Nice article, however, if I wanted to know this information, I could've also just taken a look at this graph (which it has for all parts): http://rebrickable.com/parts/3001

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice article, but these type of articles (explaining statistics in text) always seem a bit pointless to me. Not only Lego/Brickset related, but in general. Just my opinion though ;)

Nope. I don't see a graph either. Didn't know there was supposed to be a graph...

^^ It is showing up in Firefox, but not Chrome or Safari for me...

Great analysis! I'm glad that this is something others have noticed, although my personal observations have never been laser-focused on 2x4s but more on all sizes of bricks.

One of my real criticisms with LEGO sets over the past several years has been how they've gotten more detailed and intricate yes, but in the process they've become hollow and fragile. There seems to be a little too much of the building style of slapping plates over a Technic framework for larger structures and vehicles.

Sure, this style keeps the weight of the finished toy down so that it's easier to play with or is more swooshable, and it MAY (although I seriously doubt it at this point) help keep material costs and final price-point lower, bit for me It creates a much less satisfying building experience. If I'm spending $120 on a LEGO set, I want it to feel like a hefty fistful of plastic instead of a large Fabergé egg.

Huw no i do not see the graf. Is there a problem on your end?

I don't see the graph in either Internet Explorer, Edge or Firefox. Curious. Nice article though.

I have to concur with @Legolijntje in that I'm not completely sure what the point of this article is. Still, thanks for writing it as I'm sure others will enjoy it.

There is a major flaw in the logic here. In 1994 there might have been 100 new sets while in 2015 there were like 700. There should be an average per set.

Interesting article, and it tends to support a feeling I've had for some time. I like to build MOCs, and thus I buy lots of pieces from the brick wall at the Lego Stores. I feel there are too many 2x4 bricks taking up slots on the brick walls. I rarely use 2x4s in my builds. Without doing an analysis like this, my contention was that Lego doesn't use many 2x4s in their official sets, so why put so many on the brick walls? Lego doesn't use them in their design, so why do they think AFOLs need them on the brick wall? I know, the brick wall is there for kids. But I think AFOLs buying parts for their MOCs drive a lot of the brick wall purchases. I wish they would assign pieces to the brick wall that were more in line with what AFOLs wanted.

^ The number of sets was included in the article. I was more interested in shwing how many 2x4s were made a year, not how many 2x4s were in each set.

Most of the sets I purchase have 2x4 bricks in them. So I'm a bit confused with the article as well?

I mean it's not the most popular piece at all true, but it's in nearly every set I open.

Great stuff. I just built 76050 and found a tan 2x4 and couldn't help but stop and say to myself "classic" as I held the brick up in the air. Ya I'm strange ;-)

@Huw - http://www.onlinecharttool.com/graph/image/56da6a476ad59 doesn't show here (in Chrome), nothing from that site does actually. Looks like charts can be exported as png, maybe that's a good workaround?

Neat little article, the 2x4 is really useful in buildings so I hope that it continues for a big while.

Fun article. i would love to see some sets with large numbers of 2by4's such as the sculptures. However it seems TLG has not done this in years now and I am not holding out much hope for this to happen but time will tell.

One thing this article doesn't address well is the proportion of 2x4 bricks overall. Sure, the statue of liberty has a zillion if them, but relativity few people have them. Also, a lot of people have creator buckets but these were excluded.

Another thing this article misses is sets older sets... Obviously the data is harder to find, but I think it's pretty clear that the 2x4 was supreme in older days when all structures were built with them. At some point models started being built out of 1x4s. It'd be cool if this article had looked into that transition further.

@Legolijntje - You're right, that link does have most or all of the same information, but I still appreciate this type of article for bringing in to my attention. YMMV, obviously, but I was glad to read it.

Nice effort, but the title is misleading - as your graph shows, the 2x4 isn't disappearing really. It's more the case of a "the emerging 2x4" as it was less used in the mid-nineties.

Besides, I like the point of 2x4's widely appearing because of juniorization. Totally makes sense. So while being hailed as a or THE Lego icon, its use is, at least in this special case and timeframe of th early noughties, not a good thing actually.

