Bright-Coloured Filler Bricks: What's Up With That...?

I love brightly coloured fillers. I use them in all my mocs. Makes it easier to see what parts you've used if you have to make changes. Also, my favourite colour is lilac but I don't usually have a need to use it, so I just hide it inside builds.

I'm a fan of it, partly for the ease of building, partly for the chance to get some more unusual colours from sets used as parts packs. But my favourite use of it is to differentiate left and right assemblies that are almost identical, like wings on a TIE fighter.

I guess another reason for not using black to fill is to avoid black blindness

I don't mind the process at all, I think it's very logical. However I do feel that filler being should be viewed differently when designing a several £100 set that is ultimately intended for display.
For example with the technic pins, and the idea they need to stay in certain colours to avoid confusion, that is more than fair and logical in a child's playset, but I feel on a model such as the UCS AT-AT, a £700 display piece that excuse doesn't carry and is a bit of a cop out in a way. It's very unlikely that that model is going to be dismantled and end up in a kid's parts bin any time soon (you'd hope anyway ??)

I understand it. And I appreciate what it does for the building experience.

My problem with this is that it limits making other builds with the parts. These colors are usually so bright and numerous that it will be a challenge to rebuild the model without having to use them as filler bricks again unless the stars allignfor what you're doing. And I'm not talking about drab models. The colors just clash, even in bright model alt builds.

This just makes the models more laser-focussed on the one build you're supposed to make and indicates you really shouldn't make anything else with the parts.

Older Designer models did it differently. These were all parts for a certain central theme. Filler parts were used for alt builds. But because all bricks needed to work for the theme, anything still complimented each other. So the filler bricks would just be one of the colors used for the rest of the set but there were enough colors to give you 1) variation and 2) options.

I'd rather see something like that again. You can have multiple colors that don't clash against those from the main build. Like putting brown under green. An alt build could use both because they go together. If you use green filled with pink and white and cyan... and yellow. What could you even build with it if those colors mentioned only have 3 parts each?

Oh, and sometimes it made it harder to find parts if there's too many colors. The Hidden Side school was hard to build without the bags (as I had to check the inventory first as it was a 2nd hand one). Why? Because there were so many bright colors it was like trying to find a dark bit amidst dark bits amidst a rainbow.

Just my two cents.

I think it's a good thing. I already have 100s of every (dark) bluish grey element. If they keep using different colors on the inside and sometimes put in a new color 2x4 (reddish orange plz), I'm happy.

I realliy like the use of pieces of multiple colours, when they serve structural purposes and are hidden once the set is finished.
It's as under the skin of even the most serious set there is a whole world of colourful imagination, like a sneak peek on the lego philosophy. Like the Cloud Cuckoo Land from the lego movie

Personally, for this reason when I'm buying pieces for my MOCs I always try to be as colourful as possible on the inner invisible parts. To be honest strange hues help save a few euros here and there, but sometimes I spend a bit more just to avoid using the same colours.

there always were filler colours, the trouble I got is more the colour choices- at times it clashes horribly (the Chinese garden- purple next to red and next to orange and so on. Great set but by God in the middle of the building process it looked horrible), and you got single piece in cyan or coral and nothing else. The Creator Pirate ship used only standard yellow, red, blue,white and green as fillers, in a consistent and sensible way- these are all colours that are very easy to use elsewhere, and in sufficient amounts to do so. When ther're literally one purple plate, 6 coral plates, one lime green brick, and so on, reusing these elsewhere is very hard.

Never had any problem with bright filler bricks. Like the article says, it makes them easier to find (having acquired 10305 second hand, nothing was still in the original bags, so everything was drowned under a sea of 1xWhatever grey bricks that I ended up having to completely separate out) but also makes the set easier to build. One nice obvious brick in the middle of everything makes it much easier to count where the others around it are supposed to go

Another good explanation again! Keep these articles coming!

Let me agree with this first:
"Well, sadly, we are all stupid. "

That out of the way: I like these articles; they shed new light from both sides. Never formed an opinion about this particular topic, but a fun read nevertheless (including the comments).

Now do stickers, please! I really am curious about what's going on with these. And I have an opinion about them.

I quite liked to hunt for bricks back when I had much more time to spare. I remember opening all the bricks from 10227 at once because it was so much more fun to build it this way (although significantly more frustrating as well). These days when I mostly build sets with my kid, I prefer not to need to do that. Having said that, I would rather the filler bricks were all in an easily reusable colour palette - just like they were in 10497 .

"It is also not to “cheap out” by putting cheaper coloured LEGO elements inside the model."

This answer misses my point about the colors inside the models.

The differences in the production costs of the parts are unlikely to be relevant. Much more important is the question: how much profit would Lego lose if colors were used that fetch high prices on Bricklink? So it's about opportunity costs.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not fundamentally against bright colors inside. But as someone who likes to build alternative models, it's important to me that the colors are inspiring and don't clash with the other colors in the set.

Thank goodness they used to make 3L Technic pins in black and they aren't too hard to find. ;)

@poshhammer

Thank you for your answer!
Bricklink prices reflect the demand and utility of specific LEGO elements, indicating which color and design combinations are most valued by the community. The opportunity cost of using rare or distinctively colored bricks inside models is the potential revenue LEGO foregoes by not selling these sought-after pieces separately (e.g., as part of another set). My concern is that using such colors internally should enhance, not limit, their utility in alternative builds, ensuring they contribute to the overall appeal and versatility of the pieces.

As far as I understood, there is separate team at TLG responsible for the building experience and color coding, right?

That's a lot of words to still say: "our customers are too stupid to differentiate between a short black pin and a long black pin", so you have to make one of them blue ruining every model now where the blue pins stick out everywhere.
Just look at the Dune ornithopter which just looks ridiculous with all the color flashing through everywhere. Or the 700€ 75252 which is so badly colorful not only inside but where some ugly colors are also visible when finished. Who doesn't like an overly expensive collectors model which looks like cheap test model made out of random color. (But maybe Darth Vade was a fan of pink, purple and blue.)

If you would really care about customers you could simply ship two sets of pins/internal pieces, the idiots bag for people who are not the sharpest knife in the drawer and the full model matching color bag for all the others who can count to three.

PS. I just rebricked a 8285 and it was just a perfect building experience, no ugly colors, everything matching as expected.

