Forthcoming change to 18+ set instruction covers

At least it’s not an ugly render, I guess.

I guess it makes sense, a lot of ink goes on these and they wouldn't want much ink getting onto the parts bags where they could impact the parts from the set.

I'd imagine it uses a lot less ink, too. That's got to be cheaper and less resource intensive.

I'm all for the paper bags but I am pretty sure that no one really cares how a little bit of ink can rub on the bags which if someone did care could be removed with rubbing alcohol. It seems like an excuse to not have to design the instruction covers anymore which is okay, but it seems like Lego is just making excuses for why.

Less ink is more environmentally friendly and more economical as well. I fully anticipate LEGO to pass on that savings to the consumer. NOT.

Oh boy, sure wouldn't want to get any smudges on those precious paper bags that are supposed to be recycled anyways...

How come their litho process doesn't use a sealant?

Boo

I really would prefere to have the instructions in a thin plastic wrap that protects them from the elements and transportation than to see yet another theme with a bland cover without any artwork. Of course the main reason is that white background is cheaper than a black one, but no one asked them to pick all black in the first place. The most wear is still on the cardboard boxes and not on the instructions during handling so that p

Should have just continued using the plastic bags...

Lame excuse to save (a lot of) money on ink.

At least it's not as badly rendered as the other sets.

They're doing the right thing, saving ink which is environmentally helpful, for the wrong reason: so the paper-based bags is not impacted by potential ink marks caused by friction.

The tail is wagging the dog at Lego headquarters.

So it's too hard to put the manual into something called envelope, which is also made of paper. But I guess TLG wants to avoid having to raise the prices for the sets again because of this because they are "putting the customers first."

Now if only they fix the render on dark color bricks. Other than black, which uses white as it's contrast color, dark colored bricks use black as their contrast color. This is a major pain as some like dark blue and dark brown it is nearly impossible to see the contrast. I don't know why white can't be used on these on colors.

@HandPositions said:
"At least it’s not an ugly render, I guess."
In my ten years of collecting LEGO I have yet to see anyone display their collection of instructions.

In a few years, there will be no paper instructions. It makes no sense to continue producing them, neither environmentally nor economically. I have spoken.

@FARLANDER said:
"In a few years, there will be no paper instructions. It makes no sense to continue producing them, neither environmentally nor economically. I have spoken."

If this happens, I may stop buying LEGO. Printed instructions for a toy you have to build are superior to digital ones in every meaningful, useful way.

@pharmjod said:
" @FARLANDER said:
"In a few years, there will be no paper instructions. It makes no sense to continue producing them, neither environmentally nor economically. I have spoken."

If this happens, I may stop buying LEGO. Printed instructions for a toy you have to build are superior to digital ones in every meaningful, useful way."

I agree The idea lego has thrown around about instructions going digital is stupid. Do they think that all 3, 5 or 10 year olds have access to a digital device to build their sets? Also trying to build a set off a small image on a smart phone sounds ridiculous. If Lego is serious about instructions going fully digital, it might be their worst idea to date.

The white/light background instructions are so much easier to see than the dark/black background instructions.

Instruction ink???
On MY paper LEGO bags???
It's more likely than you think ...

At least, in this statement, LEGO didn't do the whole "we are environmentally friendly" song and dance again. Their bricks are still plastic no matter what the bags or instructions are made of, let's just call a space a spade and not fawn over the emperor's acrylonitrile butadiene styrene clothes.

But hey, might as well give them a cookie and a pat on the back for this bit.

@pharmjod said:
" @FARLANDER said:
"In a few years, there will be no paper instructions. It makes no sense to continue producing them, neither environmentally nor economically. I have spoken."

If this happens, I may stop buying LEGO. Printed instructions for a toy you have to build are superior to digital ones in every meaningful, useful way."

Definitely: no printed instructions - no product. If they want to save on instructions, they could come up with a rule that each step will add at least 5 new parts. That should cut the instructions size by half at least.

@HandPositions said:
"At least it’s not an ugly render, I guess."

I can’t tell if you are joking, but they are ugly renders as well. The new instructions are very ugly and clearly made with a template with maybe a human doing a final repositioning of the image. I don’t think the process is wrong but somehow they need to tweak it because right now the image is lifeless.

I actually don’t really care about how the instructions look, but the contrast between the new ones VS nicer ones is pretty funny. Compare 76912 and 75980 as an example. I just picked those because they are in front of me.

I hope this means the inside will be light colored as well. I always found it incredibly hard to see the pieces with the black background, and even my family commented on how depressing the black instructions looked.

I built the 10497 Galaxy Explorer alternate builds using my smartphone. Not quite as bad as I'd feared, but still not fun.
If they stop including paper instructions, my LEGO spending will go WAY down.