I think part of the point your trying to make and missed is about the percentages. What percent of sets are made of 2x4s and what percentage of released sets have 2x4s. That's the more interesting aspect and I think what is fueling people's perception of this. To do this properly you're going to need to go back farther, which means using Peeron's or Bricklink's parts database (both of which are reasonable accurate back to the 1970's).

Nice article, but it would be nice to see the same analysis but with the outliers (statue of liberty etc.) excluded. You did mention them, but the data might look quite different if each year a few exclusive sets skew the data. It's more of a matter of how much they are included in large sets.

Additionally, set size might matter. Last summer I've sorted the entire collection of a cousin of mine, most sets from 2004-2011. What I noticed was that around 2005, most sets were huge but hollow. The Dino Attack range were all huge vehicles, doubling in size for each price point. However, they were mostly frames with basic bricks on top.
Around 2010 everything felt... smaller. However, they were A) more parts intensive and B) using more snot. It felt like basic bricks were used more to fill in the inside of inner support structures.
Contrast these two building styles with nineties style builds. More studs on top building and moderate sets sizes. But the prices were higher. Only the largest sets were huge. This made it feel like everything was a relatively small set with loads of basic bricks. But they were actually comparable to the prices of Creator sets we have now.
Basic bricks intensity costs more. But due to rose tinted glasses people expect basic brick building to be used just as much, but with larger sets.

Personally, I think the point of just looking at 2x4 bricks is a bit biasing anyway. 2x2 bricks I saw more in the 2004-2012 collection. With older sets my personal experience is that sets after the mid-nineties simply used less plates of 1xX sizes. Just look at the build of the battrax from the late eighties to see what I mean.

I was personally surprised to see the 2x4 brick in ninjago sets. The samurai mech and Jay's storm fighter made use of them.

Sorry if I am a bit critical though. Comes with my job, so I can't really help it. The article is great. I just want to give my two cents too.

I have to say, I always let out a celebratory 'yes!' Whenever I come across this brick in a build..! It often crops up in very unusual places! :)

^^ Criticism is always welcome, and I knew that there would be complaints about this article as soon as I started writing it. There is just no way to please everyone without the article being the size of a small novel.

I have to admit that it wouldn't be my first choice for building structures either - I tend to go with the 1x? bricks more than the 2x? ones... though that's not to say there aren't situations where a quantity of 2x4s wouldn't be very useful indeed.

I love 2x4 it is very useful

I have to say, the opening sentence, "Ever since the days of Classic LEGO, it seems that the 2x4 has been on a decline, rarely appearing in sets outside of Creator buckets, and almost never in Licensed sets," had me expecting to read about 2x4s having been in constant decline, whereas the numbers and the graph show that things have fluctuated, and indeed climbed in recent years. Am I missing something?

^ No, that is the conclusion the evidence led to. The 2x4 really did almost disappear in the mid 2000s.

Makes me glad I picked up several hundred of them in light grey...

I don't use 2x4's a lot... but an interesting read nonetheless. Seems like Minecraft sets should be boosting a numbers a lot these days.

Very interesting read, thanks SprinkleOtter! Couldn't the idea of the 2x4 brick disappearing be caused by AFOLs generally buying sets that don't include them?

I'm with @catwrangler in that I mostly use 1x? bricks in my MOCs etc. However, thinking back to when I first had LEGO, which was around 1965-66, my brick collection consisted almost entirely of 2x4s and 2x2s. Where are they now?

Interesting article. Thanks.

@ Krahuq
That is a very possible hypothesis.

With the sheer number of new element designs released in the last several years its easy to see why the 2x4 brick is making less of an appearance. Very few sets now a days have the blocky feel that I remember from the 70s and 80s; and thus the decline in 2x4 and other regular bricks.

I still commend those artists and MOCers who still use regular block heavily.

Not that I notice these sort of things too often, but reading this article has made me realise that out of dozens of building instructions I've looked at over the years, I have noticed the decline of this wonderful brick. I associate the 2x4 as one of the most iconic of all Lego pieces, & like many I have a few of them. But I did get one in 75102 Poe's X-Wing Fighter in sand brown, which is a nice colour.