@poshhammer the rebuilding argument is the main reason behind the anti colourful fillers debate. If you buy a Star Wars set nowadays, you can only build that one original model, and you are left with a rainbow after deconstruction that is not useful at all for any other starship.
The worst part of this is that Lego used to be about creativity, and nowadays it seems to target AOL model builders, totally abandoning the original concept behind Lego. Lego indeed abandons their own core concepts by using colored fillers.

2 reasons for the colored filler bricks

- Lego thinks the lego fans are stupid
- the rebuilding argument mentioned earlier, so you will buy more sets/loose bricks

Alternative building bricks brands have proven, that you don’t need colorful filler bricks to have a good experience. And specially if you are targeting the adult market as heavy as lego is doing, it makes no sense.

Another interesting and fun read!

Personally, I am indifferent to the color of filler bricks. It certainly makes finding bricks when building sets a lot easier, especially larger Star Wars sets and it very rarely occurs that I really wished a piece would have come in a different color.

The brightly colored technic pins being visible on the outside, such as on the AT-AT, also don't bother me too much.

I am looking forward to your articles on stickers. I hope a lot of debates about stickers can finally be settled.

I did the reverse on 10283 Space Shuttle Discovery, replacing the olive green filler which I wanted for an MoC) with generic grey. I made a lot of mistakes on that build as a result, much more frustrating. That's made me appreciate the coloured fuller even more.
As for MoCs, go multi-coloured! I've noticed kids don't normally consider colour schemes when building stuff, they work with what they've got in all sorts of colours.
As for Technic pins, I also like the colour coding and don't want multicoloured pins. No one I know notices them at all in models, it seems to be just a few obsessive AFOLs.

Fascinating article. I think that most people would realise - and understand - that the practice is to help make sets more accessible to all levels of builders. Typically, a number of posts on here show that certain AFOLs only care about their building experience but that will never change.

And if modifying and/or using sets for MOCs is your main aim is replacing the bright coloured bricks with more suitable ones that much of an imposition?

@produktsumme said:
" @poshhammer the rebuilding argument is the main reason behind the anti colourful fillers debate. If you buy a Star Wars set nowadays, you can only build that one original model, and you are left with a rainbow after deconstruction that is not useful at all for any other starship.
The worst part of this is that Lego used to be about creativity, and nowadays it seems to target AOL model builders, totally abandoning the original concept behind Lego. Lego indeed abandons their own core concepts by using colored fillers."

This argument seems counterintuitive to me; you’re saying the extra colours limits what you can build, but surely the whole point of rebuilding means you can be imaginative and make something that uses those colours?

I like colour vomit. It makes a build more interesting.

"Lowering the time to find bricks is one of the things that gets scrutinised intensely when designing a LEGO model."

This is an aspect a lot of fan MOCs, and knock-off brick brands don't understand. I have a family member who bought some train model from knock-off bricks (while the tolerances of the bricks also have some issues with fit) the main issue has been that almost everything in the model is the same few shades of color, and to boot the instructions for the set are printed in black & white only showing color on the brick being placed at the exact step! I am always impressed with LEGO designers for making the build easy once you learn the "language" of how color bricks and other details work to speed things up.

I ironically like multi-coloured filler bricks, only because it can lead to snot bricks and/or other pieces being created in new colours.
I hate multi-coloured filler bricks for two reasons:
1. We end up with a disjointed mish-mash of bricks and pieces in colours that are used internally, thereby making it hard to MOC-build with them.
2. COLOUR BLEED. If you use multi-coloured pieces internally, and then cover them with bricks/pieces which feature a groove (for instance), then the multi-coloured pieces become visible through the gap. This is something I try to actively avoid when MOC-building and was VERY suprised to see it present in official sets i.e. the Scaled-Up LEGO Minifigure. In the same vain multi-coloured internal pieces are sometimes just openly visible behind foreground elements i.e. if you look at the Scaled-Up LEGO Minifigure's legs from the side, you can see the internal bricks used to build the middle section.

@DoonsterBuildsLego said:
"I did the reverse on 10283 Space Shuttle Discovery, replacing the olive green filler which I wanted for an MoC) with generic grey. I made a lot of mistakes on that build as a result, much more frustrating. That's made me appreciate the coloured fuller even more.
As for MoCs, go multi-coloured! I've noticed kids don't normally consider colour schemes when building stuff, they work with what they've got in all sorts of colours.
As for Technic pins, I also like the colour coding and don't want multicoloured pins. No one I know notices them at all in models, it seems to be just a few obsessive AFOLs."

When I was a kid I built with what I had in all sorts of colors because I had to, not because I wanted to. I wanted to be able to build things in uniform color schemes without all sorts of unwanted colors everywhere, but I didn't have enough parts for that. I suspect I wasn't the only kid with that attitude.

@Brickalili @poshhammer I get your point that having all those crazy colors can spur creativity,and indeed I like some of the filler stuff. But…let’s take an example, early Lego space, say Futuron. In those sets, there was not a single brick that could not go into creating Futuron-themed spaceships. I as a customer bought Futuron because I liked the look of, well, Futuron. So I could build an endless stream of trans blue, white and black starships, or bases, or whatever. That’s because every Futuron set expanded the amount of reusable bricks for that Theme by the full content of bricks in the box.
With fillers, that amount is severely degraded, to a degree where a ship has only, let’s say 30% of theme-correct hull/shell pieces, and the rest is useless.
Apart from that degraded number. Having just “shell” pieces limits my ability to create other things with that scheme as well.

I generally don't like it, but as long as it is invisible I can get over it. But there's no absolutely excuse for color puke that remains visible. Like that Dune set is a bad joke, right? The set actually already uses many of the pieces that would fix part of the problem, which makes it even more baffling....

I actually do like when there's a creative twist to it, not just random. That at least shows some thought behind it. Like with the 10497 , only using colors available at the time when the original was released. And I doubt that choice made the set too complicated for many people.

Ah, Brickset comments. Where random people insist they are smarter than the most successful toy company in history.

Having built Lego sets in every decade since the 1970s, I can assure you that modern sets are much, MUCH easier to build than they used to be. And that makes a substantial difference in the build experience for all ages and skill levels.

Most people get frustrated when they're building a set and can't find the piece they're looking for. Or they miss a piece and don't realize it until later and have to go back to fix it. Or they place something in the wrong place because the instructions were just a sea of black and gray bricks. Nobody likes to be frustrated, and every point of frustration is an opportunity for someone to give up on the build.

When it comes to design, everything is a compromise, but the value of easing the build experience should not be underestimated. If somebody quits halfway during their first Lego build out of frustration, they may never try again. "This just isn't for me," or "I'm bad at this."