This doesn't seem like an honest reason behind the change, as newer sets such as 10305 Lion Knights' Castle have the instruction book sealed in a cardboard envelope. I thought that was a great sustainable way to improve on the plastic-wrapped books of the last few years, while still protecting the book from wrinkles and tears in the box. If they continued packaging them this way, no rubbing on the bags...

"The redesign of building instruction covers is connected to our move to paper-based bags in our boxes. A lighter background print ensures that we maintain our very high quality standards. In this case, that the visual appearance of the paper-based bags is not impacted by potential ink marks caused by friction between building instructions and bags during transportation."

I'm calling BS on this. Printers have been using aqueous coating on paper for decades and so has Lego. There are also soy based inks instead of oil based. They're just trying to save money that will not go back to the customer. I hate corporations for the lies they tell. If I wanted to be lied to I'd talk to a politician.

They do, it's called aqueous coating and has been used by printers for decades.

I guess it makes sense, oh wait it's not. Who care if there are ink skid marks on the bag you'll recycle a second later.

Having said that, the design of the cover is also not important.

The new instructions look so boring.

Like... what’s more interesting? A building in the void, or a building surrounded by a nice background?

It is weird that they went with this reason instead of, y'know, just not wasting ludicrous quantities of ink. Though I do think that full box art on the instructions with background and everything was better than either plain black or plain white in appearance, we've already lost that so whether the background is white or black doesnt really matter to me.

Also, black backgrounds on the actual instruction pages always sucked and made them harder to read (not just from obscuring darker pieces, but also from glare reflecting off the pages), so hopefully this means they're finally fixing that.

Good, Maybe the pages will be white as well; then I'd be able to tell brown from black and dk grey from dk tan and so forth...

In regards to the instruction books themselves; how about having more than one step or brick assembled per page. Instructions for sets in the past were more challenging. Required thought to determine the differences, now it is simply following instructions.

@pharmjod said:
" @FARLANDER said:
"In a few years, there will be no paper instructions. It makes no sense to continue producing them, neither environmentally nor economically. I have spoken."

If this happens, I may stop buying LEGO. Printed instructions for a toy you have to build are superior to digital ones in every meaningful, useful way."

Theres no way in heck I'm looking at a screen to build my Lego. None.

I love criticizing TLG for everything they do as much as any AFOL, but after reading the comments above, it's getting a bit ridiculous.

But they are ok with scratches on actual product? Way too many window pieces came prescratched in my recent sets...

@pharmjod said:
" @FARLANDER said:
"In a few years, there will be no paper instructions. It makes no sense to continue producing them, neither environmentally nor economically. I have spoken."

If this happens, I may stop buying LEGO. Printed instructions for a toy you have to build are superior to digital ones in every meaningful, useful way."

I stare at a screen too often the way it is. I do Lego as a break from that.

Like others have pointed out, what ever happened to putting the instructions in envelopes? Was that not effective at preventing the ink from the instructions getting on everything else or something...? (Yes, I'm being facetious in order to make a point.)

@Tupperfan said:
"I love criticizing TLG for everything they do as much as any AFOL, but after reading the comments above, it's getting a bit ridiculous."
I'm letting it slide in this case because TLG's reasoning itself is so... contrived, that it almost deserves ridicule.

@GusG said:
"Lame excuse to save (a lot of) money on ink."

I don't know if it's different at the scale LEGO must buy at, but I've been purchasing commercial print for 20 years and (apart from using Pantone or metallics) ink is never a cost factor.

I suspect they're reducing the paper weight and don't want the rich black seeping through thinner stock.

Yeah... sorry, not buying that explanation.
Nice try lego. Keep trying to act like you actually care about quality whilst actually cutting corners.
It worked so well for the transparant plastics. Barely noticable!!!!
Bonus points for having already done it in the 'cheap' sets and now just giving a statement because it'll be in their oh so precious 'premium' price stuff as well. At this point it feels more like an attempt to save their 'premium product' image before anyone could think it's... you know. Cost cutting.

At least it might be okay for the environment in a different way than they apparently accounted for.

I’m gonna echo the thoughts of others just to add another name on that list, I would hate for digital instructions to replace paper ones. My buying would drop even more than it’s being forced to thanks to the price hikes.

And second, if they really want to be eco friendly, stop dumbing down the instructions so much. When there’s 3-5 steps where you only put one piece on per step is beyond ridiculous & incredibly wasteful.

I just heard a collective sigh of relief from garbage men all around the world. The Lego parts bags in the recycling bin won’t have smudges on them.

I don't see how much smudge there can be when a lot of instructions booklet are in a bag for the adults set.
Seems not a real reason. Cost is much more believable.

Here's a thought: Why not get rid of those horrid black boxes?

They detract from the charm of many sets and make others such as the Crocodile Locomotive less visually appealing. No one asked for them and very few people like them.
Great lines like the modular buildings or Winter Village now always have to be presented at night time, and either way make what should be fun, bright and happy sets look dark and foreboding.

