Nice graphs... Man Jack Stone really was horrible the more I look at it...

Something in me just loves seeing the silly grass-was-greener, not-like-when-I-was-young attitudes tested with actual facts.
My golden age was full of special pieces making up things like spaceships and Blacktron bases! Sure, there are a lot of specialised pieces in Star Wars sets now, but I'm usually quite impressed at how much the designers achieve before they have to resort to them.

LOL at calling the Jack Stone line an "appalling monstrosity". I sort of wonder what Lego was thinking, during that time of the business's history. Because things like Jack Stone didn't come about by accident, you know. A lot of people had to sit down and actually say, "Yeah, this is gonna be great!" Given how long the line lasted, I'd be guessing that it wasn't one of the more successful ones. The entire company just lost itself in the late 90s/early 00s, didn't it?

I disagree with his is method of defining what it means to be a "specialty brick". A specialty brick is not defined as how many sets the piece is in but instead if the piece can be used in trans-theme sets. For example, a large castle tower piece requires a lot more creativity to use when building a motorcycle than say a 1 x 2 piece. The 1 x 2 piece is non specialized and can be used to build items in a different theme and the tower piece is very much intended to be part of a castle. (Other uses just look ridiculous (see the Castle Cavalry set from the Lego movie for example). The power piece is specialized and the 1 x 2 piece is not. I recognize that this is harder to measure but then again this topic is subjective.

Hi durazno33, I also replied to your comment on my blog post, but I do already actually mention what you point out as something worth looking at in my conclusions :)

@durazno33: but this could be measured exactly as Big Sal suggests in his posting, i.e., by counting how often a specific brick appears 'outside' its theme (or to make it easier: in how many different themes does a brick appear in?). It's more work to evaluate (nothing I'd wanted to do manually), but should give a better idea.
It seems something like this will happen in Part 3 (or 4).

Hey Big_Sal, I just want to say that I really appreciate your work on this subject. I get really tired of seeing so many complaints about most pieces being specialized these days. Most of them I see are from people who haven't bought a Lego set in decades and have no place making such claims, but even on major sites like this I sometimes see that attitude tossed around. For me, specialized pieces only increase my creativity; they don't stifle it. You only have to see that amazing spaceship on Flickr some dude (can't remember his Flickr name) built using the huge boat piece from 70006 to realize the only limit is your own imagination.

Jack Stone sets were good for the chrome pieces. Wish LEGO came back with chrome instead of the flat silver. Even if it chipped over time.
Missed the designs of the early 90's Town, Model Team, Technic. Pretty much my MOC style :)

Of course you guys don't like JS , it wasn't designed with AFOLs in mind. It was great for the target audience of very young children , and that's all it aimed to do.

I was talking with a co-worker whose son is just a bit too young for regular Lego sets. Jack Stone would be perfect. As he grows he can discard the figs and add to his collection. Hmnicoll is correct: JS wasn't an AFOL product line. It's the same thing with Friends and those ugly figs. But girls like them and are building with them, so what's the problem? I didn't understand Friends at first. I thought that all they needed to do was add more female figs to traditional sets (and I still think that). But I get it now. And so do the kids. That is what matters.

@hmnicoll I agree with what Lego was trying to do with Jack Stone, but I think it failed to accomplish that goal. IMO, the new Junior sets out these days succeed where JS failed. Of course, people still complain about the Junior sets too, which makes little sense to me considering the targeted age group...

@ kfr "or to make it easier: in how many different themes does a brick appear in?"

That would be significantly easier - I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it! Thanks!

As pointed out in the blog post - which I think is really the most salient point - there can never be an accurate delineation between what constitutes a "basic" piece and constitutes a "specialised" piece anyway. And since I have Brothers Brick's RSS...I think that no piece is too "specialised" for a creative builder.

For the Juniors sets, they actually have more basic bricks than any other theme-- that just tends to be ignored because of the car base and huge walls. I actually would love to have some of those Juniors baseplates unprinted, that would be much handier than actual baseplates for building a quick house.

If you look at how many themes a part has appeared in, in principle you could do that for any part ever released. But that would have implications for data normalization (e.g., life span of a part vs. of themes during that time etc.). I'm not sure you want to go there...

Jack stone had an Octan vehicle, so that's something. But Galidor.........I have nothing good to say about that.

I think Jack Stone gets a bit of a bad rap. The sets weren't that good, but it has to be remembered that Jack Stone was supposed to be an "intermediate theme" between Duplo and System, the same as Fabuland. Fabuland also included a lot of specialized and cartoonishly stylized pieces — it's just the difference between those parts being stylized for a cute, old-timey look and a cool, futuristic look. So it's odd that Fabuland is so beloved by AFOLs (even if only as a novelty) and Jack Stone is pointed out as an example of everything wrong with LEGO in the late 90s and early 2000s.

If I had to pick a theme that I thought was bloated with overspecialized parts, it would be a theme that's oddly beloved by some AFOLs — Rock Raiders. Furthermore, unlike its distant successor, Power Miners, a lot of its specialized parts didn't result in creative new building opportunities. The drill and wheel pieces from Rock Raiders were just big specialized hunk sof plastic, while the ones from Power Miners were designed to allow for interesting and creative gear functions. All Rock Raiders really had going for it was its color palette, which was gritty to the point of being unrealistic — real mining vehicles are usually brightly-colored, like construction vehicles, and this was what inspired the designers for the Power Miners theme. I won't deny that I liked Rock Raiders when I was a kid, but it doesn't really hold up in hindsight.