Anything that helps kids or rookie builders reach the finish line is valuable to the entire community. Just look at the pride and sense of accomplishment of a rookie who has finished their first medium/large Lego build. I've seen that look on both kids and adults, and it's worth far, far more to me than extra gray or black bricks.

It's absolutely okay to have some landmarks e.g. to figure out front and back, left and right, up and down orientations and there's also nothing wrong with having some hidden structural elements in a different unrelated color, but they are taking it way too far. That ultimately is why people have a problem with it. It's like LEGO continually underestimate people's intelligence.

@poshhammer said:
" @legonard said:
" @poshhammer

Thank you for your answer!
Bricklink prices reflect the demand and utility of specific LEGO elements, indicating which color and design combinations are most valued by the community. The opportunity cost of using rare or distinctively colored bricks inside models is the potential revenue LEGO foregoes by not selling these sought-after pieces separately (e.g., as part of another set). My concern is that using such colors internally should enhance, not limit, their utility in alternative builds, ensuring they contribute to the overall appeal and versatility of the pieces.

As far as I understood, there is separate team at TLG responsible for the building experience and color coding, right?"

No it is the same team, but it's a totally different team from whoever runs Bricklink. The building Experience team is only concerned with making the build experience as good as possible. Literally zero consideration is given to Bricklink prices. The only things that would be maybe considered would be exclusive Minifigures in sets like Star Wars (and this would come from another team that isnt BX), but no one is checking Bricklink prices for individual elements in specific colours when making design decisions."

Not necessarily, I remember hearing Markus saying he included a sand blue 1x1 plate in Ninjago city Markets to bring down its' prices since it had previously only been available in the 2003 knockturn alley.
He also has included other fun recolors in sets he designs specifically for the afol community, such as wolverine claws in green.

If you don't want coloured filler bricks spoiling up your MOCs, then don't use them on the outside. Use them as filler!

Lego has been teaching us how to build our own sets since forever, but we constantly fail to reach the same level as its designers do.

I guess that's why none of us work as Lego designers. We spend too much time complaining and not enough time observing.

One thing I don't see a lot of consideration being given to in this discussion is that the average Lego model has gotten bulkier and more complex since most of us were kids. I can't prove that scientifically or anything, but it seems intuitively obvious to me and is easiest to see with City sets, where you can often make direct comparisons and see that the "filler" pieces in a 2020s set are often in regions that straight up don't exist in Town equivalents such as the more built-up lower sections.

Anyway, my all-time favorite filler pieces are the hearts in 10283. I love you too, Discovery.

@poshhammer, you forgot two crucial tricks. One is to color-code the construction of the model. 21103 famously used red and blue parts in the early construction to make it easier to keep track of the orientation of the chassis, because it starts out with rotational symmetry that ends long before you can make out which end is the front vs the back. The other is that parts in weird colors may be selected for use because those colors are already in production for another set, thereby saving the designer from wasting a slot. They may want to pick a contrasting color, but the most economical choices are decided by what other designers used in other sets.

This also might have been a perfect opportunity to mention the absolute worst pack job ever to come out of Billund, which was 10179. 80 unnumbered bags, sorted to make packing them more efficient and economical, but likely a rage-inducing nightmare for the end consumer when most bags are repeated 2-9x in that mix. And it also created a massive problem when they realized they'd shorted the nearly 5000pc set by two wedge plates that were no longer easily added to that arrangment. Unfortunately, this was long before your tenure, so I doubt you'd have much knowledge of that fiasco.

@HJB2810:
Black really would be the budget option. Black plastic is colored with carbon, an abundant and cheap material. Colors like yellow and orange (possibly red?) used to be colored with cadmium (also fairly cheap), but use of toxic heavy metal pigments got banned in the US in the late 90's/early 00's, and plastics manufacturers had to switch to more expensive pigment options. You can also recycle any color into black, since the carbon will overpower anything previously used to color your regrind. Note that I doubt TLG has much opportunity to use regrind. They won't use any post-consumer plastic at all, due to not having any way to know what it may have been contaminated with, and they have long ago started eliminating sprues and runners from their molds, so that only the finished part gets ejected after cooling.

@legonard:
The amount of money TLG earns from Bricklink is a rounding error on their annual profit/loss statement. You're talking about a company that grosses in the billions vs a site that may generate a few million in fees, much of which is going to be used to cover expenses of running the site. The amount of profit they'd realize from making decisions based on this is most easily expressed in terms of pennies.

I love the line that says LEGO thinks we're all stupid, based on market research. I feel like I should be offended, but then again, I've made mistakes in quite a few fairly recent LEGO builds, so it's probably objectively true by now. I don't remember ever making mistakes as a kid, though, although that could be explained by the small number of colors and the larger pieces LEGO sets had back in the day.

@poshhammer said:
" @yellowcastle said:
" @poshhammer - thank you for the great interaction. It’s appreciated. The topic, though, is a bit too small, imo.

I suspect that most of us clearly understood why it was being done and have just learned to accept it, whether we like it or not. My preference would have been for you to go “harder to the paint” here and simply discuss the dumbing down of builds as a whole by LEGO. Then we could have expanded away from filler bricks and talked about numbered bags, bazillion step instruction books, etc.

I don’t mind differently colored filler bricks nor do I look forward to them. So long as they get hidden, they rarely impact my experience. I do like the Brickheadz brains, though. :o)"

That could be one for a future topic, absolutely, but I don't think you will like my take on it... ;)"
Oh, you know what they say about assume. :o)

I’m just a lumper, taxonomically speaking, so I like to look at “issues” from a higher vantage point than say….just filler bricks. But I understand that you can always dump out numbered bags and/or rip out instructions pages. :o)

More interesting to me would be “build stability.” Everyone always complains about what LEGO does to Ideas sets and then what they didn’t do to BLDP sets…

@jkb:
Prints are also used on parts where stickers won't adhere well (compound curves), where play is dependant on them (facial features for Chima's Legend Beasts models), where application of the stickers is rage-inducingly frustrating (SW UCS plaques going forward), and sometimes when the licensing partner insists on a cleaner presentation (certain brand logos in Speed Champions). And yes, 4+ is a line that they consciously shifted to be prints-only because they know that the target market is still developing fine motor skills, and eliminating stickers allows kids to build without the assistance of an adult or older sibling. And it is embarassing when people well above the age of adulthood come here and whinge about how they have to apply stickers to expensive D2C sets while literal toddlers don't have to.