If the "dearth of 2x4s is easily attributed to the lack of set inventories for those years," then I wonder why the author used the Brickset database of inventories instead of one that is more complete for the earlier years? Still an interesting article though.

I liked the article. Just a note, without the graph I wouldn't have known how many 2x4's had been produced in 2000.

I've always suspected that the 2x4 brick was on the decline in sets as the years go by. I agree with woosterlegos that it's unfortunate that the 2x4 brick takes a lot of space on the PAB wall. Because of this, I have lots and lots of that brick (besides the Creator tubs). However, I find this brick useful for my building purposes. It's the same for plates: there's plentiful amount of plates on the PAB wall, too. I almost always buy plates.

Quick question, how many sets as a %age of the total sets released in any given year have a 2x4 brick?

The 2x4 brick and other basic bricks are very useful parts.
I would like to see basic bricks sets like 6177 was, or service packs including different basic bricks from the same color.
Current Classic creative boxes include too much of non-wanted colors, such as bright pink, dark pink, dark purple and lavander, which are mainly good for Friends-style MOCs. I don't want to buy bricks I never would use.

I have noticed lately that a lot of smaller sets seem to throw in at least one 2x4 brick, even if the build could have been completed without it. Possibly an unspoken nod to LEGO's roots?

@Yellow There was a time not too long ago, before Pick-A-Brick when LEGO sold packs of various size bricks in the same color. This was also the main way to get the mojority of bricks in sand red color (besides the Life On Mars sets). The color for some reason has never been fully utilized. I wish I had grabbed some of these at the time.

If I understand the article and graph correctly with my flu-filled head, what you are showing is the number of sets for each year that contain one or more 2x4 bricks, and the number of 2x4 bricks you would have if you bought one of each of those sets.
What would be more interesting I think is the percentage of sets each year that contain 2x4's, and the percentage of 2x4's in the inventories.

In the entire (released) Nexo Knights line-up, there are 3 2x4 bricks, 2 grey and 1 red. That's a great example of how there's really a dissappearing act going on.

All the more reason to collect the 2x4 in all it's colours, and the test bricks too

I'm personally disappointed with the JUNIORS range at the moment. I thought it was much better for kids with the older BASIC sets, with peg-figures and buildings based on 2-wide walls - with door and window parts to suit. Kids can quite intuitively build with these simple blocky parts, and hone their motor skills for smaller parts.

JUNIORS just relies too much on pre-fab large components to bulk up the size of models - all it does is teach kids to build what they're told and never vary from the instructions.

Yes, there are CREATOR buckets of basic bricks for that sort of play, but they're a mix of 1-wide and 2-wide bricks, and they don't seem all that well targetted. I'd be interested in CREATOR buckets of 1-wide bricks, and I think younger kids would be better served by 2-wide brick buckets.

Not too surprising to me. As the overall scale of LEGO models gets smaller and smaller to accommodate the ever-popular mini-figure, the relatively large 2x4 brick will be discarded in favor of plates and smaller bricks. Once you move away from mini-figure scale into model scale or "advanced buidlings", the the 2x4 is a very efficient piece to quickly build up the structure.

"The Green Brick Giant: There should be an average per set."
Good point. Maybe using median, eliminating the extrem Numbers some sets deliver?

Does the white architecture set include any?

@MorkMan: http://brickset.com/inventories/21050-1

Line graph w/the per set average - and the per set average by set size. Would've started with that data...and THEN written the article if it were me.

We're really trying to answer the question-is it being phased out of normal sized sets, say <1500pc or <500pc...or not.

TLG DID nearly disappeared in 200s so 2x4 brick being ABS heavy was not an exception i guess, rather than a omen to the fortunately avoided outcome

I was happily surprised to find a classic red 2x4 in the only Marvel set I own, Loki's Cosmic Cube Escape. I thought it was a nice inclusion.

As a kid in the 70's I never liked the 2x4 brick . I found it to clumsy and old fashion.