What I'm getting at with this is that the sets of the current Juniors theme are definitely executed way better than Jack Stone — but that's pretty much true if you compare ANY recent theme with a similar theme from the late 90s or early naughts. I know a lot of people from the BIONICLE forums I use would probably fight me to the death about this statement, but other than the largest BIONICLE sets like the 2001 Rahi (many of which were brilliant works of art and engineering that hold up to this day), several of the early BIONICLE sets were a lot like other sets of the time: revolutionary, but rudimentary, and deriving a lot of their charm from specialized parts that failed to demonstrate long-term usefulness.

Whenever I read about LEGO sets today being too specialized, I know the article in question is written by someone who either has not owned a LEGO set for many decades or who has never known LEGO to be anything other than basic brick buckets, and is bewildered to see kids going crazy over sets that are NOT basic brick buckets. It's selective memory at its finest.

ah, i had some of the Jack Stone sets when i was a lad :P

I can imagine you saying "Back in my day it was all basic bricks!" :P

durazno33 wrote "the tower piece is very much intended to be part of a castle. (Other uses just look ridiculous (see the Castle Cavalry set from the Lego movie for example)."

Possibly, but some of the best Blacktron and Futuron sets (see 6954 and 6925) used the castle wall corners to great effect. Meanwhile, when Star Wars launched, I would never have thought of how common the various droid arms and torsos would be, and how many uses they'd find. Specialised really is in the eye of the beholder, it seems.

Very interesting article, but I'd like to read more examples regarding the rare parts (regarding shape AND color, but without considering printed minifig parts/bodies). I already found some interesting parts on my own, e.g. 71972 which only appears in set 5563. Or part 2826, which appears in 3 sets but in different colors for each set. Not to forget about the wheels and doors that only appear in sets 5563/5571, red 12V train motors, train wheels from set 7750, ...
Any more examples similar to these ones?

@Huw: LOL!!

Luxury. I had to get up in the morning at 10 o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work 29 hours a day down mill and pay the mill owner for permission to work! On top o' that, we 'ad nothin' but sticks, rusty nails and mega blocks to play with! I used to dream of basic bricks! But you know, we were happy in those days. If you tried to tell the KFOLs of today that, they wouldn't believe you.

I LOVE Monty Python.

Four Yorkshiremen Sketch (look it up, its great!) inspired hilarity aside, I think Jack Stone failed because sets limited creativity to a high degree. The figures were also horrid. The parts were too specialized and juniorized to allow for clever alternate models or later parts use. Granted, If you gave any part (Jack Stone, Fabuland or even Duplo) to Pete Reid, he could probably build a masterpiece around it, but most of those large Juniorized parts languish in the bottoms of Lego bins that contain the hard-to-sort pieces.

Specialized is a highly relative term though. Some "specialized" parts, like the ice cream scoops piece, have multiple innovative uses (smoke plumes, building decoration, sweet creamy minifigure-scale confectionary, flick-fire missile warhead, etc.) The tow-trunk canopy from the article, in its non-printed form anyway, has been used to great effect on trains ( 7939 ), boats ( 7944 , 7046 , 7045 ), helicopters ( 60010 ) and even a cable car ( 4852 ). It is even used this year in set 60064 Arctic Supply Plane as the cab of a snow cat. I guess this could be an argument for stickers over printing in some cases... The new juniors sets are fun because they have many original bricks, true minifigs, and some big parts. Traditional parts do not suffer at the expense of huge juniorized pieces like in Jack Stone, they are enhanced by a few juniorized parts like the new ramp.

A Lego nightmare!

But is the whole argument misinterpreted though? Are people really saying pieces are specialized or the sets are specialized? I mean look at the back of a LEGO box in the 80's it was loaded with alternative designs. Now you build the model on the box, and give no hints to the possibilities in the set to build others things, something LEGO also helped with when they did their own Idea books (even with stickers). That also allowed LEGO to come up with the basic and expert building sets, many of which could construct houses and cars, and a windmill (like 730-2 ) which had more variety of parts than the 'basic brick' sets they have designed today (IMO). I think with the intro of I think the 3 or 4th LEGO SW line they really moved away from Alt designs being shown, which gives the feeling of specialized sets, not parts.
I will say that with the overwhelming number of parts to design with it throws me for a loop when building MOC due to selection (kid in the candy store syndrome). I know I am a bit simple like that I guess, but when it comes to budgets it frustrates me building something then find a better part for that build AFTER I have spent to build already (and not all of us use CAD programs).

Great post, Aanchir!
When buying bulk Lego, I give away most of the Jack Stone parts. They are indeed ideal for Lego beginners, extremly easy to build vehicles. Not much unlike the new Junior sets. For MOCs, there are indeed very few useful pieces, the chrome ones were pointed out, but that is about it.

And the Jack Stone pieces were introduced into regular sets – see, for example, Alpha Team Mission Deep Sea.

^True. I have two of the rotor blade thingies from a CITY helicopter I had two of in '07. And one of the windows is actually quite useful- set designers have used it in trains, a helicopter, a cable car, and a snowcat to say the least. Another Jack Stone window was used in Bounty Hunter Pursuit. I've also found those Technic car attachments, wheels, light strips, helicopter landing pads, and tailfins introduced in JS in quite a few other sets. (Look in the "Jack Stone" pictures in the database here to see the parts I mean.)

EDIT: That snowcat windshield hasn't actually been in any JS sets!

I loved Jack Stone when I was little but hopefully I've matured by now. These days it's all BIONICLE so I'm not sure what that means. :)

I liked Jack Stone A LOT. I only have 5-6 of the first sets though. Oh and Galidor LOOKED cool but I only had a Happy Meal toy lol.