@HoodedOne:
Alternative building brands haven't overtaken Hasbro or Mattel to become the largest toy manufacturer in the world. Kind of speaks to the different degrees of success they've achieved, when TLG is no longer being compared to other toy companies, but instead to entertainment empires like Disney.

@CT8088:
As stated in the article, people are stupid. Questions will possibly be answered, but in no way will any of these articles stop certain people from complaining about how they think it would be just as easy to use prints as stickers. It's an immutable law of the universe at this point.

@DoonsterBuildsLego:
I think the argument on Technic pins is going to shift dramatically based on the size of the model you're building, and also on how you're using those pins. When you're talking about a flagship Technic set that could crush a small child, Technic pins aren't even visible in most pictures because they're so tiny relative to the model. However, when I was building SW characters with the original Toa Mata parts in the early 00's, you're talking about characters that range from maybe 4-8" in total height. Sometimes I used Technic pins aesthetically, like using half-pins for IG-88's eyes, or various blasters that incorporated a fully-exposed 2L friction pin as part of the barrel. In cases like those, color is absolutely critical, and many of my element choices were made solely based on colors that were available. I would buy black friction 2L axle-pins by the hundred in those days, and would not be at all surprised if I currently own over 1000 total.

However, during the construction of even a flagship Technic set, as a builder, you're going to be focused on a tiny portion of the whole model at any given moment, and those Technic connectors are going to appear outsized in comparison. I know they do sometimes still break colorlocks on those parts, but I'm curious where the cutoff is. Sets like 8558 used those same friction axle-pins in white because they were representing teeth, with half of each part fully exposed. Even now, I'd expect those would have been produced in white, but I don't know all of the criteria that would go into making that decision. I mean, it could even come down to a licensing partner refusing to sign off on the final design, as reportedly happened with 76051, forcing them to break the most restrictive colorlocking of all time, with a recolored Mixel joint.

@poshhammer said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @poshhammer, you forgot two crucial tricks. One is to color-code the construction of the model. 21103 famously used red and blue parts in the early construction to make it easier to keep track of the orientation of the chassis, because it starts out with rotational symmetry that ends long before you can make out which end is the front vs the back. The other is that parts in weird colors may be selected for use because those colors are already in production for another set, thereby saving the designer from wasting a slot. They may want to pick a contrasting color, but the most economical choices are decided by what other designers used in other sets."

Good point about the orientation! Yes that is another one that falls under the build experience. :)

With the point about saving colour changes, you're sort of right but the motive is a bit off. They obviously wouldn't waste a colour change on a filler element. They can see what bricks in what colours are already in production so can pick anything from that list, so they SORT OF are picking them because other designers are using them, but only in that that's how the list is created, if that makes sense. :P"

That's kind of what I was trying to say. I have seen designers admit that they chose a fresh recolor (thereby using up a precious slot on a filler part) because they knew the fan community would appreciate it. And a perfect example of this is the baseplates under the Modulars. In nearly every Modular, the entire baseplate seems to be completely covered up fairly soon in the build process, so economically it would make sense to keep the baseplates all the same color. That's not what has happened, though. Reddish-brown under 10246, and red (for the first time in 35 years) under 10232 were one-offs. Light-bley under 10243 has appeared sporadically (including under two other Modulars), but may have been another conscious bone to the AFOL community. These days you don't see that as much, with Modulars rotating between light-bley, dark-bley, or tan, with a single instance in green.

I find it interesting that a good number of those who dislike filler bricks seem to hail from Germany. Not trying to throw shade(s of gray?), just observing. My favorite use of filler bricks is 76900; at one point mid-build, you'll see a Swedish flag made of them. I also appreciate that, ignoring the change to gray, 10497 only used colors available at the time of 497/928's release, even in the filler areas.

@GrosPanda1979 said:
"If you use multi-coloured pieces internally, and then cover them with bricks/pieces which feature a groove (for instance), then the multi-coloured pieces become visible through the gap. This is something I try to actively avoid when MOC-building and was VERY suprised to see it present in official sets i.e. the Scaled-Up LEGO Minifigure. In the same vain multi-coloured internal pieces are sometimes just openly visible behind foreground elements i.e. if you look at the Scaled-Up LEGO Minifigure's legs from the side, you can see the internal bricks used to build the middle section."

I went over and looked at my 40649 after reading your comment and had to pick it up and look into the joint where the legs meet the hips (which is a shadowy area, anyway) to even see what you were talking about. Yes, it isn't uniform blue in that area, but the non-blue parts there are also not something that's not going to be visible to a casual glance; as I said, I had to pick the model up and look into a shadowy area to even notice. So this is far from the worst case.

@poshhammer
Thank you for providing another objective view into LEGO design decisions. I find your articles and videos to be very interesting and quite funny. Love the humor!

Doesn't it have a purpose according to the designers.
To make it easier to build. Like they're guide bricks for the interior of the model.
It's part of Lego's very successful business model.
Every set is a potential FIRST TIME set for a new customer.
They want every set to be as easy as possible and enjoyable to build to keep this new customer coming back for more.
It's a sound and profitable practice.

As someone with a decent (but not huge) collection of bricks, I appreciate these pieces in sometimes rarer colors. I have enough pieces in grey or whatever to replace it as I'm building and I now have a new piece in a color I didn't have. I think the 'rebuilding' argument against the practice only applies to people who have fewer bricks in their collections. This means that, ironically, the people most affected for rebuilding in the short term are the ones for whom the 'ease of building' argument is most necessary, i.e. newer builders. This is not an argument for or against, simply an observation.

Our friends in Germany seem to really be struggling with this topic.

@BJNemeth:
There are definitely people who lament that instructions are now easier to follow, and look back fondly on the days when they had to really struggle to figure out how to build fairly basic sets. That just proves that they're masochists. I built 7191, and ended up being short a single 1x1 round plate in old dark-grey. I spent half an hour looking for that part, and never found it, not even after completing the build with the spare in old light-grey subbed in for the missing one. I can say quite truthfully that this experience was not enjoyable in even the slightest degree. If that happened to someone with their first set, even if the part _was_ there, that's not just a lost customer at that point. That's someone who's going to badmouth the company to their friends and family, and possibly kill even more sales opportunities.

@mhehir:
Different materials certainly had different mechanical properties. ABS was strong, PC was more prone to cracking (especially if exposed to extreme temperature changes while built), and PE is flexible. Different colors...not so much, I'd say. The only time we've heard of where color was critical to the mechanical peformance of a part was the Mixel joints (more specifically, the Mixel sockets). The exterior of the sockets had to fit within system but combined with an existing towball design so they could expand the range of parts that could be used for that half of the assembly. This resulted in the socket walls being rather thin. They also needed to be stiff enough to be able to maintain poses even after rough play, so the tolerances on these parts was razor thin compared to, say, a basic 2x4 brick. What they said was that changing the color affected how the joints performed.

