last 50 years is more expense today than it was 50 years ago because wages have stagnated while prices have soared.

Not to mention you can 3D print Duplo compatible bricks.

Sorting Lego is such a pain in the ass. I have like a huge stash from when I was a kid. Back then we just had it all in a few tubs and dug to find a part. But somehow now I feel I must sort them… but the “right way” is ill defined and kind of sucks the joy out of playing (especially disassembling)

And there is no “right way” that I’ve even found. Sort by color and now the little pieces fall to the bottom and are hard to dig for. The best I can see is part type and size… maybe… even then it sucks out the fun. I want to build cool shit with my daughter not spend every moment of Lego time sorting. There is no joy in sorting…

Maybe I just revert back to the “big tub” approach.

I dunno. Thanks for listening to my TED talk I guess.

For a while the complaint was that Lego was making too many big, specialized pieces, so I'm amused that the current complaint seems to be that they're using too many small generic ones.

I had a weird build recently with the Luxo Jr model. There are a couple of cavities in the model that are partially filled in with very small parts. These parts don't connect in a way that makes then structural. I'm still puzzled why these parts are there.

I always charitably assumed that they designed models to utilize surplus pieces for the internal structures, pieces that might be hard to use elsewhere.

The Creator 3-in-1 sets are basically what you're looking for, they just don't get advertised much. A lot of them are more generified and rebuildable, sometimes even more refined versions of more expensive sets or parts of more expensive sets. Maybe the most obvious are the 3-in-1 dragon and dinosaur sets, which to me feel obviously like more generic reworks of D&D and Jurassic Park builds respectively, and have a lot more in the way of generic tiles and bricks than the licensed sets they're derived from.

No, you'll always give up something.

If you want to spend some time looking at critiques from someone with experience, I find JANG's Youtube reviews of both LEGO and non-LEGO brick toys to be well-balanced. We have differing opinions, but he has decent rationales for most of his opinions.

Lumibricks is fantastic, built in lighting (or rather you build it in as part of the model) and as someone who has always turned their nose up at off brand Lego, the parts are definitely 99% of the way there. Instructions the same quality, if not better, than Lego as well - all for about the third of the price.

Minifigs are terrible but I have hundreds of those spare anyway!

I guess it depends on what a "Lego-quality experience" means to you.

I grew up with the mid 80s to mid 90s kits, mostly castles and pirate ships, a few space sets. I think it's a very different experience compared to the nightmares I read about building the Mould King Eclipse-class Star Destroyer ( https://www.reddit.com/r/lepin/comments/1pdfx5y/mould_king_e... ). The concept of "bad luck with construction" is foreign to me, because most of the kits I remember building as a child were comparatively simple.

I'm working on this house with my 5yo daughter now: ( https://ja.aliexpress.com/item/1005006068361257.html ). Costs ~$20, we work on it about 30-45 minutes several times a week, so it takes months to finish. If she tears it apart 6 months from now to build something from her imagination, mission accomplished.

I hear people rave about this Cyberpunk-style kit, maybe this is closer to what you expect? https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_a_a4b2bvISsP6pyjkSxLw (Chinese language review) I plan to buy it at some point....for myself, not for my kids!

The value proposition of the Chinese knockoffs is off the charts IMO.

For what I spent buying JUST ( https://www.brickeconomy.com/set/60229-1/lego-city-space-roc... ) last year for my daughter,

I've since bought her a 3-floor hospital, a firehouse, a pink villa with pool, and about 2 dozen doctor and engineer minifigs for the same ~$120 outlay. Only disappointment is the legs on the Chinese minifigs, they are difficult to seat properly on studs because the legs are at a slight angle (almost like manspreading).

I have to stop myself from going on a spending spree on AliExpress, I might order an entire Age of Sail LEGO navy.