We have 5 Grandkids ranging from age 7 to 13 that include 4 boys and a girl. They, collectively, have probably 50 sets and a gazillion pieces. The days of Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toy, and Erector Sets are gone and every birthday and Christmas is celebrated with a new set of Legos. They're cool - I get it. I even have a Lego ship in a bottle that I got for Christmas last year.

Now I see a 5 foot long Titanic will sail into the US for real this time. Only 9,090 pieces to this bad boy. I noted it does not include a Lego Iceberg, Who's first in line?

Saw that one, too rich for me.

A comment i read: It'll be accurate, and if you drop it, it's still accurate

The price of that Lego model equates to the cost of a Third Class passage ticket on the Titanic (counting in the inflation rate); and we all know how well the Third Class (Steerage) passengers fared as versus the First and Second Class passenger did.

I guess I am truly a dinosaur. I thought the value of Legos was that kids could use their imaginations to create unique objects, now it seems that they are merely completing jigsaw puzzles. I know the cranes, bridges, and rocket gantries I made from my erector set were not to an instruction sheet.

Perhaps this explains some of what we are seeing in our youth?

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
I guess I am truly a dinosaur. I thought the value of Legos was that kids could use their imaginations to create unique objects, now it seems that they are merely completing jigsaw puzzles. I know the cranes, bridges, and rocket gantries I made from my erector set were not to an instruction sheet.

Perhaps this explains some of what we are seeing in our youth?

Nonsense. They’ve been making “you build it” sets since at least the 70’s and probably long before that. We take my 7 year old son to a used Lego store where you can buy gallon ziplock bags of random mixed pieces and he builds all manner of stuff, lately mostly space ships and lunar rover type vehicles. The few sets his grandparents bought him were assembled into what they were supposed to be with assistance and then were immediately cannibalized to make whatever he wanted. I largely suspect this to be mostly the case around the globe.

Also… You think kids today are fucked up because Legos come in sets? Couldn’t have anything to do with all the social programming at school? Is this comment meant to be serious and taken seriously?

I think kids (and the US economy as a whole) is messed up because this is the kind of money we expect to be able to spend for shits and giggles. That's why we can't afford to build anything here. Our standard of living is so high that unskilled labor is unaffordable.

There’s a big difference between sets today and the ones from the 70s. The sets today are more like 3D jig saw puzzles as they have mostly small specialty pieces that only seem to go together one way.

LEGOs are miniaturized Scandinavian caltrops.

Football/soccer stadiums, the Coliseum... impressive but expensive stuff from Lego. I believe that there is book called 'Cool Lego Guns' if that iz your preference.

I couldn't say that I built anything with Legos until I made a battle tank and a half-track.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
Also… You think kids today are fucked up because Legos come in sets? Couldn’t have anything to do with all the social programming at school? Is this comment meant to be serious and taken seriously?

Not really, but I don't think it helps. Kinda like when I was a kid, my parents thought nothing of my leaving the house after breakfast, riding my bicycle all day around the neighborhood, and them not seeing me again until dinner time. Parents who allowed that nowadays would be charged with child abuse, but it taught me independence, self-reliance, and a whole lot of other things that no longer seem to be valued. How are kids going to learn to figure things out for themselves if they never get a chance to learn to do so (on so many levels I have to wonder if it is part of a plan).

My kids Lego’s are separated and all in big plastic storage tubs. We built the item as instructed out of the box and then when they were done with it they built whatever. Usually crazy looking houses and cars and planes.

quote:

Originally posted by mcrimm:
We have 5 Grandkids ranging from age 7 to 13 that include 4 boys and a girl. They, collectively, have probably 50 sets and a gazillion pieces.

HA!!!! You are just getting started.

quote:

Originally posted by ElToro:
My kids Lego’s are separated and all in big plastic storage tubs. We built the item as instructed out of the box and then when they were done with it they built whatever. Usually crazy looking houses and cars and planes.

BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!!!

The kits get built and put on display they don’t get played with!

I buy random Legos by the pound on eBay and thrown in a massive tub and those are what get free play.

We leave the big kit buying to the grandparents.

I was only ever interested in my own LEGO creations as a kid.

Don't really get the love of the pre-set ones. It does strike me as imagination-deficient...

And yes, most sets now are more like 3D Jigsaw Puzzles than anything else.

Some folks buy wood and build their own furniture, and other folks prefer Ikea, I guess.

My kids Legos not only entertained him, my cats enjoyed playing Lego hockey.
Thats bang for the buck!

The big sets aren't really for kids. They're pretty much for adults with disposable income.

Legos didn't exist when I was a kid (1940s). I had Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, and a generic construction set (couldn't afford real "Erector"). I also built a lot of bridges, etc. with playing cards stuck into books. One of my uncles worked in a laundry and he brought home lots of those shirt cardboards. His older son and I would cut them into strips and fold them into troughs, glue them together into "marble runs", with lots of turns, switches, etc. Some of them covered half a ping-pong table up to 2 feet high and would take about a minute for a marble to make its way all through it.

FWIW, someone built an eternal clock with Lego parts that was accurate to a few seconds a century.

flashguy

The Titanic isn't made for kids to play with. It's made for adults to pretend they're kids. I buy a few sets a year to build myself and many sets as gifts for my nephews. The nephews build the trucks and planes and whatever else. They also build whatever they feel like building with the pieces they have. Imagination is still alive.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: berto,

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
The big sets aren't really for kids. They're pretty much for adults with disposable income.

That has always been my impression of the kits.

But without any kids myself, my opinion is also that there’s nothing wrong with jigsaw puzzles. They can be a useful mental exercise, but without the value of true creative activities such as using something like Legos or even the simple wooden blocks which were what I had as a child to construct buildings and towns from scratch.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
Not really, but I don't think it helps. Kinda like when I was a kid, my parents thought nothing of my leaving the house after breakfast, riding my bicycle all day around the neighborhood, and them not seeing me again until dinner time. Parents who allowed that nowadays would be charged with child abuse, but it taught me independence, self-reliance, and a whole lot of other things that no longer seem to be valued. How are kids going to learn to figure things out for themselves if they never get a chance to learn to do so (on so many levels I have to wonder if it is part of a plan).

For what it's worth, I don't hear about any of my friend's sons building these kinds of sets. Just because these are available now doesn't mean that's what all kids are doing with them. That's leaping to a conclusion that isn't supported by any evidence.

I think creative play is important, and it's also is far from dead, and I say that as a parent today. Kids are still kids, no matter what you put in their hands. If you just want to go all "darn kids these days," then I'll just let you have that.

quote:

Originally posted by ElToro:
We built the item as instructed out of the box and then when they were done with it they built whatever. Usually crazy looking houses and cars and planes.

Hmmm... seems to be a common theme here from parents raising kids right now.