I don't remember if specific issues were cited, but it could have resulted in joints that were too loose with one color, or that were too tight with another. Some colors may have been so tight, or so much less durable, that the sockets would crack open, which is the worst possible outcome. We've seen one of the Mixel ball joints get recolored, but only to the only other color that's ever been approved for use in any Mixel joint element. We've never seen the sockets themselves get recolored, not even to the other shade of bley (though we have seen proof that one Mixel socket got produced in reddish-brown. It's just never been released in any sets in that color.

@Andrusi:
For proof that modern sets are definitely more complex and bulkier, all you have to do is compare the piece counts vs the size of the completed build, or look at the set inventories. Sets from 40 years ago used parts that were a lot chunkier. Small pieces counts went a long way. Now, the space occupied by a single 2x4 brick will often be no less than half a dozen parts, but the finished design looks way more detailed because of how those parts are used. I mean, look at Eldorado Fortress. 6276 used a single massive piece to "build" the plateau that the fortress sits on. 10320 takes six pages, 20 steps, and 81pcs just to recreate the cobblestone ramp on the original baseplate.

And the people who complain about the instructions being too simple complain about the sets not being simple enough. Did I mention that this just proves they were masochists?

@PurpleDave said:
" @BJNemeth:
There are definitely people who lament that instructions are now easier to follow, and look back fondly on the days when they had to really struggle to figure out how to build fairly basic sets. That just proves that they're masochists. I built 7191, and ended up being short a single 1x1 round plate in old dark-grey. I spent half an hour looking for that part, and never found it, not even after completing the build with the spare in old light-grey subbed in for the missing one. I can say quite truthfully that this experience was not enjoyable in even the slightest degree. If that happened to someone with their first set, even if the part _was_ there, that's not just a lost customer at that point. That's someone who's going to badmouth the company to their friends and family, and possibly kill even more sales opportunities."

I buy a lot of sets on Amazon that are made by an alternate manufacturer that absolutely does not care about the ease or user-friendliness of the build experience. Most of the pieces are the same color, etc. Without fail, the Amazon customer reviews for these products have a large number of complaints about missing pieces. I have personally bought over 50 sets from this manufacturer and have never had a single missing piece. I would bet anything that these less experienced users are just using the wrong pieces because of how similar the pieces look and how condensed the instructions are. Then once they get to the step where they need a piece that they misused earlier, they think it's missing and bam, negative review.

@DoonsterBuildsLego said:
"I did the reverse on 10283 Space Shuttle Discovery, replacing the olive green filler which I wanted for an MoC) with generic grey. I made a lot of mistakes on that build as a result, much more frustrating. That's made me appreciate the coloured fuller even more.
As for MoCs, go multi-coloured! I've noticed kids don't normally consider colour schemes when building stuff, they work with what they've got in all sorts of colours.
As for Technic pins, I also like the colour coding and don't want multicoloured pins. No one I know notices them at all in models, it seems to be just a few obsessive AFOLs."

Further, those olive-coloured sections are also present in the real shuttles, so that wasn't even a colour substitution in the set design.

I consider myself an expert builder and am blessed with near perfect eyesight. I am therefore in the lucky situation that I don't need building aids of any kind. I have even built BlueBrixx sets with several thousands of pieces and not a single numbered bag of parts. I simply don't mind a challenge.
I know many people nowadays have either not the same patience or abilities as myself and I know that LEGO wants to sell sets to such people as well, and I don't have a problem with that.
I also have over half a million pieces, so reusability of odd coloured pieces in sets isn't an issue for me either.
Summing up, from my point of view LEGO can stuff as many rainbow coloured pieces into their sets as they like in order to cater to the lowest common denominator and not leave anyone with enough money behind.

The only BUT is that imho those rainbow pieces must not be seen at all in the finished set, and too often that is not the case. Sometimes those pieces shine through a little, like when adjoining pieces don't cover the edges properly, sometimes the odd coloured pieces are blatantly obvious from a certain angle or even from several. That's when it becomes a deal breaker for me and I refuse to buy such a set. After all I don't need every set. Plus there's plenty of alternatives out there, both in LEGO's own lineup as well as from other manufacturers.

"This is not a “dumbing down” of LEGO sets, nor does it relate to children having shorter attention spans. The LEGO Group wants as many people to enjoy their product as possible, and if they can find and remove this friction, fewer people will bounce off them early in their LEGO career… and go on to buy many more LEGO sets from The LEGO Group in the future."

When I read a statement like this I wonder

a) how LEGO economically survived the Eighties and

b) how we as kids managed to enjoy building with LEGO as much as we did and for as long as we did.

We must indeed have been true heroes ;-)

Note: of course it is "dumbing down" when instruction manuals now are the size of old phone directories because most steps only add a single piece, while back when I was a kid you had by comparison only small instruction "leaflets" even for the largest of sets.

I like this as it breaks up the solid color palette inside. And in some sets like R2 and Saturn V for example, the red and green insides help you make sure it’s rotated right during assembly

@poshhammer said:
"I would say there is a difference between being creative and making everything look like Cloud Cuckoo Land. You need a healthy balance of versatile bricks that give you many options for building what you are imagining as a base. As well as this, you need the creative intuition to think outside the box for more exotic element usage to have those extra details and flourishes that make a MOC impressive. "

This is an aspect of Lego design that I wish was explored upon more. There's this magic in official sets: details but not too many, colorful but not wacky, and most MOCs fail to recreate that spark that official sets have. If you were looking on even more article ideas, your perception on this would be very welcomed!

Otherwise, great read as always. I love those articles because they debunk a lot of myths present in the fandom, while also reminding us all that the design side is very human. Keep up the excellent work!

@illennium:
Well, in my case, it actually was missing. I've been building since the late 70's, and have plenty of experience, hence why I knew I could sub in the inevitable spare of the light-grey one until the dark-grey one surfaced. It never did, and I didn't have any light-grey left over. There are ten dark-grey used in the build, and none of the light-grey ones get used until after you've run out of dark-grey. I checked every part bag to make sure it didn't get stuck in a corner. I checked the floor, including around every table and chair leg. It just wasn't there.