I am curious what the problem was with regular light blue instruction books?? I say get rid of all the stupid pink/purple, green, black and white instructions and just go back to sky blue for all sets. You could see the parts, it was visually appealing but not too colourful or in your face, and wouldn't take up much ink (especially if it was standardised across all themes)

@Brickchap said:
"Here's a thought: Why not get rid of those horrid black boxes?

They detract from the charm of many sets and make others such as the Crocodile Locomotive less visually appealing. No one asked for them and very few people like them.
Great lines like the modular buildings or Winter Village now always have to be presented at night time, and either way make what should be fun, bright and happy sets look dark and foreboding.

I am curious what the problem was with regular light blue instruction books?? I say get rid of all the stupid pink/purple, green, black and white instructions and just go back to sky blue for all sets. You could see the parts, it was visually appealing but not too colourful or in your face, and wouldn't take up much ink (especially if it was standardised across all themes)"

seconded! The 18+ boxes are not only joyless to look at, they also take a lot of ink presumably. Because color, light tinges and backgrounds are just too childlike for our children's building toy. No, these are big boy sets for adults! And we all know adults like things best if they're in a featureless black void. Especially ones buying lego. They sure love their drabness.

"Very high quality standards"?

ROFL

And what BS reasoning? The bags normally get thrown away instantly. Who would care about some potential black markings anyway?

At least it saves on black ink, making it both cheaper to produce (I guess the main real reason for the switch) and potentially better for the environment (always a nice to have bonus).

Tldr: LEGO now even saves on the effort to design nice instruction booklet covers. Then again, it's only fitting, since they don't spend any effort on those black boxes either. Here's an idea, why not make the boxes white too. Will save even more money, increase the profit margins further and help the boss with advancing his collection of Ferraris.

@FARLANDER said:
"In a few years, there will be no paper instructions. It makes no sense to continue producing them, neither environmentally nor economically. I have spoken."

How does this help the environment when instead you have all the energy needed to have an iPad screen on all the time to read instructions, and then have to stop when the battery dies etc?

No problem with the colour of instruction manuals (although darker will use less battery on a screen), but I have a problem with continued attempts to get rid of physical instruction manuals.

worried about ink rubbing off onto paper bags that will be going into recycling but okay with the sticker sheet and said instruction book being mangled......

@ZZJHONS said:
"I have been in a talk from Lego about this, the problem it's not so much having stains in other paper bags, it's the erosion that the paper bags do to the cover of the instructions, it leaves too many marks/lines if all the cover uses ink. And so the front page it's not nice when you open the set. "
But of course it is very nice to open the box and find a crinkled and sometimes torn instruction manual and a sticker sheet with crinkles so that the first stickers are already peeling off. Because that's how most of my instruction manuals arrived lately.

"Very high quality standards" indeed, not.

personally, I don't really care what the background colour is on the instructions, so long as they are clear and legible.
However, I will parrot those here that will drop my rather expensive Lego habit if they do away with physical instructions.
I have no desire to have to focus on a screen for what is meant to be my relaxation time.

"the visual appearance of the paper-based bags is not impacted by potential ink marks caused by friction between building instructions and bags during transportation"

This is utter BS.
And IF it was a real problem, it would be easily solvable by putting the instructions inside cardboard sleeves across the line instead of just in bigger sets.
No. The real reason LEGO is doing this is because the garbage-looking white instructions are cheaper to print. That's it.
It's cost-cutting and nothing else.

@GBP_Chris said:
" ...
Their bricks are still plastic no matter what the bags or instructions are made of,
..."

Still not getting the difference between using plastic for long time durable use
and using it for one-time only disposable and largely not recyclable packaging, are we?

A plastic product based company that keeps encouraging people to buy and buy, yet talking about environmental friendliness... ha ha ha...

I would be extremely disappointed if LEGO stopped providing printed instructions. They are infinitely easier to use than digital instructions. It would probably all but end my LEGO purchases except for the sets I most desperately need to get. I tried digital instructions with the sets sold on Bricklink, as well as a custom MOC I paid a huge amount for, and hated them.

Printed instructions are essential.

No real world instructions? No.
Without physical instructions INCLUDED IN THE BOX the product is NOT complete.
If you throw away or recycle your instructions, that's fine, that's your decision but LEGO choosing not to include them in the first place is unacceptable to me and I will stop buying their products as a result.

Why aren't they honest? If it were for environmental reasons that they stopped using black ink, they would have promoted that. Now there's the ridiculous excuse of contaminating the white boxes. I thought that the instrucstions are already protected in larger sets?
If they stop producing printed instructions, then that's one more reason to stop buying all the new sets, since I have plenty of parts already. And I absolutely hate to be forced to use a screen to be able to "have a relaxed build to get away from everyday screen work".
Edit: and please save costs by reducing the amount of building steps.