But in the end, my experience was no different than someone else would have had if they simply mixed up the colors. I mean, I still have that happen a lot, where I'm building along and suddenly can't find a part until I realize I'm looking for the wrong shade of bley. That usually only takes a few seconds to sort out, though, because it's pretty much instinct to switch over to looking for the same shape in similar colors by now.

I didn't have trouble deciphering the instructions of my childhood. I absolutely understand that other people do (I had college friends who had cleared the admissions bar for an expensive private school who still found instructions in the 90's to be difficult to follow). I don't understand those who look back fondly on that experience, and I definitely don't understand the gatekeeping they continue to participate in.

@AustinPowers:
I've been wearing glasses since the 3rd grade, and I really need to get my prescription updated. I don't build sets for the experience anymore. I build them for the model, and I don't want that process to get dragged out unnecessarily. There are sets that I never could have designed on my own, but 10018 is probably the only set they've released that I would have had a real struggle to build from instructions (and that's only because I've heard the instructions were hands down the worst ever produced). I built 21330 in about six hours at one of our public displays (while pausing to answer questions). 10179 is the only set I've had to split between two days (excluding Advent Calendars where it's part of the tradition), and that was more due to the terrible pack job, and the fact that I was getting nausea and a headache from the smell of the freshly-printed instruction tome. I could _probably_ build 75192 in a single day. If people want challenges, they should get into building MOCs.

I must not even be in a minority but I must be the only one thinking like this: I am definitely against any sorts of colour vomit and discordant colours showing all over the place when they should not. Even if they are not visible, I like coherence in the colour blocking of a model and/or moc. Unfortunately I don't have the choice as Lego forces this upon me. I do however have a large quantity of 3L black friction pins.

I am building a large moc now (15k+ pieces) it has different (hidden) colours but not vomit: one layer is (let's say) tan, the (hidden)layer on top is ALL light grey (which contrast well enough) and then back to all tan. If I need yet another layer, it will be all light grey again - no need to pick another colour - the colour change is just for contrast so you know where you are; especially in very large mocs.

One of the main thing for which I am strongly in favour: in the early 80s, I was deeply into Lego Technic sets. To me, these sets were great because you needed: (1) observation skills, (2) attention to details, (3) patience and (4) perseverance. The way I used to build a set was always the same: open ALL bags and dump the lot in a big pile. Then sift through the lot and try to find what you are looking for - there were only two colours of pins back then (black and light grey). Often times, a smaller part would be hidden under a larger part and would move together when I was swiping through the pile. You also had to spend quite a bit of time looking at the instructions making sure you put all the parts at the right place (they were not highlighted in a different colour back then.

To me, a toy is a tool kids use to develop aptitudes/skills that will help them in the future. All the dumbing down that Lego does to reduce the so-called 'friction points' make the toy less interesting as a developmental tool for kids - and we see that every day: low attention-span, easily discouraged, anxiety for just about everything under the sun, etc. (Of course, not all the young kids are like that - I'm sure you know some kids who have no problems at all.)

@AustinPowers said:
""This is not a “dumbing down” of LEGO sets, nor does it relate to children having shorter attention spans. The LEGO Group wants as many people to enjoy their product as possible, and if they can find and remove this friction, fewer people will bounce off them early in their LEGO career… and go on to buy many more LEGO sets from The LEGO Group in the future."

When I read a statement like this I wonder

a) how LEGO economically survived the Eighties and

b) how we as kids managed to enjoy building with LEGO as much as we did and for as long as we did.

We must indeed have been true heroes ;-)

Note: of course it is "dumbing down" when instruction manuals now are the size of old phone directories because most steps only add a single piece, while back when I was a kid you had by comparison only small instruction "leaflets" even for the largest of sets. "

Definitely dumbing down:

You can find instruction books where the only thing happening is the rotation of the model - no parts added - just using another page to show the model from a different angle (with a new number on the top left/right). So much 'friction' there, it had to be removed...

@HOBBES said:
"I must not even be in a minority but I must be the only one thinking like this: I am definitely against any sorts of colour vomit and discordant colours showing all over the place when they should not. Even if they are not visible, I like coherence in the colour blocking of a model and/or moc. Unfortunately I don't have the choice as Lego forces this upon me. I do however have a large quantity of 3L black friction pins.

I am building a large moc now (15k+ pieces) it has different (hidden) colours but not vomit: one layer is (let's say) tan, the (hidden)layer on top is ALL light grey (which contrast well enough) and then back to all tan. If I need yet another layer, it will be all light grey again - no need to pick another colour - the colour change is just for contrast so you know where you are; especially in very large mocs.

One of the main thing for which I am strongly in favour: in the early 80s, I was deeply into Lego Technic sets. To me, these sets were great because you needed: (1) observation skills, (2) attention to details, (3) patience and (4) perseverance. The way I used to build a set was always the same: open ALL bags and dump the lot in a big pile. Then sift through the lot and try to find what you are looking for - there were only two colours of pins back then (black and light grey). Often times, a smaller part would be hidden under a larger part and would move together when I was swiping through the pile. You also had to spend quite a bit of time looking at the instructions making sure you put all the parts at the right place (they were not highlighted in a different colour back then.

To me, a toy is a tool kids use to develop aptitudes/skills that will help them in the future. All the dumbing down that Lego does to reduce the so-called 'friction points' make the toy less interesting as a developmental tool for kids - and we see that every day: low attention-span, easily discouraged, anxiety for just about everything under the sun, etc. (Of course, not all the young kids are like that - I'm sure you know some kids who have no problems at all.) "

The thing is that if there's TOO much friction, the majority of kids will simply stop buying Lego. That's what you get from instructions like those in older years—a smaller number of fans who stuck with Lego, giving them oversized egos that make them think their generation was superior to modern kids even if their peers who washed out of the hobby are obvious counterexamples.

When I was a kid I had a Lego-themed birthday party and one thing that stuck with me was how much trouble a lot of my peers had putting together simple Throwbots sets. Having more experience and better spatial reasoning may have made the building experience easier for me individually, but it was also extremely isolating being one of the few kids in my age group who enjoyed that activity and stayed interested in Lego in the long term. I'd much rather have Lego be something everyone can enjoy, so that they can improve their building skill gradually as they gain more experience, rather than something "skill-gated" that makes it so that anyone who doesn't already have those skills has a garbage experience.

"Note: of course it is "dumbing down" when instruction manuals now are the size of old phone directories because most steps only add a single piece, while back when I was a kid you had by comparison only small instruction "leaflets" even for the largest of sets."

It is no way dumbing down today for kids. The sets we had in the 70s, 80s were super simple stacking of bricks and plates.
Today we have tons of Lego Robotic clubs. Competing and learning all the way.
ALL inspired to build by sets the past 20 years.

"When I was a kid I had a Lego-themed birthday party and one thing that stuck with me was how much trouble a lot of my peers had putting together simple Throwbots sets.
Having more experience and better spatial reasoning may have made the building experience easier for me individually, but it was also extremely isolating being one of the few kids in my age group who enjoyed that activity and stayed interested in Lego in the long term.
I'd much rather have Lego be something everyone can enjoy, so that they can improve their building skill gradually as they gain more experience, rather than something "skill-gated" that makes it so that anyone who doesn't already have those skills has a garbage experience."

Boom, spot on. No-skill gate. That's for the talented moc builders.
Lego is for everyone to enjoy through the years.

The ultimate goal with ANY Lego set is to NOT keep it as is, but as you gain building experience you're supposed to take apart the model and build something new.
That's why no glue like a traditional model kit.
They're first and foremost building blocks. Not a model kit to cut, sand, prime, paint and glue.

@PurpleDave said:
" @mhehir:
Different materials certainly had different mechanical properties. ABS was strong, PC was more prone to cracking (especially if exposed to extreme temperature changes while built), and PE is flexible. Different colors...not so much, I'd say. The only time we've heard of where color was critical to the mechanical peformance of a part was the Mixel joints (more specifically, the Mixel sockets). The exterior of the sockets had to fit within system but combined with an existing towball design so they could expand the range of parts that could be used for that half of the assembly. This resulted in the socket walls being rather thin. They also needed to be stiff enough to be able to maintain poses even after rough play, so the tolerances on these parts was razor thin compared to, say, a basic 2x4 brick. What they said was that changing the color affected how the joints performed.

I don't remember if specific issues were cited, but it could have resulted in joints that were too loose with one color, or that were too tight with another. Some colors may have been so tight, or so much less durable, that the sockets would crack open, which is the worst possible outcome. We've seen one of the Mixel ball joints get recolored, but only to the only other color that's ever been approved for use in any Mixel joint element. We've never seen the sockets themselves get recolored, not even to the other shade of bley (though we have seen proof that one Mixel socket got produced in reddish-brown. It's just never been released in any sets in that color."

I would *love* to find a resource that had more detail about the specific dyes that LEGO uses, and how they interact with the plastic. A long time ago, my wife worked with someone who worked on the infamous dark red dye, and while I remember their frustration when the resulting bricks were more brittle than they expected, I don't remember exactly why. (I asked my wife, and she doesn't remember either, and she's kind of confused about why I even care! I'm like... Okay, I'm not really sure why I care either. It's just like, when you notice that little injection molding pip on the side of *some* 1x1 tiles, but not all of them, don't you want to understand why they can't just use the mold that doesn't produce visible pip marks? I guess that either makes sense, or it doesn't... )

@talarion:
It's important to remember that not every adult who finds an expensive D2C set appealing is going to be an experienced adult. Especially with licensed themes that have very limited range, that may be someone's first LEGO set. I know I've read at least one comment where it was said they design with this probability in mind.

@crazylegoman said:
"What's the joke with the pink "brain" inside Brickheadz? Brains are gray."

Brains are typically depicted as pink in cartoons, though. Don't know why, but they are.

I miss the "like and subscribe."

Now, I feel lost and alone.

I think telling us to check out your tubeside is a bit too familiar. There are doctors for that.

@talarion said:
"I understand they have their data showing that the building experience is better this way. Still, I find it ridiculous in sets that are CLEARLY geared towards adults. It's specially noticeable in sets that are mostly black and make extensive use of technic pins (the Mercedes F1 racer or the Dune ornithopter come to mind). The final display model looks terrible imo, because the pins are really out of place.

Do they really think that people spending upwards of $200, $300 or $400 dollars need to have certain parts in blue or red so that they don't confuse them? "

In addition to what @PurpleDave mentioned above about even those more expensive sets potentially being built by someone less experienced, with "color-locked" Technic parts like that one of the considerations is the system as a whole—after all, regardless of what set parts originate from there's going to be people who take them apart and mix them with their other parts. So for easily confused parts like pins and axles, having fewer colors overall makes it less likely for people to have to measure them all individually or test whether each one has friction or not.

@poshhammer: I hadn't really noticed, when building 21345, that the filler bricks stuck to the colors of the stripe. Very nice touch!

@legoDad42 said:
"The ultimate goal with ANY Lego set is to NOT keep it as is, but as you gain building experience you're supposed to take apart the model and build something new.
That's why no glue like a traditional model kit.
They're first and foremost building blocks. Not a model kit to cut, sand, prime, paint and glue."

After all, the reason the villain of TLM was so bad was because he wanted to use the Kragle to "make everything how it should be. Permanently."

I do like these articles... but I feel like I'm always late to the party, spread 100+ comments by the time I read it!

My 2 cents, I very much agree that colour locking technic pins so that eg black 2l are always a certain friction level makes absolute sense, but refusing to use more than one colour for an element does not... e.g if there are no current 2l pins produced in light grey, there should be nothing to prevent a designer introducing them.

And secondly, I very much support Lego sets being easier than they were in the 80s and 90s. There are all sorts of ways you can make the build harder if you like (tear out every other instruction page, mix the bags before starting, tie one arm behind your back, wear someone else's glasses...) but no ways to make the build easier if you find it hard!

I will agree though that a rainbow of colours makes it harder to moc from one set alone, but this is where I'd really like to see some info on what most Lego buyers do. Do they build a set once and display it? Build it repeatedly but keep it as a set? Moc from one set at a time? I would guess that the Lego group do this kind of research, and decide that it's better (or at least more profitable...) to prioritise first time builders of the set vs people wanting to moc it. It would be interesting to see the data behind that decision....

@poshhammer said:
" @yellowcastle said:
" @poshhammer - thank you for the great interaction. It’s appreciated. The topic, though, is a bit too small, imo.

I suspect that most of us clearly understood why it was being done and have just learned to accept it, whether we like it or not. My preference would have been for you to go “harder to the paint” here and simply discuss the dumbing down of builds as a whole by LEGO. Then we could have expanded away from filler bricks and talked about numbered bags, bazillion step instruction books, etc.

I don’t mind differently colored filler bricks nor do I look forward to them. So long as they get hidden, they rarely impact my experience. I do like the Brickheadz brains, though. :o)"

That could be one for a future topic, absolutely, but I don't think you will like my take on it... ;)"

Heh. Before anyone accuses Lego of dumbing down the building experience: it absolutely is not. Sets these days are way more complex and interesting to build than they were 20 to 30 years ago. Compare Technic or Model team sets to today's Technic and Creator/Icons offerings. The number of new parts that allow different building techniques that push the limits blows my mind.

The trade-off of more complex sets is that some steps need to be broken down further so that everyone can have a chance at understanding them. If each step of a Technic set required multiples of 20 different elements all at once like they did in the 90s then a lot of people would be in real trouble and sets would be left half-built. Lego's priority here is to reduce frustration for the largest part of its customer base. It's not to pander to the relative handful of AFOLs who don't appreciate that they aren't the only customers out there and get angry at the smallest problem.

If you want a set to be more difficult, nobody is stopping you from changing up the process to suit your preference. Try emptying all 2000 pieces from their bags all at once. Try treating multiple pages as one step. Try replacing all the colourful parts with matching single-colour substitutes. BE CREATIVE.

If you can't draw an ounce of your own creativity from your grey matter, then perhaps having sets made easier to build is an appropriate measure.

For those espousing the notion that all sets are meant to be taken apart and built into something new, please note that this is NOT the only way folks collect LEGO and is a myopic and exclusionary take. If I wanted to make and design all my own sets, I wouldn’t be paying these ridiculous premiums on licensed sets. Please remember that what is true to some of us is not always true to the rest.

Brick_Master said: "And secondly, I very much support Lego sets being easier than they were in the 80s and 90s. There are all sorts of ways you can make the build harder if you like (tear out every other instruction page, mix the bags before starting, tie one arm behind your back, wear someone else's glasses...) but no ways to make the build easier if you find it hard! "

As someone with limited use of his left hand, (and no real use at all for a few months after my stroke), I can attest that one-handed building is a real challenge. There's a reason the first two sets I got after the stroke were 4+ sets (10767 and 70821), after all.

@yellowcastle said:
"For those espousing the notion that all sets are meant to be taken apart and built into something new, please note that this is NOT the only way folks collect LEGO and is a myopic and exclusionary take. If I wanted to make and design all my own sets, I wouldn’t be paying these ridiculous premiums on licensed sets. Please remember that what is true to some of us is not always true to the rest."

For those espousing the notion that all sets are only meant to be built as their intended model and never rebuilt into something new, please note that this is NOT the only way folks collect LEGO and is a myopic and exclusionary take. If I wanted to spend ridiculous sums of money on static single use display pieces I would be buying Hot Toys or Sideshow statues and not brick based building sets. Please remember that what is true to some of us is not always true to the rest.

Sorry, I had to. :(

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I feel like there's some middle ground here. It doesn't have to be one side entirely at the expense entirely of the other.

A more harmonious filler palette, or maybe a filler palette that is shared across an entire theme, so that those with smaller/more focused collections have greater options for MOC building [should they so choose to do so!] with their limited supply of bricks, could still facilitate an easier building experience for everyone.

Personally, I'm okay with the Technic pin/axle situation. I don't always love the brightly color pins showing thru, but as someone who started with Technic in the 90s, I'm more for function over form in the Technic landscape. Technic can be a little ugly if it performs an interesting function.

"Color-vomit" on the other hand, is intensely frustrating for me. When I take a set apart, to use for something else, and end up with 3 green pieces, 2 pink, 4 purple, 7 yellow, etc etc when the bulk of the exposed pieces are in another color altogether ... is frustrating in that I'm going to have limited use for those color/pieces in the limited supply, or if I'm just sorting the pieces its going to compound the time to sort/put away the pieces.

"Well, sadly, we are all stupid. All this is backed up by extensive user research and observation,"

That is one of the best quotes I've seen in a long time! :)))

Dune Ornithropter for example should have been less colorful. What do you do with the extra 5-10 minutes you save not looking for those grey or black pieces? Maybe you spend them looking at that color vomit on youe shelf when the set is ready... The building proces is a journey, it SHOULD last a little longer.

@aquarian said:
"Dune Ornithropter for example should have been less colorful. What do you do with the extra 5-10 minutes you save not looking for those grey or black pieces? Maybe you spend them looking at that color vomit on youe shelf when the set is ready... The building proces is a journey, it SHOULD last a little longer."

Dune Ornithropter owner here. I built the thing with black pieces instead of the red, just because of all the backlash that LEGO got for this colour choice, and to see if all the angry AFOLs would be right. Had to rebuild it as planned because I thought it looked too boring with black only.

Just an example to show you that what the average AFOL who reads brickset prefers is not want everybody thinks. Me honestly thinks most people don't give a FF (I will leave it up to your imagination what this means).

Also, maybe I am the only one, but I just find colour vomit to be an incredibly disrespectful choice of words for what is essentially a decision made by people you do not even know.

@AustinPowers said:
"When I read a statement like this I wonder

a) how LEGO economically survived the Eighties and

b) how we as kids managed to enjoy building with LEGO as much as we did and for as long as we did. "

The shape palette overall in the 80ies was less different bricks, than there is active headgear elements only in today’s portfolio.
In the 80ies you had red, white, blue, yellow, black and grey to build from, with occasional green plate (I owned ten green elements as a kid), and brown for a broom or a spear, and four trans colors until M-Tron showed up.
Compare that to today, where each of the colors has a dark, bright, medium shade, a bazillion different pieces, and much more pieces per set than back then, and it should be blatantly obvious.

According to Brickset, I own 479 Sets from the sweetspot 80ies to 90ies, and I only have 65700 bricks. That’s 100 average 30 Bucks sets TODAY!

Big factor in my opinion is the lack of internet, and thus the lack of a platform where one could whine and complain. There is no data how the 80ies kids found the LEGO experience, but our own memory.

Also, also it’s 2024, that’s the world we live in. Most people find sitting thru Lord of the Rings a real commitment, but watching 30 second TikToks for 3 hours is just fine.
LEGO has to adjust to that world…

I have been building with Lego for 50 years; I like to think I'm pretty good at it. Yet I still make mistakes occasionally, often due to overconfidence. There are so many parts with various curves and angles that look similar. I don't think the instructions are overly simplified- anyone new to Lego could find it bewildering to add a dozen or more parts, many with left and right versions, in a single step.
I like the colorful bricks hidden inside builds. Those who complain that it makes them useless for MOCs just lack imagination, IMO. I'm sure most of us have many more than just one set.